"He'll get far enough, perhaps," muttered Battick, turning away. "Look out he doesn't get into your barn, Mr. Strong, and set the mow on fire."
The two chatted a few moments longer about the weather and neighborhood affairs, and then Hiram started his horse and drove on toward Sunnyside Farm.
CHAPTER IX
ORRIN POST
This was the fifth day since Hiram had started his test boxes, and he was so much interested in this matter on his arrival at Sunnyside that he did not think again of Mr. Battick's first "bluebird," or harbinger of spring. In fact, he had not seen the fellow along the road and presumed the tramp had crept into a thicket somewhere to sleep off his intoxication.
He bedded down Jerry, the horse, and fed him, for it was early twilight. He locked the barn and went up to the incubator shed where he lodged. He always kept a fire here, and the temperature of the seed boxes had never fallen below 65°, and he usually managed to keep the heat at about 70°. He knew that a drop below 55° would seriously affect the germination of the corn, and at night Hiram wrapped bags about the boxes and covered them well.
The conditions under which he had made his tests of Mr. Brown's corn had been ideal. When he uncovered the boxes he saw at once that all the ears he had selected kernels from were not strong and vigorous. Any kernel of corn that does not send out vigorous sprouts of both root and stem within four or five days is too weak to germinate properly under ordinary field conditions.
Hiram discarded promptly all of twenty ears in this lot—feeding some of the discarded ones to Jerry the next morning for his breakfast.
"They look all right," Hiram observed to himself. "But looks are sometimes deceiving. I have an idea that Mr. Brown plants a whole lot of seed that either does not come up at all, or does not improve his general crop. I wonder if I am going to beat him at his own game and with his own corn."
He immediately selected more of the Brown corn for testing and filled the squares of the seed boxes again. Later he proposed to test some of the seed corn he had bought from other farmers.