that would grow luxuriantly on that bottom
land--providing, always, the flood did not come and fulfill Henry
Pollock's prophecy.

"Two feet of water on that meadow, eh?" thought Hiram. "Well, that
certainly would be bad. I wouldn't want that to happen after the ground
was plowed this year, even. It would tear up the land, and sour it, and
spoil it for a corn-crop, indeed."

So he was down a good deal to the river's edge, watching the ebb and
flow of the stream. A heavy rain would, over night, fill the river to
its very brim and the open field, even beyond the marshy spot, would be
a-slop with standing water.

"It sure wouldn't grow alfalfa," chuckled Hiram to himself one day. "For
the water rises here a good deal closer to the surface than four feet,
and alfalfa farmers declare that if the springs rise that high, there is
no use in putting in alfalfa. Why! I reckon just now the water is within
four inches of the top of the ground."

If the river remained so high, and the low ground so saturated with
water, he knew, too, that he could not get the six acres plowed in time
to put in corn this year. And it was this year's crop he must think
about first.

Even if Pepper did not exercise his option, and turn Mrs. Atterson
out of the place, a big commercial crop of onions, or any other
better-paying crop, could only be tried the second year.

Hiram had got his seed corn for the upland piece of the man who raised
the best corn in the community. He had tried the fertility of each ear,
discarded those which proved weakly, or infertile, and his stand of corn
for the four acres, which was now half hand high, was the best of any
farmer between the Atterson place and town.

But this corn was a hundred-and-ten-day variety. The farmer he got it of
told him that he had raised a crop from a piece planted the day before
the Fourth of July; but it was safer to get it in at least by June
fifteenth.

And here it was past June first, and the meadow land had not yet been
plowed.

"However," Hiram said to Henry, when they walked down to the riverside
on Sunday afternoon, "I'm going ahead on Faith--just as the minister
said in church this morning. If Faith can move mountains, we'll give it
a chance to move something right down here."

"I dunno, Hiram," returned the other boy, shaking his head. "Father says
he'll git in here for you with three head and a Number 3 plow by the
middle of this week if you say so--'nless it rains again, o