er four teats, though Thompson had relieved her thrice
while _en route_.

I was greatly pleased with the cows, but must not spend time on them
now, for things are happening in my factory faster than I can tell of
them. Johnson had built some primitive hotbeds for early vegetables out
of old lumber and oiled muslin. He had filled them with refuse from the
horse stable and had sown his seeds.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE FIRST HATCH

On February 3 the incubator lamps were lighted under the first invoice
of one thousand eggs. The incubating cellar was to Sam's liking, and he
felt confident that three weeks of strict attention to temperature,
moisture, and the turning of eggs, would bring results beyond my
expectations.

After the seventh day, on which he had tested or candled the eggs, he
was willing to promise almost anything in the way of a hatch, up to
seventy-five or eighty per cent. In the intervals of attendance on the
incubators he was hard at work on the brooder-house, which must be ready
for its first occupants by the 25th. Everything went smoothly until the
18th. That morning Sam met me with a long face.

"Something went wrong with one of my lamps last night," said he. "I
looked at them at ten o'clock and they were all right, but at six this
morning one of the thermometers was registering 122 deg., and the whole
batch was cooked."

"Not the whole thousand, Sam!"

"No, but 170 fertile eggs, and that spoils a twenty-dollar bill and a
lot of good time. What in the name of the black man ever got into that
lamp of mine is more than I know. It's just my luck!"

"It's everybody's luck who tries to raise chickens by wholesale, and we
must copper it. Don't be downed by the first accident, Sam; keep
fighting and you'll win out."

The brooder-house was ready when the first chicks picked the shells on
the 24th, and within thirty-six hours we had 503 little white balls of
fluff to transfer from the four incubators to the brooder-house. We put
about a hundred together in each of five brooders, fed them cut oats and
wheat with a little coarse corn meal and all the fresh milk they could
drink, and they throve mightily.

The incubators were filled again on the 26th, and from that hatch we got
552 chicks. On the 21st of March they were again filled, and on the 13th
of April we had 477 more to add to the colony in the brooder-house. For
the last time we started the lamps April 15th, and on the 6th of May we
closed the