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Title: Hiram in the Middle West

Or, A young farmer's upward struggle

Author: Burbank L. Todd

Illustrator: Howard L. Hastings

Release date: February 19, 2025 [eBook #75408]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: George Sully & Company, 1920

Credits: Aaron Adrignola, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HIRAM IN THE MIDDLE WEST ***

HIRAM IN THE MIDDLE WEST

OR

A YOUNG FARMER'S UPWARD STRUGGLE

BY BURBANK L. TODD

AUTHOR OF "HIRAM THE YOUNG FARMER."

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK

GEORGE SULLY & COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY

GEORGE SULLY & COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.

BACK TO THE SOIL SERIES

By BURBANK L. TODD

12mo. Cloth. Illustrated.

HIRAM THE YOUNG FARMER

Or, Making the Soil Pay

HIRAM IN THE MIDDLE WEST

Or, A Young Fanner's Upward Struggle

(Other Volumes in Preparation)

GEORGE SULLY & COMPANY, NEW YORK

CONTENTS

I.

THE MAN WHO WAS AFRAID OF RATS

II.

A KERNEL OF WHEAT

III.

INVENTOR'S LUCK

IV.

SUNNYSIDE

V.

THE TERRIBLE MISS PRINGLE

VI.

FARMING AND FURBELOWS

VII.

SEED TESTING

VIII.

THE BLUEBIRD

IX.

ORRIN POST

X.

A FRIEND INDEED

XI.

FRICTION

XII.

WORK BEGINS

XIII.

WHEAT

XIV.

YANCEY BATTICK'S STORY

XV.

THE COUNTRY DANCE

XVI.

TROUBLE WITH TURNER'S BULL

XVII.

WHEAT HARVEST

XVIII.

THE BABY TORNADO

XIX.

DISASTER THREATENS

XX.

A BARGAIN

XXI.

A PARTNERSHIP IS FORMED

XXII.

A STRANGER APPEARS

XXIII.

AN INQUIRY

XXIV.

SOCIETY

XXV.

A VISIT AND A PEST

XXVI.

THE FIGHT FOR THE WHEAT

XXVII.

DAY DREAMS

XXVIII.

CORN AND COMPARISONS

XXIX.

EXPLOITING THE WHEAT

XXX.

KING CORN

XXXI.

WHO IS THEODORE CHESTER?

XXXII.

LOOKING AHEAD

ILLUSTRATIONS

The two teams cleaned up the Sunnyside cornpatch in a week.

Orrin ... flung the cape over the bull's head

Two of his helpers had to hold the ladder steady while the other handed him the end of the wire cable

Everybody about the place—even Sister—worked in the wheat fields

HIRAM IN THE MIDDLE WEST

CHAPTER I

THE MAN WHO WAS AFRAID OF RATS

For an hour before the accommodation train stopped at Pringleton the rain had etched zigzag lines upon the windowpane beside Hiram Strong's seat; so to find the platform aglitter with puddles in the dull lamp light and the water dripping drearily from the station eaves did not surprise him. What was rather astonishing was to find Pringleton such a very lonely place.

As far as he could see, when he had walked around the bungalow-built station the light in the stationmaster's ticket office was the only light visible save the switch-targets and the disappearing green lamps on the end of the train. Hiram, with his heavy bag, was the only passenger who had got off the evening train.

When he came around to the front of the station again he saw the stationmaster humped over his desk in the bay window, with a pen stuck over his ear, looking for all the world like a secretary bird. He peered out of the window at Hiram curiously, and finally pushed up the sash.

"I don't know whether you know it or not, young fellow," the stationmaster said, "but the company charges mileage if you use this platform for a walking track. And you'll make trouble for me if you keep going around, for I never have found out how many laps make a mile, and I sha'n't know what to charge you."

Hiram Strong smiled his approval of this brand of humor, yet his question put in reply was quite serious:

"Have you seen anybody around here, sir, from a place called Sunnyside Farm?"

"There isn't anybody at Sunnyside Farm, as far as I know," said the stationmaster; "and there hasn't been since the house burned down last year."

"Yes, I know," Hiram said quickly. "But I rather expected Mr. Bronson would have somebody over here to meet me."

"Mr. Stephen Bronson?" asked the man. "Him that's just bought the Sunnyside place?"

"Yes. It's quite a walk to the farm, isn't it?"

"It is the longest two miles you ever walked, son," declared the stationmaster. "Were you thinking to walk it to-night?"

"As there is nobody here to meet me, I guess I'll have to," replied the youth cheerfully. "Which way do I head? You'll have to start me right, or else I may wear out your platform walking around and around on it all night."

The stationmaster chuckled. "Well, young fellow," he observed, "it is evidently to my advantage to put you on your way. Turn around, pick up your bag, go right down those steps to the road and walk straight ahead. You are now facing west. When you get into the road you will find it not so dark as it seems."

"Dark enough, I guess," muttered Hiram.

"You can't miss the road even on a dark night, for there is no fork in it till after you pass Sunnyside."

"But," asked the youth, "is there anybody up that way who will lodge me for the night, as the Sunnyside house is burned?"

"You may get taken in at Miss Delia Pringle's, just beyond Sunnyside—first house after you pass the ruins of the burned farmhouse. This station is named after her folks. Don't make the mistake of going to the first house this side of Sunnyside."

He said this last so curiously that Hiram asked him: "Why not?"

"Because that is Yancey Battick's place. He'll likely blow a charge of rock salt into you from his shotgun and then ask what you want afterward."

"Why, what's his idea?" asked Hiram much amazed.

"Says he's afraid of rats—that's all," declared the stationmaster, and immediately slammed down the window to shut out the searching February wind.

The youth hesitated for only a moment longer. He rather thought the stationmaster of Pringleton was quite as odd as the man he called Yancey Battick, who met all visitors with a salt-loaded shotgun and was afraid of rats.

"And this isn't really a night fit for a rat to be out," Hiram muttered, after he had walked for some time along the muddy road leading west from the station.

Occasionally while he was still near the railroad he passed a dwelling; but it was just about supper time, and nearly all the lights were at the backs of the houses. Hardly a ray of cheerful lamp light reached the road.

The houses were situated farther apart as he continued his march. The fine rain was penetrating in the extreme. Hiram desired shelter more than he ever had before, it seemed to him.

And just when it appeared as though nothing about his situation could be worse, the heavens opened. It had been doing this, off and on, all day. But this water fall seemed heavier than any of those that had preceded it.

Hiram Strong saw a light ahead and a little to one side of the road. It was not a very bright light (perhaps it was drowned by the curtain of falling rain) but it must be in a house, he thought. At a time like this, it was any port in a storm.

He set out at a heavy run toward the light. He found a sagging gate in a decrepit fence. Plunging up a muddy path, he reached a tiny porch which might have offered some shelter had not the roof leaked like a sieve.

"Hard luck!" muttered the youth. "If they won't let me in—"

His feet pounding on the rickety steps and the thump of his heavy bag on the porch aroused somebody within. Hiram heard a firm step at the other side of the door.

Suddenly the door opened with an abruptness which was startling. The door opened on a chain, and through the aperture of about eight inches was thrust the brown muzzle of a double-barreled shotgun that, at the moment, looked as big as a cannon to the youth. He stepped back promptly, and a cascade off the roof of the porch went down the back of his neck.

"What are you after?" demanded a harsh voice.

Above the slanted gun-barrel appeared a ferocious black moustache which completely hid the wearer's mouth, a beak-like nose, and a pair of blue eyes that glittered half wildly. Altogether the householder was of most forbidding aspect, and the youth at once identified him as Yancey Battick. He had evidently stopped at the wrong house after all!

"I want nothing, Mr. Battick, but shelter till the rain holds up," Hiram answered.

"Who told you my name?" demanded the man. "I never saw you before, young fellow."

"I guessed it," Hiram replied. "I'm a pretty good Yankee at guessing."

"And you are a Yankee, I imagine," the man said. "You're from the East, aren't you?"

"Yes, sir," replied Hiram, and mentioned the locality from which he had just come in answer to Mr. Stephen Bronson's summons.

The man still presented the gun, and although Hiram had stepped from under the cascade pouring down from the roof, he was anything but comfortable out there on the porch.

"Where are you going?" asked Battick, scowling still.

"To Sunnyside Farm."

"Why, there's nobody there! The house is burned down."

"I expect to work that place this year for Mr. Stephen Bronson. I want to find a place to lodge near the farm, and I was told to apply to—Miss Pringle, I believe the name is."

"What!" gasped the man. "A young fellow like you? Who sent you unwarned into the clutches of that old maid?"

"Why—is she so bad?" Hiram asked.

"There isn't any male too young nor yet too old to be out of danger of that old maid. Come on in," added Mr. Battick, unchaining the door. "I wouldn't let any male creature get into that woman's clutches."

Hiram stepped rather doubtfully into the house. Mr. Yancey Battick certainly was a very odd person. He had been warned that the man with the welcoming shotgun was afraid of rats; it appeared that he was likewise much afraid of spinsters.

CHAPTER II

A KERNEL OF WHEAT

"Hold on!" said Yancey Battick, halting Hiram just after he was inside the house and the door was closed. "Who sent you here?"

He seemed a very suspicious man. His blue eyes searched the open countenance of the boy from the East, and his expression, with bristling moustache and all, was fierce indeed.

"I tell you I was not sent here at all," Hiram explained rather wearily. "In fact, I was advised strongly against knocking at your door."

"Who advised you?" demanded Battick quickly.

"The stationmaster."

"That old thimblerigger, Jason Oakley? Huh! Are you a friend of his?"

It was evident that Mr. Battick was not on friendly terms with many of his neighbors. Hiram Strong did not lack common sense. He proposed to say nothing to cause the householder to turn him out into the downpour, which was now very severe.

"I am just as much a friend of his, Mr. Battick, as I am of yours," the youth said.

"Humph! Well! And I suppose Jason told you to try at Delia Pringle's?"

"He did."

"Humph!" Battick said again, and finally set the gun in a rack near the chimney corner.

At last Hiram Strong felt as though he could look about the room. Heretofore his attention had been given to that gun. The door by which he had entered opened directly from the porch; there was no entry-way. The room seemed to be the entire width of the cottage with a wide fireplace facing the door, and evidently there was another room behind the chimney—perhaps two.

This living room was sufficiently interesting—not to say surprising—to the visitor to hold his full attention for the time being. The two ends of the room, at the right and left of the doorway, first gained Hiram Strong's interest. At the right the wall was completely masked from floor to ceiling by bookshelves, and those shelves were filled with books, the nature of which he could not so easily learn, for the hanging lamp did not thoroughly illuminate the apartment.

At the other end was a bench upon which were retorts, a mortar-and-pestle, an alcohol forge, and other implements and instruments which suggested chemical—and other—experiments. There were, too, racks of seed-boxes for testing. Hiram was thoroughly familiar with these shallow trays.

But in the middle of the room was the object that most excited Hiram's interest. This was a high table—or so it seemed—its shape something like that of a coffin. At least, it was as long as a full length casket, about as wide, and was side-boarded like no table Hiram had ever seen before. But there was a tarpaulin spread over it. The four legs were of round, barked, straight logs four inches in diameter.

After setting the gun in the rack Battick turned toward his visitor and, though not very graciously, invited him to be seated, pointing to a rustic armchair at the side of the hearth farthest from the gun-rack.

"And take off your coat, stranger. What did you say your name was?"

"It is Hiram Strong."

"What did you say about working Sunnyside for Mr. Bronson?" continued the host. "I guess you mean you're going to chore around for him?"

"I hope to run the farm for Mr. Bronson."

"A boy like you?"

"I'll never be any younger," Hiram laughed, for he was rather used to having people cast reflections upon his age. He had had, however, much greater experience in practical farming than many men on farms who were twice his age.

"What do you know about farming?" asked Battick abruptly. "What experience have you had, Mr. Strong?"

Hiram smiled slowly. He was by no means a handsome boy, but he was wholesome looking and his smile was disarming. Even the scowling visage of Yancey Battick began to smooth out as he watched his visitor. But it was plain to be seen that the man was a misanthrope.

"You see," Hiram began, "my father was a very good farmer indeed, although he farmed for other men all his life. He read a great deal and studied farming methods, and I worked right along with him until I was fourteen. What he learned—at least, a good deal of it—I learned, too."

"Humph!" sniffed Battick, "a boy of that immature age?"

"Father made a friend of me. We were like brothers—chums," Hiram Strong continued. "Somehow, he was an easy man to learn from—he was patient."

"I see," muttered Battick. "Well, I take it your father died?"

"Yes, sir. I had got it into my head that I did not want to be a tenant farmer, as he was all his life, and there was no money left. So I went to town thinking there would be more and better chances for a boy."

"Humph! You were starting out young."

"I didn't have any folks," explained Hiram. "I got a job that barely paid my board and lodging. And I soon got sick of it."

"Of the job or the city?" asked Battick, the ghost of a smile passing over his face as he listened to his involuntary guest and stared into the leaping flames on the hearth.

"Of both," replied Hiram promptly. "The city is no place for a fellow who loves the country as I found I did. Mother Atterson, with whom I boarded, had eighty acres left her near the town of Scoville, and she and I made a dicker. I farmed it for her for two years, and when our contract ended at Christmas last, I had fixed things so that she could run it on a paying basis with the help of a friend of mine, Henry Pollock, and by the aid of Sister, whom Mother Atterson has adopted, and Lem Camp, who lives with them.

"Mr. Stephen Bronson bought a place near Scoville—"

"He's always buying farms," grumbled Battick. "Got more money than brains."

"I wouldn't say that," Hiram emphasized in disagreement. "I do not believe that Mr. Bronson ever invests in a farm without getting a good return for his outlay. He did on the old Fleigler place there in Scoville. And he only bought that place to live there for a part of each year while his daughter, Lettie, is going to school at St. Beris."

"Yes. I've heard he has a daughter that just about leads him around by the nose," sniffed Battick.

Hiram Strong laughed.

"She's a girl that most any man would be willing to be led around by, by the nose or otherwise," he said. "Lettie Bronson is a mighty pretty girl. Anyhow, her father liked my work on the Atterson Eighty; so he has made me this offer to come out here to the Middle West and farm Sunnyside for a couple of years."

In this brief way Hiram Strong had related the more important occurrences narrated in the first volume of this series, entitled "Hiram the Young Farmer; Or, Making the Soil Pay." His modest statement that "Mr. Bronson had liked my work on the Atterson Eighty" scarcely described the farm owner's enthusiasm, however, or explained why Mr. Bronson had sent for so young a fellow to run his new purchase here at Pringleton near the Ohio River.

The rain continued to slap against the old clapboards of the house and the limbs of the huge buttonwood tree Hiram had seen in the front yard creaked loudly. A long and hard storm threatened, and the outlook for pushing on to Miss Pringle's was not a happy one. The woman would be in bed before Hiram reached her place.

As Mr. Battick seemed to have fallen into a brown study and asked no further questions, Hiram felt free to examine the furniture of the living room again. The table—if it was a table—was an odd thing. The young man did not know what to make of it.

The piece of tarpaulin that covered it was sunk in along the top, and he came to the conclusion that there was no real top to the table. Then, in leaning back in his low chair near the fire, he saw that the long frame was bottomed with heavy planks. It was a box on four legs rather than a table.

Mr. Battick spoke again, in his usual abrupt fashion:

"Have you had your supper yet, young fellow?"

The tone could not be called cordial.

"I had something to eat on the train," replied Hiram indifferently.

"On that old accommodation?" sniffed Battick. "Case-hardened sandwiches, I bet."

Hiram laughed, but admitted the fact.

"I know what it is to ride on that train," the man said. "In spite of what Jase Oakley told you about me, I wouldn't see a man starve—not right here in my own house," added this queer individual, though still gruffly.

"Oh, the stationmaster did not say anything about you except that you were afraid of rats," Hiram rejoined, watching Battick slyly, for he was very curious about the man.

"That's what that old thimblerigger said about me, eh?" growled Battick. "Lucky he don't often come up this way. It might happen that I should take him for a rat."

He said it so savagely that Hiram considered it best to say nothing more to excite his strange host. Battick brought eggs and bacon and half of a corn pone from a cupboard, preparing the meal deftly at the open fire.

Suddenly Hiram's attention was caught by something on the floor just under the nearest corner of the odd table, or box, in the middle of the room. It was a tiny, cone-shaped heap of grain—wheat, he thought. It had dribbled through the bottom of that box by some tiny hole, it was plain, and had fallen unnoticed to the floor.

There was something odd about this grain—something that immediately attracted Hiram's particular interest. When Battick's back was turned he stooped sideways from his chair and secured one of the kernels of wheat between his thumb and finger. He placed it in his palm and studied it minutely.

The kernel of wheat was different from any grain he had ever seen. First of all, it was a very large, plump grain, perfectly formed, and upon one side was a tiny yet distinct red stripe.

Suddenly Hiram looked up from the grain in his hand. Battick had made a strange move. He had set the skillet down on the hearth and was reaching for the shotgun. His eyes seemed to glow and a deep flush was diffused over the man's forbidding looking countenance.

Hiram Strong was amazed and startled at his host's appearance.

"What is the matter, Mr. Battick?" cried the visitor. "What are you doing with that gun?" for the man had seized it now.

"Hush!" hissed Yancey Battick. "I think I see a rat!"

CHAPTER III

INVENTOR'S LUCK

The thought had been impressed upon Hiram Strong's mind from the very first that there was something altogether wrong with Yancey Battick. His wild eyes and excited manner now convinced the visitor that this suspicion was correct. Battick was not altogether sane. And when he reached for that rock-salt loaded shotgun the visitor prepared to defend himself.

The muzzle of the gun swung toward Hiram. The latter slid out of his chair and darted sideways just as Battick rose up with the butt of the gun at his shoulder. The muzzle seemed closely following Hiram's movements.

Then the man's finger pressed the trigger and the gun roared. It seemed that the wind of the charge passed over Hiram's head.

"What under the sun are you doing?" demanded the youth, leaping up and facing the householder.

"What did you move for?" retorted Battick. "I might have got you instead of the rat."

"The rat?" repeated Hiram in some doubt.

Battick returned the smoking shotgun to its rack and crossed the room to the workbench. Under it, deep in the shadow of the corner, he found his game—a fat, gray rat, still kicking.

"Great Scott!" murmured the boy from the East, "it really was a rat."

"What did you think I would be shooting in this old house?" growled Battick. "It's rat-ridden. They give me no peace. They have cost me more—well, no use going into that," said the man, and so concluded.

But Hiram Strong was now immensely interested in this strange individual. His fright because of Mr. Battick's reckless use of his shotgun was soon over. The rats about this ancient cottage certainly were very bold. But there must be—there was—a particular reason why the man was afraid of the rats. This fear of which Hiram had first heard from Jason Oakley, the stationmaster, was not merely some idiosyncrasy of Battick's.

"Have you tried poison for the vermin?" Hiram demanded.

"I've tried everything," replied the man gruffly.

"What makes them so bold?"

"The place was overrun with them when I came on it four years ago. I can't keep anything in the barn. Why, they have eaten a good buggy harness on me! I have to keep my harnesses in my bedroom. I've got an alarm clock in there and it ticks so loud that it scares them off, I guess. And, then, I snore. That must keep the creatures on the move."

Hiram did not know whether the man was all together in earnest, or not; but he had to laugh at this last statement.

"It ain't no laughing matter," Yancey Battick said, wagging his head. "My old horse got a nail in his hoof and I greased it well. Hanged if the rascals didn't near eat him up in one night. If he hadn't kicked and snorted so and woke me up, I guess they would have had the most of him eaten before morning."

"But what brings them into the house—and so bold? You must be on the watch for them continually."

"I am. Jase Oakley is right. I am afraid of the things. I scarcely dare leave the house because of them—"

He halted. Hiram knew instinctively that the man thought he had said too much. He had verged on some secret, the mystery of which the youth had felt to be in the very air of the house since he had entered it. He saw that Battick was eyeing him again in his suspicious, if not ugly, way, so he hastily asked:

"Did you learn to shoot on the fly like that by shooting rats?"

"Oh, I knew how to use a gun before I came to Pringleton."

"You've got good eyesight. I did not see that rat at all."

"I saw the glint of his eyes under the bench." Battick was again giving his attention to the preparations for supper. "I've got so I am continually on the watch for the rascals."

And he did not dare leave the house because of them! Then, decided Hiram Strong, there was something in the house that he feared the rats would destroy.

Hiram looked under the odd box in the middle of the room at the little heap of grain that lay there. Wheat! A special kind of wheat! The seed-boxes on the bench told something. Hiram could guess more. But he said nothing at the moment. In fact Yancey Battick was scarcely a man to whom one would address a personal remark or ask a direct question about himself or his affairs.

Yancey Battick brought a small stand from one corner of the room and set it before the fire. He spread a clean, if coarse, cloth upon it, and then the tableware, such as a camper would use. The smoking food, together with a pot of coffee, came on the table, and Battick beckoned Hiram to draw up his chair.

"This is mighty good of you, Mr. Battick," the visitor said, "especially when I know you do not make a practice of harboring wayfarers."

"I hope I shall not be sorry for having befriended you," the man said gloomily.

"I assure you—"

"You couldn't assure me of anything," interrupted Battick. "I have had sufficient experience to make me a thorough pessimist. You look like a nice young fellow; but I shall not be surprised if I am, in the end, very sorry that I took you in."

"Even to save me from the clutches of Miss Delia Pringle?" the visitor suggested slyly.

There came a sudden twinkle into Yancey Battick's eye. Whether or not he was a monomaniac on some subject (and Hiram Strong was tempted to believe he was) it was evident that the man appreciated a joke. He nodded his appreciation of Hiram's words.

"That woman is a pest!" Battick said with vigor. "But I guess she is honest—wouldn't steal anything but an unsophisticated and helpless man-critter, I mean."

So it was stealing that he was afraid of! Rats are great thieves. Hiram guessed again—and believed he had hit the fundamental trouble with his odd host. Battick had originated, or developed, a new seed-wheat. He feared somebody would steal it from him, and the rats were doing so.

The rats were so troublesome that he had to keep the wheat in his living room. This table-looking thing was a box full of wheat. And because the rats were so bold he dared not leave the house. Even with all these precautions the thieving creatures were getting some of the wheat, as note that little pile of grain under the box on the floor.

The young fellow from Scoville was interested in more than one way. First of all, Battick himself aroused his curiosity. But that single kernel of wheat he had picked up interested Hiram Strong much more.

He had examined many samples of seed-wheat, but nothing that had ever looked like this large, plump grain with the tiny crimson stripe upon it This was indeed a distinct variety, and if its culture was possible on all wheat lands, and it milled all right, Hiram knew the strange man had the basis of a fortune—if he could put it over.

This section around Pringleton, as Hiram had learned from Mr. Bronson, was not particularly a wheat-growing country. And yet every farmer of any importance grew some wheat. If this box was full of grain the man had about eight bushels, if Hiram was any judge of bulk and measure. Sown carefully, this would be enough for five or six acres. Five or six acres of wheat is a very small wheat crop, but an excellent seed crop.

If Battick really had a new and good wheat, the crop from this amount of seed would pay him a good penny, if he could sell it to an honest seedsman. There was thus reason why he should be so afraid of thieves—and especially of the rats.

Under fortunate conditions, the increase of these few bushels of wheat would yield Battick a small fortune. Perhaps the man was by no means as crazy as he at first appeared. And it might be that he knew his neighbors, and had reason to suspect them of desiring to rob him of the fruits of his discovery.

The two finished supper and pushed back from the table. There was a sink in one corner of the room, and at this Battick quickly washed the cooking utensils and tableware, while Hiram dried them. They spoke of inconsequential things while they did this work Then Battick said:

"I wouldn't have the heart to turn you out on a night like this, even if it cleared off—which it isn't likely to do. I'll let you sleep in my bed and I'll bunk down here before the fire."

"Oh, no, Mr. Battick! I could not think of taking your bed," Hiram urged, but with a smile. "You have proved to me that you are a much better neighbor than you were quoted at; but there is no use in carrying the demonstration too far. I will sleep here before the fire and be very glad of the chance."

Yancey Battick flashed him another of those hard, suspicious glances. It was not difficult to read the man's mind now that Hiram had discovered, as he thought, the key to the mystery. Battick was suspicious of him yet. He said gruffly:

"If you remain here to-night, young man, you will sleep in my bed. And see that you do sleep, too, for although I snore, I'm easily roused, and I keep that gun right beside me."

Hiram could not help being somewhat exasperated by all this suspicion. He was glad enough of the shelter; but he did not think he looked so dishonest that his host had to guard himself with a shotgun.

"Look here, Mr. Battick," he said, rather tartly. "You're one of those cows that give a good pail of milk and then step in it. You give me supper and a bed, but distrust me. How do you know but you are entertaining an angel unawares?" and he ended by laughing a little to cover his vexation.

"That's all right, too," Battick replied. "I know all about those 'angels unaware.' I've had my experience with them, and I've had to run 'em off the place with my shotgun. Besides, I don't see any wings sprouting on you, Mr. Strong. I'll treat you just as good as you treat me. But as I tell 'em all, when you come to my front gate, call out; and if I don't answer, keep off."

"If you are a pessimist, Mr. Battick," Hiram said shortly, "I hope I'll never get to be one."

Suddenly the man flashed him a more earnest glance than before. His countenance became suffused with red.

"I hope you never will, young man," Battick said. "And never be an inventor. Immediately a man starts out to help his fellows, everybody's hand is turned against him. He is pariah—and likewise the prey of all those with thieving instincts. Consider Goodyear, what he suffered; and Elias Howe, and a horde of others.

"I came to Pringleton to escape people who wanted to rob me. Some of them had. But it seems people are the same in all localities. I have to watch, and threaten, and live like an outlaw to keep what is my own, Mr. Strong. You are young and have faith. Keep that faith in people if you can. But never be an inventor; for that is a crime that should be punished by being boiled in oil, or sawn asunder, or drawn and quartered, or some other middle-age device for making capital criminals suffer."

"That is dreadful!" exclaimed Hiram.

"Sounds pretty rough, I admit," Battick said, in his usual tone. "But believe me, I know whereof I speak. Now, come this way, Mr. Strong. I think you will be comfortable."

He lit a candle at the blaze on the hearth and led the way into his bedroom. It was a comfortable room, and Battick insisted upon putting clean sheets on the bed, which he aired before the fire, and left his guest finally with the word:

"Don't be frightened if you hear the gun in the night, Strong. I shall probably be only shooting at a rat."

Hiram had never been entertained in just this way before. He peered through the crack of the door and saw Yancey Battick loading the barrel of the shotgun that had previously been emptied. The young fellow went to bed finally feeling that he was in the midst of alarms.

CHAPTER IV

SUNNYSIDE

As so often happens after a hard storm, the weather cleared at daybreak and a patch of cold blue wintry sky met Hiram Strong's inquisitive gaze through the window as he rolled over in Yancey Battick's comfortable bed to look out.

He judged immediately that it would be a race between Boreas and Jack Frost as to which would gain the most advantage by the stopping of the rain. The sturdy wind would try to dry up the saturated earth before Jack Frost could get his fetters on the puddles and plowed ground.

From what he had read of conditions here about Pringleton, the winter had already been severe enough for all farming purposes. The grain was in good shape, the plowed ground had already been well frozen to the detriment of the bugs and worms, and the fruit trees were showing no signs of early sap-rising.

Another month of cold weather, some snow for a wheat-cover, and some strong March winds, would put the land in ideal shape for corn.

And Hiram Strong had been brought here to the Corn Belt of the Middle West for the express purpose of raising corn.

He was enthusiastic over the prospect. He had worked hard and intelligently on the little Eastern farm, and now had come his chance, not only to work out his present theories on a larger scale, but to experiment further and with greater facilities for carrying his plans through to successful completion. Yes, it was with eager anticipation and high hopes that he looked forward to the advancing spring.

Mr. Stephen Bronson had been growing bumper crops on all his farms through the Middle West, and especially those in the vicinity of Pringleton. Without doubt the big farm owner, having seen what Hiram Strong had accomplished on the Atterson Eighty, determined to learn if such methods of cultivation would pay on a larger acreage and under somewhat different conditions of climate and with different tools.

The young fellow quite realized that he was on trial only. He must make good within two years or he would be a failure in the eyes of such a sharp business man as Stephen Bronson.

Hiram, however, had no intention of being a failure; he had come here to Pringleton to win, just as he had gone upon the old Jeptha Atterson farm to win.

Hiram remained in bed on this morning until he heard a stir in the living room and the sizzling of bacon in the skillet. He had not been disturbed by Mr. Battick shooting at rats in the night (for which he was grateful), but he had not dared to venture into the outer room until he was sure his host was moving about.

Hiram brought his bag out of the bedroom already packed. Battick only grunted a "good morning," and was evidently in no more cheerful mood than on the evening before. Had he been invited to do so, the youth from the East would not have wished to prolong his stay with the man.

Battick, however, seemed still opposed to Hiram's getting into the clutches of Miss Delia Pringle. At breakfast he said:

"If you can stand to 'bach it,' as I do, Mr. Strong, you can make yourself comfortable up there at Sunnyside, and no thanks to anybody."

"But you say the house is burned down!"

"That's right. The last fellow who was on the farm, however, went in strong for poultry. Believed in fowls—it was a religion with him. And I take it a man has got to make 'em his religion really to get anything out of them. I never had the patience myself."

"I believe eighty per cent. of those who try hens for profit, fail; but the successful ones can easily enough point out the reasons for those failures," said Hiram.

"Well, maybe. However, that Brandenburg who lived at Sunnyside last fixed up a pretty good hen plant. After the fire he went in a hurry. Feared he would be blamed, perhaps. And I guess that Pringle woman would have done something to him if she could have got the law on him."

"Miss Delia Pringle?" Hiram asked, with some curiosity.

"Yes. Her folks owned pretty near all the land around here two or three generations ago. That's why it is called Pringleton. Sounds like a nursery rhyme. She sold Sunnyside to Stephen Bronson, same as she sold me this place."

"Indeed?"

"This was the old Pringle homestead. Built before the Flood, or thereabout," said Battick. "That is why it is rat-ridden. The rodents had it to themselves for years, while the farm lay idle. It had not been cropped to death by tenants; that is why I bought it. You will find part of Sunnyside in worse shape than this old place was. Miss Pringle had one tenant after another on the big farm, each one worse than the previous incumbent. I hope Stephen Bronson got it cheap enough."

"You intimated I might find some means of housekeeping up there, after all," said Hiram. "What did you mean?"

"That Brandenburg left his chicken plant just as it was. The end shed is tight and has a good stove in it and a bunk. He watched his incubators there. You get some bedclothes and some cooking utensils and you'll be fixed right," said Battick.

"Anything rather than give me up to the teeth and claws of Miss Pringle, is it?" asked Hiram, with a quiet chuckle.

"No laughing matter, young fellow," advised Battick, as the visitor prepared to depart. "I'll bet you she'll be over to see you before you are at Sunnyside twenty-four hours—unless she has a broken leg. Oh, I know her, Mr. Strong. I pretty near had to run her off this place with my gun."

"I hope not, Mr. Battick."

"Fact," said the man in a perfectly serious way. "As I tell you, this was the old Pringle place. She claimed she liked to come down here for old time's sake and sit under that buttonwood tree out there. She'd bring her sewing and stay all the afternoon and I had to dress up and make believe I was going to town to get rid of her."

"That was a good deal of a time-consumer," interrupted Hiram, his eyes dancing with his inward mirth.

"Then," pursued the harassed man, "folks riding by began to ask me if we were going to be married soon and whether I'd continue to live down here or go up to Miss Pringle's new house to live with her. It got right embarrassing for a modest man, for a fact!

"Besides," added Battick, "I didn't know but she was aiming to get me into court for breach of promise. Circumstantial evidence has hung many a man."

"I hope I shall have no similar trouble," Hiram replied, vastly amused.

He believed Battick, in spite of all his moodiness, and his fear of rats—and dislike for visitors—was a wit and worth cultivating. At least, he determined to learn more about that new wheat that the man was guarding so religiously.

In fact, Hiram had found a chance to pick up a pinch of the wheat corns from under the trough, and had the grain safely twisted up in a bit of paper in his pocket.

He knew better than to offer Mr. Battick anything like money in return for the queer hospitality the misanthrope had shown him. Hiram did, however, make one attempt to return something for the kindness.

"I see you have seed wheat in this box, Mr. Battick," he said. "If you wish to keep the rats out of it, I believe I can show you a wrinkle."

"You can?" rejoined Battick, watching him with keen suspicion again.

"You have a couple of old milk pans there and two wash basins. Invert a basin or a pan over each leg of that box and no rat can run up the leg and over the side of the box, or gnaw into it."

"I get you!" ejaculated Battick, seeing the point at once. "I believe that's a good idea, young fellow."

"I know it is," rejoined Hiram with confidence. "I built me a corncrib that way only last year. It surely gives Mr. Rat something new to think about."

He picked up his bag, shook hands with his odd host, and went out. It was a keen wind he faced as he started up the hill to Sunnyside Farm.

A jay winging its way from one wood to another, stopped upon a dead limb to stare curiously at the wayfarer. Then, with raucous cry, it disappeared in a piece of woodland that evidently belonged to the old farm that Yancey Battick had purchased from the terrible Miss Pringle. This windbreak divided the Battick place from Sunnyside.

While he was yet at some distance Hiram saw the burned ruins of the farmhouse on the hill and the barns and other outbuildings. All the arable land of Sunnyside seemed to lie on the south side of the road; and the slope of the fields was toward that same point of the compass.

The higher land on his right was heavily timbered clear to the summit of the hill. As he mounted the incline he obtained a pretty clear idea of what the acres he expected to farm looked like.

Hiram Strong was deeply interested in his calling. Every young fellow must, if he would get on in the world and really amount to anything. As he had told Yancey Battick the evening before, Hiram's father had been a good farmer, and he had not only given his son knowledge, but had instilled into his mind the principle of thoroughness, as well.

As Hiram looked, searching the fields to the far-distant line of the forest-bounded farm, he wondered what would be his fortune here. Would he be able to show a profit for Mr. Bronson on the ledger, as he had for Mother Atterson? As to his own contract, Hiram was on a straight salary, and whether he made little or much for his employer his own income would not be affected.

But money was not the only thing that Hiram Strong saw in the bargain. He was after a reputation. Moreover, he desired to learn something from his experience—whatever it might be—here at Sunnyside.

He reached the plain at the top of the rise at last. The outlook all about was promising, save in one direction where there was a piece of burned timber. The nearest house was a white painted cottage with green blinds on the other side of the road and a few rods beyond the burned timber lot.

"That must be Miss Pringle's," Hiram thought, and on the heels of this mental decision he beheld to his surprise a woman with a shawl thrown hastily over her head running out of this small dwelling and out of the yard, approaching the main gate of the Sunnyside place, evidently in a state of exaggerated excitement.

"Say, young man!" she shouted while still some distance away, "I want to know why you've kept this whole neighborhood in a stir-up all this blessed night? Where have you been? And you as dry as a bone right now!"

CHAPTER V

THE TERRIBLE MISS PRINGLE

The woman so excitedly approaching Sunnyside was a buxom person with every sign of an assertive and determined character. This first speech addressed to Hiram made him feel that he must somehow be in the wrong—that he had done something to shock Miss Pringle and the neighborhood in general.

Hiram took off his hat as Miss Pringle came near. But he did not offer his hand, for he was not at all sure that her greeting was intended to be a friendly one.

"I suppose you are Mr. Strong?" the woman gasped, rather out of breath when she arrived.

"Yes, ma'am," replied Hiram.

"Well, for the land's sake, where have you been?"

"I guess I don't understand you," he said. "Are you Miss Pringle?"

"That's who I am," she declared with emphasis. "And I heard all about you from Mr. Bronson. You were comin' to stay at my house last night and you didn't come. Were you told to come to me?"

"Not exactly. I was advised to try at your house for lodging—"

"Who by?" she flashed at him.

"By the stationmaster."

"That dumbhead! I might have known Jase Oakley would ball it all up. When Mr. Bronson 'phoned to me that he could not get over in the storm to meet you at the depot, I turned right around and 'phoned Jason to tell you that I would be on the lookout for you. Didn't he tell you that, Mr. Strong?"

"Not in just that way," replied Hiram.

"Well, for the land's sake, where did you stop? When you didn't come along at the proper time after the train got in last evening I began calling folks on the line. I called everybody that had a 'phone, and none of 'em had seen you. It was so rough a night—"

Hiram saw at once that the terrible Miss Pringle was, after all, a kindly soul. It could not be for the mere possession of a "male creature," sight unseen, that she had taken all this trouble to locate him, a stranger in Pringleton.

"You were most kind, Miss Pringle," he said quickly. "I am sorry to have caused you any disturbance of mind."

"But where did you stay?" insisted the woman, eyeing Hiram with two very sharp brown eyes.

It was evident that very little of importance went on in Miss Delia Pringle's neighborhood that she did not see. She was kindly of disposition as well as shrewd, Mr. Yancey Battick's opinion to the contrary notwithstanding. Hiram was not at all afraid of her when he looked into her plump and rosy face.

"I tell you," he said, smiling covertly, for he suspected from what the stationmaster had said how the majority of the neighbors looked upon Yancey Battick, "a heavy shower caught me and I made for the nearest house."

"And whose was that, for the land's sake?" was the instant demand.

"Mr. Battick's," Hiram said demurely.

"Yancey Battick?" almost shrieked Miss Pringle. "Why, he's crazy!"

"I shouldn't wonder if he is a little," admitted Hiram. "But I am sure he is harmless."

"I don't know about that," she demurred. "He's altogether too quick to use a gun. A poor tramp came past here last summer—he never would have stopped, I guess, only he was out of breath completely—and Battick had blown his coat-tails off with a charge of rock-salt just because the hobo had gone into the yard of the old house and around to the well. That's the coldest water anywhere in Pringleton; but nobody ever gets a drink of it but Yancey Battick now."

"I suppose he's paid for it, Miss Pringle?" said Hiram quietly.

"I don't know that he has," was her quick reply. "At least, the neighbors blame me for selling the old place to such a man. They know I didn't need the money. And Yancey Battick certainly ain't what you can call with truth a good neighbor. We count on getting good neighbors into the Pringleton district if we can. That is why I was so glad to sell Sunnyside to Mr. Bronson.

"And do you really mean to tell me that you spent the night with Mr. Battick?" she added.

"And he did not eat me up," laughed Hiram.

"Well! All I've got to say, young man, is that you're a regular Daniel. You'd find it cozy and comfortable, I guess, in a lion's den. Never heard of anybody's even getting inside of the old house before since Battick got into it. He did let you inside, didn't he?"

"I don't look as though I had stayed out on that leaky old porch of his, do I?" asked Hiram, still much amused.

"You're as dry as a bone, as I said before."

"Not only did he entertain me for supper and breakfast, but he gave me his own bed in which to sleep."

"For the land's sake!" Miss Pringle shook her head in wonder. Then her brown eyes suddenly snapped. All the inquisitiveness in the woman's nature came to the surface; perhaps it was her single sin. "What's he got in that house he's so afraid the neighbors might see, Mr. Strong?"

"I did not see anything particularly mysterious—nothing at all," Hiram assured her.

"Not a thing? Wasn't he trying to hide anything from you? Didn't he seem afraid of anything?"

"He certainly has a great fear of rats," Hiram admitted, answering her second query but avoiding the first. "And he has good reason to. He shot a big fellow right there in the house while we sat before the fire."

"You don't say!"

"If it was me I'd get me a weasel and turn him loose in the house and then pour cement and broken glass in the rat holes."

"He knew the rats were there when he bought the old homestead," declared Miss Pringle defensively.

"And I guess he has a right to shoot them if he wishes to," laughed Hiram.

"But he is too promiscuous with his shotgun," declared the woman, shaking her head. "Well, now, Mr. Strong, I'm sorry you did not reach my house. I—and Abigail Wentworth who lives with me—would have been glad to put you up. But I am glad you made out as well as you did at Mr. Battick's. I'm glad to know he's not so bad as we all thought him."

"Perhaps the neighbors haven't approached him just right," Hiram suggested. "He wishes to be let alone."

"Then there is something wrong with him," Miss Pringle declared. "Something that he's ashamed of."

"You are jumping at a conclusion there, that may not be correct," Hiram said. "At any rate I saw nothing really wrong with Mr. Battick. And I feel grateful for his hospitality."

"Well, now, Mr. Strong," the woman said quickly, "you bring your bag right over to the house and stop with me till Mr. Bronson can make other arrangements for you."

"You are more than kind," Hiram told her. "But I understand that I may be able to go to housekeeping on my own account in one of the sheds—where the former tenant of the farm ran his incubators and brooders."

"That Jim Brandenburg! He made me a lot of trouble. But he did have ideas about hens. I suppose that shed could be made comfortable for you if Mr. Bronson wants you right on the place."

"I will try 'baching it,' Miss Pringle," Hiram said with firmness.

"Well, just as you say. But I want you to come over to-day to dinner. You ain't prepared to go right to housekeeping, I'm sure."

"Thank you; I will certainly come," Hiram assured her.

"Do so," Miss Pringle said warmly, as she turned away. "Abigail will blow the horn when it's ready."

He thanked her again. The terrible Miss Pringle did not prove to be so very formidable after all. It was evident that Battick had gained just as wrong an idea about his neighbors as the neighbors had about him.

"I will keep on the blind side of both parties," Hiram Strong told himself. "It is well to have friends in both camps. One thing I surely want—that is, to keep on good terms with everybody about Sunnyside. I don't want to have any such difficulty here as I had with the Dickersons at first, back there at Scoville," he added, remembering very poignantly a neighborhood feud that had hampered him when he first went to work on the Atterson Eighty.

When Miss Pringle had gone back to her neat little cottage across the road, Hiram began examining the buildings left standing on the Sunnyside premises. Nothing of importance but the dwelling itself had been destroyed by the fire.

The barn had a basement with swinging stanchions for ten cows and stalls for several horses. The mows were filled with a good quality of hay, and some oats in the straw—a feed that Hiram did not much approve of. For a horse or mule has to be very hungry indeed to eat oat-straw, and fed in this way a large proportion of the grain is wasted and trampled underfoot with the roughage.

"It looks to me," Hiram decided, after coming out of the barn, "that somebody tried to run a small dairy here without a silo. There are stacks of corn fodder, half of it winter-spoiled, and not a beast on the place to eat it up. It would pay Mr. Bronson to buy some young stock right now and turn it into the paddock back of the barn, and feed up all this roughage.

"Even if there is little pasture on the farm, it would pay to do this, and if the stock is not fattened by May, hire pasture for them on neighboring farms. I hate to see fodder go to waste, for it is the most expensive feed a farmer can raise."

Many an older farmer would have called in question the young fellow's statement. But Hiram was thinking no longer as a "one-horse farmer." He had got out of that class now. Here at Sunnyside, if he made a profit at all, it must be through much bigger agricultural activities than he had ever been able to compass before.

He went on to the row of poultry houses and entered the first one. This was the incubator house of which Mr. Battick had told him. It was a well-built and comfortable place. There was a good-sized pot stove and a bunk to sleep in. There was a cupboard, too, and a table and a chair.

"Guess I can make out here for a while, at any rate," he thought as he came out-of-doors again. "Of course, later I shan't have time to get my own meals; but at first—Ah! here comes an automobile. I wonder if this is not Mr. Bronson now?" and he started for the gate to meet the machine.

CHAPTER VI

FARMING AND FURBELOWS

The motor-car that came swiftly along the ridge road to the gate of Sunnyside Farm was a big, seven-passenger touring car. Behind the wheel sat a big man in a fur coat. To tell the truth, however, it was not Mr. Bronson, his employer, at whom Hiram Strong first looked.

He had caught sight of a veil trailing upon the wind from the tonneau. A girl sat there—a very winsome looking, bright-faced girl—and before the car stopped she had spied Hiram and waved a gloved hand at him, shouting:

"Oh, Hiram Strong! isn't this a beautiful spot? How are you?"

"I'm all right, Miss Lettie," he said answering the second question first. "I guess it is pretty here at Sunnyside in summer. But look at those wheels and mudguards!"

Mr. Bronson began to chuckle, shutting off his engine.

"Hiram's right, Lettie," he said to his daughter. "You'd better stay in the car and keep out of this mud. What do you think of the drainage hereabout, Hi?"

He stepped out of the car himself and shook hands with Hiram, man to man. It was evident by his manner and look that Mr. Stephen Bronson both liked and respected Hiram Strong.

"I haven't had much time to look about, Mr. Bronson," replied the youth, "only got here an hour ago. But it does look as though that field yonder"—and he pointed to one at the east of the house lot that was covered with shallow puddles—"would be the better for some tiling."

"And yet it is high and should be dry."

"All high land isn't dry—that piece proves it. What's in it?"

"Wheat."

"Thought so. It won't be much of a crop, I fear."

"How much tiling would it need to drain that whole piece properly, do you think? I understand from the farmers about here that that twenty acres has never made heavy crops—neither of corn nor grain. It has been limed well, too."

"The litmus paper test will prove or disprove that," said Hiram. "But it is high, almost level land, and right along the roadside. It ought to grow you a good crop to advertise the farm."

"I presume that's so, Hiram," laughed Mr. Bronson. "But a carload of tiles, and dragged clear up here from the siding at Pringleton, would cost a heap of money."

"Yes," agreed the young farmer. "Perhaps you had better make the better fields pay in advance for the improvements on the poor ones."

"Oh, wait!" cried Lettie Bronson, with a pout. "You men have begun talking farming like a house afire—right at the start! I can't get a word in edgewise, and I've got news for Hiram. You know, Hiram, I only came on from St. Beris yesterday, just to remain at Plympton with father over Sunday."

"And I only got here last night, Miss Lettie," the young fellow said.

"Then we might have traveled together just as well as not!" she cried.

"I guess not," laughed her father. "You went to see that machinery we talked about, didn't you, Hi?"

"Yes, sir. I went all through the Comet Plow Factory and the big agricultural warehouse in Cincinnati."

"You see, Lettie, he was several days coming here from Scoville."

"I don't care," Miss Lettie declared, "I want to tell him something he doesn't know."

"There are a whole lot of things I guess you could tell me that I don't know, Miss Lettie," said Hiram rather ruefully, for he felt his lack of book knowledge most keenly.

"It is about Sister. Cecilia, I suppose her real name is, Hiram?"

"But rather stiff and formal for Sister," said the young fellow, dodging the query.

"I chanced to ride past the Atterson place," pursued Lettie Bronson, "and Mrs. Atterson was on the porch and waved to me. I rode into the yard, and she was full of the news. It seems that Sister has not known just who her people were."

"She was an orphan when Mother Atterson got her," admitted Hiram.

"Well, it seems that she really has some relatives, somewhere. And Mrs. Atterson says she thinks there will be some money coming to Sister—Cecilia. She had just received a letter from a lawyer who had been trying to find Cecilia for some time. It's quite a romance, isn't it?"

"I am awfully glad for Sister's sake," the young farmer said. "But if she finds her folks I hope they will not take her away from Mother Atterson. She needs Sister."

"I did not see Cecilia to speak to," Lettie said. Then to her father: "Now, Papa Bronson, I know you and Hiram want to tramp all over this farm, and you certainly shall not leave me here in the car to catch my death of cold. Let Hiram take me over to Miss Pringle's. She will give me shelter till you are ready to go home again."

"Go ahead and take the chatterbox over there, Hiram," said Mr. Bronson. "We'll have no peace until you do."

It could not be said honestly that Hiram Strong found Lettie a nuisance, if her father did. He would have enjoyed talking to the pretty girl at any length. When Lettie hopped out of the automobile, too, resting one hand lightly in his, the young farmer saw that she was, as always, very becomingly dressed. Perhaps her outfit was more expensive and somewhat too "grown-up" for a girl of her age; but Hiram—nor Mr. Bronson—did not realize that defect in the motherless girl's garments. That Lettie was growing up too fast for her own good, perhaps, would not appeal to the masculine mind as it would to a thoughtful woman.

Having been reminded of Sister, Hiram took mental note that the girl whom he had first known as the boarding house slavey in Mother Atterson's kitchen had never in her life dressed anything like Lettie Bronson. Fine feathers do not always make fine birds; but the feathers help!

Lettie chattered as Hiram helped her over the muddy spots in the road to the cottage where Miss Pringle lived. The woman welcomed Lettie vociferously. To Hiram she said, with a smirk:

"Now, don't forget, Mr. Strong, to come over to dinner when Abigail blows the horn."

Hiram saw Lettie's dancing eyes and he could not keep from blushing when Miss Pringle was so urgent and significant in both look and speech.

"I guess Yancey Battick isn't so far out of the way, after all," the young fellow muttered as he went to rejoin Mr. Bronson. "Miss Pringle does rather work on a modest fellow. Lettie Bronson's got the laugh on me, all right."

Mr. Bronson had been going through the poultry houses and Hiram caught him at the house in which he thought to set up housekeeping.

"Perhaps that is a good idea, Hiram," said the gentleman thoughtfully. "I haven't told you what I intend to do here, have I?"

"Only that you intend to farm it," the boy replied with a smile.

"You are to do that, my boy, for me," rejoined Mr. Bronson. "I expect you to bring this farm into such a state of fertility in a few years that I can sell it at a big profit."

"That sounds like a big contract, Mr. Bronson," said Hiram, shaking his head thoughtfully.

"You're equal to it, my boy!" declared Bronson, confidently. "Now, is this the hut you think you can camp in?"

"I can make myself comfortable here for a while—until the spring work really opens, at any rate."

"All right. That suits me. We'll run down to the store at the Forks before I go back to Plympton and buy provisions, bedding and cooking utensils for you."

"No need to go to any great expense," put in Hiram.

"The things I buy will all come in handy later. And that brings me around to what I started to say before, Hiram. It does not pay me to farm this place so far from my headquarters. My other farms are right around Plympton. I can move my tractor and my reapers and my thrashing machine and hay-balers from farm to farm in my Plympton string of places. But Sunnyside is too far away from headquarters to send over many of the machines, unless it is the thrasher. That is why I had you look at the farm machinery on your way out here."

Hiram merely nodded.

"My idea," pursued the man, "is to put Sunnyside Farm in good shape and then sell it at a profit to some man who wants a 'gentleman's farm'—you know, catch one of these city men who wants to retire to the country; the kind the farmers say have more money than brains."

"I know," chuckled Hiram, remembering what Battick had said about Mr. Stephen Bronson himself. "Sometimes those gentlemen farmers show the old timers a thing or two."

"Yes. They can afford to experiment and try out new things. However, that is not just what we were getting at. If I sell this farm for a good price I must have a good house on it. I mean to build on the site of the old house that was burned. I shall have to bring workmen here and lodge and feed them. As there are no neighbors who make a practice of taking boarders, other than their own farm help, I shall have to put up a shack, hire a cook, and feed the gang for three months at least."

"I see," said Hiram. "And I can get my meals with them."

"Yes. That is my idea. So if you can get along alone for a while—"

"Of course I can, Mr. Bronson."

"I will have a shack built and a kitchen and bunks established just as soon as the weather is warm enough. Meanwhile my trucks, when not otherwise in use, can be hauling the frame and lumber for the new house."

"One word, Mr. Bronson," said Hiram Strong quickly. "As long as you must build a shed, why not build one that will afterward house these new tools you propose to buy for my use? I see there is no storage room for such things save on the barn floor, and in time they will be in the way there."

A gleam of approval flashed into Mr. Bronson's eyes.

"Good idea, Hiram! And you are as full of good ideas as an egg is of meat," said Mr. Bronson with enthusiasm. "Have you thought of any particular way in which this farm should be run—for the biggest profit, I mean?" and the man smiled at Hiram curiously.

"I'll tell you what struck me right off the reel, Mr. Bronson," said the youth thoughtfully. "But it is only a thought."

"Let's have it," urged Mr. Bronson.

"This land has been worked by tenants only for some years. Tenant farmers usually supply commercial fertilizer to some extent, but not enough humus. The land needs humus—and that in the form of stable manure. Especially the manure from cattle—from cows—if you want to raise bumper crops of corn."

"I presume that is so, Hiram."

"The barn yonder is arranged for the keeping of cattle. You should at least drive some young stock up here right away to eat up the roughage that is going to waste. We want to make all the fertilizer possible and spread it on the land as fast as it can be made and carted out of the barn basement."

"But we can't handle milch cows here, Hiram, before we have a house in which to put a family to look after the cows and the milk."

"That is why I say buy some young stock for the present. I can attend to them myself. They can be fattening at practically no expense. And all the time they will be making fertilizer for the place."

"Well, Hiram, what is going to happen," asked Mr. Bronson, quizzically, "when we give up farming with horses and mules entirely and use only tractors?"

"A hundred tractors won't put back into the soil the fertility that one horse will," the young farmer said. "That is sure. Soiling crops are all right. But in the end, the only farms run by tractor power that are not going to be injured beyond repair are the dairy farms. And I believe the easiest and quickest way to get this half run-down farm into shape is by putting cattle on it."

"Young stock—yes. I agree with you that can be done at once. In fact," said Mr. Bronson, "I should not be surprised if I could pick up a score of head of stock to send up here within the week from my other farms."

"Good! That will be a beginning. But two score will be better. Pasture them later if the pasture is any good here."

"There is good pasture and the fences are in good condition. I looked them over before I bought the place."

"All right, sir. You agree with me, then, that we should aim in the end to make Sunnyside a dairy farm?"

"That seems to be the idea, Hiram. I fancy you are right."

"That being the case, Mr. Bronson, there is one thing you must do. There is only one really profitable way to feed dairy cattle. That is from the silo."

"Oh! Oh! Hiram, you hurt!" exclaimed his employer, and his smile was very rueful. "Do you realize that any kind of silo runs into money?"

"Yes, sir. But it will cost you less to put up a silo now, while you have workmen on the place building your house, than at a later time. If you are going to make Sunnyside fertile, you must have cattle; if you are going to feed cattle cheaply you must cut your corn green and shred it and blow it into the silo. It is the safest and the cheapest way."

"I suppose I have got to admit all you say as true. But your suggestions, are all expensive. The first outlay will be enormous. Here you want to tile that twenty acres of upland. And goodness knows what you may want to do with some of the lowland."

"Make it grow good crops—bumper crops if possible—that is all," said Hiram smiling. "And about that twenty acres along the county road that is now in wheat—"

"Well?"

"I've an idea about underdraining that! but I won't tell you what it is until I have looked over the ground a little. I am convinced that that particular piece should be as fertile as any acreage around here."

"It never has been, they tell me."

"That is no reason why we shouldn't make it the best, is it?" and the young farmer laughed again.

CHAPTER VII

SEED TESTING

By evening of his first day on Sunnyside Farm Hiram Strong was comfortably established in the incubator shed and prepared to keep house after a fashion. Mr. Bronson supplied him with the requisites for a home on the limited plan Hiram intended to follow. The young farmer believed, however, that Miss Delia Pringle really would have taken him to board had he not been so firm in his stand for independence.

It could not be denied that Miss Pringle was a very friendly neighbor; but Hiram saw that Yancey Battick had some right on his side when he stated that he was afraid of the spinster. During those first few days that Hiram was at Sunnyside he, too, thought it the part of wisdom to dodge her as much as possible.

Not that there was any harm in Miss Pringle. She was merely silly, or seemed to be, about men; but Lettie Bronson had teased Hiram all the way to the store in the automobile and back again that first day about the conquest the youth had made of his nearest neighbor at Sunnyside.

This had made Hiram self-conscious and had served to exaggerate in his mind Miss Pringle's already too pronounced attentions.

"You will not be lonely at all, Mr. Strong," the rougish girl told him, immensely pleased by the situation. "Delia Pringle is going to make life there at Sunnyside for you one grand sweet song! You see if she doesn't."

"I hope she will not insist upon being too kind to me," sighed Hiram.

"She told me that she thinks you are very manly for your age," giggled Lettie, who enjoyed making the youth feel uncomfortable. "And I am sure she thinks your age is just right."

"Hold on, Lettie!" advised her father. "I've heard you praise Hiram yourself on occasion. At least, I never heard you run him down much when talking about him."

This statement closed the girl's lips immediately and gave Hiram peace. But he did not wish Lettie to think for a moment that he considered Miss Pringle's interest in him really earnest. However, during his first week or ten days at Sunnyside Farm Hiram Strong was about as busy as one could be; so he did not have to invent many excuses to escape Miss Pringle's rather pressing attentions.

Farming is an exacting occupation. One cannot let loose ends lie and be successful. Before the actual plowing and planting begins there are innumerable details to be gone into and many matters to be settled, for when the spring work once opens there is time for nothing else. And to Hiram, this first year of his work in this strange section of the country, came more than the ordinary number of affairs to be looked into.

Mr. Bronson sent him over a dependable road horse and a run-about, so that he could get about the neighborhood on such errands as he might find necessary. And one of his first errands was to hunt up the best corn growers in that section and buy seed corn of them.

He believed, as he had shown in farming the Atterson Eighty, that raising such corn as was already being grown in the locality was the wiser course. Corn becomes acclimated, and men who have raised the crop year after year in one neighborhood must know more about the proper seed to use than a stranger.

Methods of raising the crop was another matter. Hiram had certain methods he wished to try out to improve and increase the yield of corn that had nothing to do with locality, climate, or soil. These experiments he would try in any case.

He found one man whose cribs were full of a small-cobbed corn of a yellow dent variety, but with many red kernels interspersed among the yellow on most ears. It might not have been what the judges at a corn show would have called true to type, nor was it a handsome corn. But it was as hard as a rock, well rooted on the cob, and, furthermore, it ground into the finest kind of meal.

"How do you select your seed for this, Mr. Brown?" Hiram asked the farmer.

"I just throw aside what look to me like good ears as the boys bring the corn up from the fields and I count the baskets. I don't try to select ears in the field as I hear they do on the agricultural college farm. That's all flapdoodle," said the old fellow, with evident confidence in his own opinion.

"When I'm ready to get my seed, Mr. Strong, just before planting time, I go over the ears I've saved, and what the rats have left me—"

"So you are a friend of the rats, too?"

"What d'you mean—a friend of the rats? I feel about as friendly to them as I do to potato bugs or polecats. Not any!"

"But you feed them—and, what's worse, on your seed corn."

"Like to see you keep rats out of anything that you have to keep corn in," said Daniel Brown energetically. "Not any!"

"We'll take that up at some future time," Hiram said seriously. "I don't believe in letting rats or mice have the run of my seed corn. I think too much of it. Besides, they often nibble the germ of the corn and that particular grain never comes up."

"Well, I count on the planter dropping enough in the hill to overcome that."

"And then you have to go tediously over the field and pull up the superfluous sprouts, don't you?"

"Who don't?"

"I hate to," confessed Hiram.

"Lots of things about farming, young man, that we hate to do. And you'll find it out as you get older."

"I don't doubt it. I'm learning things—both good and bad—every day. Don't you test your corn, Mr. Brown?"

"What d'you mean? In the silly little boxes they tell about at the agriculturoolarulal college?" chuckled the old hard-shell farmer. "Not any! And I raise the very best corn in this section."

"Don't you believe in scientific farming?"

"Science is all right for city folks that need it when they come out on to the land and mess around, raising crops," declared the old man in good natured disgust. "But experience counts for more than book-learning, and don't you forget it."

"But just think what you might do, Mr. Brown, with all your experience and just a little science."

"Rats!" chuckled the old man.

"That is much to the point," Hiram said gravely. "'Rats.' A little science properly applied would free your cribs of rats. I am going to send you a Government pamphlet on that matter."

"I usually roll them into pipe-spills, young man," replied Brown. "I ain't never cultivated a taste for fiction."

But from the looks of the farms, the outbuildings, and the well rolled fields and machine sheds he passed in driving through the country, Hiram did not believe that there were many farmers in the vicinity as stubborn as Mr. Brown. However, he had obtained two baskets of Mr. Brown's seed corn, paying two dollars for it, and he was sure he had the foundation for a good crop.

He did not intend to plant the corn haphazard, as Brown himself did. He stopped at the store just beyond the Pringleton station and bought some yards of canton flannel.

Hiram drove back to Sunnyside Farm. Just as he reached the gate the rural delivery mail wagon stopped.

"Are you the new man on Sunnyside Farm?" the postman asked Hiram.

"Yes."

"Your name's Strong?"

"Hiram Strong," he admitted, going closer to the wagon.

"Here you are, then."

The postman thrust out a letter and Hiram accepted it. Instantly he knew it was from home—for Scoville was still "home" to Hiram Strong. The letter was from Mother Atterson, and as soon as the postman had gone his way Hiram tore open the envelope and read its contents:

"Dear Hiram:

"We got your letter that you had arrived at that Sunnyside place and was sleeping in the henhouse and cooking your own meals. That is pretty hard going, I do allow; but Mr. Bronson is paying you big wages (I wish I could afford to pay you as well and had kept you here on the Atterson place) so you can put up with some inconvenience. For money is a good thing and that brings me to the great news about Sister. That child certainly has got money coming to her. We have heard from a lawyer that says her grandmother, who must have been a pretty harsh old lady, on her father's side, named Cheltenham, has died and left a lot of money to be divided between Sister and—What do you know about Sister having a brother? Ain't it surprising? But it seems the children were parted when they was small, one going one way and the other the other, and the boy has to be found according to the terms of Mrs. Cheltenham's will before the money can be divided. It is going to cost something to find the boy who ran away from a reform school and ain't been heard of since. And that's got to be paid out of the money the lawyer says. But he seems like an honest man and Mr. Strickland says he knows him. And I am glad for Sister's sake for now she's got folks and knows who they are."

Mother Atterson's letter continued in this strain and to great length. But Hiram was very glad to hear the particulars of Sister's good fortune. For there would always be in Hiram Strong's heart a very tender place devoted to Sister. The little slavey of the boarding house was developing now into an intelligent and attractive girl.

Of course, Hiram told himself, she would never be like Lettie Bronson or the other girls who attended St. Beris, for instance. But there was something very sweet about Sister's character that Hiram felt and liked. She was almost like a real sister, and more.

Hiram went on to his living quarters and made his seed testing boxes, using the canton flannel instead of earth in which to germinate the corn selected from the ears he had bought of Daniel Brown. He made his boxes two inches deep and about thirteen inches wide, allowing for the width of the flannel, which was twenty-seven inches, folded once and taking into consideration the slight shrinkage of the cloth.

Hiram considered the flannel better in the seed boxes than either sand, soil, or sawdust. Three or four thicknesses of cloth in the bottom of the box and two thicknesses over the seed, all well dampened, makes the ideal seed testing bed.

He washed the new cloth thoroughly and after it was dried and folded in the box as a bed, he marked it off into checkers of two inches each with an indelible pencil. He then soaked the cloth and replaced it in the box.

Shelling off and discarding the small and irregular grains from the tips and butts of the ears he intended to test, he selected the kernels to be germinated and placed those from ear number one in the first square on the canton flannel, germ side up, from ear number two in the second square, and so on. Wetting the other strip of flannel he covered the corn, and on top of the box laid a pane of glass that fitted tightly.

This method of testing seed enables one to examine the seed at any time without injury to it; the amount of water condensed upon the under side of the glass will usually show whether the cloths are drying out or not.

The numbered ears Hiram stacked upon a hanging shelf in one of the laying houses, confident that neither rats nor mice would reach the seed corn in that place.

CHAPTER VIII

THE BLUEBIRD

Lettie Bronson did not come to Sunnyside again that spring, but her father, of course, came frequently during the first weeks of Hiram's incumbency as superintendent of the hillside farm.

It had been finally agreed that the shed to be built to house the gang of workmen should be a permanent shelter for certain new farm implements that Hiram and his employer had decided upon. And, in addition, a silo was to be built.

"But go easy on the first cost, Hiram," Mr. Bronson continued. "This farm is for sale. An expensive silo will not help sell it any quicker than an old-fashioned silo."

"I don't know about that. It is altogether according to the man who buys. But I am not opposed to the old-fashioned stave silo, only it soon rots out."

"It will stand five years."

"And maybe for twenty," agreed Hiram quickly. "Just according."

"How about these new all metal ones?"

"They have not been tried out long enough for the reports of their usefulness to be verified."

"My gang of carpenters can put up the stave silo," Mr. Bronson said.

"All right, sir. But buy iron hoops for supports, Mr. Bronson, and use wire stays or one of these big winds they tell about around here will blow your silo over—especially before it is filled."

"Oh, yes, we'll do that, of course."

The lumber began to arrive, truck load after truck load. The first drivers to arrive at Sunnyside were very curious about the identity of the boy from the East.

"Where's the boss, son?" Hiram was asked again and again as he met strangers.

"I guess you will have to get along with me as boss," he was wont to say quietly.

"You don't mean it! Bronson hasn't hired you to run this farm?"

"Yes. I'm going to try to run it."

"Well, I always did say that Bronson was crazy," was one frank statement. "More money than brains—more money than brains! Ridiculous to give a boy like you such a job!"

"That is to be seen," Hiram said coolly. "It does not always take frost on the hair to ripen brains."

At this the man grinned and replied:

"You've got a tongue, at any rate, young fellow."

One incident did not pass off so pleasantly. A hulking young fellow turned in at the gateway of Sunnyside and hailed Hiram:

"Where's your dad?"

"Unfortunately he has been dead for some years," Hiram told him. "Won't I do?"

"Huh! Where's Mr. Bronson?"

"You'll find him at his home in Plympton."

"Well, when's he here?"

"I could not say for sure when he is to be here. Hadn't you better tell me your business?"

"I hear he wants to hire men for work here; but I want to do my business with the boss."

"Then you can talk with me, for anybody who works on this farm will have to look upon me as the boss," Hiram told him, smiling.

"You ain't got charge of this farm?"

"Yes. Mr. Bronson has hired me in that capacity."

"Well, I'll be switched!"

"I want some men to ditch and for other heavy work for a few weeks," Hiram said calmly. "After that I shall need plowmen at better pay. You are a farmer, I presume?"

"I presume I am," said the fellow scornfully. "But I don't want to hire out to any kid. I want a man for a boss."

"I'm afraid I would not suit you then," sighed Hiram, with perfect gravity. "Come around in a couple of years, when I am older, and perhaps we can make a dicker."

The fellow went away muttering. Later Hiram chanced to pass the Pringle cottage and the owner came to the gate to hail him.

"Did Adam Banks come to see you, Mr. Strong?"

"The big fellow with the mop of yellow hair? Yes, Miss Pringle; he said he was looking for a job. But I doubt if he loses his eyesight looking for it."

"You said something," declared Miss Pringle. "And he just said to me he wouldn't be caught working at Sunnyside if you were going to run the farm."

"No?"

"He said he should think Mr. Bronson could find enough men in the neighborhood to do his work without sending off for a—a——"

"For a boy?" laughed Hiram. "If I can't make good in my job there will soon be a chance for somebody else to take my place."

"For the land's sake! I do hope you will stop here, Mr. Strong. I shouldn't want to see Mr. Bronson put a fellow like Ad Banks in charge at Sunnyside. He'd be worse than that Jim Brandenburg that made me so much trouble—burning everything all up."

"I hope your house that was burned was insured, Miss Pringle," Hiram said.

"Yes, 'twas, Mr. Strong. But that piece of pine timber across the road wasn't. The sparks flew from the house and caught that, and you can see quite a patch of it was burned—completely ruined for any purpose, even firewood. Who wants to handle wood that smuts you all up? I had a log or two dragged up to the house and sawed and split; but Abigail can't abide it. Says she won't have it in her kitchen. And I can't blame her."

"So you have no use for that burned timber?" asked Hiram thoughtfully.

"No more'n a cat has for two tails."

"Are you just going to let it stand there and be blown down by the wind?"

"I've told some folks that haven't much firewood that they can have it for the cutting and hauling."

"I don't know that Mr. Bronson would be willing to have me make just that kind of a bargain," said Hiram smiling. "But I can make use of some of those dead trees."

"You can? Remember they are fire-killed, Mr. Strong."

"I'll give you ten cents apiece for them, and I will have them cut and hauled, of course."

"For the land's sake!" ejaculated Miss Pringle, her bargaining instincts coming immediately to the fore, "I think that is an awful small price."

The young fellow laughed. "That is just ten cents apiece more than you had any expectation of getting for the burned trees, Miss Pringle."

"That may very well be," she argued. "But this is a bargain now. Money is money. If you think the trees are worth ten cents apiece to you, like enough they are worth a quarter each. I don't like to feel I've done myself in any deal."

"I'm afraid you will own the timber a long while at that price."

"For the land's sake, you can raise me a little, can't you?"

"I don't see how I can," replied Hiram gravely.

"I have heard that you Down East Yankees are as sharp at bargaining as can be. It does seem as though I ought to get fifteen cents apiece."

"The longer those blackened trees stand on your land, the longer the land will be worth just nothing to you, Miss Pringle."

"Land isn't worth much to a lone woman like me, Mr. Strong," she simpered. "Unless a body's got a man—"

When Miss Pringle got on this tack Hiram always felt embarrassed. He started to break off negotiations at once.

"Oh, well, never mind. It was just an idea I had. Nothing much in it, I guess."

He started on, but she got hold of his sleeve and held him tightly. Hiram blushed, and he was sorry he had spoken about the timber. At any rate he was very glad that Lettie Bronson did not see him now!

"For the land's sake!" cried Miss Pringle, "you're so sudden, Mr. Strong. Won't you split the difference and give me twelve and a half cents?"

A bargain was a bargain, and it was up to Hiram to do the best he could for his employer. Besides, the use of the half-charred tree trunks was at best an experiment.

"Ten cents is my best offer, Miss Pringle. I can use a hundred of the burned trees; maybe two hundred."

"And only the charred ones, Mr. Strong?"

"You can keep tally on them," he said.

"All right. Seeing it is you, Mr. Strong," she concluded, her head on one side and looking languishingly at him. "We're such friends, you know."

Hiram groaned inwardly. But he went in with her then and there and wrote out the agreement in duplicate, both signing the papers.

"Seems like a lot of folderol for ten or twenty dollars, Hiram," Miss Pringle whispered. "But, of course, I understand you have to have everything in writing to show Mr. Bronson. Mr. Bronson is a widower, and they do say widowers are awful strict and stern."

But Hiram did not immediately tell Mr. Bronson of the bargain he had made with Miss Pringle for the half-charred timber. However, he planned to start certain activities at Sunnyside the very next day, and he drove down to Pringleton to see if Mr. Oakley, the stationmaster, knew of any laborers in the neighborhood who wished work.

Coming back, he saw Mr. Yancey Battick leaning upon his sagging front gate. He had not seen the odd man to more than hail him since the time he had sojourned with him over night.

"Looks like spring now, doesn't it, Mr. Battick?" Hiram suggested, stopping his horse.

"I guess. And there's the first harbinger—a bluebird," and Battick pointed up the road.

"What's that? Bluebird?" Then Hiram laughed, seeing the individual to whom Battick referred. "The first tramp of the season?"

"Yes. And full as a tick, if I'm any judge," Battick said, with disgust.

The fellow up ahead was staggering as he walked, and there was reason for thinking that he was intoxicated.

"He won't get far in that shape," Hiram said.

"He'll get far enough, perhaps," muttered Battick, turning away. "Look out he doesn't get into your barn, Mr. Strong, and set the mow on fire."

The two chatted a few moments longer about the weather and neighborhood affairs, and then Hiram started his horse and drove on toward Sunnyside Farm.

CHAPTER IX

ORRIN POST

This was the fifth day since Hiram had started his test boxes, and he was so much interested in this matter on his arrival at Sunnyside that he did not think again of Mr. Battick's first "bluebird," or harbinger of spring. In fact, he had not seen the fellow along the road and presumed the tramp had crept into a thicket somewhere to sleep off his intoxication.

He bedded down Jerry, the horse, and fed him, for it was early twilight. He locked the barn and went up to the incubator shed where he lodged. He always kept a fire here, and the temperature of the seed boxes had never fallen below 65°, and he usually managed to keep the heat at about 70°. He knew that a drop below 55° would seriously affect the germination of the corn, and at night Hiram wrapped bags about the boxes and covered them well.

The conditions under which he had made his tests of Mr. Brown's corn had been ideal. When he uncovered the boxes he saw at once that all the ears he had selected kernels from were not strong and vigorous. Any kernel of corn that does not send out vigorous sprouts of both root and stem within four or five days is too weak to germinate properly under ordinary field conditions.

Hiram discarded promptly all of twenty ears in this lot—feeding some of the discarded ones to Jerry the next morning for his breakfast.

"They look all right," Hiram observed to himself. "But looks are sometimes deceiving. I have an idea that Mr. Brown plants a whole lot of seed that either does not come up at all, or does not improve his general crop. I wonder if I am going to beat him at his own game and with his own corn."

He immediately selected more of the Brown corn for testing and filled the squares of the seed boxes again. Later he proposed to test some of the seed corn he had bought from other farmers.

Some of the seed boxes were in far from a good condition, and the young farmer spent the best part of half an hour in fixing them. A smile of satisfaction crossed his features as he surveyed his work.

"They can't say that I haven't tried to do this right," he thought to himself. Then he gave a long stretch. "My! but there's a lot to this farm work," he murmured.

By the time the work on the boxes had been completed Hiram felt hungry. It was growing dark, and he concluded that he had better get something to eat before doing anything else.

There was a dishful of cold potatoes on the shelf, and these he sliced for frying. Then he brought out what was left of some cold meat; he next prepared to make himself something hot to drink.

The young farmer was working around the stove when he heard an unusual noise outside. He listened for a few seconds, and then went to the door and threw it open.

"Not a soul in sight," he murmured to himself. "That's queer. I thought I heard somebody coming. I wonder if it can be some stray animal?"

He walked outside and gave another look around. Neither man nor beast was in sight, and, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, he returned to the shed.

Hiram cooked his supper and then lit a lantern to make his usual turn about the premises before going to bed. The barn doors were padlocked, but there were small sheds into which wayfarers might crawl and, as Yancey Battick had suggested, the tramp who smokes is the farmer's deadly enemy.

It was a dark night and a chill wind was whining through the burned pines across the road. Hiram's custom was to go around the barn, try all the doors, and flash his lantern into the calf-pens and the old wagon shed. It was when he got down the slant beside the barn to the door which he had recently locked in putting Jerry in his stall, that he got a whiff of tobacco smoke.

"That bluebird!" muttered Hiram. "Where is the scamp?"

It was but a faint odor Hiram smelled—the sickish-sweet odor of a dead pipe; it led to the nearest calf-shelter.

He had been getting the pens ready for the young stock Mr. Bronson would send up to Sunnyside in a day or two. He had torn one of the fodder stacks to pieces, and scattered the broken and half-rotted bundles of fodder over the floor of the shed and pen to dry out and to be picked over and trampled by the cattle.

There had been nobody on the place this day to his knowledge—certainly not before he had driven to Pringleton. And what would bring any proper visitor down here to the sheds? But the tobacco smell was stronger as he approached the arched opening. A whiff of it was blown directly into his nostrils.

He reached up to the beam inside the opening and ran his hand along it—the very place an habitual smoker would be likely to place his pipe on entering the shed, sober or otherwise. Habit is strong.

There it was. Although it was cold, Hiram was sure it had not long been so. He held up his lantern the better to see it. There was a "heel" of half-burned tobacco in the pipe. That was what he had smelled.

The wabbly ray of the lantern flashed across the shed. Hiram, suddenly startled, saw a huddled form lying on the fodder-strewn floor.

The young farmer did not fancy handling any individual who was half intoxicated, as this person probably was. He was no friend to the drunkard in any case.

But the fellow might have matches in his pocket. In his drunken state he might do some damage with them. Besides, it was blowing up cold, and Hiram felt that he could not sleep warm himself if he knew this fellow-creature lay here with so little shelter.

He crossed the shed and stooped over the stranger. He placed a tentative hand on the shoulder nearest him. The touch elicited nothing but a groan.

"Pretty far gone," muttered Hiram. "Well, nothing to do but to roll him over more comfortably and bring one of Jerry's blankets—"

Fitting the deed to the words, he moved the man slightly. There was an impatient exclamation from the stranger; then, for an instant, his face came into the radiance of the lantern as he arose upon his elbow.

It was a wild looking and much flushed face. The eyes, seemingly half-filmed with sleep, rolled about but fastened their gaze neither on Hiram nor on anything else. It was a delirious look.

"Hey! Wake up!" urged the young farmer. "What are you doing here? Who are you?"

"Orrin Post—that's me! Orrin Post," said the stranger, loudly and promptly. Then he sank back upon the fodder again, and his mind seemed to sink, too. He only muttered impatiently when Hiram touched him again.

"Here's a pretty kettle of fish!" gasped Hiram. "What shall I do with Orrin Post? That is what I should like to be told."

He had suddenly made another discovery. There was no smell of liquor about the fellow. His breath was feverish, but not alcoholic. The man most certainly was not drunk.

This was no case of leaving the man covered up in the calf shed to "sleep it off." Whatever was the matter, Hiram was quite sure the stranger needed more attention than that. If this was the fellow Yancey Battick had pointed out to him staggering along the road to Sunnyside Farm, he should have had help right then and there—a doctor, perhaps.

First of all, Hiram decided, the sick man must be removed to the nearest comfortable place; and that place was the incubator house where he had made himself so much at home. He rolled the stranger over again and stretched out his limbs. He was quite as tall as Hiram, if not taller; but there was little flesh on his frame, and the young farmer was positive the man weighed considerably less than he did.

Hiram knelt down and lifted the sick man across his shoulder, holding both wrists as he again staggered to his feet. He picked up the lantern and started up the path beside the barn. The stranger seemed sunk in complete unconsciousness, only muttering a word now and then.

In a few minutes the young farmer had brought his burden to the shack which he had made his home since coming to Sunnyside. He laid Orrin Post—if that was his name—in the bunk and began removing his shoes and outer clothing. His garments were shabby, but of fair quality, and his underclothes were clean. He was evidently a fellow who respected himself. Perhaps he was not a tramp at all.

However, it was not so much who he was as what he was. Hiram, stripping off the man's clothing, made a discovery that startled him—then actually frightened him.

The fellow's body was burning up with fever—face, hands, chest. What was this? His hand, lightly touching the chest of the victim, revealed an eruption under the skin. It felt almost like small shot—the beginnings of deep-seated postules, perhaps.

Hiram Strong was staggered by the discovery. For a moment he fell back from the bunk. He even turned his gaze on the door, and it is true that he thought of escape.

The highly inflammatory fever; the eruption on the chest. That it was a malignant disease of some kind he knew, and he believed he recognized the symptoms as those of the most deadly of all diseases that ever becomes epidemic in a temperate climate.

"Smallpox!" the young farmer muttered. "This fellow's got it sure enough, and I have exposed myself to it."

CHAPTER X

A FRIEND INDEED

Hiram Strong was not likely to forget the experiences of that night. He did not feel that he was braver than anyone else in remaining with the delirious man and doing what he could for him. Merely, he did not see how he could ever respect himself again if he deserted the stranger.

And to desert the sick man was to desert, as well, Sunnyside Farm and his employment. Hiram could not do that. But he realized that, if this was a case of smallpox as it seemed to be, he had made a pesthouse of the shed in which he had camped for these few weeks, and none of the expected workmen would remain on the place while the case was developing.

However, he plucked up sufficient courage to go back at once to the sick man and complete his preparations for bed. He had already exposed himself to infection, and if he, too, was doomed to the disease, he believed he could do nothing now to prevent it.

Nevertheless, there was something extremely dreadful to him in the thought of smallpox—mainly, perhaps, because of the possible scars to be left on the body.

Hiram neglected the unfortunate man not at all, however. Distasteful as the thought of handling him was, the youth that night did all in his power for the stranger's comfort.

He kept water at boiling temperature on the stove, and made a wash with soda with which he bathed the sick man several times to reduce the fever. The purple face, the puffed eyelids, the drooling lips, altogether made the victim a most unpleasant looking object.

Yet Hiram thought that, in his right mind and free of fever, this fellow who called himself Orrin Post might be a very good looking man indeed. And he judged his age to be not far along in the twenties.

Hiram got no sleep at all. The patient began to thrash about toward morning and was more delirious than before. Occasionally he seemed to be taken with a slight chill, and his nurse kept the temperature of the little room much higher than 70°.

"This might be good for that corn test," Hiram once thought.

But he was not giving much attention to anything but his care of Orrin Post. He harked back to Mother Atterson's recipes for caring for persons who were ill. He found a stone bottle and filled that with hot water and put it to the patient's feet to counteract the chills. He wished he had some medicine to give him. Hiram wondered how he could send for a doctor in the morning. Whom could he get to go? And would a doctor come to attend a smallpox patient—any doctor but the physician for the county's poor?

Occasionally he examined that eruption. It was spreading over the man's chest. If it was smallpox—

What a night that was! At daybreak—a chill and darksome dawn—Hiram went to the door, looked out, and finally stepped out and closed the door behind him. His eyelids were swollen for lack of sleep. He was tired to the bone!

The pale light in the sky grew slowly. Something stirred in the road—toward the Pringle cottage. Miss Pringle and Abigail were always early risers. And here came one of them along the road!

"Hiram Strong! is that you? For the land's sake what have you been havin' a light in your window for the whole live-long night?"

There was no mistaking the energetic voice of his neighbor. She hurried in at the gate, her head and arms wrapped in a shawl.

"Are you sick, or what is it?" pursued Miss Pringle. "I said to Abigail, 'I'm going to find out what that light means if it's the last act of my life—and before I have my breakfast, too!' I declare I waked up a dozen times during the night and saw your light winkin' at me just like a star. What is the matter?"

"Don't come any nearer, please, Miss Pringle," Hiram broke in. "You mustn't."

"Mustn't what?"

"Come any nearer to me."

"What's the matter with you, Hiram Strong? You ain't going to explode like dynamite, are you?"

"It's worse than dynamite."

"For the land's sake! what is it?"

"It is smallpox," said Hiram, his voice on the point of breaking.

"What's that?" gasped the woman. "Smallpox? You haven't got such a thing."

"Perhaps not—not yet," Hiram said. Then he told her about his visitor and how he had found Orrin Post in the calf pen.

"And you've been tending him all night, Hiram! You poor fellow!" exclaimed Miss Pringle, bustling forward again.

"Oh! But you must not come here!" cried Hiram. "You find somebody to send to fetch a doctor. I'll stay and look after the fellow now I've begun the job."

"And you don't really know it's smallpox. I'd took nice getting Dr. Marble up here, tellin' him it was smallpox, and then having it turn out to be nothing of the kind. He'd never let me hear the last of it. Let me see this Orrin Post."

"But, Miss Pringle, you must not!"

"Go along! Do you think I'm afraid, Hiram Strong? I guess I'm just as brave as you are."

She pushed right by him and went into the house. The air was warm and close, and she sniffed it energetically.

"If smallpox was much developed you could smell it, Hiram," she declared. "No mistake about that. The poor fellow! How red he is! Looks more like scarlet fever, if you ask me."

She went to the bunk and placed her soft, cool palm on the patient's forehead. Almost instantly his head stopped weaving from side to side on the pillow. He sighed and murmured, asking for water.

Hiram caught up the pitcher and went out to the pump. When he returned Miss Pringle had been examining the sick man's chest. She straightened up and looked back over her shoulder at Hiram. The grin with which she favored him was the most beautiful smile the young fellow had ever beheld.

"Men certainly are helpless creatures," she said, breaking into a chuckle. "Though I will say you're better than most, Hiram Strong. Put out that lamp. Don't let it shine in his eyes. He wants to be in the dark as much as possible. He's developing as fine a case of measles as I ever saw and that's a fact!"

Relieved? Hiram Strong could have readily and heartily given three cheers.

"I—I've had the measles, Miss Pringle," he said warmly. "How glad I am you came over. I'm not afraid of measles."

"I should hope not! Though I guess this fellow's got 'em pretty hard. It is sometimes serious with folks as old as he is. But we'll pull him through, Hiram—you and me together," she added with her old-time smirk.

But she could not disturb Hiram's equanimity now.

"You are a friend in need, Miss Pringle," he said.

"I should hope so! Those are the only friends to have—especially in the country. We all need to help each other out here on the farms."

"We'll get a doctor for him," said Hiram, promptly. "I'll pay the fee."

"You'll spend your money in no such foolish way," declared Miss Pringle, energetically. "I'd be ashamed to have the neighbors know I sent for Dr. Marble for a case of measles.

"You've treated this poor fellow all right, Hiram, as far as you've gone. After breakfast I'll come back with some medicine I've got to reduce his fever. You'll have enough to do around here daytimes tending to your work. I'll do the nursing for the poor fellow during the day if you'll look after him at night."

"My goodness!" said Hiram, with fervor, "I'll do all I can. It is a relief to know it isn't smallpox."

"You musn't neglect your work," Miss Pringle said, as they both came out of the house again. "You've got some men coming, haven't you?"

"In a day or two."

"That Ad Banks was around yesterday, wasn't he? I guess he's after a job with you, after all, even if you are a mite young for a boss," and she chuckled.

"I did not see him."

"That so? I saw him hanging about the barn and smoking that old pipe of his."

"He can't get into the barn very easily. The doors are all locked," said Hiram. Then, suddenly remembering the pipe he had found, he drew it from his pocket. "Could this be Adam Banks' pipe?" he asked.

"Guess it could—and it is," said Miss Pringle promptly, sniffing at the odorous pipe. "I'd know that old thing anywhere. It's Ad Banks'. Where'd you find it?"

"Where it had no business to be. Inside one of the sheds. Funny it should have been down there, too. I thought it belonged to this Orrin Post. I wonder what that Banks fellow was doing down there?"

Miss Pringle bustled away and Hiram set about getting his own breakfast. The sick man murmured for water occasionally, but otherwise needed little attention until Miss Pringle came back.

"Yancey Battick is all wrong about Delia Pringle," thought Hiram. "She may have her peculiarities, but she has a heart of gold."

CHAPTER XI

FRICTION

The first truck to arrive that day at Sunnyside instead of bringing lumber, bricks, or other building material, brought ten yearling steers that Mr. Bronson had picked up from his other farms; and Hiram turned the blatting, frisky creatures into the pen and shed in which he had found Orrin Post the evening before.

One of the young cattle had a frayed bit of rope about its neck, and Hiram went into the pen to get it off. The yearling ran into the far corner of the shed and while he struggled to remove the rope, the young farmer's eye caught the glint of something on the beams where he had found the pipe that Miss Pringle declared was Adam Banks' property.

He had already looked about the shed for anything the sick man might have dropped. There had been absolutely nothing in his clothes but a little change and a pocketknife—no letter, or paper, or keepsake of any kind. Nor had Hiram seen anything in the fodder where Orrin Post had lain.

He reached up to this beam and out of the far corner, where a thin ray of sunshine entered, he plucked a pint flask half filled with an amber colored liquid, one sniff of which assured him was the probable product of a peach-still somewhere in the neighborhood.

Had it not been for the pipe he had previously found, Hiram might have believed this raw brandy the property of Orrin Post, in spite of the fact that the condition in which the poor fellow had been when he took shelter in the shed seemed to preclude his having hidden the brandy flask.

The sick man was scarcely in his senses all that day. Every time Hiram put his head in at the door of the incubator house, he found Miss Pringle either fixing up the room, giving the patient his medicine, or sitting sewing within reach of the bunk. She made Hiram go over to her house for his dinner, and Abigail Wentworth, a tall, gaunt, elderly woman with spectacles and a neat cap pinned upon her iron-grey hair to hide her bald spot, served him a most satisfying, as well as appetizing meal. He had not eaten many such since coming to Sunnyside Farm.

"I don't wish to seem harsh, Mr. Strong," said Abigail, "but it does seem a blessing that that man came along and was taken sick as he was. It's given Miss Delia something to do besides clutterin' up my kitchen. I am blessed beyond all when some of the neighbors fall sick and will let Miss Delia in to nurse 'em."

"I see she is a wonderful nurse," said Hiram approvingly.

"Well, she'll do less harm that way than most," said Abigail, who seldom was known to approve thoroughly of anything finite. "But that's what made trouble between her and that Yance Battick, I guess."

"Indeed?"

"Yes. He was pretty near down sick—just hobblin' around. Rheumatism and all. That old Pringle house is as damp as the grave. Miss Delia heard how bad off he was and off she marched with her pills and plasters and what-not. But Yance Battick wasn't goin' to let no woman into his house—and he told her so to her face."

"I don't think Mr. Battick understands Miss Pringle's character," said Hiram. "He does not realize how very kind she means to be."

"'Means to be'—yes. That's it. I never could give three cheers for those folks that always mean so much better than they do," sniffed the angular woman, who could not even speak in entire approval of her employer. "But it's wisdom to let fellows like Yance Battick alone. Besides," she added, dropping her voice, "there's dark doin's in that house of Battick's. Ain't no place for a decent, respectable woman."

"You don't mean it!" exclaimed Hiram, rather amused. "I stopped there over night, and I saw nothing much out of the way."

"You weren't let to," said Abigail pursing her lips. "There's those that say Yance Battick is deeper than Sim Paget's well—and it never had no bottom! He's got a power of knowledge that never came out of books. And no man would ever be so crotchety and shy off his fellowmen like Yance Battick does, if he wasn't sold, body and soul, to the devil."

Hiram found no answer to this statement. It was evident that Abigail Wentworth, lineal descendant of Salem Puritans transplanted to this Middle West, possessed superstitions that are popular still in some localities.

The following day Mr. Bronson came up to Sunnyside himself with some more young cattle. He had heard of the "tramp" Hiram had taken in and whom Miss Pringle was nursing. Hiram had had rather a hard night with his patient; but he was freshened up when his employer arrived.

"You are a good chap, Hi," Mr. Bronson said. "But you'll overdo some day, helping all the yellow dogs that come your way."

"Better speak to Miss Pringle about it, too," grinned Hiram. "And we're not altogether sure he is a canine of the breed you mention."

"Well, I'll take him back with me to the Plympton hospital—if you say so."

"I don't think that would be best. Miss Pringle says he is coming along all right. He is pretty measly right now, and he might catch cold if he was moved and then they'd 'strike in,' so she says. Then he'd be worse off. Guess I've got him on my hands for a while."

"It's your funeral," Mr. Bronson said.

"And it might have been Orrin Post's funeral if I hadn't found him as I did. Hello!" he added, as he observed the loutish figure of Adam Banks approaching. "Here's a fellow wants to see you, I guess, Mr. Bronson."

"What about?"

"He says he wants work. But he doesn't want to hire out to me—I'm too young," laughed Hiram.

"Do you want him? I understand you are about ready to put a gang of ditchers to work in that wheat field. But you haven't told me what kind of underdraining you are going to do there. Tile is awfully expensive just now, Hiram."

Adam Banks slouched into hearing before Hiram could reply.

"Well?" asked Mr. Bronson briskly of the newcomer. "Do you wish to see me?"

"I hear you are hiring men for spring work, Mr. Bronson," said Banks respectfully. "I'd like a job."

"I am not hiring anybody at Sunnyside," the farm owner said promptly. "That is all in Mr. Strong's hands. If he likes your looks and can make use of you—"

"That kid!" interrupted Adam Banks, turning red in the face and glaring scornfully at Hiram. "I want work all right, but—"

"You don't act as though you do," Mr. Bronson interposed. "Mr. Strong is in charge here."

"Why don't you get a man to run your farm for you, Mr. Bronson?" asked Banks boldly. "You know my dad owns a good farm, and I've been brought up to work. And I'm a voter. Why don't you give a young man like me a chance to show you what can be done here on Sunnyside?"

"Well, now," Mr. Bronson said, his eyes twinkling, "I really didn't know about you when I was looking about for a farmer. What's your name?"

"Ad Banks. You know my dad."

"I presume so. Well, Mr. Banks, I fear it is too late now. A bargain is a bargain. I have hired Mr. Strong—"

"But that fellow ain't of age. You can see that plain. Your contract ain't binding if he's under age—and he is."

"Indeed? Then you are quite a lawyer as well as a farmer, Mr. Banks. However, I always consider a contract binding, with whomever made."

He turned away; but Adam Banks did not lack persistence. He urged:

"If you ain't found out yet whether this Strong can fill the bill or no, I might be handy if I was working for you here, Mr. Bronson. I could jump right in and take hold when he gets into trouble—as he will. What are you paying for day's work?"

"I am not paying anything. I tell you, young man, Mr. Strong will do all the hiring. And the discharging, too, for that matter. Do you want this fellow, Hiram?" he asked the young farm manager bluntly.

"Say, what use is there askin' him?" broke in Banks, with disgust. "He's heard what I said. He knows what I think of him for a boss. What chance is there of my getting a job on his say-so?"

"I am afraid I cannot make use of Mr. Banks," said Hiram quietly.

"No! Of course you can't. You'd ruther take in tramps. I hear you've begun that. And we don't think much of tramps in these parts."

Mr. Bronson merely smiled, waiting to see how Hiram Strong would handle the situation.

"Just because you made a bid for my job doesn't influence me to refuse your services, Mr. Banks," the boy from the East said. "But I have two things against you."

"What's them?" demanded Banks sneeringly.

"Here they are," Hiram told him, and drew the pipe from one pocket and the flask of peach-brandy from another. "Here is your pipe that you left in one of our sheds day before yesterday, with burning tobacco in it. And the quantity of peach-brandy you had evidently drunk out of this flask made you forget both pipe and bottle. Neither of these things find favor in my sight about a farm, either inside or outside of a man."

"I'll be switched!" ejaculated Adam Banks. "Huh!"

His face blazed up and he gave every indication of having been caught with the goods. He even accepted the pipe and flask. Both Hiram and Mr. Bronson had already smelled liquor upon Adam Banks' breath. At least, he had had something besides ham and eggs for breakfast. But suddenly the loutish fellow decided not to acknowledge the ownership of the articles.

"Here!" he growled. "These ain't mine. What are you trying to put over on me, Strong? More'n likely they were brought on the place by that tramp you've taken up with. I ain't been near your sheds."

"You were seen there," Hiram said sharply. "More than that, your pipe has been identified. There is no use denying either fact. I shall not hire you."

"Are you going to let me be treated like this, Mr. Bronson?" demanded Adam Banks. "Dad's a neighbor. We live right here. That upstart, Strong—"

"That will do," interrupted Mr. Bronson, waving his hand in dismissal. "If Hiram doesn't want you that closes the discussion as far as I am concerned," and he walked away with his young farm manager, leaving Banks in the road.

CHAPTER XII

WORK BEGINS

"I'd keep my eye on that fellow Banks if he continues to hang around here," said Mr. Bronson. "He means you ill."

"And perhaps would do something to cause trouble. Perhaps I should have taken him on," Hiram Strong said thoughtfully.

"I should say not! You did just right. You read him aright. His prime failings are drink and laziness. Just warn him off the premises if he bothers you. He's been in trouble and is not locally liked. Mr. Banks spared the rod in Adam's case, sure enough.

"Now, Hiram, to get back to ditching. You don't mean to leave open ditches through that field, do you? I can't stand a ditch bank—always growing up in wild cherry and poison oak and such worthless trees and vines. Besides, open ditches interfere with tillage most abominably."

"That is farthest from my thought, Mr. Bronson."

"But tiling—"

"I figure to underdrain with something much cheaper than tile," the young farmer declared.

"What are you going to use?"

Hiram pointed across the road at Miss Pringle's patch of scorched woodland. The underbrush and sprouts were beginning to show that faint blur of green that announces the coming of spring growth; but the trees were gaunt looking and black.

"I've bought as many as I can use of those scorched trees at ten cents apiece," Hiram explained.

"For the land's sake!" exclaimed Mr. Bronson, quoting Miss Pringle, but looking puzzled, too.

"Exactly. For the land's sake. For the improvement of that twenty acres—or such of it as needs draining."

"But—Hiram—my dear fellow—"

"I am not starting something that I cannot put over, Mr. Bronson," laughed Hiram. "Nor is it a brand new idea of my own. I have seen timber in the rough employed in underdraining more than once. My father used to do it when the man who owned the farm father worked would not listen to the expense of tiles."

"Ha! I acknowledge the corn," replied Mr. Bronson.

"I am not criticising you, Mr. Bronson. You are preparing this farm for a sale. You wish to put it in as good shape as possible at as small expense as possible."

"Right, young man."

"So we will put in a drain that will answer every purpose of tiling for a few years. In very low, wet ground logs laid in a ditch, and covered, will last twenty years—sometimes forty. On this upland the life of the timber I mean to use will not be so long."

"But it is fire-killed."

"That makes no difference. I've been over there and looked at it. You couldn't knock any of those trees down. The fire went through there only last year. They are not punky."

"I suppose not."

"And we shall be killing two birds with one stone—getting cheap drainage and likewise wiping out a very ugly spot right across the road from your new house."

"That is so. And you are getting the timbers cheap enough, if they are any good. I wouldn't have had the heart to offer Miss Pringle such a price."

"It is more than anybody else would have given her," Hiram declared, smiling. "And it is worth all you are paying for it to have those unsightly sticks chopped down."

"Guess you are right, Hiram."

"The logs will serve the purpose we want them for very well indeed. We'll lay two in the bottom of the ditch, six inches or so apart, and a third log on top to cover the aperture. Earth packed down upon them will soon form a firm culvert into which all the superfluous water will drain.

"I'll put a man into Miss Pringle's patch with an axe and soon knock down everything that is standing. The whole patch will be covered with green by midsummer."

"Smart boy, Hiram!" exclaimed Mr. Bronson. "Will you snake the logs right across the road into the wheat field?"

"As soon as the ditches are begun and you send up that pair of Percherons you promised me. I can't do that work with Jerry."

"You shall have the Percherons in a few days. They are a well mated pair and young. By the way, your disc-plow, harrow, check-row planter, and the mowing machine are on the siding at Pringleton. I'll send a truck over for them tomorrow. We don't want any demurrage charges piling up on us."

"Good! I want to see those things on the big floor of the barn," cried Hiram, his eyes beaming.

"I'd better send up a machinist to help you set them up, hadn't I?"

"No, sir. Leave it to me. I must learn to put together every machine that comes onto the place. There are always instructions sent with the implements from the factory. The time may come, right in the middle of a job of importance, that the machine will balk. I've got to know all about it. Do you see?"

"I see. And you are right, I guess."

"Mr. Bronson, seems to me I'll be just about made when I sit up on that plow and chirrup to those Percherons. I've tramped along in the furrow behind one or two horses for so many years—Well!"

Mr. Bronson laughed. "While I've ridden a plow and other farm tools so much that I hate to get up on one," he said. "They say it's mighty good exercise for a sluggish liver to ride 'em over hobbly ground. Ah, my boy! you've got the best of it, for you are young. You've got enthusiasm."

"Why, so have you, Mr. Bronson," cried Hiram. "Only it is enthusiasm of a different kind from mine. Otherwise you would not buy farms and put them into shape for other men to run."

"Maybe that is merely business."

Before night Orrin Post was quite in his right mind. Abigail had been making broth and porridge for him, for now that his fever was reduced Miss Pringle's idea of nursing seemed to be to stuff the patient with food.

"She will kill me with kindness," the young man said to Hiram. "I hope I shall not have to lie here long."

"Miss Pringle is awfully good," the young farm manager said stoutly. "I do not know what we would have done without her."

"I don't know what I would have done without you, Mr. Strong. She's told me how you thought I had smallpox, and yet picked me up and brought me here."

"You've got the cart before the horse," chuckled Hiram. "I got you up here from that shed before I discovered that you were breaking out in such shape. How did you get to the shed?"

"I haven't a very clear remembrance of it," confessed Orrin Post. "I felt pretty bad."

"Had you traveled far?"

"I had a job with a farmer all winter at Roundspring. But I was taken down with this fever and he told me I had better go because he was afraid his children would catch it. I couldn't blame him—much. So I started west."

"Wasn't there any place they would take you in? No hospital?"

"I didn't happen to stop at a hospital," said Orrin Post dryly.

"And nobody offered to do anything for you?"

"I do not remember that any one did. I was kind of flighty the last day or two, I guess."

"Were you heading for home?" asked Hiram.

"If I was I didn't know it," Post said with a faint laugh.

"But where is your home?"

"Anywhere I hang up my hat."

"Really?"

"I'm giving it to you straight."

"And no friends?"

"You are the best friend I ever had," declared the young man, with sudden emotion. "Nobody ever put himself out for me before that I can remember."

"Oh, don't make too much of what little I have done," Hiram urged. "Where do you go from here?"

"I haven't the first idea. I'll get out as soon as I can—"

"If you say that I'll take your clothes away," declared Hiram promptly. "You've got to eat many a gallon of Miss Pringle's broth and porridge before you get a chance to leave Sunnyside."

"'Sunnyside,'" repeated Orrin Post wistfully. "Is that the name of this farm, Mr. Strong?"

"Yes."

"It must be a pleasant place."

"I don't know that myself yet," laughed Hiram, "I have been here so short a time."

And for the next few days Hiram Strong was so busy that he was not at all sure whether or not he would like it himself at Sunnyside Farm.

He set a gang of a dozen men to ditching in the twenty acre lot. He could have made much better time with a ditching machine; but of course it would not have paid to hire such an implement for this small job.

He had been all over the wheat field and had made a mental plan of what he wished to do before a spadeful of earth was thrown. He proposed running a ditch the entire length of the field, through the middle and parallel with the road on which the twenty-acre piece bordered. On the wetter portion of the piece he proposed having transverse ditches every hundred feet. Where the land seemed naturally better drained he would have the cross ditches dug less frequently.

The county ditch beside the road was deep enough and clean enough to carry off an immense volume of water. The natural drainage of the land was toward the road; therefore nobody could complain of his using the county ditch as he intended.

With a cross-cut saw they fitted the logs to match at the intersection of the ditches and there he laid a cap of heavy planking which chanced to be about the place. Any bit of rough lumber answered this purpose.

As fast as the timbers were laid they covered them, tamping the earth over them firmly and leaving a very slight ridge through the field. Snaking the logs across the field did not damage the wheat much, for Hiram made the driver of the horses follow a single path—that of the main ditch—both coming and going.

The man Hiram had hired to cut the timber was very dexterous with the axe, but after the first day he raised decided objections to working in the half-burned area. He was smutted from head to foot and looked like a charcoal burner.

"I am sorry," the young farm manager told him, "if you find the work different from what you supposed it to be. I told you plainly enough what I wanted you for."

"Let some of the other fellows take their turn in that patch, and I'll do a little digging. That's clean work," said the man.

"No. I hired you because I was told you were a good axman. I hired the other men for ditching. You can chop better than you can ditch, and the others can use a spade better than an axe; I want the most I can get for my money."

"Well, I suppose that's fair enough," agreed the man grudgingly. "But what my wife will say when she sees this jumper will be a plenty."

He was in no better mood the second day; and that afternoon Hiram saw Adam Banks stroll along the road and go upon the burned-over piece to speak to the woodchopper. There was not so much tree cutting done during the next hour, and it vexed the young farm manager.

"It seems, as Mr. Bronson suggested, that I am bound to have trouble with that fellow, whether I hire him or not," Hiram reflected.

CHAPTER XIII

WHEAT

It was about this time that Hiram received his first letter since leaving Scoville from Sister. He was glad to hear personally from her, and about her wonderful fortune as well; but it must be confessed that had the letter been from a certain other girl he would have been equally pleased.

He had heard of Lettie Bronson frequently from her father. She would graduate from St. Beris in June and come home to Plympton. Then, Hiram hoped, he would see her occasionally at Sunnyside Farm.

Secretly the young fellow was particularly pleased with his new position as farm manager because it gave him an opportunity to delegate the heavier and dirtier work to his workmen. If Lettie came on the place he would be able to go to meet her in decent clothes and with clean hands.

Sister's letter was very friendly and newsy; but upon reading it a second time Hiram thought he observed in it a tone that was not like that of the Sister he had previously known. She had been wont to be rather fly-away and careless of speech and act. Now there was a sudden primness in the way she expressed herself which must, Hiram thought, arise from the feeling of responsibility which her new circumstances had brought to her.

But here spoke the old tender-hearted, if imaginative, Sister:

"I wish I could go out myself, Hiram, and find my little brother. Just think of his running away—even from a reform school—into the world all stark alone! I don't know anything more about him than that—not even what his first name is. It seems my Grandmother Cheltenham hired the lawyer to find us both before she died, but she would do nothing for Brother and me until we were both found. So all that I can do is to wait patiently. I hope the poor boy will come to no harm."

She signed the letter: "I-don't-know-my-first-name-yet Cheltenham." But Hiram could imagine how proud and happy Sister was with a real name of her own.

"Bless her dear little heart," he murmured.

The carpenters began to arrive at Sunnyside, and the shack, first to be used for a bunkhouse and kitchen, was soon put up. It would comfortably house twenty men, the bunks being built along the walls and a long table and benches occupying the middle of the room. Hiram took his old bed in the small house after Orrin Post moved in with the other men, and the incubator house was fumigated.

"For as long as you are used to farmwork," Hiram had told Orrin, "why should you not stay here and work for me when you get strong enough?"

"You are a good fellow, Strong!" declared the friendless one. "You won't be sorry that you took me in."

"Oh," Hiram said, his eyes twinkling, "I figure to get all of my money back on you, Orrin."

There was something about Orrin Post that Hiram found very attractive, and yet the fellow was as secretive about his personal history as though his past life was something to be ashamed of.

He proved to be, now that he was convalescent, a good looking young man, rather frail of physique, but manly in every way. Because of his enunciation and judging, also, by little turns of expression in his use of English, Hiram thought Orrin came, too, from New England. He was intelligent and to all appearances well-educated.

But never did the latter drop a word to reveal what his upbringing or his former state had been, save that he had worked on farms. He appeared to have none of the vices of the common tramp; he was polite, clean-mouthed, and an easy and fluent speaker on almost any subject but that of his private affairs.

He read everything there was to read—books, papers, magazines, even a pile of old poultry journals Brandenburg had left in the incubator shed. Miss Pringle pronounced him to be "real nice" and lent him all the books and papers she owned.

Now that Orrin Post was out of danger and there were so many men about Sunnyside Farm, the spinster did not visit them so often. But Hiram and Orrin sometimes called on her in the evening. In numbers there is safety, Hiram thought, while Orrin did not seem to be at all disturbed by any of Delia Pringle's languishing ways.

That he was grateful both to the good-hearted spinster and to Hiram they could not doubt. Orrin began to do light jobs for both very soon. One thing, he relieved Hiram altogether of the care of the more than twenty cattle that the young farm manager was feeding in the pens behind the big barn.

It was Orrin, too, who assisted Hiram in setting up the farm machinery that had arrived. He seemed to have some idea of mechanics, and Hiram always found him of considerable assistance.

The two-disc plow was the first implement they set up. It was a splendidly built machine, one of the newest on the market, and could be pulled by either tractor or horses.

Mr. Bronson did not intend to use a tractor much at Sunnyside; at least, not this first season. When the season's work really commenced he would have all his present tractors could do on his other farms.

"But with these young elephants," Orrin said, admiring the pair of Percherons when they had arrived, "you ought to be able to do almost anything, Mr. Strong."

The horses were really huge fellows, quiet, kindly, and well broken to work. They were not much like the horses Hiram had been used to in the East, it must be confessed. Even Jerry, who was a good cross of Morgan and Canadian stock, looked truly Lilliputian beside these huge fellows.

When the Percherons started one of the largest logs in the burned piece, the driver chanced to steer them wrong at one point and the foot-and-a-half butt of the pine-log rammed a stump. The force of the blow, with the horses leaning against their collars, split the pine-log for half its length.

"Say," said Will Pardee, the driver, "let me tackle them to the corner of that barn, and I bet I could start it. Aside from a steam engine, they are the best pullers I ever saw."

The carpenter gang was now at work and the material for the stave silo had arrived. All but the wire cables with which Hiram had advised that it should be stayed. But those were promised.

It was to be a hundred-and-forty-ton silo—one of the largest of the old-fashioned kind—and its foundation was of masonry. Under proper conditions it would last for years if the walls (the staves were grooved and tongued) were properly erected. The silo was placed at one corner of the barn just where it would be handy to shred and blow the ensilage into the enormous round tank.

Meanwhile, Hiram had continued his corn testing, and to his satisfaction. Having selected the good ears among those he had bought of Mr. Brown, discarding the less vigorous, he shelled the remaining corn off these good ears and mixed the kernels thoroughly. This seed he sacked, tagging it plainly, and hung it where Yancey Battick's dread enemies, the rats, would not get at it.

This bag of corn would not furnish Hiram with all the seed he would need at planting time. He had other corn to test and his testing boxes were busy for some weeks.

In the meantime he had tried out the little handful of wheat he had brought with him from Yancey Battick's place. The vigor and uniformity of that red-streaked wheat was quite remarkable. Never had Hiram Strong seen a wheat that pleased him as much as did this new grain.

He was deeply interested in Yancey Battick's experiment with this wheat; but he did not know how to go about gaining the odd man's confidence. Really, he was on less familiar terms with Battick than with any other neighbors about Sunnyside—save, perhaps, the rascally Adam Banks.

The latter came around occasionally and talked with the men working for Hiram and interfered in a small way with the ditching and the chopping down of the pine trees. But Hiram was determined to have no trouble with the fellow if he could help it.

He had been told that Adam Banks had quarreled with a farmer for whom he had worked, and later, when that farmer's barns were fired, the owner had declared that Adam Banks had done the firing. But nothing could be proved against the fellow.

There had been a few warm days; but the ground was not ready for corn plowing, and Hiram was to raise no oats this year. Nor did he give any attention to potatoes or other truck crops. Primarily his job at Sunnyside was to raise corn—with a proper rotation of clover and grains to keep the soil of the farm in arable condition.

He had mapped the farm and planned his work of seeding for the year, both on the land that had lain fallow over winter and that already in crops.

He did not like the looks of the wheat on the upper twenty acres where the ditching was being done. It had not stooled properly; there were patches where it was winter killed because of the poor drainage. He knew the crop on this piece would scarcely pay for harvesting.

And yet he understood that both lime and commercial fertilizer had been used heavily on this acreage before it was seeded the previous September.

"The standing water has made the land soggy. You can't grow crops on a sponge—at least, not wheat," he told himself. "The fertility put into the soil for this wheat is still here, or it has evaporated or leached away. Surely the lime has not done all its work in releasing the natural fertility which the soil possesses. This piece should not need liming again for three years.

"If I can get this wheat off in time for an ensilage crop—first broadcasting the coarse manure from the cattle pens—I might make a showing on the profit side of the ledger, for this piece, ditching and all, by the next year. Ensilage corn and peas together would make this twenty acres look pretty good."

Thus he dreamed. He walked about the other wheat fields. None of the grain was as seriously injured as was that on the twenty-acre piece bordering this much traveled section of the county road.

Through a rift in the strip of woodland between the Sunnyside fields and Yancey Battick's place, he saw a lovely plain of green. It looked so very different from his own wheatlands that Hiram ventured across the boundary fence to examine the patch more closely.

Here was not more than an acre of level, wheat-covered land. He saw that the grain had been sown very thinly; and yet the plants had stooled so well that, at a little distance, it seemed as though the ground was matted by the grain plants.

If this was the red-streaked wheat it must be wonderfully productive. At least, the plant itself was thrifty and lush—far beyond any wheat Hiram Strong had ever seen. Whether it was of the bearded or smooth variety, the grain from such a plant must make a heavy and paying harvest.

He looked up suddenly to see Yancey Battick—his face inflamed and gun in hand—bearing down upon him with so savage a demeanor that Hiram confessed himself frightened.

CHAPTER XIV

YANCEY BATTICK'S STORY

"What are you doing there?" demanded Battick, with his gun cocked and the muzzle on a level with Hiram Strong's breast. "Have I got to give you a lesson, too?"

"You certainly are teaching me something, Mr. Battick," returned the young farmer with flushed face and angry look. "Put down that gun! What do you mean by threatening to shoot me?"

"I'll more than threaten to do it!" declared the man wildly. "You get away from that wheat! You get off this farm! And you stay off!"

"What is the matter with you, Mr. Battick?" cried Hiram. "Are you crazy? You haven't got your farm posted over there where I entered."

"I can't go to the expense of putting up a 'no trespass' sign every few feet," snarled Battick. "But you, as well as everybody else around here, know that I don't want anybody sneaking around my place. Get out!" and he advanced with the gun again.

The double muzzle of the shotgun was a most unpleasant prospect. Hiram Strong did not fancy being backed through the wood to the boundary fence with the gun against his breast. It was too ignominious a prospect to be borne.

It has always been a mooted question just how far a man may go to protect his property from trespass. In most cases the courts demand that harmful trespass be proved. And certainly Hiram had done no harm, and contemplated none, in coming here to look at his neighbor's wheat.

He did not believe Yancey Battick was altogether sane. But an insane man with a shotgun is a combination as uncertain as a barrel of gunpowder and a match!

Hiram half turned towards the woods path through which he had come. Battick, only eight feet or so away, raised the muzzle of his gun a trifle. Like a flash the young fellow wheeled, stooped, and leaped in to seize the man.

The gun exploded and Hiram's hat went sailing into the air, its brim in front torn to bits. His forehead was blackened by the smoke of the discharge, so near was it.

But he had seized Yancey Battick around the waist and held on. The shotgun fell to the ground under their stamping feet. The young farm manager was more vigorous if not more angry than his antagonist. For half a minute or more they strained and tugged—Hiram to throw the man, the latter to escape from his embrace.

Suddenly they broke apart. Both staggered back a pace. They stared at each other, their visages pale now rather than inflamed. Both realized how near to tragedy the incident had led.

Hiram drew a palm across his blackened and sweating forehead. Battick still glared, panting, at the young fellow.

"I—I might have shot you, Strong. You're a young fool," he muttered.

"If anybody lacks sense it is you," retorted Hiram quickly. "If you had killed me I'd only have been dead. But you would have had to pay the penalty."

"You are on my land—"

"Don't begin that old foolishness," commanded Hiram.

He seized the man's arm and led him toward a log at the edge of the wood. Battick was actually shaking and he stared at Hiram in a way that troubled the latter considerably. Could it be that this strange individual was really insane?

"Sit down here," said the youth, and took a seat beside him on the log. "Now for goodness sake, tell me what the matter is with you. I know you have bred a new wheat. I saw the grain at your house. I suppose this is a field of it. Why act like a madman about it? I can't steal these plants and so breed the wheat in competition."

Battick looked at him solemnly. "You don't know what I have been through, Mr. Strong," he said.

"I can see you are carrying on a regular guerrilla warfare against your neighbors, Mr. Battick. But I cannot imagine why."

"They have hounded me—robbed me!" exclaimed Battick excitedly.

"Who have?"

"People you don't know, perhaps. And perhaps you do! I can never be sure that their agents are not around here. You may be one of them, Mr. Strong."

"I assure you—"

"Or you may be as right as rain. I was too quick just now. But I am suspicious of every person I see trespassing in my fields."

"Who could, or would, do this wheat harm?"

"Let me tell you! When I bred my Mortgage Lifter Oats I was robbed of my seed, my standing grain was burned just before it was ready for the sickle, and cattle were turned in on my young oats, a field like this, and allowed to graze."

"The Mortgage Lifter Oats? The great new oat that Bonsall and Burgess, the seedsmen in Chicago, put out four years ago and which proved such a wonderful cropper?"

"The same."

"You bred that variety, Mr. Battick?"

"Yes. But I do not get the credit for it, nor did I get any of the money—a small fortune—that has been made through its sale. I do not hold Bonsall and Burgess at fault. They honestly bought the new seed of those who robbed me and were themselves aware of no crime having been committed."

"I never!"

"Yes, Mr. Strong. There are mighty mean people in this world. Where I lived before I came to this place there were other men living around me who gave some attention to the selection and breeding of new varieties of seed. You see, that clergyman who years ago made a clear twenty thousand dollars by breeding a famous muskmelon started us all to hunting for new types of vegetables, fruits, and grains.

"Rivalries arose in my neighborhood, of course. But I thought they were friendly rivalries. We even talked over our discoveries at the Grange meetings. I had made a study of plant life, and I gave little lectures—the more fool me!—to the boys and girls who were interested enough to come together at the schoolhouse to listen. I had no idea my neighbors would steal."

"You don't mean to say they did?"

"Exactly. And some of the very boys I had tried to interest and help were the ones who broke down my fence and turned the cattle into my young oats. That was so I should be unable to raise a crop of the new oats that year and so fail to take advantage of the Mortgage Lifter being advertised by the seedsmen. You understand that all big money is made on new seeds in the first and second seasons, don't you?"

"I know that, Mr. Battick," Hiram agreed. "After that everybody has the new strain. It must be a quick clean-up in the seed business."

"That's it. I don't really know to this day just who it was profited by my loss. In the main, I mean. Almost everybody around my place had some of the seed. That held the gang together and made it impossible for me to get any evidence against the real transgressors. You see, the other neighbors were bribed.

"However, my crops had been destroyed, the seed-oats taken out of my granary in the night when I was ill. It was a dirty plot! Bonsall and Burgess were not to be blamed. Nor could they tell me anything. They were bound to secrecy in their contract."

"And could you get no satisfaction?" asked Hiram, in sympathy.

"I could prove nothing. You cannot patent, or copyright, a seed! Those fellows merely beat me to it."

"It was a shame!"

Battick laughed bitterly. "They certainly did me dirt," he said. "I sold out and came here. I may be wrong in telling you this. Nobody else knows what I came here for and why I bought the old Pringle place."

"No," said Hiram smiling. "Some of the neighbors assume you came here to practice the black art."

"Let them! The less they know the better for me. I've chased more of them than you think off the place. That lazy, good-for-nothing Adam Banks—"

"Do you mean to say that he has troubled you?" put in Hiram, with some interest.

"Yes. And I'll surely fill his pants full of rock salt so that he'll prefer eating off the mantel-shelf for a week, if he doesn't keep away. I don't trust anybody, Mr. Strong, and that's a fact. Unless it is you. I believe I have the finest strain of wheat that was ever bred."

He stopped. It was plain that he could not trust Hiram sufficiently to talk intimately about it. He shook his head and looked away.

Hiram glanced at him, scrutinizing the worn, hoop-backed figure from the corner of his eye. Yancey Battick was not an old man. He was worse than that. He was a man worn out before his time.

The young farm manager could understand just how hope and faith had dried up in this unfortunate man and left only a husk. Fate and unkind circumstances, as well as wicked men, had sadly treated Yancey Battick.

His best efforts had gone for nothing. His attempts to win a competence for his old age had been frustrated. Perhaps there were more personal sorrows—heart-breaking sorrows—in Yancey Battick's life that he had not touched upon in his angry and bitter narrative.

Hiram's own heart warmed toward him, unlovely as he was physically. If he could help Yancey Battick he was determined to do so.

"I am mighty sorry for your bad luck, Mr. Battick," Hiram said, rising at last from his seat on the log. "I really did not intend annoying you when I came over here to look at your wheat. It looked so much better than that on Sunnyside that I was curious."

"Un-huh," muttered Battick. "I understand you, Mr. Strong. I presume you are all right."

"Well, good-day!" said Hiram, moving off. "I'll be sure to come around to the front door again if I visit you," and he laughed shortly.

The laugh died on his lips as he went back through the woods path. And for a very strange reason. Through the greenery to the right he caught sudden sight of a figure slinking away from behind the log on which he and Battick had been sitting while the latter told his story.

Hiram recognized this eavesdropper. It was Adam Banks.

CHAPTER XV

THE COUNTRY DANCE

Miss Delia Pringle had an idea and she came to Hiram with it that very day when he returned from his visit to Yancey Battick's patch of wheat.

"I do love a dance, Mr. Strong, don't you?" she began with her head on one side and a languishing look. "We have had very few of them around this neighborhood this winter. The flu, you know—so many unfortunate sicknesses.

"But the winter's well over now and everybody who hasn't died of the flu has recovered. I'd dearly love to have one more dance before haying and grain harvest—before all the young men get too busy."

"Yes. But—"

"Oh, I want your help in getting it up, Mr. Strong," Miss Pringle explained.

"Why, Miss Pringle," he said rather anxiously, "I'm a newcomer. I don't want to put myself forward and act officiously. It might make a bad impression on the minds of the neighbors."

"What nonsense!" cried the lively spinster. "They all like you—of course they do!"

"Not Adam Banks," suggested Hiram, with one of his quick smiles that always made his rather plain face more attractive.

"My goodness! I should hope not," exclaimed Miss Pringle. "If he did I certainly wouldn't."

"And I think Terry Crane is getting to dislike me, too," added Hiram speaking of the man whom he had put into the burned-over patch of woodland to chop down trees. "I understand that Crane's wife thinks I'm quite a terrible fellow because I make her washing so hard."

Miss Pringle laughed. "It would be a good thing, I should think, if these folks got together and learned more about you, Mr. Strong—got really to know you and how nice you are," and her smile would—when he first knew her—have made Hiram blush to the very tips of his ears.

"You flatter me, Miss Pringle," was what he said. "And I don't believe I would know how to go about getting up a dance."

"Oh, that's all right. You leave that to me," she said promptly. "What I want of you, Mr. Strong, is to get Mr. Bronson to let us dance on his floor."

"Dance on his floor?" repeated Hiram. "At Plympton?"

"Of course not!"

"Where, then? What floor? His barn floor here at Sunnyside?"

"No, no! Of his new house. Don't you know how Dolan and MacComb are going to put up the house after your silo is done? They often build 'em so around here. They do not raise the whole frame at once, but lay the floor on the sills and then put up the scantlings for the frame, story by story—the outside walls first."

"I see. That is a common practice in some localities."

"It is here," returned Miss Pringle, "for we have a good many high winds. Come along one of those baby tornadoes, as they call 'em, and a regular house-frame would be torn all to pieces, unless it was well boarded in."

"I believe you!"

"Well. If it's nice weather, as it is likely to be in June when the floor's laid, we always try to have a dance. Christen the floor, as it were. In this Pringleton district we don't get to have a real good dance once in a dog's age. Carpet dances are nothing, and barn floors are so rough. So's the schoolhouse floor. There isn't a real hall nearer than Plympton."

"I see your idea, Miss Pringle," Hiram said; "and if I can get Mr. Bronson to agree—and I presume he will—I don't see why we shouldn't have a nice time. Miss Bronson will be home early in June, and I shouldn't wonder but that she would help."

"Little Lettie Bronson? Of course she will. We'll have a regular party," declared the enthusiastic Delia. "And I hope you'll ask me to dance, Mr. Strong."

"I promise to," laughed Hiram. "I ask you right now for at least two dances, and there's Orrin. I bet he can dance."

"Oh, I've already promised him three, Mr. Strong," declared the fore-thoughtful spinster, in high fettle.

This was a bit of pleasure to look forward to; and all work and no play does make Jack a dull boy. It was something to write Sister about, too; and Sister (who wrote more frequently now that she had discovered Hiram would answer her letters) became very much interested in "Hiram's house raising party," as Mother Atterson called it.

"Mrs. Atterson remembers going to a barn raising party when she was a girl in the country and there she met Mr. Atterson for the first time," Sister wrote in her very next letter. "She thinks she never had such a nice time as she did at that party. I wish I was going to be at your house raising party, Hiram.

"Miss Lettie Bronson has been here and says she expects to be home for the party. She says Miss Pringle—the lady you write so much about—has writ (is that right, Hiram? Mrs. Atterson says it is) her all about it and how fine you are getting along with your spring work. I would dearly love to see you riding your double-disc plow behind those Percherons. They must be as big as elephants.

"I am most of all interested in that Orrin Post. To think of his coming to your place sick, and all, and then turning out to be such a nice fellow and such good help! Mrs. Atterson says it was a leading. You were led to go down into the calf shed that night to find the poor fellow."

There was considerable more to the letter for Sister was a voluminous writer when once she got started. Hiram's epistles, however, had soon to be of the briefest description, for the work was piling up on him enormously. Spring had opened with a bang!

Had it not been for Orrin Post the young farm manager would actually have been swamped with the details of the farmwork. As he gained strength (and Orrin did that rapidly) he relieved Hiram of many petty duties that had begun greatly to try the latter.

Helpful and pleasant as Orrin Post always was, he did not grow any more communicative about himself as their intimacy increased. His past was a sealed book to everybody about Sunnyside. Even Miss Delia Pringle confessed to the young farm manager that she had never met such a close-mouthed person.

"A dentist's forceps wouldn't pull anything out of that Post—no more than as though he was a post," she declared. "But he is a mighty nice fellow."

The workmen at Sunnyside and the other neighbors had at first referred to the stranger as "that tramp," but after a time they warmed up to Orrin. He was friendly, and was always willing to bear a hand at any job.

The ditching was completed and the logs laid in the drains and covered. Miss Pringle's burned-over patch was certainly improved in appearance. The sprouts and bushes were growing rapidly green and would soon completely hide the unsightly stumps. Even the most critical neighbors owned to the improvement. But some of them carped at Hiram's underdraining scheme. That twenty acres never had amounted to much and it never would, according to these people.

"Digging the drains was all right, Mr. Strong," said Turner, who held the farm back of Miss Pringle's. "That is, the ditches would have been all right, except they'd have been in the way of plowing and tilling.

"But when you threw in the logs and covered them up you did a fool's trick, if you'll allow me, who was farming, it's likely, when your daddy was born, to say so. A fool trick—yes, sir!"

But Hiram only laughed pleasantly at the grizzled old farmer's criticism, saying:

"I cannot say I believe you are right and I am wrong, Mr. Turner; but there is one thing that will settle the question."

"What is that, young man?"

"Time," replied Hiram, quietly.

"Ha! I guess that is so," agreed the aged farmer. "Maybe you ain't so big a fool as you appear."

Criticism did not bother Hiram Strong, and as he told Mr. Turner he could afford to wait for time to prove him right. He knew that even the owner of Sunnyside Farm, Mr. Bronson, felt some doubt regarding the value of the kind of underdraining his young farm manager had done. And it had cost a pretty penny!

But now came the plowing for corn and Hiram had four weeks of steady plowing and raking to get the fallow land into shape for his corn crop. And he did most of the plowing with the Percherons and the double-disc plow himself. There being little culch on the land, this make of plow worked remarkably well.

This land on which he proposed to grow his main crop was limed heavily before it was raked, and he determined to fertilize well with a special corn fertilizer at planting time. Mr. Bronson mixed his own fertilizers. Early in the season Hiram had secured specimens of the soil on which he was to plant the corn, and had sent them to the State Agricultural College for examination.

Therefore, he expected his employer to supply him with a chemical compound which would have in it just the needed ingredients to fertilize the soil in question for the growth of corn. But he knew these acres of Sunnyside had already been heavily cropped; and in spite of their having lain fallow for a year he did not look for any big crop. The long-tenanted farm was hungry for humus—something the chemicals could not put into it.

"But at the last cultivation of the corn," he told Mr. Bronson, "we will sow crimson clover. Well limed as the land now is, we should get a good catch of clover. We'll cut it for hay in June—and cut it at the right time. I shouldn't want it to ball up in the stomachs of these splendid Percherons, for instance, and kill them, as many a good horse has been killed by crimson clover."

"We usually plant wheat and clover together for hay," Mr. Bronson said. "I have had an unfortunate experience with crimson clover cut at the wrong time."

"My father showed me the time to cut and cure it. It is safe as a church if handled right," declared Hiram vigorously. "But it should not be fed steadily without other hay. It would be like trying to bring up a child on sugar only. The youngster would like it all right—until he was made sick. So with the horses.

"Now, we ought to get a good crop of hay off this corn land by June of next year. Then if we can broadcast the sod with compost or cattle manure we shall have an ideal soil for corn."

"But, I say! you're figuring on following corn with corn and only clover between," exclaimed the farm owner.

"Sure enough. And with the broadcasting of manure and a good, sharp fertilizer in the drill, I guarantee to make a fifty per cent. better crop on this same land next year than I can this, although next year's crop will have to be planted a month later than this, and I shall have to have help in the plowing."

"All right! All right! Go ahead, Hiram," cried Mr. Bronson, literally throwing up his hands. "You are the most convincing talker for a young chap that I ever heard. But on my other farms I usually plant potatoes on clover sod."

"Yes, the old and standard rotation of crops—corn, clover, potatoes. But Sunnyside is not potato raising soil. Nor are the marketing conditions right for going in heavily for such a crop. To make money here I thought we had agreed, Mr. Bronson, that nothing should be sold off Sunnyside save what can walk, outside of the wheat and corn?"

"That's right. We did. And you are correct, my boy. But the old Irish Cobbler has made me so much money on my lower land around Plympton, on a three crop rotation, that I cannot get it out of my mind that it ought to work up here."

"On Sunnyside we've got to raise corn, we've got to raise silage, and a part of the land should be excellent for grain if properly tilled."

"I hear from Miss Pringle that for the last few years the wheat has not been much."

"And the crop now in the ground will not be much," grumbled Hiram. "But believe me, Mr. Bronson, I won't put a grain of wheat in the ground next September unless I am pretty positive of a thirty bushel crop."

"Sh! Don't let any of these old hardshells around here hear you say that or they'll think you are crazy. They don't average over twenty bushels to the acre, if they do that."

"There's one man around here who is going to do better than that unless all signs fail," said Hiram quickly.

"Who is he?"

"Yancey Battick."

"What? Why, that wet, sour land of his isn't fit to grow wheat."

"That's all right; but wait a while. Maybe he'll show you something. That is, barring the weather or the Hessian fly."

"The weather we cannot control. We can only pray about that," said Mr. Bronson smiling. "But how about the Hessian fly and other insect pests?"

"Luck. It's good luck if you don't have 'em and bad if you do," answered Hiram.

"Do you know anything about this new one—what they call the English wheat louse?"

"Only that he's 'bad medicine,'" Hiram replied. "But I do have faith in one thing to help overcome the ravages of all pests on wheat."

"What is that?"

"The use of a fertilizer in which nitrate of soda is prominent. The nitrate forces the growth and sometimes that puts the crop ahead of the fly or other vermin. There is not much fast-growing wheat on Sunnyside to-day, Mr. Bronson. Here it is corn-planting time and the wheat is not yet two feet high."

"I've seen richer land, Hiram," rejoined the farm owner. "But I don't expect to see much richer around here than Sunnyside will have after a couple of years of your work. I'll supply the money, my boy, if you will supply the brains."

"That swells me all up, Mr. Bronson," laughed Hiram, "But I never did claim that all the farm knowledge in the world is under my cap."

"No one man or boy ever had too much of that, I can assure you," Mr. Bronson agreed. "But you must feel your responsibility. If Sunnyside is going to be a well tilled and profitable farm, it will come through your personal effort, more than by any other way, Hiram."

Hiram Strong felt all this. He had taken a big contract on his shoulders, and he did not overlook that fact for a single waking hour.

Mr. Bronson sent another corn planter from one of his other farms and the two teams cleaned up the Sunnyside corn patch in a week. It was the biggest acreage of corn Hiram had ever had anything to do with, and he looked over the great brown field from the altitude of the knoll on which the new farmhouse was being built with no little pride and satisfaction.

The two teams cleaned up the Sunnyside cornpatch in a week.

Miss Delia Pringle had proved a true prophetess. The silo was finished, all but two of the hoops and the wire stays, and the carpenters were well at work on the new house. The lower floor was laid and the framework for the outer walls raised as high as the second story, and the back and sides were boarded in.

Lettie Bronson arrived home on the eighth of June, and it was the evening of that day that had been set for the "house raising dance" at Sunnyside.

CHAPTER XVI

TROUBLE WITH TURNER'S BULL

The hard scrubby looking red and yellow corn that Hiram had got from Mr. Brown and tested so carefully, had planted a goodly patch of the Sunnyside cornland. Mr. Bronson looked at some of it as Hiram filled the two cylinders of the cornplanter, running several handfuls through his hand.

"That's kind of scrubby looking stuff, Hiram," he observed doubtfully. "I sent you up better looking seed."

"Yes, sir. Your seed certainly is well selected and graded," agreed the youth. "But I am not going to plant it on this lowland; not much of it, anyway. That big corn grows tall, I imagine, and takes plenty of time to grow, doesn't it?"

"From a hundred and ten to a hundred and twenty days. But you are planting plenty early."

"Yes. Only we may get frost on this lowland early in September. The farmers about here tell me they do, some years. And June frosts, too, once in a bad while. I am afraid, if we had a set-back in corn planting in June, that long-growing variety of yours would get scarcely glazed down here, before the September frost hit it. And it is not the sort of corn I want for silage."

"I see. You always do have an answer ready, Hiram; and usually it's a good one. Though, truth to tell, an early September frost here is almost as unlikely as a July snow."

"Just the same," his young employee said, "this corn that you think is so scrubby is due to make you a big crop. I am planting a specially prepared strip on that far side toward Battick's for seed."

"No!"

"Yes, sir."

"But it isn't even pure breed, Hiram. There will be a dozen red ears to the bushel, I am certain."

"Did you ever see a horse or a mule refuse a red ear of corn?" laughed Hiram. "I don't ever remember of seeing smut on an ear that turned out to be red—though that doesn't prove anything. And red ears make just as good meal as yellow."

"I suppose you are right. But this looks like scrub."

"If it comes right, when it is cured you can knock a steer down with an ear of it without knocking a kernel off the cob."

"That will be some corn, boy!" chuckled Mr. Bronson.

Hiram came up from the first raking of this seed corn patch at noontime of this beautiful June day to find Miss Pringle and some of the younger girls transforming the first floor of the new house at Sunnyside into a ballroom. Busy as they were at this time on the farm, both Hiram and Orrin gave the girls a helping hand during the afternoon.

The carpenters built a small platform at the back of the house for the musicians. There was to be the piano brought over from Miss Pringle's, a violin, and a horn. Mr. Bronson had sent up a lot of Japanese lanterns, and these the boys strung as they were directed about the big, open floor and overhead. Chairs and benches were brought from the schoolhouse, half a mile or more away.

The veranda flooring had likewise been laid, and the carpenters had built wide, rough steps by which the veranda could easily be reached.

The girls swept out all the shavings and other litter, and the well-laid floor presented an attractive appearance to the eye of anybody who was fond of dancing. Just as the place was pronounced ready by Delia Pringle, and the girls and boys were retiring from the cleanly swept floor, Adam Banks appeared at the back door and coolly scrambled into the house.

"Let's see how it is laid," he said, grinning, and beginning to clog clumsily with his heavy boots.

He had been walking in muddy places, and every step he took on the clean boards rattled gravel and mud off his boots.

"You get out of here, Ad Banks," commanded Miss Pringle, starting after him with broom and dust pan. "You are the biggest nuisance that ever was."

"Aw, Delia, don't be harsh with a fellow," said Banks, grinning broadly. "You going to promise me a dance to-night?"

"And you probably coming here half drunk!" announced the spinster, frankly. "I guess not!" announced the spinster, frankly. "I guess not! No indeed!"

"You'd better. You'll be a wall-flower enough, Delia—you know you will."

At that Miss Pringle flushed very red and her eyes fairly snapped.

"If I never danced at all I wouldn't take on any such makeshift of a man as you, Ad Banks! Get out of here!" she commanded, "shooing" him with the broom.

He grappled with her, still laughing in his lubberly way, and wrenched the broom from Miss Pringle's hands.

"Oh, Delia," he sing-songed, "how I love you! You're the prettiest girl I know. Come on and give us a dance. No? Then I'll dance with the broom," and he proceeded to do a grotesque dance over the clean floor with the broomstick for a partner.

"Now just look at what you've done, Ad Banks!" cried Miss Pringle almost in tears. "See that!"

Broken cakes of mud were scattered about the floor wherever the fellow clogged while Miss Pringle looked on angrily.

"That fellow needs a good licking," Orrin Post said to Hiram, while the girls loudly expressed their vexation at what Banks was doing.

Hiram had quite made up his mind not to begin any personal violence with Adam Banks. The man had time and again sought to coax the young farm manager into a fight.

Banks was half a head taller than Hiram and much bulkier in appearance. He could easily have overcome Orrin, who was slight and still suffering from the effects of the attack of measles.

But when Orrin leaped back upon the veranda and started to enter the house, Hiram could not allow the matter to go farther without interference. He would not see Orrin attack a man plainly so much stronger than himself.

"Hold on!" the young farm manager commanded. "You stay out of this," and he caught the angry Orrin by the arm. "If anybody is going to make Adam Banks walk French, it has to be me. Really, nobody else has a right to throw him out, I presume, as I am the representative of the owner of the farm."

"Hurry up and do something, then," growled Orrin. "I'm not going to stand around and see Delia abused."

Hiram pushed ahead of his friend, and as Banks, still dodging and laughing at Miss Pringle, gyrated nearer, Hiram stepped quickly forward and seized him by his shirt collar and the waistband of his trousers.

"Hi! Hey!" bawled Banks. "What are you trying to do?"

He dropped the broom. He struggled mightily to break away. But all he could do was to kick and paw the air.

Hiram had him right on the tips of his toes, and propelled him across the floor in a most undignified way and at great speed. Doubtless the young fellow's success arose from the unexpectedness of his attack; but Hiram was likewise very strong.

He shot Banks out of the front door of the new house, across the veranda and down the steps, and thence across the front yard to the road.

"Let me go! I'll kill you for this, Hi Strong!" Banks shouted.

Hiram made no verbal reply to this threat, but to the delight and with the applause of the girls he flung Adam Banks from him with such force that the fellow sprawled on hands and knees in the dust.

"There!" Hiram said. "I am sorry that I was obliged to do it; but I have had to and so the matter is settled. Mr. Bronson told me to put you off the place and keep you off. I've done part of my duty—I've thrown you off of Sunnyside. I'll do the rest of it just so sure as you come loitering around here—I'll keep you off."

"You blamed fool!" sputtered Banks, "don't you dare touch me again."

"You step back on to the farm and see how quick I'll touch you."

Banks, after so emphatic an exhibition of Hiram's ability to handle him, took it out in sputtering. He did not come back. But he threatened dire vengeance as he stumbled away. The girls and the carpenters working within sight approved of Hiram's exploit—so much so, indeed, that the young fellow was glad to get out of the way for a while after Banks had gone, and so escape their congratulations.

But after supper at six-thirty in the workmen's shack, Hiram Strong was obliged to appear in front of the new house and meet people. What he had done to Adam Banks, the neighborhood bully, seemed to have been circulated by some method of grapevine telegraph, and Hiram realized that those who did not speak to him about it showed that they had heard the story by their curious smiles.

He was a newcomer, and naturally his neighbors were sizing him up. The young farmer from the East expected they would be curious about him if not actually doubtful.

The thing that soon began to make the deepest impression on the young manager of Sunnyside was the number of automobiles that were arriving. There were some horse-drawn buggies and carriages, but one after another the more popular makes of motor-cars arrived at the farm until there were more than fifty parked along the roadside.

The Bronson car came after the dancing had begun. Hiram ran out to greet his employer and Lettie. The latter was dressed in the very height of city fashion and when she came up to the dancing floor on Hiram's arm the country girls fairly buzzed.

But in spite of Lettie's outré style in dress, she was by no means snobbish. She greeted everybody whom she knew with perfect freedom, and she displayed no air of patronage. Hiram thought to himself that Lettie Bronson had greatly improved during these past few months.

Miss Pringle, who had already danced once with Hiram and once with Orrin, ran over to meet the daughter of the owner of Sunnyside Farm, and her effusive greeting only made Lettie laugh.

"There is a whole flock of fellows here who will want to dance with you, Lettie Bronson," the young-old girl declared. "You'll have a good time here."

"Of course she will," said her escort, smiling.

"Hiram, first," declared Lettie, smiling up at her father's employee in a way to make the young fellow's heart increase its beat. "I haven't danced with him since we had our barn dance last corn husking at Scoville. Remember, Hiram?"

"I should say I do," he agreed with warmth.

"And then I want to know Orrin Post. Does he dance, Hiram?"

"There he is now dancing with Miss Paulsen," said Hiram.

"Of course Orrin can dance," Miss Pringle joined in.

"You know Sister—or is it Cecilia?—is very much interested in this Orrin Post, too," Lettie said to Hiram as they got into step with the music. "I saw her and dear old Mrs. Atterson just the other day. You will have to make good here at Sunnyside, Hiram Strong, or you will disappoint Sister and Mrs. Atterson fearfully."

"I mean to succeed. I hope all my friends will root for me from the side lines," laughed Hiram, yet with a certain wistful glance at his partner.

"Of course we will," cried Lettie frankly. "And nobody will root any louder than 'yours truly,' Hiram. Why! next to father I am sure nobody can have your welfare more at heart than I."

Lettie said this with her very best grown-up air. But it pleased Hiram a great deal. His interest in his employer's daughter was very deep and very serious. Lettie Bronson was the most interesting girl he had ever met.

The dancing floor was now well filled every time the orchestra played, and the chairs and settees around the edge of the floor were crowded. It was a lively scene, and the lanterns furnished all the light necessary. At the openings for the windows that were not yet, of course, framed in, men and boys who did not dance stood and talked or smoked.

The crowd increased both on the floor and outside the new house. Now and then Hiram went out to see what was going on. There was some shouting and ribald laughter at a distance, but the rowdy element seemed to keep away from the vicinity of the dance.

"I hear you finally took my advice about Ad Banks," Mr. Bronson said to Hiram, chuckling, "and ran him off the place."

"Folks are making too much of it," the young fellow replied. "Hullo! What is this coming?"

There was a wood road through the burned-over patch belonging to Miss Pringle, and there was light enough from the moon and stars to show Hiram and those who stood with him on the front porch of the new house a crowd of men and boys approaching along this rough way.

"There's Ad Banks now!" exclaimed one man. "You are going to have trouble with him, Bronson."

"Not me," declared the farm owner. "It's all in Hiram's hands, and I have confidence that he can handle anything Banks can start."

Hiram had already started for the road. A sharp cry arose in front:

"Look out, there! That bull is as mad as he can be. Look out!"

A huge, plunging shape came out of the wood path with two men, or boys, hanging on to the ropes hitched to the monster. The latter headed right across the road and those in the way scattered like chaff before a wind.

"That's Turner's bull!" shouted somebody behind Hiram. "He is as savage as a lion."

At that the two men clinging to the maddened animal let go of the ropes. With head down, and uttering a reverberating bellow, the creature came toward the new house on the floor of which the girls and boys were dancing.

CHAPTER XVII

WHEAT HARVEST

There had been two powerful lamps lifted from automobiles and placed so that they would light the veranda. Therefore the front of the partially built house and the yard were well illuminated.

As the bull charged through the gap in the fence his coming cleared the yard in a hurry. The only person who stood his ground was Hiram, and he did not do so from any choice of his own.

It seemed that the mad bull was aiming directly for the steps to the veranda, and the young farm manager stood directly in his path. The youth was not fear-paralyzed, but his mind was quite as empty of ideas at the moment as the others who had run in all directions. His single thought was:

"If I only had a club!"

Hiram Strong had not overpowering fear of this, or any other, bull. He quite realized the danger threatening whoever stood in the way of the beast. But he had dodged more than one animal of the kind, and with a hardwood stick in his hand he would not have been panic-stricken at this meeting. The nose of a bull is a very tender spot.

"Oh, if I only had a club," the young farmer repeated to himself.

But Hiram had no club, and he saw no other weapon within his reach. As Turner's bull charged across the yard directly at him, Hiram skipped backward until he reached the steps, and up those he stumbled.

The figure of the young fellow—the only living thing in his path—evidently held the bull's attention. He came on after Hiram, uttering another bellow.

Within those few seconds the excitement outside the new house was communicated to those inside. The music stopped suddenly; the girls began to scream. And when the boys at the bay windows began to shout that Turner's bull was loose a good many of the dancers and spectators acted as though the beast was already upon the dancing floor.

And it actually did seem as though the animal had that very intention of entering the partly finished house. Hiram had no more than leaped up the steps than the bull plunged clatteringly after him.

Had there been a bit of plank or a piece of scantling lying about, the young fellow might have beaten the bull back. But the girls that afternoon had cleaned up the rubbish all too thoroughly.

Hiram flashed a single glance behind him. Within the wide opening left for the front door he caught a glimpse of the startled faces of both Lettie Bronson and Miss Pringle. They were both screaming some advice to him; but what it was they said Hiram did not know. The general hullabaloo drowning their cries. The excitement was growing.

But here, through a gap in the front wall, darted another person. It was Orrin Post bringing with him a cape belonging to one of the dancers that he had caught up and which floated behind him like the cape of a matador.

The flying garment doubtless caught the eye of the enraged bull. He bellowed again and again and stopped to paw the boards of the veranda floor.

His hesitation was his undoing. Orrin rushed right in between Hiram and the bull and flung the cape over the bull's head. Quickly Hiram leaped forward to help, and between them he and Orrin wound the cape about the animal's head so that it could not shake off the all-smothering folds.

Orrin ... flung the cape over the bull's head.

"We got him!" shouted Orrin, in high delight. "All right, Strong?"

"Yes," replied Hiram. "Grab that rope. Here's one on this side. They are hitched to his horns. Whoever those fellows were, they had no need to let the beast go."

"It was Banks and his friends. They did it purposely, you can just bet."

"No doubt of that."

All the ferocity of the bull seemed to have evaporated. They backed him off the veranda while the girls and boys returned with much excitement and noise. The bull, half smothered in the folds of the cape, uttered a rather plaintive "moo!"

"Hear that creature, will you?" cried Miss Pringle's strident voice. Then, with increased excitement: "What have you got his head wrapped in, I want to know? For the land's sake if it isn't my best broadcloth cape! Now what do you folks know about that!"

The laugh that rose after this excited statement by the spinster relieved the situation to some degree. But it did not pacify Hiram Strong's anger.

"I wish with all my heart I had trounced that Banks fellow this afternoon when I had the chance," he declared to Orrin.

"I agree with you. Nothing but a blamed good licking will ever do a fellow like him any good."

"I don't want to do him good," grumbled Hiram. "I just want to pound him and make him suffer."

But they were not likely to see Adam Banks again just then, or have a chance to beat him properly. Having encouraged younger boys to help lead Turner's bull from the pasture to Sunnyside and turn him loose, Banks had taken his own hasty departure.

Then, evidently awakening to the enormity of his offence after he reached home, he packed a bag and departed from his father's house before daybreak and was not seen in the neighborhood again for some time.

The excitement did not serve to spoil the house-raising dance, however, for when the bull was led away the crowd returned to the dance floor, and the gaiety continued until long after midnight.

Hiram met most of the people worth knowing for a wide district surrounding Sunnyside Farm, and he was glad to make their acquaintance in this friendly way. Most of all, however, did he enjoy the dance because of the presence of Lettie Bronson. She gave him several dances, and when he finally put her into the car beside her father Hiram secretly felt that this evening was marked with a very agreeable milestone in his career.

They next day opened a season of work even more strenuous than that which had gone before. The cultivating of the corn crop had to be carried on every day now unless it rained. Mr. Bronson had furnished Hiram a second small horse, and that, with Jerry, kept the cultivators and rake busy. The Percherons were too big and clumsy to use in the cornfield after the planting, and there was, too, plenty of other work for them to do.

Such hay as there was on Sunnyside had to be harvested, and then came wheat harvest. Most of this crop—especially that on the twenty acre piece which had been underdrained—was rather thin. Sunnyside had not grown heavy crops for years—if it ever had—and Hiram felt somewhat doubtful about the final outcome of this attempt to make the old farm productive when he saw how slim the wheat crop was.

They cut and stacked it, however, trusting that it would pay for thrashing later. Hiram went to the expense of removing the sheaves from the field entirely and building the stacks on a lot near the barns. Immediately he put the Percherons to work plowing the twenty acres along the county road.

He had no stable manure to broadcast here; yet he desired to help fill his silo from this very piece of ground as well as to put the soil in better condition for winter wheat.

The Percherons certainly earned their keep that week. It was dry, with the ground getting harder and more baked every day. Yet Hiram ploughed the piece deep and raked it well before setting out to broadcast a good dressing of bone meal.

Turner came along and stopped to watch Hiram, who was himself riding the harrow which, in this case, pulverized the soil better than the disc machine.

"I don't know why it is," the aged farmer said, as Hiram stopped near the road fence in a cloud of dust, "but this soil fines up, seems to me, after such late plowing, better than I ever remember its doing before. Why do you suppose that is, Mr. Strong?"

Hiram smiled across the fence at him: "I never saw the piece plowed before, you know, Mr. Turner. I don't think much of it even now. But if there has been any change in the condition of the soil I am inclined to lay it to that foolish job of underdraining I did."

"Pshaw! Nonsense! Couldn't be that!" exclaimed the old fellow, driving on. "We ain't had no rain to amount to anything yet. When I see the water pouring out o' those log drains of yours into the county ditch I'll take back all that I said about that foolishness."

"Mighty hard work to convince some people they are wrong," chuckled Hiram to himself, as he started the Percherons again. "But it looks as if we would get enough rain pretty soon to prove one of us—either Mr. Turner or me—in the wrong."

CHAPTER XVIII

THE BABY TORNADO

Hiram had not lost sight of the fact that Yancey Battick's wheat had promised to be better than any of that planted on Sunnyside, to say the least; and although since his rather serious experience with Battick and his gun he had barely nodded to the strange man in passing the old Pringle homestead, Hiram had been very curious as to how Battick's crop was coming on.

While Mr. Bronson's binder was at Sunnyside Hiram offered Battick the use of the machine.

"Of course, I will drive it myself, so nobody else need know anything about your crop," Hiram said.

"Very kind of you, Mr. Strong," said Battick, but in such a way that Hiram was not at all sure whether the man was still suspicious or not. "But I am going to reap that field with a sickle. I always do. This seed wheat is too precious to waste with a binder. I cradle it by hand and shall thrash it with a flail, too. That wheat which you happened to see in my house was harvested in the same way; and then it was all winnowed and selected by hand, grain by grain."

"Some job!"

"But worth it if I can once get a sufficient quantity to interest a big seed house."

"I presume so," agreed Hiram. "How does your wheat stand the dry weather?"

"I take it you have not been over to see it of late?"

"I can assure you I have not crossed the line fence since you showed me so plainly how you felt toward even innocent trespassers," Hiram rejoined stiffly.

Battick gave him a sidewise glance and said nothing for a moment. He was leaning, smoking his pipe, on his sagging front gate.

"Come on down to the field and take a look at my wheat, Mr. Strong," said the man at last, and only because Hiram saw that it was such an exertion for Yancey Battick to give the invitation did the youth accept.

They walked down past the old house, and Hiram saw that Battick had now made plank shutters to all his lower windows which fitted flush with the frames and were barred on the inside. He certainly had prepared to withstand a siege!

It seemed silly. Surely the man's troubles must have turned his brain. Yet when Hiram considered what Battick had suffered of wrong and disappointment, he did not altogether blame him, sane or not.

"And this wheat is a wonder!" the young farmer thought.

He said it aloud when he came in sight of the field in question. It was not more than an acre in extent, and he presumed it was the best spot on the little farm which Miss Pringle had sold Battick along with the old homestead.

The undulating field of grain was shoulder high and was now all of a wonderful golden hue. Such a field of golden luxuriance Hiram had never before seen. The wheat was of a bearded variety, the awns very stiff and long, while the ear itself was the fullest and longest Hiram had ever seen.

"It is a picture! A picture!" he declared with enthusiasm.

Yancey Battick's leathery face lit up as might the face of an artist who heard his masterpiece praised. His gloomy eyes glowed. There was even a smile trembling on his lips as he said:

"You are right, Mr. Strong. It is one of the finest pictures ever painted by Nature. A field of wheat, when you consider it, is the most wonderful thing to contemplate on this, our western hemisphere. Next to rice, it is the grain most depended upon as the staple of human consumption. And when used in its entire, or whole, state it has no rival for nourishment and health.

"An entire rationing of a people with rice may, some medical men claim, nourish the germ of leprosy; we know that badly cured corn is the start of the dreaded pelagra. But wheat—even when refined and bleached until its goodness is all but wasted—brings no disease in its train save indigestion and that quite an unnecessary result of its use. Ground as a whole grain and properly baked, we need not even fear indigestion. More and more is the bread made from wheat becoming the Staff of Life."

"You certainly have a variety here," Hiram said, carefully examining one of the ears, "that might well be named that when you put it on the market, Mr. Battick."

"Named what?"

"'Staff of Life Wheat,' you know," Hiram said, smiling.

"A good suggestion, Mr. Strong—a cracking good suggestion," declared Battick, with some enthusiasm. "I'll bear that in mind."

"And can I have one of these heads, Mr. Battick?" Hiram asked. "Frankly, I'd like to show it to Mr. Bronson."

The man started, reddened, and glared at the young farmer sharply again. His easily roused suspicion was immediately awakened. But Hiram looked at him steadily—unwinkingly. Battick's gaze finally fell.

"You know how I feel about it, Mr. Strong. Your Mr. Bronson may be an all right man; but it was just such men as he appears to be who robbed me of my Mortgage Lifter Oats."

"He won't rob you, I guarantee," Hiram said shortly.

Meanwhile Battick plucked several of the long plants and handed them to Hiram.

"You won't find their like around this part of the country, that is sure," the proud owner of the new wheat said. "If I had better land on which, this coming fall, to plant the grain I have, I should feel the time was ripe next season to sound some seedsman."

"I hope you will make a fortune out of it, Mr. Battick," said Hiram with earnestness.

"No fear!" bitterly returned the man. "But I mean to try. Of course, Mr. Strong, I'd just as soon you wouldn't show that grain to everybody."

"I understand."

"Or tell the folks around here where you got it."

"Trust me," rejoined the young man.

After he had left Battick, however, he thought of something. There was probably one person in the neighborhood—or of the neighborhood—who knew about Battick's wheat and about Battick's former ill-fated attempts to make something out of breeding seed.

Should he turn back and speak to Battick about Adam Banks? Ad had gone away. Hiram had heard that after the night of the dance at Sunnyside the fellow had gone to another county and was working on a farm.

"Let sleeping dogs lie," muttered the young farm manager. "And Ad Banks is a dog all right."

The twenty acres of the Sunnyside farm along the county road, and on which Hiram had made his experiment in underdraining, was now in shape for replanting. There had been no rain, but if a farmer did not have hope—and especially hope in helpful weather conditions—there would be few crops planted. The twenty acres were made into a smooth and good seed bed; but when he went upon it with the Percherons and the grain-drill the dust rose and floated in a stifling cloud across the field.

"I am afraid that a part of my bone meal is drifting off this field with the dust," he told Orrin. "Loose as ashes, by jinks! But if I can get the seed in and covered deep, and if a rain comes—"

He had stopped every other spout of the drill and filled the boxes alternately with silage corn and cowpeas. The drill had to be arranged in a particular way to sow these large grains properly.

The corn was of a low-growing variety and the ears would be pretty sure to glaze in seventy-five days. The cowpeas, rich in nitrogen and a soil improver almost unsurpassed, would be at their best condition—green-podded and with the leaves still clinging to the vines—when the corn was ready to cut. Harvested together, shredded and blown into the silo, this crop should pretty well fill that huge tank.

There were now on Sunnyside nearly forty head of yearlings and two-year-olds. Mr. Bronson picked up all the strays about his other farms and brought them to Hiram. The Sunnyside pastures were in good condition, and now all the young cattle were far down in the river-lots getting sleek and fat at practically no expense to their owner.

Hiram desired to have plenty of the right kind of feed for them the coming winter. And the next year he hoped to feed the herd almost altogether at the barns so as to conserve a greater proportion of the fertilizer which the cattle made.

Yes, Hiram desired to see that silo filled, and with just such succulent silage as would make the herd of young cattle put on flesh at a cheap rate. He got the twenty acres planted, and the Saturday afternoon he finished the job, thunder heads gathered in the west and south, threatening a tempest if nothing more.

Dolan and MacComb were pretty well along with the new house now. In fact, by hastening the erection of that building the carpenters had neglected the completion of the silo, although Hiram had spoken of this neglect on several occasions.

Of course, he had no authority over the contractors or their men; but the iron hoops and cable-stays for the silo not having been at hand when the walls of the tank were completed and the roof on, the gang had been taken off the silo job and had not gone back to finish it.

When Hiram and Orrin drove the sweating team of Percherons back to the yard with the drill the carpenters had picked up their tools for the day and were getting ready to depart in a big auto-bus for Plympton. They all went home over Sunday, and besides Hiram and Orrin Post only one farm laborer and a boy remained on Sunnyside over the week-end. Even the cook went home, and the four remaining on the farm had to make out as well as they could with amateur cooking until Monday morning.

"Everything is all right at the house, Mr. Strong," said the boss carpenter to Hiram. "The windows are in and the roof is tight at last. If it rains it can't do us any harm."

"Say!" exclaimed the young farmer. "How about if a big wind came up? Those clouds over yonder look ugly."

"Oh, no baby tornado is going to do the house any damage," declared the boss, following his men into the bus.

"How about the silo? Suppose something happens to it?"

"Oh, that'll be all right. Anyway, it is too late to put those bands on now."

"Or the wire stays?" cried Hiram as the automobile started.

"Pshaw! You are an old Betty, Hi Strong!" sang out one of the carpenters as the machine rolled out of the yard. "I don't believe it will rain enough to lay the dust."

However, that prophecy went by the board before Hiram and his helpers got the chores done at Sunnyside that evening. They ran for the shack as the big drops of water began to fall. The drops soon turned to sheets of wind-driven rain that slatted against the walls of the shed like sleet.

In the midst of the supper preparations Orrin opened the door to look out. He stared through the thinning rain toward the south.

"She's letting up, boys," he said confidently, and then turned to look across the road and up the hillside. Immediately his voice changed and the cry he uttered was one of positive fear.

"What's the matter?" Hiram shouted, and all of them darted out of the door.

The moment the old man, Blodger by name, looked over the shoulder of the hill he threw up his hands and shrieked:

"It's coming! Tornado! The wind'll change and come from the north—right from the North Pole—in a minute. There!"

For an instant it was calm and the rain ceased. Then, with a whistle and roar and the sudden writhing of the branches in the wood, the tornado came. It might be only a "baby," but to Hiram's mind the funnel of black cloud sweeping down upon Sunnyside seemed a full-grown wind-storm indeed.

CHAPTER XIX

DISASTER THREATENS

"Who's that scurrying down the road toward Pringleton?" demanded Blodger in the lull before the tornado struck Sunnyside.

They all saw the man hurrying along the county road with the tails of his coat over his head. Jim Larry, the boy, shrieked:

"I believe that is Ad Banks. What's he doing around here? I thought he was working over at Loomisville."

Nobody gave the running figure much attention. The phenomenon of the coming tornado quite filled their minds.

The whine of the wind rose to a demoniac shriek. Hiram turned to shout to his companions and a sudden gust seemed to take his breath so completely that he could not utter a sound.

He staggered, crouching, and seized Orrin Post who was actually being swept down the yard by the force of the gust. Jim Larry had scuttled to cover. Blodger stood in the doorway of the shack yelling something that Hiram could not understand.

The trees across the road and up the hillside bent and writhed as though seeking to uproot themselves. Into the air sprang a shed on the Pringle place, and when it had crossed the road and was about ten feet above the ground it fairly exploded as though a bomb had been set off inside of it.

Then the tornado struck Sunnyside—struck the place in all its fury.

There was not much rain, but what there was, blown by this terrible gale, cut like a knife. Loose boards began to fly over the yard. Everything the wind could get under seemed to shoot right up into the air. There was a cloud of light litter sucked up into the churning black mass that was flying over the farm.

Hiram and Orrin had managed to get into the lee of the shed. The wind thundered against it, shaking the structure as though to tear it loose from its foundations. But being low it did not offer the resistance of a higher structure, and perhaps was as safe from disaster as any building about the farm.

"Unless we got into the cellar," Orrin managed to make Hiram hear.

"Seems as though this wind would scoop us right out of a cellar," shouted Hiram. "Hey! Look there!"

He pointed to the corner of the barn where the silo stood. The round tank positively shook under the recurrent blows of the wind!

"She's going!" yelled Orrin in dismay. "She's going!"

"Like fun she is!" returned the other young fellow. "Those bands and cables should have been put on. But as the tank's empty and there is nothing to hold her down, she'll shift on her foundation if we don't do something."

"We can't help it, Strong," objected Orrin.

"We can try," returned Hiram forcefully. "You get Blodger and Jim. I'm going over there. There are two sets of fastenings for the cables on the barn and the barn won't blow down—that's a sure thing."

"I don't know that it is a sure thing," grumbled Orrin. "You'll take your life in your hands if you go out there."

But Hiram had already started. The wind did not come steadily, and he ran stooping between gusts to the silo. The wire cables, cut as he knew to proper length and wound on a spool, lay with some other material against the barn foundations.

Of course, Hiram knew they could not put on the iron bands; but if they could pass a couple of the length of cable around the silo and fasten them to the barn Hiram was sure it would aid in keeping the tank on its foundation.

He looked back across the yard and saw Orrin propel the frightened Jim out of the doorway of the shack; and he had to fairly drag Blodger out as well. Both the old man and the boy knew these tornadoes too well to desire to be out-of-doors.

Hiram was endeavoring to unwind the first cable alone when the others reached him. He had fastened the end of the twisted wire through one of the rings in the side of the barn about eight feet from the ground. They unwound the entire length of this first cable, struggling against the wind, and carrying the end around the silo.

Here the fastening ring was too high to be reached without the aid of a ladder. The carpenters had left their various ladders behind the new house. Hiram spied them, and, shouting to Orrin to come with him, started against the wind for that place.

They had actually to tack like a boat in a heavy seaway to reach the ladders. And coming back, each bearing an end of the ladder selected, they were blown to the ground half a dozen times.

This was the most awful gale Hiram, at least, had ever been out in. And for the four of them to raise the light ladder was one of the most serious tasks one could imagine.

Meanwhile the silo was weaving back and forth in a threatening manner. Hiram had selected a ladder long enough to enable him to reach the upper ring intended for the second cable. Two of his helpers had to hold the ladder steady, however, while the other handed him the end of the wire cable. It took more than half an hour of hard fighting to secure both ends of the two wire ropes.

Two of his helpers had to hold the ladder steady while the other handed him the end of the wire cable.

The silo rocked back and forth, the vibrations seeming, of course, much greater than they really were. But the cables—or good workmanship—held it in place. The four got back to the living shack and cowered therein in darkness for another two hours before the wind really ceased blowing. The rain had stopped long since, and beyond the hurrying shreds of cloud the moon and stars appeared.

Drenched as everything had been by the first tempest, the ground was now fast becoming dry. The water drained away quickly from the knoll on which the Sunnyside buildings stood.

As soon as the danger from the big wind was over, however, Hiram had thought for another thing. He lit a lantern and said to Orrin:

"Come on down the road and take a look."

"Who for? That Ad Banks? If he's drowned in the ditch I wouldn't much care."

"I'd forgotten all about him," confessed Hiram. "But come on. I want to look at something."

Curiously Orrin followed him while the old man and the boy sought their bunks. The rain had washed and rutted the road deeply. The ditches were carrying the surplus water off, however.

At the first cross-drain through the recently planted corn and pea field Hiram flashed the light of his lantern into the ditch. A stream of water the size of his leg was spurting from the opening.

"Cracky! Look at that!" ejaculated Orrin. "Why, Strong, the darned thing works!"

"Of course it works. Didn't I tell you it would?" replied the young farm manager.

They went on along the road, and at every such opening the yellow flood poured forth. That particular twenty acres of Sunnyside Farm would never be sour or lumpy to work as long as Hiram's simple underdraining scheme continued to work so successfully as it was now doing.

They were about to turn to go back to the house when Orrin clutched Hiram by the arm and pointed toward Yancey Battick's place.

"What's the matter down there do you suppose?" he asked, with anxiety.

There was a sudden glow against the sky, seemingly rising from behind Battick's buildings. Then a long streamer of flame bannered into the air above the treetops.

"It's a fire! Something's burning!" declared Hiram.

The two lads set off on a hard run down the road toward the old Pringle homestead which Yancey Battick occupied.

CHAPTER XX

A BARGAIN

Before Hiram Strong and Orrin Post reached the strip of woodland that divided the open field of Sunnyside from the old Pringle place they heard somebody shouting. After the passing of the rain and the terrible gale of wind the whole countryside seemed very quiet. This raucous voice could have been heard a mile:

"Fire! Fire!"

"It must be his house," Orrin panted, having some difficulty in keeping up with the young farm manager.

"That flame is too far back for the house," Hiram rejoined with confidence.

"The barn, then?"

"It is something at any rate," was the grim reply.

The flames were streaming high in the air; yet before the young fellows reached Battick's gate the fire seemed decreasing. They could still hear Battick hoarsely shouting.

Entering by the gate they dashed around the house and out behind the barns. Hiram had felt, although he had not said it to Orrin, that he knew the nature of the disaster. Yancey Battick's stack of wheat was more than half consumed!

He had been running madly from pump to stack, trying to throw enough water on the sheaves to put out the fire. But the blaze had burned up through the very heart of the stack. It must have, indeed, to have burned the wheat at all after the exceedingly heavy rain of three hours before.

"You're too late! Too late!" shrieked the man wildly. "They have got me again. What did I tell you, Strong?" for he recognized the young manager of Sunnyside by the fading light of the fire.

"Why didn't you pull the stack to pieces?" shouted Orrin, beginning to burrow into the bottom of the stack which the fire seemed not to have consumed, a good deal as a terrier would burrow for a rat. "Come on, Hiram. We can save some of this wheat."

But the sheaves which he dragged out proved to have had their heads entirely burned. Although the flames soon flickered out and left but a smouldering heap, there was but very little wheat left.

"They got me again! They got me again!" mourned the shaken Battick. "What did I tell you, Mr. Strong?"

"Why, Mr. Battick, do you really believe some enemy burned your wheat stack?"

"It certainly was no friend of mine," returned the man laughing wildly.

"You said a true word there, Brother," Orrin Post remarked bluntly. "Whom do you suspect?"

"Who about here knew anything about this wheat?" asked Hiram. "Yes, you might as well let Orrin know about it. I can assure you I have not told him."

"What's that?" asked Post curiously.

"This wheat!" almost sobbed Yancey Battick. "It was a special variety that I was raising for seed. They have burned it up on me! Oh, the rascals!"

"Who do you suspect?" demanded Orrin again. "Couldn't it have been set on fire by accident?"

"How by accident? There was no lightning accompanied that tempest. I tell you somebody came here and set it off. I have had as bad done to me before."

"Who could it have been?" Hiram murmured. "And so soon after that terrible wind. You wouldn't think anybody would have gone out in that gale to do a neighbor an ill turn."

"Hey!" ejaculated Orrin suddenly. "There's that Ad Banks."

"Where?" demanded Hiram turning around quickly.

"I don't mean that he is here now," Orrin said grimly. "But don't you remember we saw him coming down the road in this direction in the middle of that rain storm?"

"So we did," Hiram agreed.

"Banks isn't at home now," said Yancey Battick, looking at the two young fellows doubtfully.

"We saw him all right," Orrin declared. "Jim Larry who works up at Sunnyside knows him well. Lives right on the next farm to the Bankses."

"Mr. Battick!" exclaimed Hiram, smitten by a new thought, "have you ever had any trouble with Ad Banks?"

"I told you once I had to run him off my place."

"And there is something I did not tell you," Hiram went on. "Remember the day I was over looking at your wheat field? Back there in the spring, I mean?"

"Yes, I remember, Mr. Strong," said Battick, reddening.

"When I left you that day I chanced to see Adam Banks sneaking through the underbrush away from that very log on which we had been sitting to talk!"

"Had he been eavesdropping?" demanded Battick angrily.

"Like enough. I did not give it much thought at the time. But he may have learned at that time all about this special wheat."

"He did it!" ejaculated Battick. "He was paid to do it, I bet."

"We-ell," said Hiram thoughtfully, "that's rather jumping at conclusions without much evidence. But it might be."

"It is!" repeated Yancey Battick. "They told me Ad Banks went over to Loomisville to work."

"That is right," Orrin said.

"That," said Battick significantly to Hiram, "is where I lived before I came here. They robbed me of my Mortgage Lifter Oats over in that neighborhood."

Orrin looked at him curiously, but Hiram understood.

"You think they might have sent Ad over here to do this?" the manager of Sunnyside said thoughtfully.

"I'm sure they did."

But Hiram was not convinced. He began to see flaws in this theory.

"How did Banks set it off? How could anybody have set it off?" he queried.

"With a match," said Orrin, grinning faintly in the lantern light.

"That's all right," Hiram said. "But we saw Banks coming down this way when the rain was almost over. This stack was thoroughly wet on the outside by that time."

"It was set off somehow inside," interposed Battick. "When I looked out of my door after the big wind the flames were shooting right out of the peak of the stack. It had been smouldering all that time deep down in the heart of the pile."

"Yes. Well, like the famous query about the old woodchuck's hole: How did the fire get there?"

"What do you mean?" asked Battick and Orrin in unison.

"If the fire had been set before the wind, it would have spread much sooner. Doesn't that stand to reason?"

"Uh-huh!" agreed Orrin, although Battick looked doubtful.

"Of course! And if it was set on fire after the wind stopped, how did the incendiary get his fire into the heart of the wet stack?"

"You're just asking questions," snarled Battick. "Why don't you say something that is worth while?"

"I will say something," replied Hiram. "I'll say this much: Perhaps your stack was not burned by an enemy, Mr. Battick. It might even be your own fault."

"What do you mean?" snapped the other with a sour look.

"You are a smoker," said Hiram; "and it might be that you dropped a match when you were stacking this wheat. It's been done more than once."

"What do you mean?" cried Battick, "That it has taken all this time for a match to ignite? Do you mean by spontaneous combustion?" he scoffed.

"Not at all. I mean that it may have been ignited by the sharp little teeth of a field mouse. Such things have happened."

"That's right!" exclaimed Orrin. "I believe a fodder stack where I worked once was burned in that way."

"Mice and rats have been my bane since I came to this old Pringle place to live," admitted Yancey Battick slowly. "But I think your idea is far-fetched, Mr. Strong."

"At least, it is as good an idea as that Adam Banks set the stack off. We ought to find proof before we accuse the fellow."

"I don't mean to accuse him. What good would that do?" demanded Battick in disgust. "The harm is done. I've lost my wheat—"

"But you have all that in the house for fall seed," Hiram said.

"Yes," growled Battick. "And I mean to guard that with my gun. I mean to warn everybody that I'll put something besides rock-salt in my shotgun after this."

"Whew!" ejaculated Orrin Post, "you sound very savage."

"I do not blame you for feeling as you do, Mr. Battick," said Hiram cautiously, "even although I think you have jumped to a wrong conclusion. But I am sure trying to shoot your neighbors, good or bad, will not help you. I have an idea I'd like to talk over with you and will do so the next time I am down this way. But it is time we were all in bed now."

He and Orrin started back for Sunnyside. The latter asked Hiram:

"Where do you suppose that Ad Banks did go, Strong?"

"I haven't the least idea."

"Do you really think he had nothing to do with that fire?"

"At least, Battick can show no proof. Suspicion only, breeds trouble. I am inclined to blame the field mouse instead."

"Humph! Well, maybe," grumbled Orrin Post.

"At any rate it will do no good to spread abroad any suspicions you may feel about it."

"We-ell."

"Promise me you will not speak of Banks in connection with the fire."

"Oh, all right! If you don't want me to," said Orrin promptly.

"It's a bargain," Hiram rejoined, and they dropped the subject for the time being.

CHAPTER XXI

A PARTNERSHIP IS FORMED

Not until morning was the full result of the tornado revealed on and about Sunnyside. Most of the buildings being comparatively new, Hiram found that few had suffered. The sheds were under the break of the hill, anyway; therefore he looked for little misfortune there.

The silo had suffered despite the efforts they had made to stay it with the wire ropes. It had a decided list to the east and was no longer set true upon its cement foundation. The neglect of the carpenters in not staying it firmly before the storm came was a matter that would have to be settled between them and Mr. Bronson. Hiram was glad it did not come under his jurisdiction.

The young farm manager had enough trouble of his own. The heavy rain which had preceded the gale of wind had beaten some of the corn on the lowlands almost flat to the ground. It was about two feet high and the sun of Sunday, the day following the tempest, began to revive the corn.

But it was evident that it would be impossible to get into those fields with the cultivators for several days. At this stage of the corn crop continual cultivation was necessary. Hiram had always followed a system of cultivation not altogether approved of by corn raisers in this vicinity.

All cultivation, Hiram had previously held, should not be shallow. It was all right to use a two- or three-horse hoe as most of the corn-belt farmers do, until the plant is half-leg high. But after that Hiram believed in using the fluke harrow.

"Now we've seen something of what can be done to a field of corn by a big wind and rain. If such another baby tornado comes in August or September," Hiram said to Orrin Post, "and knocks the corn down, it never will recover unless the area of rootage is very wide and strong.

"In the South they plow corn in July to hold up the stalk through heavy winds and rains; but that leaves the land in bad shape for the following tillage. I like to use a fluke harrow and cultivate deep. Tear right through the small roots and rip them apart. That more than doubles the root-system and finally gives the plant a hold on the soil that will enable it to stand up under almost any kind of blow and rain."

"Shallow and frequent cultivation seems to be the rule around here," Orrin remarked.

"Yes. And Mr. Turner tells me that only year before last he lost fifteen acres in one piece by the corn being knocked down in a big wind and hail storm just as it was silking. However, our cultivating is going awfully slow. I don't know but I shall have to get Mr. Bronson to furnish one of those three-horse hoes for next year, if I am really going to make a corn crop."

This conversation was carried on while Hiram and Orrin were driving over to the pasture behind Jerry, and carrying with them a tub of salt for the cattle. Salting the cattle is always a Sunday job on the farm; but as a usual thing Hiram went to church before going to the pasture.

They had got up too late on the morning after the tornado, however, to drive to the church service. It was only high noon when they came to the pasture gate.

"I don't see that spotted yearling," Orrin said, as he climbed down to open the gate and the herd began to turn toward them. "He's usually right at the head of the bunch."

"That red one with the crooked horn is missing, too," Hiram said, "I am afraid something has happened, Orrin."

"Oh, they've just strayed away," said Post cheerfully. "Don't be worried."

However, after the herd had come up and been counted and they found that four were missing, even Orrin acknowledged that there was reason for anxiety. They salted the young stock and then left Jerry to graze while they beat the pasture brush and the woods adjoining in search of the four missing animals.

There was a plain path of the tornado's passing in this patch of wood. Several trees were uprooted and one huge forest monarch that had been struck by lightning years before and had stood dead and stripped of bark, had been snapped off at the butt.

Under its heavy and sprawling limbs lay the four young steers, their backs broken by the weight of the fallen tree.

"There lies a hundred dollars profit, as sure as you live, Orrin," Hiram Strong declared. "I hate to tell Mr. Bronson that. And look at that silo, too."

"Don't worry," said the other, but looking grimly at the dead cattle. "You did not bring the wind, I should hope. And that silo isn't your business, either."

Hiram, nevertheless, was much disturbed by the unfortunate accident. Mr. Bronson and Lettie came up to Sunnyside that afternoon. The loss of the young cattle was, of course, irreparable; but the owner of Sunnyside declared he would demand that Dolan and MacComb straighten up the silo and make it firm before the next wind.

"Maybe I would have been wiser had I built the silo of cement, after all," he said to his young farm manager. "It is hard to know sometimes where real economy begins. 'Penny wise and pound foolish' is not my usual failing—

"How about your log drains, Hiram? That was another economy."

"You ought to have seen the water spurting out of the drains after that big rain last night. Come down there and have a look now."

He included Lettie in this invitation and hoped that she would come; but the girl tossed her head, although it was with a smile that she refused.

"That is all I hear—farming," she said. "Now that I have finished school I think papa ought to take me to some summer resort this year. I'm tired of Plympton."

"Wait till you are grown up, Lettie," said Mr. Bronson carelessly.

"If I'm not grown up yet, when shall I be?" asked the girl. "I'll soon be an old maid like Delia Pringle."

Mr. Bronson and Hiram laughed at this statement. But the latter felt that Lettie was more in earnest than her father considered. St. Beris seemed to develop its pupils rather early. Hiram was glad that Sister did not attend that school—not, however, that he really compared Sister to Lettie Bronson in any way!

However, Lettie Bronson went over to call on Miss Pringle while her father and Hiram started down the road toward Battick's place. From every drain the water was still pouring into the roadside ditch, but of course not in the volume it had the night before.

Mr. Bronson cheered up immediately when he saw this.

"And not a puddle in sight on the whole twenty acres! Well, Hiram, it looks as though you had done a good job here—and saved me money. We won't worry over the dead yearlings. That you certainly could not help. The tree you tell about must have fallen in the midst of the herd. It is fortunate no more of them were killed.

"One of my neighbors near Plympton had his barn torn to pieces last night and all his cattle killed. Who else suffered around here?"

"I am not sure that anybody suffered much damage by the tornado, but Yancey Battick lost his stack of wheat—and it was a wonder of a stack!"

"Did he have much?"

"It was the handsomest wheat I ever saw," Hiram told him earnestly. "I want to show you a sample of it that he gave me, Mr. Bronson. I think there would have been thirty-five or forty bushels of it when it was thrashed."

"Humph! At the price wheat is going to be—"

"He has got a new variety and had raised it for seed," Hiram explained.

When they got back to the farm buildings he showed his employer the heads of grain Battick had given him. They shelled out the wheat. Every grain of it was perfect, with the tiny red stripe upon one side. Hiram watched Mr. Bronson's face with interest as the big farmer examined the kernels of wheat.

"My goodness, Hiram!" exclaimed the man at last, "do you mean to say that Battick had bred this wheat—that it is all alike?"

"I have every reason to believe it is all fully as good as that in your hand and true to type."

"And he's lost it all?"

"He has lost his crop for this year. He believes the stack was set on fire."

"No!"

"Yes, sir. And you cannot blame him after what he has been through. Let me tell you, Mr. Bronson."

They sat down and Hiram related the details of the story Yancey Battick had told him, as well as of his own adventures with the strange man.

"Well," was Mr. Bronson's first comment, "I had an idea that Battick was not quite right in his head. But I guess he is sane enough. And an educated man, too, isn't he?"

"I should not wonder if he were college-bred; only he has grown careless of speech. And he certainly is a crank."

"Who could blame him?" muttered Mr. Bronson thoughtfully.

They discussed the matter at some length, and gradually Hiram got around to a plan that had formed in the back of his mind since he had learned so much about Yancey Battick's new wheat.

Hiram had come by this time to know his employer pretty well. Not only was Mr. Stephen Bronson a money-maker and deeply interested in any new agricultural idea, but he was the sort of business man who is always willing to take a legitimate chance.

If Mr. Bronson had a choice of making a sure ten dollars and a possible hundred dollars, he would naturally take the long chance. It was characteristic of him to be immediately interested by the story of Yancey Battick's wonderful new wheat. And when Hiram pointed out a way by which Battick, Bronson and Hiram himself might form a partnership to breed and exploit the new variety of grain without taking any seedhouse into the scheme, Mr. Bronson was eager for it.

"If you can make Battick see it, I'll find all the cash necessary. A seed firm would want to hog it—they always do. Battick must know that. If he's got a good grain and we can introduce it ourselves to the grain farmers farther west, we'll all make money," Mr. Bronson declared with enthusiasm.

That very week Hiram arranged a meeting and the three discussed the plan fully in the shaded dooryard of the old Pringle homestead. The loss of his whole crop—a possible forty and surely thirty bushels of the grain—had vastly discouraged Yancey Battick. The sensible way in which Hiram had approached him before introducing Mr. Bronson into the matter encouraged the unfortunate wheat breeder to look favorably upon the assistance that Mr. Bronson was able and willing to lend.

Whether the wheat stack had been set on fire maliciously or had been destroyed by accident, as Hiram had pointed out, the fact remained that if the crop had been properly handled the grain would not have been destroyed.

In the first place, the wheat had not been allowed to cure long enough in the shock before being stacked. Battick admitted that he had only stacked it because he dared not leave the shocks in the field for long. He had camped in the field with his gun every night until he built the stack at the barn.

In fact, to conserve the wheat and handle it in the best shape, it should have been cured in the shock and then thrashed immediately, afterwards being spread in a proper granary. There was no granary on the old Pringle place and the rats and mice were a pest, as Hiram had seen the first time he had met Yancey Battick.

In fact, taking it all around Battick had tried to do the impossible. He had neither capital nor land nor housing facilities to develop and grow a sufficiently large crop of the new wheat to make its sale for seed a profitable venture.

"You tell me that you lost everything on your Mortgage Lifter Oats undertaking," Hiram said to him. "So far you have tried to keep secret your new wheat, and you have lost out. If your neighbors have not robbed you, and if the burning of the wheat stack was not a case of incendiarism, it was a sure thing that the rats and the mice are against you. I do not believe that one man alone can handle such an undertaking.

"Suppose you make a contract with Mr. Bronson for two years, during which the wheat can be properly developed and a big crop raised. You furnish such seed as you have left—half to be planted this fall, the remainder to be held against chance of accident. Mr. Bronson will supply the land, the fertilizer, the tillage, paying for the harvesting and thrashing and storage, as well as for any guard that may be needed if trouble should arise. You'll make more under the terms of such a partnership than you would if you made the crop entirely by yourself and sold out to a seedsman."

"And where do you come in, Mr. Strong?" Battick had asked.

"If you go fifty-fifty with Mr. Bronson on the final profit obtained from the exploitation of the wheat, I'll get my share from Mr. Bronson," Hiram said.

The proposal was most thoroughly thrashed out between the three, and in the end an agreement following closely Hiram Strong's suggestion was drawn up and signed by Yancey Battick and Mr. Bronson. Hiram being a minor, he could not enter into the partnership agreement; but he had his own contract with the owner of Sunnyside Farm by which he was to have a half interest in Mr. Bronson's share of the profits from the wheat transaction, if profits there were.

And, under fairly favorable conditions, from what he had already seen of Yancey Battick's new wheat, the young manager of Sunnyside Farm was confident the profit for all would be large. He already had five hundred dollars in the bank when he came to Sunnyside. From his wages as farm manager he expected to lay aside at least two hundred and fifty dollars each quarter while his contract lasted.

And for every dollar of these savings to which he looked forward, Hiram Strong had a definite use.

CHAPTER XXII

A STRANGER APPEARS

Hiram Strong was learning something about corn growing that he had not found out before. That is, after all, one of the greatest charms of the science of agriculture: There is always something new to learn.

There is in addition always something new to find out regarding the methods adopted in different localities for the cultivation of the same crop. Farmers who have cultivated a certain plant in a certain locality where their fathers and grandfathers have grown the same plant, usually develop an almost uncanny knowledge of the conditions under which that particular plant will best grow and come to fruitage.

All the scientific knowledge of farming methods does not come from the agriculture colleges; the ordinary farmer often cultivates his crop in a certain way because it is the right way without knowing the reason for following that particular method.

One thing about growing corn in this Middle West section of the country was fast becoming a conviction in Hiram Strong's mind. Methods which had grown him a bumper crop of corn in the East might work quite as well here on Sunnyside Farm, but there had arisen objections to them. He had admitted as much to Orrin Post on a recent occasion.

His old methods were quite necessary for the locality in which he had used them. But corn growing on the Atterson Eighty and corn growing on Sunnyside Farm were two distinctly different matters.

"Always something new to learn," Hiram said to his companion.

"Right you are," answered Orrin. "A good deal to learn," and he sighed heavily.

Throughout July and more than half of August Hiram and Orrin worked almost on the run to keep up with the growing corn. Jerry and his mate lost flesh under this grilling work. To get over all the fields, and at the proper time, with one-horse cultivators, was an almost superhuman task.

Besides, Hiram watched the shallow cultivation of his neighbors' corn. They used two- and three-horse knife-hoes that stirred the soil scarcely an inch deep and left the earth between the rows just as level as the harrow had left it when the field was first smoothed.

Most of these farms about Sunnyside were more heavily manured than the fields that Hiram cultivated. The neighboring farms had not been cropped to death by careless tenants.

These neighbors planted their corn in rows rather than checking it. The stalks stood twelve to fifteen inches apart in the row, making more than twice the number of hills to the acre than Hiram had planted.

He was satisfied that he had planted and left to grow all the corn his land would develop properly. Two stalks to a hill and two good ears to a stalk was better to his mind than more fodder and less corn.

The cultivating method followed by the neighboring farmers was not all it might be. The two- and three-horse cultivators left much to be desired. There were more weeds left in the row than Hiram cared to see. When he and Orrin got through cultivating a piece of corn they could safely have offered a prize for any weed in the field that had not been covered.

In this connection, however, Hiram had something to learn, too. This land was not so cursed with weeds as that he had been used to cultivating farther East. There was no twitch-grass, wild mustard, or purslane. After many years of deep plowing and crop rotation, the fields of this part of the corn-belt were comparatively free of weeds. Only on land that had been allowed to lie fallow were the weeds a pest.

The fields of Sunnyside Farm must be greatly improved before Hiram could, however, take up the local methods of corn growing in every particular.

He knew of no improving crop better suited to his needs than crimson clover. It is rich in nitrogen, makes a heavy crop of hay before corn-planting time, and it could be sowed at the last cultivation of the present corn crop.

The drawback was that it necessitated the cutting of the corn to the ground and the removal of the shocks from the field. On the better farms near by the corn was allowed to cure on the standing stalk and then the cattle and hogs were turned in to graze on the fodder, the stalks being knocked down and cut up by the disc harrow before plowing in the spring.

That was another method Hiram could not adopt. If his clover catch was worth anything at all he did not want the corn stalks mixed with it at hay-making time. He talked the matter over with Mr. Bronson, and a machine was secured at harvesting time that, drawn by one of the Percherons, went through the field cutting two rows of corn at a time and giving the two men working with it all they could do shocking the corn at proper intervals.

This corn finished curing in the shock and the husking was done at the barn where the fodder was stacked against the increasing need of the herd of young stock that Mr. Bronson was continually adding to.

This method of harvesting cost more in time and labor than Hiram could have desired; but it left his fields clean and gave the young clover a better chance.

The corn he had obtained from Daniel Brown proved to be all that Hiram had hoped it would be. That which he had raised for seed was so evenly matured and sound in the ear that Mr. Bronson admitted it was by far the most satisfactory variety Hiram had tried. And how it did mount up in the cribs with its glossy red and yellow grains!

The wheat thrashing had yielded Hiram not more than sixteen to eighteen bushels to the acre—scarcely a paying investment. But it was all profit for Mr. Bronson, as the crop had been planted when he bought the farm.

Hiram knew well enough where the fault lay. The land was not strong enough for wheat, and he proposed to plant but a small acreage to that grain for the next season.

"Oats will pay us better, I believe. Some of this upland can be plowed early in the spring, and as soon as the oats are off we'll disc and put in cowpeas, turning them under for the corn crop."

"Ow!" ejaculated his employer, "do you mean to plow under both the oat stubble and the peas for the corn?"

"If you want corn—real corn," the young fellow told him. "This land is poverty stricken. And give me all the cattle you can find, Mr. Bronson. I'll manage to feed them somehow or other."

The ensilage crop demanded his attention and the labor of all the hands for the better part of a week. Even Mr. Turner had been forced to confess that something had happened to that twenty acres of Sunnyside along the county road that heretofore had yielded such poor crops. Since Hiram's underdraining scheme had gone into effect the soil seemed entirely different. The corn and cowpeas had grown like a rank swamp. When cut and carted to the shredder it was so heavy it was all a man could do to lift a forkful.

It was not particularly hard to load the wagon in the field; getting the ensilage off the cart was the more difficult part of the job.

A brief experience taught the young farm manager something. He unhung the wagon and put the low wheels behind and the big wheels in front. With side racks spread at a wide angle and chains front and rear to hold the racks, they were enabled to pile an enormous load upon the sloping wagon body.

The Percherons could pull all the ensilage the men could pile on. When drawn to the shredder all that was needed was to unfasten the chains at front and rear and draw the wagon out from under the load.

This was quick work and kept the crew at the shredder busy all the time. The ensilage was blown into the silo as rapidly as it was shredded, and at the end of the week the huge tank was filled.

Hiram at once had the twenty-acre piece broadcasted with stable manure, and as the heavy crop of corn and peas had kept the soil comparatively moist it was plowed much easier than might have been expected after the August drought. At wheat planting Hiram used a good fertilizer in the drill and set the sprouts to run about a bushel and a half rather than a bushel and a peck to the acre.

This he did save on the lower four acres next to Yancey Battick's place. This patch was considered by both Mr. Bronson and Battick the best soil for experiment with the new wheat, and Battick planted the wonderful new grain himself, using a hand-sower and sowing only three pecks to the acre.

The new wheat plant proved to stool so heavily that Battick claimed the field would be quite as well covered in the spring as the rest of the twenty acres. Hiram had observed the stooling property of the new wheat; but he had some doubt about its being well to sow the grain so thinly. He feared it would not furnish sufficient protection for the ground.

But as this crop was for seed rather than for bulk of grain, it might be all right. In any case the young farmer watched the experiment with much interest.

Long before Thanksgiving the farm work was pretty well cleared up. Hiram kept only Orrin and the boy, Jim Larry, to help him do the winter chores. The three of them could feed the cattle, draw out the stable manure and spread it on the corn land which he would first plow in the early spring, and do the other necessary winter work.

The house had been long since finished, although the interior had not been decorated, as Mr. Bronson wished to wait for the house to settle. It was otherwise ready for occupancy and there was a heating plant in the cellar. Hiram and the boys moved into the house when the weather became severe and started the furnace. Mr. Bronson furnished some necessities in the way of cots and warm blankets, and the three were very comfortable.

Miss Delia Pringle insisted upon coming over on frequent occasions and "ridding up" for them.

"For, talk as you will, men-folks ain't fitted by nature to be good housekeepers. For the land's sake! I remember once my mother and I went away from home for a time and left father alone, and when we came back we couldn't tell for the mess there was whether it was father or the dog that had lived in the kitchen. I am sure of one thing—the dog-kennel was a long sight the cleanest!"

Miss Pringle was anxious to have another dance in the new house at Sunnyside; but Hiram did not like to ask Mr. Bronson for permission. There were certain rough fellows in the neighborhood who Hiram believed had helped Adam Banks loose Turner's bull on the occasion of the former dance. Besides, Ad Banks himself was at home again for the winter.

What the fellow had been doing about Sunnyside at the time of the tornado in June, Hiram had never discovered. He certainly had not remained at home for long on that occasion. Yancey Battick was not at all convinced that Banks had not come straight from Loomisville for the express purpose of burning his stack of wheat. Battick still clung to the belief that the men who had stolen his Mortgage Lifter Oats had information of the new wheat, and were determined to ruin his chances of raising a crop of it for seed if they could do so. Adam Banks would be a perfect instrument to their hands, he declared, and he felt that Banks must be watched closely.

However this might be, Hiram did not wish to tempt the ne'er-do-well to try any further tricks about Sunnyside Farm. Hiram, with Orrin and Jim Larry, were always on the keen lookout for Adam Banks. Orrin, by this time, was in good health and quite able to defend himself in any case. His ability to work well and his willingness pleased Hiram immeasurably. If only the fellow was not so secretive about his past! Hiram knew little more about Orrin Post now than he had when he found him in the calf shed, eight or nine months before.

Orrin in all this time had never mentioned his family, his friends, where he was born, or what his circumstances had been before he came to Sunnyside Farm. His having been driven away by his former employer when he was taken ill, was positively all the information he had vouchsafed.

Hiram had learned that he had come through Pringleton the day he had arrived at Sunnyside. Previous to such arrival, however, Orrin Post's life was a total blank to the young farm manager.

Hiram did not believe that Orrin's previous life had been a happy existence. It might be even that he had had trouble with the police, and for that reason was so close-mouthed. Nevertheless, Hiram kept such thoughts as this to himself. For his own part he accepted Orrin Post at his face value.

The three young fellows at Sunnyside used the kitchen to cook and eat in, set up their cots in the dining room, and occasionally on a rainy day or on Sunday sat in the parlor, where they could watch the road through the broad windows.

They were doing this last on one dripping Sunday afternoon, when Jim spied a vehicle coming up the hill from the direction of Battick's and Pringleton. He did not identify the horses or the man driving them.

"Stranger in this neighborhood," he announced. "That fellow driving has got a bushel of whiskers on his face. Did you ever see the like?"

Hiram was reading and did not even get up to look out. Orrin, however, examined the approaching turnout at some length, but he made no comment and finally drifted out of the room. Hiram heard him open and close the back door just as Jim exclaimed:

"Hey! Old Whiskers is stopping here. He's waving his whip and calling. What do you suppose he wants, Mr. Strong?"

Hiram put down his book. "The best way to find out is to ask him," he said laughing, and rose to go to the front door.

CHAPTER XXIII

AN INQUIRY

The rain dripped from the porch roof and a curtain of drizzle fell between the house and the gate where the gray horses stood. The bewhiskered individual had a rubber blanket over his knees and the water dripped from the brim of his hat into his lap—just as it dripped from the roof over Hiram Strong's head.

On the back seat of the old-fashioned carryall sat a second man. But Hiram could not see him very well at first.

"Hey!" yelled the bewhiskered man, "you ain't all deaf in there, are you?"

"Not all of us," replied Hiram. "I still have my hearing unimpaired. But 'hay' is for horses. It doesn't mean much to me. What do you want?"

Suddenly the man in the rear seat of the vehicle thrust forward his head. He wore spectacles and was evidently no farmer. He demanded:

"Have you any information of, or do you know anything personally about, Theodore, or Teddy, Chester, or a man calling himself by such name?"

"Never heard of him," declared Hiram.

"He is supposed to have come this way."

"I might say that lots of people drive this way—especially in summer."

"He would probably have been walking," said the bespectacled man confidently.

"Not many strangers walk by here, I admit."

"And if he came this way—as seems probable—it was months ago. Early last spring, to be more exact."

"Why," laughed Hiram, "I would not be likely to remember anybody who passed here so long ago."

"Suppose he asked for work?" put in the bearded driver of the carryall. "He'd be likely to. Ted wasn't lazy."

"You may remember the men who asked you for work last season?" repeated the more professional looking man with emphasis.

Hiram began to think this man was a lawyer. An inquiry of importance was being made, and he grew interested. He put his head back into the house door and asked Jim Larry to get his umbrella. In a moment, when the boy had brought it, Hiram went out to the carriage to discuss the matter more at his ease.

"You do remember the fellow, hey?" asked the bearded man, his little blue eyes sparkling. "I bet you do!"

"I won't say 'yes' or 'no' so easily," laughed Hiram. "When was it the man was supposed to come this way?"

The man on the rear seat of the carryall gave a date. It was well back in the spring.

"It was after that date—soon after, we believe. We know almost positively that he came through Pringleton and was heading this way."

"Heading for Sunnyside?" asked Hiram in surprise.

"Is that the name of this place? I don't mean to say that he was coming to this particular farm. Only that he was walking in this direction."

"Really," said Hiram, who had been trying to think of the incidents of the previous spring, "I don't know that there were many tramping people who asked me for work at that time."

"Do you run this farm—a kid like you?" demanded the bewhiskered one in surprise.

"Yes," Hiram said with his customary smile, "I try to. I would know if anybody came along asking for work. And at that time I was having ditching done and hired almost every man I could get."

"I don't know about Ted doing ditching," said the driver of the carryall. "He was a notch above that."

"At that season of the year I presume a farm worker is not likely to have his pick of jobs," the other man suggested shrewdly.

"I feel almost sure I would have remembered anybody who came here and whom I did not hire if he really wanted work at that time," said the young farm manager thoughtfully. "But there was nobody by that name."

"He might not have given you that name," the legal looking man said quickly.

"No?"

"Mr. Post knew him by that name," continued the gentleman, indicating the driver.

Hiram was shocked to sudden and keen attention. But he controlled his features. He asked, after a moment, as though he had been thinking:

"What did this Theodore Chester look like?"

Here the bearded individual answered. The other man did not seem so familiar with the lost one's personality as was the driver of the carriage.

"Tell you, he wasn't much to look at. Kind of slimpsy lookin'. Lean like. But he could work. Had a sleight with him about most things."

"You are not giving the young man a very clear description of—er—Ted," interrupted the legal looking man. "What color are his eyes and his hair?"

"Oh, his eyes are sort o' blue, or blue-gray, and his hair is brownish. Leastways, I should say it was. And he had kind of crinkly wrinkles about his eyes when he laughed—"

"How old was the man?" interrupted Hiram quickly.

"He is twenty-three years old this very month," replied the man from the back seat of the carryall.

"He looks older," said the bewhiskered farmer.

"Of course, you have no photograph of him?" asked Hiram slowly.

"Wish I had!" exclaimed the other man. "I would plaster this whole country with reproductions of it if I had one."

"Yes? Well," said Hiram, "I do not know any such man. At least, I do not remember any such asking me for work or passing this farm."

"Well!" sighed the bewhiskered man, and took up his reins.

"If you should ever see such a person let me hear about it, will you?" asked the other quickly, and thrust his hand into the rain with a card in it.

"What did he do?" asked Hiram as the gray horses started.

"He ran away from me, young fellow," the bearded man said shortly and grimly, and the carryall rolled away.

Hiram looked at the card. It read: "Eben Craddock, Attorney at Law," with an address in a Cincinnati office building.

"Odd thing," muttered Hiram, slipping the card into his pocket. He went back to the house, leaving the umbrella on the porch to drip. He went in and found that Jim Larry seemed to have followed Orrin out through the rear door.

He sat down and picked up his book again; but he could not fix his mind on the story he had been reading. That bearded man's name was Post and the young man of twenty-three had run away from him.

The date the lawyer had mentioned as that on which the fugitive was supposed to have come through Pringleton was the very day—he remembered it now—on the evening of which he had found Orrin so ill and helpless in the calf pen here on Sunnyside Farm!

This was a good deal of a nut to crack—and it was a meaty nut when Hiram Strong had cracked it. However, both the man named Post and the lawyer had refused to give any details of why they were hunting the mysterious individual called "Theodore Chester." If he was a fugitive and a criminal why had they been so secretive?

"I have the lawyer's card. Somehow I don't trust that fellow with the whiskers at all," muttered Hiram. "And I've know Orrin more than eight months, and know nothing but good of him."

So he said nothing regarding the inquiry for Theodore Chester to either of his companions. As for Orrin, he did not appear again at the house until dark.

For some reason hard to explain Hiram was willing to take a chance on Orrin.

CHAPTER XXIV

SOCIETY

Hiram knew that Lettie Bronson, after all, had her way with her father and that before the summer was over she had made him take her to one of the lake shore resorts where she met just the class of girls whom she had associated with at St. Beris. Since they had returned to Plympton, and during harvest and afterward, Miss Lettie had been to Sunnyside but seldom.

Now that winter had come and Hiram Strong had some free hours, he began, as any other healthy and normal young fellow would, to long for some society besides that of his two comrades on the farm and Yancey Battick.

Even Delia Pringle did not furnish all the "ladies' society" Hiram craved. And for some weeks about the only time he saw a girl was when he and Orrin hitched up Jerry and went to church on a Sunday morning.

But he was not entirely forgotten by his employer's daughter. That fact became apparent the very day after the bewhiskered farmer and the lawyer searching for "Theodore Chester" had stopped at Sunnyside Farm. The postman brought Hiram a dainty envelope in which was an equally dainty missive in Lettie's rigid, upright handwriting.

It was a warm little note—not at all the ordinary staid invitation to an evening party—and for a long time Hiram kept it in the bottom of his handkerchief box where some scent lay.

Sister's letters, which now came with fortnightly regularity, he kept too. But he did not hide them under the flowered silk lining of his handkerchief box.

The party at the Bronson house was to be—as Hiram supposed—rather a dressy affair. He had already prepared for it. He had sent his measurements as the advertised instructions directed to a catalogue house in Chicago and from there in due season arrived a "full tailored" dress suit. It fitted fairly well; but of course it was a block pattern garment, fitted with the tailor's "goose" rather than to Hiram's measurements. It fairly shrieked "ready made!"

"You'll knock their eye out, Mr. Strong," declared Jim Larry, as Hiram appeared dressed for the revel, kid gloves and all.

Hiram hoped he looked as good as Jim's enthusiasm suggested; but somehow he had his doubts. Besides Orrin, who had harnessed Jerry to the run-about for him and handed Hiram the reins after he got in the carriage, only said:

"Hope you have a good time, Strong. My regards to the Bronsons."

Orrin did not say a word about how fine Hiram looked in his new plumage. The young fellow began to feel a trifle anxious. He knew he felt uncomfortable. If by any chance he looked as bad as he felt—

He drove down to Plympton in rather high fettle, however, arriving at the Bronson house at the edge of town just as it was getting dark. The place was not lit up and there seemed to be few arrivals. First he wondered if he had mistaken the evening. Then he wondered if anything had happened—anything serious to Lettie or her father—and the party had been postponed.

He drove in by the side lane to the broad yard at the back. One of the stablemen came out with a lantern and recognized Jerry.

"Oh! Hullo! You're from Sunnyside, aren't you? Come down to help us?"

"Help you do what?" Hiram asked climbing down from the carriage rather stiffly, for it was a cold night.

"Help us look after the teams and show 'em where to park their jitneys," said the man carelessly.

"Not to-night," Hiram replied soberly. "I've been invited to the party."

"Whew! All right, me lord!" chuckled the stableman. "But there's nothing doing in the party line for an hour or more yet. Did you come so early because you were afraid they'd eat up all the cake and drink all the grapejuice on you?"

Hiram did not answer this gibe. He walked around the cold streets for two hours before he ventured back to the Bronson house.

Then he found that the company had arrived with a rush. He was directed to the men's coat room on the second floor. It was filled with men and most of them—at least those who appeared quite grown-up—were in dress suits. A glance assured the observant Hiram his own garments were not altogether in the mode.

These fellows' coats fitted them as sleek as a cat's hide! Hiram knew that his garments wrinkled or bagged. After having his overcoat on so long and sitting in the carriage, his new dress suit needed pressing. The tailor's goose might have helped some at this juncture.

He saw more than one curious glance cast in his direction. But he was in for it, and Hiram Strong had suffered a searing of his pride before. He knew how to stand the gaff.

At the wide entrance to the drawing room Lettie was standing with her father to greet the guests. She carried an immense bouquet of hothouse flowers.

"Hiram! How glad I am to see you," she said, very kindly.

But at once the young farmer realized that she seemed looking over his shoulder as though in search of somebody else. Hiram stood aside, but there was nobody in the doorway. Lettie asked:

"Isn't he with you?"

"Who?" Hiram queried.

"Mr. Post—Orrin Post. Didn't he come?"

"Why Lettie! I didn't know he was invited. You didn't expect me to bring Orrin?"

"I thought he would come with you, Hiram. I invited him."

Hiram felt momentarily relieved. He shook his head, however, saying:

"I surely did not know anything about that. Orrin did not mention it to me. Are you sure—?"

"I sent him an invitation," Lettie said, pouting. "He is such a nice dancer. I am disappointed, Hiram."

"And he did not reply to you at all?"

She shook her head firmly. She was very pretty in her party dress and with her hair "done up" for almost the first time that Hiram had seen it so. Lettie seemed quite grown up indeed.

"It must be that Orrin did not receive your invitation. He surely would have mentioned it. We talked about this party a good deal," said Hiram smiling.

Lettie had been looking Hiram over, and now she was smiling a little, too. The young farm manager wondered if her amusement was not aroused by his ill-fitting suit. His gloves were uncomfortable, too. One of them had begun to split!

"How did you send the invitation to him?" Hiram asked hurriedly, trying to cover his own embarrassment.

"By mail. Just as I did yours."

"It is strange, then," Hiram said. "I am sorry, and I am sure Orrin would have loved to come. Are there any other folks on our R. F. D. route named Post?"

"I just directed it to him at Pringleton. I didn't even put 'Sunnyside Farm' on the letter. I didn't address yours any differently, Hiram."

"No. But the mail carrier knows me all right. I—I don't believe Orrin has received or written a letter since he has been with me."

"Oh! Doesn't he have any friends at all?"

"Doesn't seem to," replied Hiram, making room for another arrival then.

Mr. Bronson welcomed him warmly; but of course he gave his time mostly to the older people who came to the party. Hiram found himself alone for the most part. He knew very few people here in Plympton, and almost none of the younger set.

He found himself with a group of older men who largely talked farming or politics. It looked as if he would have a dull evening, and Hiram wished more than once during the first hour that he had not come.

He wondered if Orrin had received an invitation but had been wise enough to remain away from the Bronsons' party. It was queer!

Then Lettie was kind enough to hunt Hiram out and give him a dance on her list. The dance was informal and there were no cards, and the girls seemed just as likely to ask the young men for a dance as vice versa.

No other girl gave Hiram the opportunity to dance, however, having seen him on the floor with Lettie. That awkwardly fitting dress suit certainly made a show of him.

Hiram apprehended more than one giggling comment as he turned about the room with Lettie. She offered to dance with him again later, but he told her he thought he should go home early—it was such a long drive back to Sunnyside Farm.

This was rather cowardly on his part. Yet he felt that he could not let the girl, out of the kindness of her heart, make a further exhibition on the floor of herself with him.

The young farm manager kept out of Lettie's way as much as possible for the rest of the evening. And he did go home early.

"I hope you enjoyed yourself, Hi," said Mr. Bronson, when the boy bade him good-bye. "Seems to me I didn't see you dancing much. Don't you care for it? Too sensible, I bet!"

His employer's cordiality was not to be doubted. Lettie seemed just as sweet to him as she could be. Yet Hiram was glad when he was jogging back to the farm behind Jerry. Society was not a condition in which Hiram Strong could shine.

The next time he had occasion to drive to Pringleton the young manager of Sunnyside Farm went to the post office for a special purpose.

"Is there any letter here for Mr. Orrin Post?" he asked the young woman who presided over the local mail.

"Why, Mr. Strong!" she exclaimed, "you don't take the Posts' mail."

"Why don't I take Orrin Post's letters—if he has any?"

"Because Orrin Post lives clear down at the other end of Number Three route—almost fifteen miles east of the town. And you don't look anything like Orrin Post," she added, smiling.

"Don't I?"

"He has heaps and heaps of whiskers," laughed the young woman. "And there is no other Orrin Post that I know of."

"There is a man working for me by that name," Hiram said seriously.

"Then you must tell him to be sure to have his correspondents put 'Sunnyside Farm' on their envelopes addressed to him," was the advice of the postmistress.

CHAPTER XXV

A VISIT AND A PEST

In spite of the disappointment Hiram Strong experienced regarding the party at the Bronson house in Plympton, the winter did not pass without some entertainment—and of a kind which he really enjoyed better than he had Lettie's party.

The Christmas holidays ushered in a series of barn dances, surprise parties, straw rides and other country social functions organized in the Pringleton district and mostly of a nature that assured a pleasant time and plenty of clean fun.

Hiram and Orrin and Jim Larry attended most of these entertainments. But Hiram hid away his dress suit and never wore it again. After a while his comrades on Sunnyside Farm ceased to gibe at him about the garments.

Hiram had never asked Orrin about the invitation he might have received to the Bronsons' party. He shrank from arousing any suspicions in Orrin's mind that he, Hiram, was suspicious of him.

But the young farm manager believed Lettie Bronson's note to the young man they both knew as "Orrin Post" had gone to the real Orrin Post—the bewhiskered farmer who had driven through the neighborhood with Eben Craddock, the lawyer from Cincinnati, looking for the mysterious "Theodore Chester."

Was Hiram's assistant here at Sunnyside the individual that had run away from Post, the farmer, who lived fifteen miles east of Pringleton? If so, why had the young fellow given Hiram his former employer's name as his own?

And then, searching his mind for the details of that long-past incident, Hiram remembered that the sick young fellow when Hiram found him in the calf shed had been delirious. He had given his name as "Orrin Post" without realizing, perhaps, what he was doing or saying. He had uttered the first name that had come into his mind—the name of the farmer who had treated him so harshly by driving him out of his house when he was taken ill.

Hiram was quite convinced that there was no criminal charge against the young man he knew as Orrin Post. It was surely no misdemeanor for a man twenty-three years old to run away from his employer! It was evident that neither the bewhiskered man nor the lawyer were willing to accuse the man they called "Theodore Chester" of any particular wrongdoing. The circumstances remained a mystery.

Whenever Miss Delia Pringle had anything to do with getting up a party that winter Hiram, Orrin and Jim Larry were of course invited. Indeed they were practically her right hand men.

Miss Pringle frankly admired Orrin, treated Hiram as though she had known him all his life, and could not keep from hugging the fresh-faced and grinning Jim if he chanced to sit next to her on a straw ride or in any other free-and-easy assembly.

Yancey Battick once remarked to Hiram, and with vast disapproval: "They can't come too young for Delia. She'd rob the cradle, she would!"

"You're unfair to Miss Pringle, Mr. Battick," Hiram told him. "She is the best-hearted girl around here."

"Girl!" snorted Battick, with emphasis.

It was in January that something happened to Yancey Battick that was bound to change that misanthrope's attitude toward most of the world, and should have changed it particularly toward Miss Pringle. All through the winter up to that time, Battick could have been seen frequently walking about the lower end of the wheat field where his new seed was planted. That he apprehended trouble at almost any time he frankly admitted to Hiram.

Sometimes in the middle of the night, or when the boys came home late after some party, or very early in the morning when they got up for some special purpose at Sunnyside Farm, they would see the spark of a wandering lantern down at that end of the twenty-acre lot. Battick was roaming about on the lookout for trouble.

Just what the man expected to happen to the dormant wheat plants, in mid-winter, Hiram could not imagine. But it was a fact that going out at all hours of the night and in all kinds of weather brought its own punishment.

Battick lived so much like a hermit anyway that had it not been for Hiram's interest in him, the man might never have seen spring again and the revival of his wonderful wheat. One day the young farm manager suddenly remembered that he had not seen or heard from Battick for at least three days.

The thought somewhat startled him; yet he started along the county road toward the old Pringle place with no real fear that Battick was in trouble. When he mounted the low steps to the rickety front porch where he had taken refuge from the rain the first night he had come to this neighborhood, Hiram was startled by hearing a faint cry from inside the house.

"Hi!" he shouted. "That you, Mr. Battick?"

There followed another murmuring cry. Hiram put his hand on the knob of the door and rattled it. The door, of course, was locked. But he heard the pleading call again. This was no time for etiquette. Nor did he worry about Battick's gun.

"It's I, Mr. Battick! Hiram Strong!" he shouted, and then threw his shoulder against the door. The frail bar to his entrance gave way immediately. He was almost catapulted into the room.

"What's up?" he cried seeing nobody in the living room of the house.

"I'm down, Mr. Strong," croaked Battick's voice from the bedroom.

"For pity's sake! what is the matter?" demanded the boy, and hurried to see.

Battick was stretched upon his bed, covered in his blankets and shaking with a chill. He could scarcely speak above a whisper and his face was fiery-red with fever.

Hiram was deft in attending the sick. He had shown that at the time Orrin Post had first come to Sunnyside. He made Battick as comfortable as possible, leaving drinking water beside him, and then hurried back up the hill. His first thought was to hitch up Jerry and go for a doctor. He believed the man was in a bad way.

Then he remembered that Miss Pringle had a telephone. In addition, the spinster was famous as a nurse. Hiram knew that Yancey Battick was in need of nursing as well as of medical attention.

"I expect he will give me fits when he gets well for letting Miss Pringle into his house, he hates her so," thought Hiram. "But if I was to be sick that way myself, and could not get Mother Atterson to nurse me, I'd be mighty glad to get Miss Pringle as the next best nurse."

So he did not stop at Sunnyside but went on to Miss Pringle's and told his story. Almost immediately the spinster was at the telephone and calling up Doctor Marble. Abigail Wentworth scurried around to pack a basket with the things Delia thought she might need.

"You won't be let in. You'll be put out like you were before," declared Abigail in her sputtering way. "That Yance Battick will work some magic on you—"

"Nonsense!" exclaimed Miss Pringle.

"Yance Battick has got the evil eye," declared Abigail with confidence.

"He's got pneumonia, I shouldn't wonder," snapped Miss Pringle. "I'll be glad when Doctor Marble comes. Are you going back with me, Hiram?"

"I certainly am, Delia," said the young farm manager. "And if he tries to send you home, I won't let him."

But when they got down to the old Pringle homestead Battick was too deep in delirium to recognize Miss Pringle. When Dr. Marble arrived he declared that Hiram had found the man and given the alarm none too soon, if he was to be saved.

It was a fight to keep Battick from slipping over the Border. Hiram, or Orrin, or Jim Larry was at the house all the time. Miss Pringle remained night and day. Other neighbors showed an interest in the queer man and Mr. Bronson sent up everything that might be needed and which Battick and his neighbors might not possess when he became convalescent.

Mr. Bronson had been over-urged again by Lettie, and they were going to Florida for the season.

"Of course, if anything happens to Battick—if he dies—let me know by telegraph," Mr. Bronson told Hiram. "Being his partner in that wheat growing deal gives me a personal interest in the poor fellow."

"And me, too," agreed Hiram. "I will look out for him—and for the wheat too."

Battick did not wholly forget his precious wheat, and the day after Hiram had found him so ill he recognized the young farmer and earnestly begged him to bring the remaining seed of the new wheat into his bedroom and hang it in a bag above the foot of the bed where Battick could see it.

"If anything should happen to that in the ground," the sick man whispered, "I'd still have a chance."

But the wheat in the ground—not only Yancey Battick's but all the wheat on Sunnyside, gave promise of good growth when the spring should open. There was some snow for a cover during the coldest weather; but most of the storms were of rain and wind. Hiram was growing hungry for the spring. He watched anxiously for the earliest moment when he could get the plow into the ground for oats.

Battick was convalescing when this first plowing began. Miss Pringle had ministered to him so faithfully that, crank though he was, the hermit could but speak well of her at last. Yet—

"She is a nuisance to have around—all women are," he grumbled to Hiram. "She's cleaned and scoured this room—even my workbench—till I know I can't find half my things. There isn't anything in its right place. But she has nursed me faithfully and won't take a cent's pay—"

"Great goodness, man! you didn't offer her money?" Hiram gasped.

"Well, she did not take it," muttered Battick.

"No wonder I met her just now going up the road crying. Is that all the sense you have? Or gratitude? Or anything?" completed Hiram with great disgust.

"Hoity-toity, young man!" Battick said weakly. "Do you realize that I am much older than you are?"

"You don't act so," snapped the young farm manager. "I can't respect anybody who throws away the very heart of the nut and eats the husk. You are determined, it seems, to make all your neighbors dislike you. If I were Delia Pringle I'd never step inside your house again!"

"Well, I don't know that I shall ask her," muttered Battick.

At that Hiram marched out himself. He knew very well that the man did not mean what he said; he was still sick and weak enough to quarrel with everybody—even his best friends.

Hiram was too busy just then to give the crotchety man much attention; and thereafter he knew that Miss Pringle sent a neighbor's boy down to Battick's with the dainties she cooked for him. She did not go near the old homestead.

Another team of Percherons and a double plow came to Sunnyside to help in the plowing and oat sowing. They got on the land just as soon as the horses would not mire. But there was much of even the higher fields that Hiram wished might be tiled properly to make the soil more friable.

They drilled the oats and then went about the other spring work—cleaning the stables and calf pens and drawing out all the fertilizer the cattle had made to the early corn land. There was now more than sixty head of young stock on the farm and Hiram intended to grain a dozen or more for market.

But the silo was empty and most of the corn fodder had been picked over and trampled in the cattle yards. What hay he had left Hiram needed for the horses. It was still three months and a half till haying time, and Sunnyside did not yield any too much hay, in any case.

The promise of the crimson clover was encouraging, however; and it would make the earliest of pasture. Therefore he turned the cattle into a ten-acre piece below the barns and let them graze there before the regular pasture at the far end of the farm was grown.

The stock went pretty nearly crazy over the first few mouthfuls of clover, bawling and running about rather than settling down to eating. But after a few hours they spread out and went quietly to grazing.

Until mid-May they found plenty to do on this patch of fast-growing clover; but of course Hiram could not cut that for hay. He put the plow into it as soon as the cattle were driven to the regular pasture. They had enriched it considerably and the roots and stubble of the clover held plenty of nitrogen. He knew the soil was in good condition now for corn.

The fields that had lain fallow over winter were already plowed and planted. This year Hiram was following the local custom and planting in the row and would use the large horse-hoes for cultivating. The early cornfields had received during the winter a heavy dressing of manure and all the other cornfields—save those that now had growing wheat upon them—would either have clover sod to turn under or an eighteen-inch growth of cowpeas.

Hiram claimed that his cornfields this year would be well enriched in one way or another.

Mr. Bronson had returned with Lettie from Florida. He brought Lettie up to Sunnyside in his car on several occasions; but although the girl was chatty and kind, both to Hiram and Orrin Post, to the mind of the first named there was something lacking in her manner. She seemed bored and dissatisfied. In her usual frank fashion Miss Pringle commented upon the change in Lettie since she had first met her.

"Land's sake, Hiram! that girl is certainly getting her nose in the air. Not that I mean she's spoiled, but she ain't the same as she was. This taking her around from one flashy place to another is making her a regular flibbertigibbet."

"Whatever that is," laughed Hiram.

But he recognized the truth of Delia's homely statement. Since Yancey Battick's illness Hiram and the spinster had become even firmer friends than before. Miss Pringle was shrewd enough to see that Hiram was enamored of Lettie Bronson. But there were other interests Hiram had that Miss Pringle knew about.

Long before this time she had not only heard all about Sister, but she had begun a correspondence with the little girl back in Scoville and with Mother Atterson. She could tell those loved ones "back home" more about Hiram and his affairs than the youth himself would have been willing to write about.

Hiram was too busy again to send very long letters to Scoville, although during the winter he had been faithful in writing to Sister.

Oat harvest came and the Sunnyside Farm crop was all that Hiram had any right to hope for. They stacked the oats ready for the thrashing and then put both big plow-teams to work, turning under the stubble, raking and rolling the land. Jerry and two mates (the first trio-hitch Hiram had driven on Sunnyside), followed behind the land rollers with the drill, sowing cowpeas.

Haying and wheat harvest was right ahead of them when Miss Pringle drove past Sunnyside behind her dappled pony one day, bound for Pringleton.

"Where are you going to be when I come back, Hiram?" she called to the young farmer.

"Right here, or hereabout," he replied. "What do you want, Delia?"

"I am going to have something to show you," she said, and drove on.

It was two hours later that Hiram chanced to walk down the county road toward Battick's, intending to take a careful look at the green wheat at that end of this roadside field—the wheat in which he, as well as Battick and Mr. Bronson, placed such hopes.

Although he did not apprehend that the same danger menaced the new wheat which Yancey Battick did, Hiram seldom allowed two days to go by without a scrutiny of the field.

By this time the new wheat proved itself, to the most casual eye, to be a different variety from that growing in the remainder of the field. It was a foot taller, the bearded heads were beginning to fill out, and, as Battick had promised, the plants had spread so in growing that the grain stood quite as thick as in any other part of the twenty acres.

Hiram saw a figure moving at the edge of the field at the far corner next to Yancey Battick's land, and he knew it to be Battick himself. These warm days the man was getting around quite briskly and was feeling much like his old self.

Before Hiram could cross the ditch and start around the lower end of the wheat field, as he intended, he saw the dappled pony coming up the hill. There was somebody beside Miss Pringle on the seat of the buggy.

"Hey, Hiram! Wait!" called the spinster. "I want you to see who I have here."

Hiram had already given a second glance. He saw a slim, prettily dressed figure with a flower-like face under a shade hat. For a half minute or so the boy had no idea who this person could be. He only realized that she was a very pretty girl.

And then Miss Pringle's companion smiled. Hiram fairly jumped.

"Sister!" he shouted, and strode down the hill to meet the dappled pony.

At that moment he heard a wild yell from Yancey Battick. The man came running along the lower edge of the field. He bore high above his head a handful of the grain which he had torn up by the roots. His lean face was actually pale.

"Strong! Look here! They've got us!" he cried.

"Who has got us? What is the matter?" demanded Hiram, startled into forgetting Sister and her wonderful appearance for the moment. "What's turned that wheat in your hand yellow so early?"

"Do you see it? Do you see it?" shouted the excited Battick. "It's being eaten alive! Little green bugs—not the Hessian fly. It is a pest I never saw before. It wasn't there the other day. I tell you, they've got us!" concluded the man in a hopeless tone of voice.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE FIGHT FOR THE WHEAT

"What's the matter now, Hiram Strong?" demanded Miss Pringle, urging her pony nearer. "For the land's sake! is that Battick man completely crazy?"

"Oh, Hiram! what has happened?" called Sister.

She jumped over the wheel and ran to greet the young farmer. A year previous Hiram would certainly have met Sister with a hug and a kiss! But this tall, pretty, almost grown-up girl was an entirely different person from the child he had known and first remembered as the boarding-house slavey in Crawberry. She was almost a stranger to him.

"Sister! What a surprise! How nice you look!" he cried, seizing both her hands and gazing into her glowing eyes with fully as much delight as she herself displayed. "What a surprise!" he repeated.

"Oh, Hiram, I'm so glad you're glad to see me!"

"Of course I am! And Mother Atterson?"

"She is fine. And so is Mr. Camp. And Henry Pollock. And everybody!"

"How did you ever come out here without letting me know?"

"Miss Pringle did it all. I am going to stay with her. You'll have to thank her if you are glad to see me, Hiram."

"I should say I am! Delia, you are a darling!" cried Hiram, laughing up into the good but homely face of the spinster.

At this juncture the almost breathless Battick reached the roadside.

"Here! What's the matter with you, Strong?" he demanded, shaking the handful of wheatstraw at the young farm manager. "Do you hear what I say—or have you gone crazy over those women? That wheat is being eaten alive."

"Oh!" exclaimed Sister looking wonderingly at the excited Yancey Battick.

Miss Pringle scrambled down from the carriage. They gathered about the young farmer while he examined the affected heads of wheat.

These heads were now about half developed. The straw was already three feet and a half tall, and the bearded, three-sided heads had been most promising only a day or two before.

Now the tiny green bugs (and occasionally a long fly into which the insect develops) were evidently sucking the life of the plant. The presence of both the louse-like insect and the adult fly on the same staff of wheat proved to Hiram's mind at once that the creatures were of a single species and that their growth and development was very rapid—like that of hard-shell from soft-shell potato beetles.

"What do you call those things?" demanded Miss Pringle looking askance at the green insects.

"It is the English grain louse," Hiram announced with conviction. "I have been reading about the pest this winter. The louse did considerable damage in grain last year in New Jersey and other parts of the East. But how did it get into our wheat?"

"Ah-h!" groaned Yancey Battick. "You can easily answer that. It was put here by those that mean to ruin our crop. And between two days, too."

"Do you really think that possible?" Hiram said. "And yet, what I have read about this pest suggests that it does not come suddenly into a new field of wheat in this way, unless it has already been a scourge in some near-by patch of grain the winter before. In such an open winter as we have had it might have hybernated on the plants. Then, in April, it begins really to reproduce. But we have watched this wheat so closely—"

"I tell you the lice have been brought here," Battick cried almost wildly. "It did not just happen."

"You'd surely think so," Delia Pringle said. "I never saw those things before. But I heard the other day that some pest had attacked wheat fields over back of the hill—to the north of us."

"Which farms?" Hiram asked quickly.

"Seems to me they said Wilson Banks' wheat was the worst affected."

"Adam's father?"

"Ah-h!" ejaculated Yancey Battick. "What did I tell you?"

Of course, this gossip proved nothing, and Hiram very well knew it. But both Battick and Miss Pringle seemed so sure!

"Let's go and look at the affected patch," Hiram said slowly, and, of course, Sister trailed along with him to the far corner of the field. She clung to his arm and chattered away at a great rate, giving Hiram all the news of Scoville and the Atterson farm neighborhood. Naturally this forced Miss Pringle and Battick into each other's company for the walk. They did not make a very friendly looking pair, however, for Battick's gaze was fixed on the ground while Miss Pringle had her head in the air and did not vouchsafe him a glance!

The party came to the corner of the field where Battick had found the specimens of the grain louse. A patch several yards square was turning yellow.

"These lice," Hiram observed thoughtfully, "feed on the leaves of the wheat plant until the grain commences to head. Then they assemble on the heads among the ripening kernels. When the grain ripens they migrate to various grasses, the book says, and manage to live until fall when the new wheat is sown and appears. But we had nothing like them here on Sunnyside last year."

"Nor did I see any on my patch," muttered Battick. "I tell you they were sown here recently."

"Oh!" exclaimed the sharp-eyed girl from Scoville. "What is this?"

She sprang forward and picked out of the tall and robust wheat several withered wheat-straws that were about half developed. She gave them to Hiram.

"Did you pull up any plants besides those you brought to me, Mr. Battick?" asked the young farm manager, curiously examining the wilted plants.

"No. And, say, those are not my wheat! Don't you see, Strong? The straw is entirely different, nor is it as well developed as the straw standing on this piece."

"That is what I saw," Sister said softly. "It is not the same plant as this handsome wheat."

"You've got sharp eyes, Sister Cheltenham," declared Miss Pringle. "Hasn't she, Hiram?"

"Never mind all that!" snapped Battick, interrupting crossly. "What do you think about this, Strong? Somebody brought those straws with the living insects on them and tossed them in among this wheat."

"It would seem so," Hiram admitted.

"The villains! It is no more than what I have expected all along. And you and Bronson would not believe me. Now what do you think?"

"I think somebody has it in for us," Hiram frankly said. "This was deliberately a malicious act."

"If it was any of those Bankses they ought to be horsewhipped!" declared Miss Pringle.

"Has Adam been home of late?" asked Hiram.

"I don't know," replied the spinster. "But I bet he has."

"We shall have to watch this field night and day now till the grain is ripe," Battick declared moodily.

"But first of all we must get rid of this pest."

"Can you do that?" asked Sister.

"Never was anything so bad that it could not be worse," declared the young manager of Sunnyside Farm sententiously. "These flies have only just begun their nefarious work. There must be some way of stopping them."

"How will you do that, Hiram?" Miss Pringle demanded. "When the striped bugs get on my melon vines they're gone, and that's all there is to it!"

"Every blade and ear on which the louse has fastened itself must be destroyed. We must be ruthless in rooting the plague out."

Battick groaned aloud. He hated to think of losing a single grain of the new wheat. "How are you going to do it?" he asked.

"It must be pulled up and burned. And this may not be the only spot where the pest was thrown."

"I'll look all around the field," Battick said eagerly. "You don't see any place where the scoundrel has walked into the wheat to spread the pest, do you?"

"No. He probably did nothing to trample down the wheat and so reveal to us where he had worked.

"I would make sure how wide the area of affection is before pulling up any wheat, Mr. Battick," said Hiram. "I'll bring the boys down here and we'll burn a wide enough area to surely put the louse out of business in this field. No use cutting off the dog's tail half an inch at a time."

Battick understood this homely saying, and only groaned again.

Hiram and the girls returned to the road, and Miss Pringle and Sister climbed into the buggy. Hiram walked beside the vehicle to the Pringle cottage, and remained there for supper.

The change in Sister in the time since Hiram had last seen her seemed marvelous. Not having seen a picture of her in all that time, the surprise Hiram felt was even greater that it otherwise would have been. Sister positively had become a pretty girl.

Battick came up to report after supper. He had found but that one place where the grain louse was at work. Hiram took Orrin and Jim Larry and one of the new men and went down with Battick to burn the affected wheat.

He slashed into that corner with a scythe and cut out almost a quarter of an acre of the wheat. Meanwhile the other boys had been smearing oily sacks over the condemned patch, and when the fire was put to it even in its green state, the grain blazed up hotly. They forked what Hiram had cut down on to the fire and made sure of burning every spear of wheat that could possibly be affected.

It was furthermore arranged that a night watch should be kept upon this end of the twenty acre wheat field. Hiram, as well as Yancey Battick, was confident that the pest had not come here by chance. An enemy that would try such a despicable trick once, might try to repeat it.

"I tell you I have felt all along that we shall have to fight to get a decent harvest of this wheat," said Battick.

"Then we'll fight!" returned Hiram grimly. "Go ahead, Mr. Battick, and get your gun and watch here until midnight. Then either Orrin or I will come down and relieve you. I don't mean to let our enemies beat us, no matter who they may be."

The young farm manager had an interest in the success of this new wheat matched only by Yancey Battick's own.

CHAPTER XXVII

DAY DREAMS

There was an uncertainty in the atmosphere of Sunnyside Farm and an expectancy of trouble in all their minds. What would happen next? Would the enemy strike again, having been thwarted in one attempt to destroy the new wheat?

The fact that the soil had been well enriched and that the forcing effect of nitrate made the crop grow so fast was really the salvation of Yancey Battick's new grain. The pest could not work fast enough to overcome the rapidity of the wheat's growth.

Hiram had a multitude of things just now to take up his time; yet he made a pilgrimage to each farm in the vicinity to discover which wheat fields, if any besides that on Sunnyside, were affected by the new pest. The English grain louse had not been seen in this part of the country he was sure, previous to a few months before.

"It bred on Banks's land," Mr. Turner told Hiram Strong. "When I first saw the critter during the winter—Banks called me over to show it to me—I told him I'd plow up that wheat as soon as I could, if I was him, and plant something else—spring wheat, or oats, or something. It was a puling kind of crop anyway. And it's a sight now!"

"I presume his land is poor?"

"You presume just right. And he's shiftless. Don't raise more than half a crop of anything. Don't keep cattle—they are too much trouble, he says—and his farm is getting poorer and poorer."

"I've seen his kind of farmer before."

"You bet you have! I've often thought, Mr. Strong, that a shiftless neighbor is worse than a dishonest one. You are on the watch for a thief; but a shiftless or lazy man will make more trouble than forty thieves, I do believe."

Hiram considered that Mr. Turner was about right. He went far enough with the old man to look at the Banks' wheat. It was completely blighted by the pest and to Hiram's mind would scarcely be worth thrashing. Besides, when the binder went through the field he knew very well that the pest would lodge on the weeds and grass that bordered the grain, and would thus exist—a serious menace—until the new wheat appeared in the fall.

"Do you know what I would do if I had money, Mr. Turner, and owned a farm next to this one?" the young farmer said.

"What would you do?" asked the old man suspiciously.

"I'd offer Banks a price for his standing grain and then burn it."

"Hey! You surely would have money to burn," grumbled Turner.

"Get the other neighbors to go into the deal with you. It will save your crops in the end. First you know, you'll have to give up raising grain to starve out the pest. And maybe that won't do it."

"'A fool and his money are soon parted,'" said Turner.

"Maybe," Hiram rejoined slyly. "But how about a fool and his wheat?"

"Huh!" was Turner's only comment.

Meanwhile, Hiram learned that Adam Banks had been at home over Sunday and on that occasion could easily have brought the specimens of the grain pest to the fields on Sunnyside. He would never have a chance to repeat the trick, however—if he was guilty—for there was a guard at the wheat field every night, and by day some of the workmen were always in sight of the piece of seed-wheat.

Hiram Strong enjoyed Sister's visit immensely. The girl seemed just like a bit of home—the only real home Hiram had known since he was a child. Had she been really his sister he could have thought no more of her.

And she was still a healthy, wholesome girl. She was not growing up too fast, as he sometimes thought Lettie Bronson was.

Sister, in a gingham frock and one of Miss Pringle's sunbonnets, was out with Hiram all over the big farm. She knew enough about agricultural pursuits now, and loved nature enough, to enjoy thoroughly Sunnyside and all it meant to Hiram. The latter, too, found in Sister a confidante such as he had never had before.

She could help, too. The clover crop ripened suddenly because of a dry spell. The brilliant crimson blossoms which gave to the fields a blush such as no other flower gives, began to turn brown at their base petals. The mower had to be brought into use at once—in fact, two of them.

Sister rode the tedder and managed to stir the clover well behind both mowing machines. In spite of the dry spell it was a heavy crop of clover hay, and the odor of it ascended in the noonday heat as the incense must have ascended from the altars to the Sun God in ancient times.

The two teams of Percherons were at work six days a week. As soon as the clover was made and drawn to the mows, the big plows were put in to turn over the clover sod. This was raked lightly, rolled, and then the corn was drilled. The early corn was already up and under the second or third cultivation. Everything at Sunnyside was on the rush.

The cattle were on regular pasture. Twelve of the sleekest and oldest were held in the pens for fattening. They would be the first "commercial crop" since Hiram had come to Sunnyside sold off the farm, save a part of the previous year's wheat.

Following the plowing of the clover sod, the areas where oats had been and the cowpeas put in for a soilage crop were turned under, and corn was planted on that land. Hiram was planning for a real corn crop this year, and for the most part he used the seed corn he had raised from that of Daniel Brown. Another corn crib was built at this time to be ready for the expected harvest.

As soon as the corn was planted where the peas were turned under for manure, the regular haying came on. Such hay as there was on Sunnyside had to be harvested in a hurry. It was a thin crop, for it had been seeded to timothy and red top several years before. Hiram decided to plow most of this meadow land for wheat in the fall and seed some of the present wheat- and corn-land for meadow. He turned the cattle into the mowing fields, therefore, as soon as the hay was out of the way.

No further menace had attacked the wheat. The fields of grain on Sunnyside were a beautiful sight—now turning a golden yellow and with the heavy heads nodding to the harvest. Battick's new variety was at least a foot taller than that in any other field on the farm.

The man had watched the special wheat as a mother cares for her new-born babe. Night and day he hung about the edges of the field. He even crept over the patch that had been burned seeking for any of the insects that might not have been destroyed by the fire.

"I think that man must be more than half crazy, as Jim says he is," Sister said to Hiram in commenting upon Battick.

"Why does Jim—and you—think Battick is insane?" Hiram asked her, smiling.

"Why, he makes such a fuss over that new wheat."

"His whole heart is set upon developing this Staff of Life Wheat," the young farm manager said thoughtfully. "And so is mine, Sister."

"What do you mean, Hi?"

"I guess I am crazy, too," the young fellow said. "I believe my fortune, as well as Battick's, is wrapped up in that wheat. Somehow, from the very first time I saw the seed in his house, the night I arrived in this neighborhood, I have felt that the new wheat meant much to me."

Sister looked at him, puzzled.

"I really wish you would say right out what you mean, Hi Strong!" she exclaimed.

"I am day dreaming, I suppose," he told her. "But when I look over this billowing field I can see thousands of acres of the same grain, all in one mowing, and a crop that will fill vast granaries with wheat. There would be a fortune in a single crop of such size."

"Oh, Hiram, you are thinking of the wheat fields of the great Northwest," Sister said in a low tone. "Are you dreaming of going so far away from us all?"

"Sister," said the young farmer seriously, "I set out to farm Mrs. Atterson's Eighty with the idea of making that a stepping-stone for something bigger. I have got the bigger thing; but it is not big enough. I am still working for another man. I want to work for myself."

"But—but it takes so much capital to run one of those great wheat ranches."

"I know. I couldn't expect to begin at the top. If I begin for myself it must be at the bottom. But I have more than a thousand dollars saved, and I have a quarter interest in Battick's new wheat. Before this time next year, Sister, I ought to have at least five thousand in cash!

"When I have that much money I am going to strike out for myself—on my own hook. Whether it will be in the Northwest or not I don't know. But Hiram Strong, Sister, is going to be his own man before he gets through, not another fellow's hired hand!"

CHAPTER XXVIII

CORN AND COMPARISONS

Hiram and Sister (who had as yet not discovered her first name) often discussed her personal mystery. The lawyer who had finally searched her out at the Atterson farm, having traced her through the records of the orphanage in which she had spent so many unhappy years, had neglected to tell her the name with which she had been christened.

"Nor do I know my little brother's name. Poor boy! To think of his having been sent to a reform school! I often cry about him, Hiram. How awful it is for him to be wandering about the world, maybe ill-used, beaten, hungry—perhaps growing up wicked! He perhaps will not find anybody like Mother Atterson—or you—or Mr. Lem Camp."

"I don't know that you had much to congratulate yourself about until we all left Crawberry and got out on Mother Atterson's farm," said Hiram.

"Well, it seems to me now that I was pretty lucky," the girl said soberly. "But poor little Claude couldn't possibly have found such good friends."

"'Claude'!" repeated Hiram in surprise. "How do you know his name is Claude?"

"I don't—really. Sometimes I call him 'Marvin.' I like both names," replied Sister. "It doesn't really matter what I call him till I know what his really, truly name is, does it?"

"Well, for goodness' sake! don't call him 'Claude.' If he is a real boy, that will make him sick! And how do you know he is so much younger than you?"

"Why—"

"Did the lawyer say so?"

"No, he didn't. He didn't say how old—er—Marvin was. But, of course, he must be only a little boy to run away and get lost."

"Pshaw! He may be older than you are."

"Why, how you talk! Of course he isn't, Hi Strong. How could my little brother be older than I am? Why, that is ridiculous!"

"You have a mighty hazy idea of your brother, I do believe," Hiram chuckled. "If he was arrested and sent to the reform school—"

"Hiram! How can you? My brother arrested?"

"How do you suppose he got into the reform school?" demanded her friend.

"Oh! Do they have to be bad to get to reform schools?"

"He'd have to be sent by the Court to such an institution. He must have been old enough to be arrested for doing something, Sister. It needn't have been anything very bad—swiping apples, or throwing stones, or something like that."

"But, Hiram!" murmured Sister, almost in tears.

"I know it sounds hard. Sometimes a committing magistrate is pretty harsh. They don't have Children's Courts everywhere. And sometimes there isn't any other place to send kids but to the reform school."

"Oh, my dear, you make my heart ache," declared Sister, sighing.

"Well, he was some size to have been sent to such an institution instead of to an orphanage, as you were."

"I—I suppose so."

"How long was he in the reform school before he broke out?" Hiram asked.

"That lawyer did not tell us."

"Then, when did he run away?"

"I guess it was some time ago, come to think of it," the girl admitted.

"Seems to me you and Mother Atterson didn't ask many questions of that man," said Hiram.

"We were so stirred up!" cried Sister. "And he was only at the house a few minutes. He told me to be sure and let him know if I went anywhere else. I wrote to him when I was coming out here. But he never replied."

"I'd like to ask him a few things," muttered Hiram thoughtfully. Then: "So you have no idea when your brother ran away?"

"It must have been some time before the lawyer found me last year. He said he had been hunting for both of us, and he wanted to make sure of me, so that I would not run away and make trouble. For the property my Grandmother Cheltenham left us cannot be divided till both heirs are found. That is just the way he put it."

"Humph! A nice way to fix it, I must say. Your grandmother must have been a pretty cranky old tea-party."

"I don't know, Hiram. Maybe she did what she thought was best. But I do hope that I take after my mother's side of the family."

"Which can't be any worse than the Cheltenhams in any case, eh?" chuckled Hiram. "Nice name—'Cheltenham.' Sounds as though you ought to be related to the King of England, or some of the nobility."

"Now, you're laughing at me, Hiram! I'd just as lief my name was something short and nice sounding—like 'Strong,' or 'Post,' or—"

"Maybe Orrin's name isn't so short and sweet." Hiram said suddenly. "You know, as I wrote you, there is a mystery as to what Orrin's name really is."

"Yes, I know," said Sister thoughtfully. "And Orrin is such a nice young man. I asked him the other day, Hi, what he supposed might have become of my little brother after he ran away from the reform school."

"What did he say?"

"Why, he seemed real interested. He said maybe Claude—I mean, Marvin—was wise to run away. Orrin said sometimes they hire boys out from those schools to farmers who make them work like slaves. He seemed to know all about such things."

"He did?"

"I believe Orrin must have been in one of those schools himself when he was a boy."

"Lucky if he wasn't in a worse place," thought Hiram.

But he did not go any deeper into a discussion of Orrin's affairs at this time. The mystery of who and what Orrin Post really was seemed quite as far from being solved as the whereabouts of Sister's brother.

The wheat was now nodding heavy heads for the harvest. The binders and extra harvest hands came to Sunnyside Farm after reaping Mr. Bronson's other wheat fields. Everybody about the place—even Sister—worked in the wheat fields, standing up the golden shocks, from early morning until nightfall.

Everybody about the place—even Sister—worked in the wheat fields.

Close on the heels of the harvesting the great tractor drawing the threshing machine rumbled up to Sunnyside. The regular threshing crew came with it so that the work at Sunnyside went much more rapidly this time than it had the year before, although the yield of grain was far greater.

But how everyone did toil at it! Threshing under the very best conditions is the hardest farm work there is. It is not such tedious work as the making of the crop—the plowing and raking, rolling and seeding, and the cultivation of it, or of the mowing and binding; but for out and out bone-breaking labor, and in the hottest part of the year, threshing takes the palm. It must be hurried, too, for there is always another grain ranch to go to. And the season, too, is that when other work on the farm is urgent.

Mr. Bronson came himself to Sunnyside to watch Hiram's wheat and oats threshed. Besides, he was particularly interested in the yield of Battick's new wheat.

Lettie came up with him from Plympton and remained over night at Miss Pringle's, with Sister. She seemed unfeignedly glad to see Sister again, and the two girls raced about together all day, watching the toiling threshing crew, and riding the empty wagons back to the field.

"One seemed," Orrin said to Hiram Strong, "as big a kid as the other."

In the evening, however, after the boys had eaten supper and washed at the bunkhouse, they strolled over to Miss Pringle's, and the girls met them with their most grown-up manner. Indeed, Lettie flirted with Orrin in a way that actually amazed Hiram. He was glad that Sister was not addicted to such manners. And yet, of course, Lettie meant no harm and Orrin Post seemed to understand. Hiram wondered if he had been used to the kind of society in which Lettie had learned to behave in this way.

Of course, Orrin was quite "grown-up." Lettie looked upon him as fair game, without doubt. She would not have considered for a moment treating Hiram in this way.

Sister did not attempt to copy the more sophisticated Lettie. Yet she seemed to approve fully of the daughter of the owner of Sunnyside Farm.

"Lettie is so much nicer than I used to think her," Sister said gently to Hiram. "She is so kind."

"Yes?"

"She wants me to go back to Plympton with her and stay a while before I go home."

"Yes?" questioned Hiram again.

"Would you?"

"I—don't—know," said Hiram slowly.

He remembered the sort of young people he had met at the Bronson house the night of the party. He had never been able to make up his mind whether he had been invited on that occasion out of sheer kindness, or not. Hiram's perceptions were keen. Would Sister be comfortable in their society? Would they, young and gay and careless and more or less intimate friends from childhood, make her feel a little as though she were outside of all their fun and friendships? Sister was sweet and lively, true and likable, but could she, after all, adjust herself to surroundings which were very different from those she had been accustomed to?

"I'd like you to advise me, Hiram," said Sister softly.

"What does Delia say?" exclaimed Hiram suddenly.

"She says go if I want to, and if I don't like it to come back here any time. She says I can hire a flivver there to bring me back for a couple of dollars—if I am in a hurry."

"There!" exclaimed Hiram with relief. "I always did think Delia Pringle was a mighty sensible person. I agree with her, Sister."

"After all," thought Hiram, "Sister is likable and attractive, and, moreover, pretty well able to look out for herself. And then, Lettie is kind and sweet-natured and thoughtful, and why should I take it for granted that her friends are not the same sort?"

Orrin only laughed about Lettie when the boys went back to Sunnyside at ten o'clock.

"You needn't be jealous, Strong," he said. "She is only practising on me. She thinks you are not ripe for such nonsense yet."

"Humph!" thought Hiram. "Do I appear to be such an awful kid?"

Comparisons are odious, however. Hiram did not propose to judge Lettie by the same standard by which he judged Sister. They were two very different girls.

The work of threshing went on apace. Hiram had arranged his wagons as he had the year before in harvesting the ensilage for the silo—putting the small wheels in the rear and the big wheels in front. They thus brought enormous loads of the golden sheaves on the racks to the threshing machine, merely dumping the load. Men stood on both sides of the heap and forked the sheaves into the chute. This was a modern threshing machine which automatically cut the bands as the sheaves were fed into the maw of the roaring monster.

The straw was blown into a huge pile at one side of the barn, later to be baled; for good wheat straw is valuable. The straw from the oats Hiram used for bedding.

Mr. Bronson or Hiram stood by the men bagging the grain, keeping tally. The ordinary wheat averaged thirty-two and a half bushels to the acre—almost twice the average of the year before, and better by several bushels than the average on the neighboring farms. Still, this was no great yield.

The threshing machine was then run in between the oat stacks and the bundles of oats were pitched by crews of four men into the chute. The oats yielded a fair average—nothing great. But, then, they had been raised more as a preparatory crop than anything else. All the oat land had grown a heavy crop of cowpeas for soiling, and now the corn stood rank, black, and knee high upon all those oat fields.

The oats were run through the threshing machine before the new wheat was brought up from the lower end of the twenty-acre piece which lay along the road. The oats had swept every kernel of the ordinary wheat out of the machine. The Staff of Life Wheat, as Hiram had dubbed it, was the handsomest grain anybody working on the threshing crew had ever seen.

And how it did yield! It was a marvel considering how thinly the seed had been sowed. Still, Battick was not satisfied, and almost wept whenever he thought of the quarter acre that had been burned. From the remaining three-and-three-quarters acres was threshed a hundred and sixty-eight bushels and a peck of grain—the biggest yield that had ever been known in the neighborhood of Sunnyside within the memory of the oldest living farmers.

Hiram, flushed and excited, felt like shouting in his happiness, self-contained though he usually was.

"Even when this land was all virgin prairie, I do not believe they got greater yields of wheat," Mr. Bronson declared.

"And yet," Hiram said thoughtfully, "a forty-five bushel average is an ordinary harvest in Kansas and Nebraska. And further north the yield is even greater. This, Mr. Bronson, is not wheat land."

"Well, it is good enough for me," declared his employer, warmly. "Those fellows out there in the Northwest are under greater expense than I am for tractors, machinery, and wages. I am pretty well satisfied. If you do as well for me with the corn—"

"Oh, when it comes to corn, this is just the land for it!" cried Hiram.

"And with tractors instead of horses—"

Hiram shook his head.

"I've been figuring that out, Mr. Bronson," the young farmer said. "Nothing less than three hundred acres of corn—and as much of it in one piece as possible—would pay under tractor cultivation. Sunnyside could never be a tractor farm. The fields are too much cut up."

CHAPTER XXIX

EXPLOITING THE WHEAT

The wheat threshing was past. The plows were going again, and following the raking and smoothing of the fields Hiram Strong put in either ensilage corn and peas, or a mixture of grass seeds for new mowing.

There were more than a hundred head of young stock on Sunnyside by midsummer, for Mr. Bronson was continually adding to the herd. Sunnyside was bound to wax fat in another year with all this kine to enrich the acres. Whoever Mr. Bronson sold the farm to would get, after all, one of the most productive farms in the Pringleton district.

Orrin Post (Hiram always thought of him by that name, whether it was rightfully his or not) was fairly in love with the place. He often said to Hiram:

"Strong, it would be the height of my ambition to own this place. I could settle down here in happiness for life."

"And marry Miss Pringle?" suggested Hiram chuckling.

"Delia has her cap set for another fellow," returned Orrin, grinning widely. "Believe me, she will get him, too."

"What are you talking about?" snapped Hiram, thinking the tables were being turned upon him and not liking it after all.

"Nothing personal. You are not the fellow, Strong," said Orrin.

"It must be Jim Larry, then, that she is after," sniffed the farm manager. "But if you like it, Orrin, I should say Sunnyside would make a mighty nice homestead. But, I tell you truly, Mr. Bronson isn't writing anything much on the credit side of the ledger yet. It takes time to bring back an abused farm like this to a paying basis. This new wheat of Battick's will put Mr. Bronson ahead of the game. Yet that ought not to be charged to the profits of the farm, for it was entirely a side issue."

The prospect for a bountiful corn harvest was, however, plain. When the corn was in the cribs they might easily count a clean slate, at least, without referring to the Staff of Life Wheat.

Hiram was elated when he went through the fields of early corn and examined the ears now rapidly filling out. He was confident that nobody ever grew a better corn crop on Sunnyside Farm than he was making.

Sister made her visit to Lettie Bronson and came back to Miss Pringle's fairly radiant. She had learned to put up her hair in a more attractive fashion and had bought a new summer dress under Lettie's tutelage which she said made her other clothes look "countrified" in comparison.

"Lettie Bronson is so hospitable and nice, Hiram," Sister said. "I let her introduce me as 'Cecilia Cheltenham.' It sounds stylish, and I could see it impressed Lettie's friends. Do you think it is wrong, Hiram? Maybe 'Cecilia' is my name."

"Just as good as any other, I guess, Sister," Hiram said kindly. "But don't for pity's sake name your brother some name that he won't like."

"Oh! 'Marvin'?"

"He can stand that better than 'Claude' or 'Percy.' Do give the kid a chance."

Hiram had come to consider the lost boy as a little fellow, too, although Sister had no particular warrant for that belief.

Sister's visit came to a close. She knew Mother Atterson and Lem Camp missed her sorely. She had now been at Miss Pringle's all of two months.

Everybody about the place thought a deal of Sister. Delia Pringle declared she was the nicest girl she had ever known. Orrin could not do too much for her and treated her with a brotherly affection that Hiram thought might breed some confidences on his part. But Orrin never touched upon his personal affairs save on one occasion, and then lightly enough.

"Didn't you have any brothers and sisters in all your life, Orrin?" Sister asked, pointblank, in Hiram's hearing.

"I had a sister," Orrin replied shortly.

"Oh! Didn't you love her, Orrin?"

"Very much indeed." He spoke in a low voice and turned away his head so that she might not read the expression in his face. "I never talk about her," he added in a tone that precluded further questioning on the girl's part.

This single reference to his past life was practically all Hiram had ever heard Orrin make. Sometimes curiosity burned so hotly in Hiram's thoughts that he was tempted to demand of Orrin who he was and what his real name was. Was he the "Theodore Chester" the bewhiskered farmer from the other side of Pringleton and the lawyer, Eben Craddock, were searching for back there in the winter?

There was one thing Hiram did not want to do, however; he did not wish to say or do anything to offend Orrin, so that the latter would leave him. More and more had the young farm manager come to depend on this helper who had been with him so long. He was paying Orrin bigger wages than anybody else on the place. But, as he told Mr. Bronson, if anything happened, he could depend upon Orrin to go ahead with the work and carry out the plans already formulated for the improvement of Sunnyside.

Nothing did happen—of any unlucky nature, at least—not even to Yancey Battick's wheat. Battick had watched the grain from the threshing with quite as keen apprehension as before.

However, if Adam Banks—or any other ill-disposed person—wished to ruin the yield of seed wheat, he did not succeed in such plans. The new wheat was spread upon the floor of the attic of the new house at Sunnyside, and that dwelling had been built mouse and rat proof!

Samples sent to various experimental farmers and agricultural stations with the well-written claims for the new wheat prepared by Yancey Battick attracted wide attention. Photographs of the growing wheat which Mr. Bronson had had taken were reproduced and printed in some of the farm papers. Every wheat grower who saw the grain and heard of its development was enthusiastic.

But the partners in the Staff of Life Wheat determined to sell none of the surplus of this present crop in large lots. Battick got up a catchy advertisement headed: "Grow it in Your Garden," showing how any farmer might develop seed enough from one fifty-cent packet to plant an acre of the new wheat in a year's time and so, in two years, gain a forty-acre crop.

The advertisement brought almost immediate returns, and the orders grew in number daily. At this packet rate the partners were getting for the seed wheat a hundred and twenty-eight dollars per bushel!

"Oh, no! there is no money in the seed business is there?" said Mr. Bronson, widely smiling.

And they were giving something of value for the fifty-cent orders that came in with a rush. With care any gardener could raise seed enough for an acre of grain, just as their advertisement said. The Staff of Life Wheat was a really wonderful variety.

Of course, the advertising cost a good deal and the exploitation of the wheat in this way entailed much work. But the profit was enticing.

The Rural Free Delivery mail carrier began to object to handling the traffic of Sunnyside Farm, and Battick was obliged to drive to Pringleton three times a week to mail packets of seed and get the money orders cashed. Mr. Bronson banked the money in a special account at the Plympton National Bank, and the seed selling business grew in importance.

Miss Pringle had learned to use a typewriter, and Battick had to hire her to help with the correspondence. This pleased Hiram immensely, for it put Yancey Battick in a position where he had to associate with the good-hearted spinster. The man did not have much show to continue a woman hater when he was associated daily with Delia Pringle!

"I told you," chuckled Orrin, "that Delia had set her cap for a particular person in this vicinity. And it is not you or me or Jimmy Larry. Yancey Battick is in much more danger right now from Delia, than his wheat ever was from the plottings of Adam Banks, believe me!"

CHAPTER XXX

KING CORN

Hiram Strong had grown taller corn with bigger ears on it in the East than any of the now ripening crop on Sunnyside Farm. But in bulk of shelled corn he knew he had never equaled this present crop.

One small field he had prepared especially for his seed corn. By this time he had come strongly to believe in the yellow-red strain of corn he had originally obtained from Daniel Brown, and this special field had been planted to that variety exclusively.

Hiram had from the very start prepared this field in a particular way. It had been a fallow piece on which had been thrown with the manure spreader during the winter about ten tons of fertilizer to the acre.

As soon as he could get on the field with his heavy horses he disked the piece both ways. This enabled him to plow at least eight inches deep, and he put three of the Percherons on the plow.

Hiram disked the field again after plowing, and harrowed it twice, making the soil as loose in the end as a garden plot. With this preparation, the bottom of the seed bed was as loose as the top and the plant roots when they got to growing, found plenty of room to develop.

Hiram did not put this corn in until the first of May. He planted it one grain to the hill, sixteen inches apart in the row, and the seed had been so carefully selected that he had an almost perfect stand all over the field. Hiram was no friend to replanting in any case.

At the time he put the corn in he sowed in the row fifty pounds of commercial fertilizer to the acre. When the corn was up a few inches and the root system began to develop, the young manager of Sunnyside Farm sowed a hundred pounds to the acre of a special forcing fertilizer—straddling the row with the cornplanter and sowing this special fertilizer in rows down the middle.

One day, about the time the bulk of Hiram's crop was hardening, Mr. Brown drove along and Hiram hailed him and asked him to walk with him through this field of seed corn. The grizzled old fellow noted the strong stalks, the wide blades, and the heavy ears with brightening visage. He loved corn! On Hiram's invitation to do so, he tore the husk away from several ears.

"By gum!" exclaimed the old man, "I thought I raised good corn. I always have raised good corn—the best in this county, if I say it who shouldn't. But you've got me beat, Mr. Strong—you've got me beat.

"This variety here, wherever you got it, is better than my best, and how even it runs! I never saw the like before. Where'd you get it? I thought you were raising corn from seed you bought of me?"

"I am," Hiram told him with a smile.

"Where'd you get it? I'd like to compare this new variety with my kind of corn," went on the farmer, not heeding Hiram's assurance.

"This is your corn you've got hold of, Mr. Brown," Hiram said.

"You don't tell me!"

"I certainly do. I consider it the best corn for this soil that I could find. It is only better than yours because I take more pains in selecting and testing the seed than you do."

"By gum! I can't believe it."

"Every hill of this corn, and the main part of my crop, came from the two baskets of corn I bought of you a year ago last March. Half of that I discarded. Probably two-thirds of this whole field I shall feed to the cattle. Out of the rest I will sell you what you may need for six dollars a basket, Mr. Brown."

"By gum! I want it," exclaimed the old fellow. "Some of it, anyway."

"It takes but about fourteen ears of corn, you know, to plant an acre. I'll sell you the same quantity I bought of you, if you like, at the price stated. I think it is worth that to raise seed like this, don't you, Mr. Brown?"

"Boy, if what you tell me is true—if this is my corn—then I don't know much about corn growing, after all."

"I guess you know about all there is to know about corn growing to date," laughed Hiram. "But you certainly do not know how to select and test your seed. And then, as I told you back there when I bought of you, you were too good to the rats and the mice. Many a kernel of corn is planted the germ of which the sharp little teeth of the rodents have emasculated."

Daniel Brown was not the only enthusiastic spectator of Hiram's corn. And the harvest bore out the promise, in spite of a heavy wind-storm that knocked down some of it. This that was blown down had glazed and was well matured. Hiram harvested it at once and sold it to fatten hogs at the market price.

This was a small loss compared to the value of the entire crop. This year Sunnyside followed the methods of big corn growers, and most of the corn was husked on the standing stalk, the eager cattle being turned in to graze on the fodder.

Fifty head of cattle marched off the farm that fall, stuffed with the cheapest kind of foods, and brought just as good a price as they would had they been winter-fattened with corn.

It was agreed that only the new wheat should be raised on Sunnyside the coming year. The partnership in the Staff of Life Wheat still continued, and they expected to sell the crop for seed as high as ten dollars a bushel to the big wheat growers. Hiram's share of the profits of the first crop had been a little over four thousand dollars. He felt that he was actually a wealthy man!

But he was thinking larger, and his mental view was much wider than when he had arrived at Sunnyside Farm. He wrote Sister that no small contract would ever satisfy him again. He heard of and saw farmers all through this corn belt making thirty and forty thousand dollars on a single crop.

At the County Fair he met and talked with a young man no older than Orrin Post who had cleared that season more than ten thousand dollars from raising corn on shares!

"If a man can get hold of a thousand acres, work it with tractors and have ordinary good luck, in one season he can pay for his land," Hiram wrote to his friends in the East. "It sounds big. It almost staggers one to think of it. It is a gamble!

"But I feel that I have in me the pluck to take that gambler's chance. I am going to bide my time, but have my money ready. The money is in the great wheat fields of the Northwest. America must feed the world, and I want to do my part. Ten years of raising wheat in a big way will enable me to retire, if I wish to.

"My father worked for other men all his life. I am going to be my own man before I get through. To this I set my hand and seal,

"Hiram Strong."

There was a wee note of anxiety, if not sorrow, in the return letter which Sister wrote. Those on the Atterson Eighty feared that Hiram Strong was getting altogether too far away from them.

But there was something else in Sister's letter that struck Hiram much more sharply. It suggested a possibility that startled him, to say the least, and roused in his mind again much suspicion regarding the bewhiskered farmer, whose name, he believed, was "Orrin Post," and his own Orrin's connection with this man.

Sister wrote:

"What do you think, Hiram? My lawyer wrote me from Boston that perhaps I might have been near to my dear little lost brother when I was out there to see you and Miss Pringle. He writes that he traced poor little Marvin (or whatever his name may be) to the Middle West, and that a correspondent of his, whom he put on the case, writes that he believes the boy has been in your neighborhood. The western lawyer is named Eben Craddock."

CHAPTER XXXI

WHO IS THEODORE CHESTER?

By this time the great corn crop was in the cribs and Sunnyside Farm was down to a winter basis. The crop had averaged sixty-five bushels of shelled corn to the acre, and only one other farm belonging to Mr. Bronson—and that a very well tilled one indeed—had done better, or as well.

Hiram's success with corn (which was, indeed, the principal reason for his having been put in charge of the farm by Mr. Bronson) was all the more to be commended because of the conditions under which the young fellow had undertaken this present contract. Hiram had been obliged to change radically the methods of corn growing he had followed in the East.

Just as the old-time farmer who hand-hoed his cornfield learned to throw away the hoe and use the cultivator, horse-hoe, and fluke-harrow, so these big corn growers had developed a method of cultivation quite at variance with that of the small farmer cultivating but a few acres.

Hiram had discovered that by rotation of crops which kept down the weeds corn could be cultivated with a riding harrow drawn by two or three Percherons that could do twice the work in a day of three ordinary horses worked to single cultivators, and with the saving of two men's time.

In addition to learning and following these new methods and in some cases improving on them, Hiram had kept more than a rough farm account. He knew his overhead charges against each crop. It cost him more per acre, for instance, to prepare his field for the seed corn he had shown Daniel Brown; but that particular field paid him in increased yield. It ran ten bushels per acre over the remainder of the farm.

The cribs were bursting with corn. Mr. Bronson had long since got over his first objection to the red ear and the occasional mottled one. This corn would ship to any distance after it was well dried and lose practically no weight in the journey.

He proposed to hold Hiram's crop this year until mid-winter, or later, when the price would certainly advance.

"I am satisfied that your methods have made me money, Hiram," said his employer, on one occasion. "You don't know everything. Nobody does. But there is one very good thing about you. You are not too old to learn!" and Mr. Bronson laughed.

However, all this occurred before that letter came from Sister which so excited Hiram's curiosity. That the same Cincinnati lawyer should have to do with the search for the lost Cheltenham boy and for the mysterious Theodore Chester, was a coincidence that, Hiram decided, must needs be looked into.

"Strayed boys are not so common as all that," he thought.

He sat down and wrote to Mr. Eben Craddock at the address the lawyer had given him, asking if he had found Theodore Chester, just who that mysterious individual was, and if the lost Cheltenham boy—first name unknown—had any connection with Mr. Craddock's former inquiry at Sunnyside Farm.

As it chanced, another matter came up before Hiram received any reply from Craddock, which proved to be a very surprising incident and one that for the time being quite drove thought of his letter to Craddock out of Hiram's mind.

Mr. Bronson was buying young stock—calves and yearlings—all the time to swell the number of the herd Hiram was feeding, and with which he was so successfully enriching Sunnyside. Sometimes the farm's owner, or one of his men, brought the new live stock to Hiram. At other times the former owners of the calves delivered them.

It was on a day early in December that a big farm wagon with a cattle-rack in it was driven into the yard. The boys were living again in the house, and had the furnace fire going, for Mr. Bronson had just had the house decorated and wished it to be kept well heated. Hiram left his comfortable seat before the dining room register, and went out to meet the wagon. Orrin and Jim were both down at the cattle sheds.

The moment Hiram drew near the wagon in which the calves bawled he recognized the driver and the latter knew him.

"Well, well!" exclaimed the bewhiskered man whom Hiram believed to have been the employer of his assistant whom he knew as "Orrin Post." "Are you still here?"

"I am on the job still," answered Hiram smiling.

"I was told to ask for Mr. Strong."

"That is my name."

"Then you do run this here Sunnyside Farm?"

"You are correctly informed, sir."

"And they tell me you've grown the biggest crop of corn and the heaviest wheat ever seen on this land," said the bearded man from beyond Pringleton.

"We've done right well here this year."

"Well, well! Well, I've got six calves here, Mr. Stephen Bronson bought and told me to deliver to you."

"All right. Drive down that road beside the barn, if you will. We will unload them at the calf pens."

He jumped upon the wagon at the rear to look at the calves and ride down to the place indicated. All the time he was wondering what would happen if the bewhiskered man should spy Orrin—if the real Orrin Post should confront the young man who claimed that name.

Ought he to have prepared his friend for this meeting? Should he inquire of the farmer what the mystery was all about, anyway?

Hiram remembered how Orrin had slipped out of the house and kept away when this farmer and the lawyer had appeared at Sunnyside the previous winter. What would he do now?

And just then the teamster turned the trotting horses into the paddock and brought them to a standstill with a flourish.

"Whoa, there!" he shouted. "Where do you want these calves put, Mr. Strong? Here, you—By crippity! how the deuce did you come here, Ted Chester?"

Hiram jumped off the rear of the wagon and ran around. Leaning on a fork the young man he knew as Orrin Post confronted the farmer.

"So it is you, is it, Mr. Post?" the younger man said.

"You mean to say you've been here all this time? And that lawyer and me have been right here and asked—"

Suddenly he swung to look at Hiram. He shook a finger at him.

"What did you mean by telling me and that lawyer you didn't know this fellow?"

"I did not. You did not make me understand that this was the man you were looking for," declared Hiram without looking at his friend.

"You were holding out on us," said the farmer. "You made me lose a fifty-dollar note."

"How is that?"

"That lawyer promised it to me if we found Ted, here. And now I don't suppose he'll give a cent."

"Anybody would be mighty foolish to give fifty dollars for me," broke in the man who appeared to be the missing Theodore Chester.

"What do they want you for, anyway?" Hiram demanded.

"I don't know."

"Do you know?" Hiram asked the original Orrin Post.

"That lawyer did not tell me. But if this fellow, Ted Chester, hadn't left me flat—"

"If you hadn't put me out when I was taken sick, I suppose you would have got the reward," said the accused.

"But why should anybody offer a reward for you?" Hiram asked him again.

"Because they want me, I suppose."

"What do they want you for? And who wants you?"

"Humph! I'm not going to tell everybody that," said the other, with a side glance at the bearded man, indicating that Post was the person he did not care to confide in.

"Well, is your name Theodore Chester?" Hiram asked in some desperation.

"I suppose it is. At least, that is what I have always called myself."

"Now you know, Ted, I always treated you right," began the bearded man.

But Hiram stopped him. He waved a commanding hand.

"Get those calves into that pen. If Ted wants to talk to you, he can do so afterward. But it doesn't seem to me as though it was any of our business whether he is Ted Chester or somebody else."

"Well, I tell you right now," growled the farmer. "I ain't going to lose that fifty if I can help it."

When the calves were unloaded and the real Orrin Post had driven away grumbling, Ted Chester—if that was his name—turned to look at Hiram in rather a sheepish fashion.

"I suppose you think it's up to me to explain, Strong?" he asked.

"Well, I am curious," admitted Hiram.

"Of course, you, thinking my name was Orrin Post until now—"

"No. I might as well tell you that I suspected you had been known as Ted Chester about a year ago," interrupted Hiram, and he told him how he had come to that belief.

"Well, it is a fact. That was Orrin Post. I worked for him. He is the man who chased me when I was sick. I don't know how I came to give you his name, unless it was because he was on my mind. And in my opinion—then, at least—one name was as good as another."

"Was there any reason why you were afraid to use this one of Chester?"

"Only that I did not want to be traced."

"By whom?"

"By anybody."

"Then you knew," said Hiram thoughtfully, "that somebody was after you?"

"I was told so."

"Who does that lawyer represent?"

"Hang it all, Hiram!" exclaimed the other, "I have been in a reform school. Back East. I ran away. I never had any bringing up—much. Only for a couple of years I lived with nice people. Then I got into trouble and was arrested. I stayed in the reform school some time."

"This must have happened a good while ago," guessed Hiram shrewdly.

"I was only nineteen when I ran away from the institution."

"The authorities cannot be searching for you through that lawyer," declared Hiram. "It must be for something else you are wanted."

"I—I never thought of that," murmured his friend.

"Who were your people?"

"I don't know. First I remember I was in an orphanage."

"Just like Sister."

"I suppose so," said the other.

"How do you know 'Theodore Chester' is your name?" demanded Hiram.

"Why, that is what they called me. No! Not altogether," he added. "I saw the books once and I know they had me down as 'Ted C.' They always called me Ted. I named myself Chester."

"Just as Sister names her brother—and herself for that matter," muttered Hiram. "Say, Orrin—I mean, Ted! Suppose your name should be the same as Sister's?"

"What do you mean, Strong?" cried the other.

"Suppose your real name is 'Cheltenham,' too?" propounded Hiram Strong shrewdly. "Stranger things have happened, don't you think?"

"Me? You mean that I may be Sister's brother?" demanded Ted. "What nonsense! Why, she told me her brother was a little boy—younger than she is."

"Lots she knows about it!" rejoined Hiram excitedly. "She doesn't know anything more about her brother than you know about yourself. Orrin—Ted—whatever your name is. This matter has got to be looked into! Right away, too!"

CHAPTER XXXII

LOOKING AHEAD

Later the reticent Ted opened his heart to his friend and told him of all his checkered life previous to his coming to Sunnyside Farm.

It was by no means a strange story; except that he was forced to live in a public institution, the management of which chanced to be in rather hard, unsympathetic hands.

Theodore could remember a little of what had happened to him before he was incarcerated in that first institution with its stone walls and strict discipline, and a government scarcely paternal.

He could remember that he had had a little sister, too, whom he loved very much and whom he looked after and carried about in his arms. But they had taken her from him in the orphanage and he had become "Ted C." He never was allowed to see his little sister again.

At twelve years old he was taken by a family who treated him well and who sent him to school and taught him for a few short years what the "worth while" things in life were. Then illness and death in the family cost the boy his home, and he had to struggle for himself. He was soon picked up by the police and the magistrate sent him to the reform school, as there was nobody to speak for him.

How Ted had kept a clean heart during these troubled years was a mystery. There was something, Hiram believed, innately good in the fellow. Like Sister, he possessed traits of character that disposed him toward good rather than toward evil.

But his experiences made him reticent and suspicious. After he ran away from the reform school he never wholly trusted people he met. In the city he was always in fear of the police, as well as of his associates in the reform school who likewise had got out. He was afraid they would get him into further trouble. So he went out into the country and worked his way west from farm to farm.

That he really was Theodore Cheltenham was soon established through letters from the Eastern lawyer who had the matter in charge. At Christmas time both he and Hiram were relieved from duty, and they went to Scoville to spend the holidays at the Atterson farm and to settle with the lawyer about the legacy left to Ted and his sister.

Sister's name, by the way, was Mary, but she always called herself "Mary Cecilia."

"Now I've got money and a brother, both," Sister said to Hiram, "I am somebody. I wish Mr. Fred Crackit and Mr. Peebles and all those others at the boarding house in Crawberry knew about it—and that boy who used to pull my pigtails so.

"Dear me, Hiram Strong, what a lucky girl I am."

She would have been glad to keep her brother with her in the East, for she was very fond of him already. But Theodore's thoughts were set on Sunnyside. He had immediately written to Mr. Bronson, making an offer for the farm, having money enough as his share of his grandmother's legacy to make a first payment on the place. And, in time, Sunnyside Farm became Ted Cheltenham's property.

The two young fellows returned to Pringleton after New Year's to take up their work. Hiram's contract with Mr. Bronson had still some months to run, and it was arranged that he should put in the corn crop and continue a personal oversight of the farm until after wheat harvest. For Hiram had a stake in that wheat crop; and while he was making arrangements for his own great venture, the particulars of which will be related in "Hiram in the Great Northwest," he intended to keep a sharp eye on Yancey Battick's famous wheat.

That winter, whenever it was open weather, both Hiram and Battick searched the fields for the pest that had attacked the Staff of Life Wheat during the previous season. Some of the farmers around the Banks place had their grain well-nigh eaten up by the pest, but none appeared again on Sunnyside. There was no danger of Adam Banks spreading the grain louse to other fields, if he had been guilty of it before, for Banks had finally come to the attention of the police and had been put in jail.

"And the right place for him," declared Miss Pringle. "He has made trouble enough about here."

Miss Pringle's own interest in the new wheat was abiding since she had helped in its sale during the summer. And by this time she showed an inordinate interest in everything belonging to Yancey Battick.

The latter had "spruced up," as Hiram called it, a good deal of late. He was no longer playing the hermit. His success with the Staff of Life Wheat made him forget his failure with the Mortgage Lifter Oats, and really made a new man of Yancey Battick.

"And mark my words," Ted Cheltenham said, laughing, when Hiram said this, "that new man is looking for a new woman. I can't go over to Delia's in the evening without finding Yancey Battick occupying her best rocker. I don't know but Abigail will leave Miss Pringle flat. She still believes Battick has the evil eye."

This winter did not pass without Hiram being invited to one of Lettie Bronson's parties. This time the young girl saw to it that Ted was asked too, for she rode up to Sunnyside herself to deliver the invitation to the social function by word of mouth.

Of course they agreed to go. Hiram would not have hurt Lettie's feelings for anything, and she was much in earnest. As for Ted, he seemed to have prepared for this very occasion while he was East.

At least, he displayed a handsome suit of evening clothes and asked Hiram if he was not going to wear his own dress suit. Hiram hauled the suit in question out of his trunk and carefully examined it. In his eyes the clothes looked just the same as they had when he laid them away.

"Here, Jim," he said to Larry. "You and I are about of a size. I make you a free-will offering of these—pants, coat and vest! Somehow, I don't fancy my appearance in the 'soup to nuts.' My figure is not built right for such garments. I am sure no tailor could make Hiram Strong look as though he belonged in a suit of this kind."

Perhaps he was right. At least, nobody considered him out of place when he arrived at the Bronson house and appeared as one of the few men who were not in evening dress.

In another matter Hiram showed wisdom on this occasion. Lettie was just as kind to him as she always had been. He might have had three or four dances with her. He accepted two, and sat them out with her in a corner of the conservatory, although Ted Cheltenham danced with every girl he could find—and danced well.

"You are a funny boy, Hiram Strong," said Lettie, looking at him curiously.

"How so?"

"Why, preferring to sit here rather than to getting out on that beautifully waxed floor," she said.

"I would be 'funnier' there than I look here," he replied grimly. "I know my failings better than I used to, Lettie."

"Why, Hiram!"

"Sure I do. I am only going to tackle in the future what I have a fair chance to accomplish."

"I cannot imagine you as a failure in anything, Hiram," she, told him very prettily.

"No? I can imagine myself failing in lots of things."

"But not in this new venture you are making? Father says you have wonderful pluck to attempt to go out into that strange country and risk your last cent on a wheat ranch."

"I suppose it does look like a gamble," admitted Hiram.

"And father says he would be glad to help you get started here, as Orrin—I mean, Theodore—is starting."

"It is kind of your father, I know," agreed Hiram. "But I guess I am in a hurry. I may be glad to come back and take a job with your father again. But it will only be after I have spent every cent I own on this new venture."

"And you have made good here, Hiram," she said, with some wistfulness in her voice and her look. "Don't you think you would better stay?"

"Couldn't think of it, Lettie. My plans are all made."

"Not—not if all your friends here asked you to?" she ventured.

"Why, I am sure," Hiram laughed, but remembering in secret how Sister had finally wished him Godspeed, "that none of my real friends would want to keep me back from this thing, when I am so set on it and have been so long planning for it."

"Well, perhaps not," she sighed. "Here comes Theodore, looking for me, Hiram. I have promised him the next dance."

She arose, and Hiram watched her float away in the arms of his friend. For a moment he felt a stab of—was it jealousy? Or was it just a feeling of homesickness as he contemplated so soon leaving everybody he knew and cared for, to lose himself in the vast wheat fields of the Great Northwest?

THE END

[Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphenation left as printed.]

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Table of Contents

HIRAM IN THE MIDDLE WEST

A YOUNG FARMER'S UPWARD STRUGGLE

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

HIRAM IN THE MIDDLE WEST

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHAPTER XXIX

CHAPTER XXX

CHAPTER XXXI

CHAPTER XXXII

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE