“Great Scot!” ejaculated Hiram, slapping his knee, “what wouldn't grow on this bottom land?”
“Yes, it's mighty rich,” agreed Henry. “But it's a long way from the house—and then, the river might flood it over. I've seen water running over this bottom two feet deep—once.”
They finished the al fresco meal and Hiram leaped up, inspired by his thoughts to brisker movements.
“Whatever else this old farm has on it, I vow and declare,” he said, “this five or six acres alone might be made to pay a profit on the whole investment!”
CHAPTER IX. THE BARGAIN IS MADE
Henry showed Hiram the “branch”, a little stream flowing into the river, which marked the westerly boundary of the farm for some ways, and they set off up the steep bank of this stream.
This back end of the farm—quite forty acres, or half of the whole tract—had been entirely neglected by the last owner of the property for a great many years. It was some distance from the house, for the farm was a long and narrow strip of land from the highway to the river, and Uncle Jeptha had had quite all he could do to till the uplands and the fields adjacent to his home.
They came upon these open fields—many of them filthy with dead weeds and littered with sprouting bushes—from the rear. Hiram saw that the fences were in bad repair and that the back of the premises gave every indication of neglect and shiftlessness.
Perhaps not exactly the latter; Uncle Jeptha had been an old man and unable to do much active work for some years. But he had cropped certain of his fields “on shares” with the usual results—impoverished soil, illy-tilled crops, and the land left in a slovenly condition which several years of careful tillage would hardly overcome.