"Catch hold here, Henry," laughed Hiram. "One of you on each side now,
and pump for all you're worth. And see if I'm not right, my boy. You
can't keep your end up with Pete at this job; for if you do, the water
won't flow!"

Henry admitted that he had, been badly sold by the joke; but he was
enthusiastic in his praise of Hiram's ingenuity, too.

"Aw, say!" said the young farmer, "what do you suppose the Good Lord
gave us brains for? Just so as to keep our fingers out of the fire? No,
sir! With all this perfectly good and wet water running past my field,
could I have the heart to let this celery die? I guess not!"

He had a fine spray nozzle on the pipe and the pipe itself was long
enough so that, by moving the pump occasionally, he could water every
square foot of the big piece. And the three young fellows, by changing
about, went over the field every other day in about four hours without
difficulty.

By and by the celery plants got rooted well; they no longer drooped in
the morning; before the drouth was past the young farmer had as handsome
a field of celery as one would wish. Indeed, when he began to ship the
crop, even his earliest crates were rated A-1 by the produce men, and he
bad no difficulty in selling the entire crop at the top of the market,
right through the season.

The garden paid a profit; the potatoes did even better than the year
before, and Hiram harvested and sold seventy-five dollars' worth while
the price for new potatoes was high.

He shipped most of his tomatoes this year, for he could not pay
attention to the local market as he had the first season; but the tomato
crop was a good one.

They raised to eight weeks and sold, during the year, five pair of
shoats, and Mrs. Atterson bought a grade cow with her calf by her side,
for a hundred dollars, and made ten pounds of butter a week right
through the season.

Old Lem Camp, looking ten years younger than when he came to the farm,
muscular and brown, did all the work about the barns now, milked the
cows, and relieved Hiram of all the chores.

Indeed, with some little help about the plowing and cultivating, Hiram
knew very well that Mrs. Atterson and Old Lem could run the farm another
year without his help.

Of course, the old lady could not expect to put in any crop that would
pay her like the celery; for when they footed up their books, the
bottom-land had yielded, as Hiram had once prophesied to Mr. Bronson
over four hundred dollars t