Sister wrote:
"What do you think, Hiram? My lawyer wrote me from Boston that perhaps I might have been near to my dear little lost brother when I was out there to see you and Miss Pringle. He writes that he traced poor little Marvin (or whatever his name may be) to the Middle West, and that a correspondent of his, whom he put on the case, writes that he believes the boy has been in your neighborhood. The western lawyer is named Eben Craddock."
CHAPTER XXXI
WHO IS THEODORE CHESTER?
By this time the great corn crop was in the cribs and Sunnyside Farm was down to a winter basis. The crop had averaged sixty-five bushels of shelled corn to the acre, and only one other farm belonging to Mr. Bronson—and that a very well tilled one indeed—had done better, or as well.
Hiram's success with corn (which was, indeed, the principal reason for his having been put in charge of the farm by Mr. Bronson) was all the more to be commended because of the conditions under which the young fellow had undertaken this present contract. Hiram had been obliged to change radically the methods of corn growing he had followed in the East.
Just as the old-time farmer who hand-hoed his cornfield learned to throw away the hoe and use the cultivator, horse-hoe, and fluke-harrow, so these big corn growers had developed a method of cultivation quite at variance with that of the small farmer cultivating but a few acres.
Hiram had discovered that by rotation of crops which kept down the weeds corn could be cultivated with a riding harrow drawn by two or three Percherons that could do twice the work in a day of three ordinary horses worked to single cultivators, and with the saving of two men's time.
In addition to learning and following these new methods and in some cases improving on them, Hiram had kept more than a rough farm account. He knew his overhead charges against each crop. It cost him more per acre, for instance, to prepare his field for the seed corn he had shown Daniel Brown; but that particular field paid him in increased yield. It ran ten bushels per acre over the remainder of the farm.
The cribs were bursting with corn. Mr. Bronson had long since got over his first objection to the red ear and the occasional mottled one. This corn would ship to any distance after it was well dried and lose practically no weight in the journey.