in the morning until dark.

But they were well--and happy. Mother Atterson, her heart troubled by
thought of "that Pepper-man," could not always repress her smiles. If
the danger of losing the farm were past, she would have had nothing in
the world to trouble her.

The hundred eggs she had purchased for five dollars had proven more than
sixty per cent fertile. Some advice that Hiram had given her enabled
Mrs. Atterson to handle the chickens so that the loss from disease was
very small.

He knocked together for her a couple of pens, eight feet square, which
could be moved about on the grass every day. In these pens the seventy,
or more, chicks thrived immensely. And Sister was devoted to them.

Meanwhile the old white-faced cow, that had been a terror to Mother
Atterson at the start, had found her calf, and it was a heifer.

"Take my advice and raise it," said Hiram. "She is a scrub, but she is a
pretty good scrub. You'll see that she will give a good measure of milk.
And what this farm needs is cattle.

"If you could make stable manure enough to cover the cleared acres a
foot deep, you could raise almost any crop you might name--and
make money by it. The land is impoverished by the use of commercial
fertilizers, unbalanced by humus."

"Well, I guess You know, Hiram," admitted Mrs. Atterson. "And that
calf certainly is a pretty creeter. It would be too bad to turn it into
veal."

Hiram did not intend to raise the calf expensively, however. He took it
away from its mother right at the start, and in two weeks it was eating
grass, and guzzling skimmed milk and calf-meal, while the old cow was
beginning to show her employer her value.

Mrs. Atterson bought a small churn and quickly learned that "slight" at
butter-making which is absolutely essential if one would succeed in the
dairy business.

The cow turned out to pasture early in May, too; so her keep was not
so heavy a burden. She lowed some after the calf; but the latter was
growing finely under Hiram's care, and Mrs. Atterson had at least two
pounds of butter for sale each week, and the housekeeper at the St.
Beris school paid her thirty-five cents a pound for it.

Hiram gradually picked up a retail route in the town, which customers
paid more for the surplus vegetables--and butter--than could be obtained
at the stores. He had taught Sister how to drive, and sometimes even
Mrs. Atterson went in with the vegetables.

This relieved the young farmer and allo