"Come with me," said he. "I will show you something."
The tone of his voice deeply impressed her. She knew that she was about to venture into the sacred recesses of a life. She followed him to the porch where rested a tub. Seizing the handle he pulled it out into the sunlight. Lifting a covering he disclosed to her eyes a mass of grain—beautiful wheat, brown-gold in colour, with the wealthy red tinge that tints the peerless milling kernel. The plump, red berries suggested to her heaps of tiny, golden pebbles. She was astonished and silent.
"It is The Red Knight," said he simply, stooping and dipping up a handful. She observed how fondly he held it in the palm of his great hand.
"It is very dear to you," was her gentle remark.
Once again he studied her eyes. They looked up at him with a clear-eyed rapture that provoked his grateful confidence.
"Come, lassie! Rest while I tell you the tale of the finding of The Red Knight.
"It will be forty years, come Maytime again, since I brought Kitty Belaire from the old East over the Valley of The Qu'Appelle to The Craggs. Here we set up a home in the little log hut you can see at the end of the lane. In the log hut was born the first wee bairn. He did not stay with us long and we laid him away in the dip beyond the bluffs. There, too, Ned came to us, filling the sore spot in our hearts left by his little brother. We were happy, the three of us, though we had little to do with, and the work was hard. The years were years of struggle. We fought the winds and the drought, rust, smut, hail and the frost with little success to boast about. One year we had a bumper crop with prices low. Then followed one or two without a harvest. Ned was growing to be a husky little chap when a crop grew on the place that promised us a forty-bushel yield. But one day a black cloud swept over the homestead and in ten minutes it was gone. We had no seed. On the heels of the hail came a drought year. Following it appeared a crop that filled the settlement with hope. We were getting ready to cut when a blight appeared. The rust reduced the yield from forty bushels to five. So passed the years and the battle went against us, with the frost the worst enemy of all. One terrible harvest it came to me that the seed was wrong. It matured too slowly. What we needed was a seed that would come along fast enough to harden before the blight of the rust or the nip of frost. The following harvest I set out on a quest. One day I discovered a patch of ripe heads among the filling grain. Upon shelling them I found a plump kernel fully matured. I plucked the strange heads and carefully preserved the wheat. When seeding time came round again I sowed them on a bit of new ground in the garden. They came up strong and far outstripped the other grain. I had great hopes. Filling time arrived and I watched developments. It was now plain to me that the new variety would ripen fully two weeks ahead of the old type. Then, in the depths of night, a crashing hailstorm and—my precious plot smashed into the earth.
"I had made the fatal mistake of not preserving a few kernels against accident. But that was the beginning. Henceforth I was alert to discover any quickly maturing plants among my fields of grain. By hand selection I began to improve the standard varieties. By use of head-row plots I was able to provide myself with a purer seed. But it took a great deal of time. My neighbours began to surpass me in quantity of yield. Eventually they regarded me as luny. At last only Kitty and Ned believed in me. They never failed me. They became experts in seed selection. They helped me with their sympathy. Together we made thousands of tests. Gradually we caught our feet. One year we started cutting a full week ahead of the settlement. We had escaped the rust and showed a plump sample. We were alone in our good fortune. From that time we were the first into the binding, our yield was at the top, and under Ned's wise management our quantity began to pull ahead, always showing a consistently high sample.
"It is four years this harvest that Kitty and the lad went out on a 'roguing' stalk. Perhaps you do not know that a 'rogue' is a foreign variety of grain that has appeared for some reason in your field. The task of plucking these 'rogues' is called 'roguing.' Upon their return the mother handed to me a headed plant of wheat carefully lifted from the ground. How well I remember it! She gave it into my hands with a smile.
"'Here, Edward!' she said brightly. 'Here is your Red Knight at last. I found him growing in the twenty acre field on the little knoll.'