



Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer





HIRAM THE YOUNG FARMER

By Burbank L. Todd


CONTENTS

CHAPTER I. THE CALL OF SPRING

CHAPTER II. AT MRS. ATTERSON'S

CHAPTER III. A DREARY DAY

CHAPTER IV. THE LOST CARD

CHAPTER V. THE COMMOTION AT MOTHER ATTERSON'S

CHAPTER VI. THIS DIDN'T GET BY HIRAM

CHAPTER VII. HOW HIRAM LEFT TOWN

CHAPTER VIII. THE LURE OF GREEN FIELDS

CHAPTER IX. THE BARGAIN IS MADE

CHAPTER X. THE SOUND OF BEATING HOOFS

CHAPTER XI. A GIRL RIDES INTO THE TALE

CHAPTER XII. SOMETHING ABOUT A PASTURE FENCE

CHAPTER XIII. THE UPROOTING

CHAPTER XIV. GETTING IN THE EARLY CROPS

CHAPTER XV. TROUBLE BREWS

CHAPTER XV. ONE SATURDAY AFTERNOON

CHAPTER XVII. MR. PEPPER APPEARS

CHAPTER XVIII. A HEAVY CLOUD

CHAPTER XIX. THE REASON WHY

CHAPTER XX. AN ENEMY IN THE DARK

CHAPTER XXI. THE WELCOME TEMPEST

CHAPTER XXII. FIRST FRUITS

CHAPTER XXIII. TOMATOES AND TROUBLE

CHAPTER XXIV. "CORN THAT'S CORN"

CHAPTER XXV. THE BARBECUE

CHAPTER XXVI. SISTER'S TURKEYS

CHAPTER XXVII. RUN TO EARTH

CHAPTER XXVIII. HARVEST

CHAPTER XXIX. LETTIE BRONSON'S CORN HUSKING

CHAPTER XXX. ONE SNOWY MIDNIGHT

CHAPTER XXXI. "MR. DAMOCLES'S SWORD"

CHAPTER XXXII. THE CLOUD IS LIFTED

CHAPTER XXXIII. "CELERY MAD"

CHAPTER XXXIV. CLEANING UP A PROFIT

CHAPTER XXXV. LOOKING AHEAD




CHAPTER I. THE CALL OF SPRING

"Well, after all, the country isn't such a bad place as some city folk
think."

The young fellow who said this stood upon the highest point of the Ridge
Road, where the land sloped abruptly to the valley in which lay the
small municipality of Crawberry on the one hand, while on the other open
fields and patches of woodland, in a huge green-and-brown checkerboard
pattern, fell more easily to the bank of the distant river.

Dotted here and there about the farming country lying before the youth
as he looked westward were cottages, or the more important-looking
homesteads on the larger farms; and in the distance a white church spire
behind the trees marked the tiny settlement of Blaine's Smithy.

A Sabbath calm lay over the fields and woods. It was mid-afternoon of
an early February Sunday--the time of the mid-winter thaw, that false
prophet of the real springtime.

Although not a furrow had been turned as yet in the fields, and the snow
lay deep in some fence corners and beneath the hedges, there was, after
all, a smell of fresh earth--a clean, live smell--that Hiram Strong had
missed all week down in Crawberry.

"I'm glad I came up here," he muttered, drawing in great breaths of
the clean air. "Just to look at the open fields, without any brick and
mortar around, makes a fellow feel fine!"

He stretched his arms above his head and, standing alone there on the
upland, felt bigger and better than he had in weeks.

For Hiram Strong was a country boy, born and bred, and the town stifled
him. Besides, he had begun to see that his two years in Crawberry had
been wasted.

"As a hustler after fortune in the city I am not a howling success,"
mused Hiram. "Somehow, I'm cramped down yonder," and he glanced back
at the squalid brick houses below him, the smoky roofs, and the ugly
factory chimneys.

"And I declare," he pursued, reflectively, "I don't believe I can stand
Old Dan Dwight much longer. Dan, Junior, is bad enough--when he is
around the store; but the boss would drive a fellow to death."

He shook his head, now turning from the pleasanter prospect of the
farming land and staring down into the town.

"Maybe I'm not a success because I don't stick to one thing. I've had
six jobs in less'n two years. That's a bad record for a boy, I believe.
But there hasn't any of them suited me, nor have I suited them.

"And Dwight's Emporium beats 'em all!" finished Hiram, shaking his head.

He turned his back upon the town once more, as though to wipe his
failure out of his memory. Before him sloped a field of wheat and
clover.

It had kept as green under the snow as though winter was an unknown
season. Every cloverleaf sparkled and the leaves of wheat bristled like
tiny spears.

Spring was on the way. He could hear the call of it!

Two years before Hiram had left the farm. He had no immediate relatives
after his father died. The latter had been a tenant-farmer only, and
when his tools and stock and the few household chattels had been sold
to pay the debts that had accumulated during his last illness, there was
very little money left for Hiram.

There was nobody to say him nay when he packed his bag and started for
Crawberry, which was the metropolis of his part of the country. He had
set out boldly, believing that he could get ahead faster, and become
master of his own fortune more quickly in town than in the locality
where he was born.

He was a rugged, well-set-up youth of seventeen, not over-tall, but
sturdy and able to do a man's work. Indeed, he had long done a man's
work before he left the farm.

Hiram's hands were calloused, he shuffled a bit when walked, and his
shoulders were just a little bowed from holding the plow handles since
he had been big enough to bridle his father's old mare.

Yes, the work on the farm had been hard--especially for a growing boy.
Many farm boys work under better conditions than Hiram had.

Nevertheless, after a two years' trial of what the city has in store for
most country boys who cut loose from their old environment, Hiram Strong
felt to-day as though he must get back to the land.

"There's nothing for me in town. Clerking in Dwight's Emporium will
never get me anywhere," he thought, turning finally away from the open
country and starting down the steep hill.

"Why, there are college boys working on our street cars here--waiting
for some better job to turn up. What chance does a fellow stand who's
only got a country school education?

"And there isn't any clean fun for a fellow in Crawberry--fun that
doesn't cost money. And goodness knows I can't make more than enough to
pay Mrs. Atterson, and for my laundry, and buy a new suit of overalls
and a pair of shoes occasionally.

"No, sir!" concluded Hiram. "There's nothing in it. Not for a fellow
like me, at any rate. I'd better be back on the farm--and I wish I was
there now."

He had been to church that morning; but after the late dinner at his
boarding house had set out on this lonely walk. Now he had nothing to
look forward to as he returned but the stuffy parlor of Mrs. Atterson's
boarding house, the cold supper in the dining-room, which was attended
in a desultory fashion by such of the boarders as were at home, and then
a long, dull evening in his room, or bed after attending the evening
service at the church around the corner.

Hiram even shrank from meeting the same faces at the boarding house
table, hearing the same stale jokes or caustic remarks about Mrs.
Atterson's food from Fred Crackit and the young men boarders of his
class, or the grumbling of Mr. Peebles, the dyspeptic invalid, or the
inane monologue of Old Lem Camp.

And Mrs. Atterson herself--good soul though she was--had gotten on Hiram
Strong's nerves, too. With her heat-blistered face, near-sighted eyes
peering through beclouded spectacles, and her gown buttoned up hurriedly
and with a gap here and there where a button was missing, she was the
typically frowsy, hurried, nagged-to-death boarding house mistress.

And as for "Sister," Mrs. Atterson's little slavey and
maid-of-all-work----

"Well, Sister's the limit!" smiled Hiram, as he turned into the street,
with its rows of ugly brick houses on either hand. "I believe Fred
Crackit has got it right. Mrs. Atterson keeps Sister instead of a
cat--so there'll be something to kick."

The half-grown girl--narrow-chested, round shouldered, and sallow--had
been taken by Mrs. Atterson from some charity institution. "Sister," as
the boarders all called her, for lack of any other cognomen, would have
her yellow hair in four attenuated pigtails hanging down her back, and
she would shuffle about the dining-room in a pair of Mrs. Atterson's old
shoes----

"By Jove! there she is now," exclaimed the startled youth.

At the corner of the street several "slices" of the brick block had
been torn away and the lot cleared for the erection of some business
building. Running across this open space with wild shrieks and spilling
the milk from the big pitcher she carried--milk for the boarders' tea,
Hi knew--came Mrs. Atterson's maid.

Behind her, and driving her like a horse by the ever present "pigtails,"
bounded a boy of about her own age--a laughing, yelling imp of a boy
whom Hiram knew very well.

"That Dan Dwight is the meanest little scamp at this end of the town!"
he said to himself.

The noise the two made attracted only the idle curiosity of a few
people. It was a locality where, even on Sundays, there was more or less
noise.

Sister begged and screamed. She feared she would spill the milk and told
Dan, Junior, so. But he only drove her the harder, yelling to her to
"Get up!" and yanking as hard as he could on the braids.

"Here! that's enough of that!" called Hiram, stepping quickly toward the
two.

For Sister had stopped exhausted, and in tears.

"Be off with you!" commanded Hiram. "You've plagued the girl enough."

"Mind your business, Hi-ram-Lo-ram!" returned Dan, Junior, grabbing at
Sister's hair again.

Hiram caught the younger boy by the shoulder and whirled him around.

"You run along to Mrs. Atterson, Sister," he said, quietly. "No, you
don't!" he added, gripping Dan, Junior, more firmly. "You'll stop right
here."

"Lemme be, Hi Strong!" bawled the other, when he found he could not
easily jerk away. "It'll be the worse for you if you don't."

"Just you wait until the girl is home," returned Hiram, laughing. It was
an easy matter for him to hold the writhing Dan, Junior.

"I'll fix you for this!" squalled the boy. "Wait till I tell my father."

"You wouldn't dare tell your father the truth," laughed Hi.

"I'll fix you," repeated Dan, Junior, and suddenly aimed a vicious kick
at his captor.

Had the kick landed where Dan, Junior, intended--under Hi's kneecap--the
latter certainly would have been "fixed." But the country youth was too
agile for him.

He jumped aside, dragged Dan, Junior, suddenly toward him, and then gave
him a backward thrust which sent the lighter boy spinning.

Now, it had rained the day before and in a hollow beside the path was
a puddle several inches deep. Dan, Junior, lost his balance, staggered
back, tripped over his own clumsy heels, and splashed full length into
it.

"Oh, oh!" he bawled, managing to get well soaked before he scrambled
out. "I'll tell my father on you, Hi Strong. You'll catch it for this!"

"You'd better run home before you catch cold," said Hiram, who could not
help laughing at the young rascal's plight. "And let girls alone another
time."

To himself he said: "Well, the goodness knows I couldn't be much more
in bad odor with Mr. Dwight than I am already. But this escapade of his
precious son ought to about 'fix' me, as Dan, Junior, says.

"Whether I want to, or not, I reckon I will be looking for another job
in a very few days."



CHAPTER II. AT MRS. ATTERSON'S

When you came into "Mother" Atterson's front hall (the young men
boarders gave her that appellation in irony) the ghosts of many ancient
boiled dinners met you with--if you were sensitive and unused to the
odors of cheap boarding houses--a certain shock.

He was starting up the stairs, on which the ragged carpet threatened to
send less agile persons than Mrs. Atterson's boarders headlong to
the bottom at every downward trip, when the clang of the gong in the
dining-room announced the usual cold spread which the landlady thought
due to her household on the first day of the week.

Hiram hesitated, decided that he would skip the meal, and started up
again. But just then Fred Crackit lounged out of the parlor, with Mr.
Peebles following him. Dyspeptic as he was, Mr. Peebles never missed a
meal himself, and Crackit said:

"Come on, Hi-Low-Jack! Aren't you coming down to the usual feast of
reason and flow of soul?"

Crackit thought he was a natural humorist, and he had to keep up his
reputation at all times and seasons. He was rather a dissipated-looking
man of thirty years or so, given to gay waistcoats and wonderfully knit
ties. A brilliant as large as a hazel-nut--and which, in some lights,
really sparkled like a diamond--adorned the tie he wore this evening.

"I don't believe I want any supper," responded Hiram, pleasantly.

"What's the matter? Got some inside information as to what Mother
Atterson has laid out for us? You're pretty thick with the old girl,
Hi."

"That's not a nice way to speak of her, Mr. Crackit," said Hi, in a low
voice.

The other boarders--those who were in the house-straggled into the
basement dining-room one after the other, and took their places at the
long table, each in his customary manner.

That dining-room at Mother Atterson's never could have been a cheerful
place. It was long, and low-ceiled, and the paper on the walls was
a dingy red, so old that the figure on it had retired into the
background--been absorbed by it, so to speak.

The two long, dusty, windows looked upon an area, and were grilled half
way up by wrought-iron screens which, too, helped to shut out the light
of day.

The long table was covered by a red figured table cloth. The "castors"
at both ends and in the middle were the ugliest--Hiram was sure--to be
found in all the city of Crawberry. The crockery was of the coarsest
kind. The knives and forks were antediluvian. The napkins were as coarse
as huck towels.

But Mrs. Atterson's food--considering the cost of provisions and the
charge she made for her table--was very good. Only it had become a habit
for certain of the boarders, led by the jester, Crackit, to criticise
the viands.

Sometimes they succeeded in making Mrs. Atterson angry; and sometimes,
Hiram knew, she wept, alone in the dining-room, after the harumscarum,
thoughtless crowd had gone.

Old Lem Camp--nobody save Hiram thought to put "Mr." before the old
gentleman's name--sidled in and sat down beside the country boy, as
usual. He was a queer, colorless sort of person--a man who never looked
into the face of another if he could help it. He would look all around
Hiram when he spoke to him--at his shoulder, his shirtfront, his hands,
even at his feet if they were visible, but never at his face.

And at the table he kept up a continual monologue. It was difficult
sometimes for Hiram to know when he was being addressed, and when poor
Mr. Camp was merely talking to himself.

"Let's see--where has Sister put my napkin--Oh! here it is--You've been
for a walk, have you, young man?--No, that's not my napkin; I didn't
spill any gravy at dinner--Nice day out, but raw--Goodness me! can't I
have a knife and fork?--Where's my knife and fork?--Sister certainly has
forgotten my knife and fork.--Oh! Here they are--Yes, a very nice day
indeed for this time of year."

And so on. It was quite immaterial to Mr. Camp whether he got an answer
to his remarks to Hiram, or not. He went on muttering to himself, all
through the meal, sometimes commenting upon what the others said at the
table--and that quite shrewdly, Hiram noticed; but the other boarders
considered him a little cracked.

Sister smiled sheepishly at Hiram as she passed the tea. She drowned
his tea with milk and put in no less than four spoonfuls of sugar. But
although the fluid was utterly spoiled for Hiram's taste he drank it
with fortitude, knowing that the girl's generosity was the