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!"