So it was decided to go ahead with the work as already planned; but neither the young farmer, nor his employer, could look forward cheerfully to the future.
The uncertainty of what Pepper would eventually do was bound to be in their thought, day and night.
CHAPTER XXI. THE WELCOME TEMPEST
To some youths this matter of the option would have been such a clog that they would have lost interest and slighted the work. But not so with Hiram Strong.
He counted this day a lost one, however; he hated to leave the farm for a minute when there was so much to do.
But the next morning he got the plow into the four-acre corn lot; and he did nothing but the chores that week until the ground was entirely plowed. Then Henry Pollock came over and gave him another day's work and they finished grubbing the lowland.
The rubbish was piled in great heaps down there, ready for burning. As long as the rain held off, Hiram did not put fire to the bush-heaps.
But early in the following week the clouds began to gather in a quarter for rain, and late in the afternoon, when the air was still, he took a can of coal oil, and with Sister and Mr. Camp, and even Mrs. Atterson, at his heels, went down to the riverside to burn the brush heaps.
“There's not much danger of the fire spreading to the woods; but if it should,” Hiram said, warningly, “it might, at this time of year, do your timber a couple of hundred dollars' worth of damage.”