ler said it was easier to do the work
herself than to keep explaining Mahailey's psychology. Day after
day ten ravenous men sat down at the long dinner table in the
kitchen. Mrs. Wheeler baked pies and cakes and bread loaves as
fast as the oven would hold them, and from morning till night the
range was stoked like the fire-box of a locomotive. Mahailey
wrung the necks of chickens until her wrist swelled up, as she
said, "like a puff-adder."

By the end of July the excitement quieted down. The extra leaves
were taken out of the dining table, the Wheeler horses had their
barn to themselves again, and the reign of terror in the henhouse
was over.

One evening Mr. Wheeler came down to supper with a bundle of
newspapers under his arm. "Claude, I see this war scare in Europe
has hit the market. Wheat's taken a jump. They're paying
eighty-eight cents in Chicago. We might as well get rid of a few
hundred bushel before it drops again. We'd better begin hauling
tomorrow. You and I can make two trips a day over to Vicount, by
changing teams,--there's no grade to speak of."

Mrs. Wheeler, arrested in the act of pouring coffee, sat holding
the coffee-pot in the air, forgetting she had it. "If this is
only a newspaper scare, as we think, I don't see why it should
affect the market," she murmured mildly. "Surely those big
bankers in New York and Boston have some way of knowing rumour
from fact."

"Give me some coffee, please," said her husband testily. "I don't
have to explain the market, I've only got to take advantage of
it."

"But unless there's some reason, why are we dragging our wheat
over to Vicount? Do you suppose it's some scheme the grain men
are hiding under a war rumour? Have the financiers and the press
ever deceived the public like this before?"

"I don't know a thing in the world about it, Evangeline, and I
don't suppose. I telephoned the elevator at Vicount an hour ago,
and they said they'd pay me seventy cents, subject to change in
the morning quotations. Claude," with a twinkle in his eye,
"you'd better not go to mill tonight. Turn in early. If we are on
the road by six tomorrow, we'll be in town before the heat of the
day."

"All right, sir. I want to look at the papers after supper. I
haven't read anything but the headlines since before thrashing.
Ernest was stirred up about the murder of that Grand Duke and
said the Austrians would make trouble. But I never thought there
was anything in it."

"There