seed. Against the wall behind him ranged the row of sacks. Harran cut
the fastenings of these and examined the contents carefully, taking
handfuls of wheat from each and allowing it to run through his fingers,
or nipping the grains between his nails, testing their hardness.

The seed was all of the white varieties of wheat and of a very high
grade, the berries hard and heavy, rigid and swollen with starch.

"If it was all like that, sir, hey?" observed Phelps.

Harran put his chin in the air.

"Bread would be as good as cake, then," he answered, going from sack
to sack, inspecting the contents and consulting the tags affixed to the
mouths.

"Hello," he remarked, "here's a red wheat. Where did this come from?"

"That's that red Clawson we sowed to the piece on Four, north the
Mission Creek, just to see how it would do here. We didn't get a very
good catch."

"We can't do better than to stay by White Sonora and Propo," remarked
Harran. "We've got our best results with that, and European millers like
it to mix with the Eastern wheats that have more gluten than ours. That
is, if we have any wheat at all next year."

A feeling of discouragement for the moment bore down heavily upon him.
At intervals this came to him and for the moment it was overpowering.
The idea of "what's-the-use" was upon occasion a veritable oppression.
Everything seemed to combine to lower the price of wheat. The extension
of wheat areas always exceeded increase of population; competition was
growing fiercer every year. The farmer's profits were the object of
attack from a score of different quarters. It was a flock of vultures
descending upon a common prey--the commission merchant, the elevator
combine, the mixing-house ring, the banks, the warehouse men, the
labouring man, and, above all, the railroad. Steadily the Liverpool
buyers cut and cut and cut. Everything, every element of the world's
markets, tended to force down the price to the lowest possible figure at
which it could be profitably farmed. Now it was down to eighty-seven.
It was at that figure the crop had sold that year; and to think that the
Governor had seen wheat at two dollars and five cents in the year of the
Turko-Russian War!

He turned back to the house after giving Phelps final directions,
gloomy, disheartened, his hands deep in his pockets, wondering what was
to be the outcome. So narrow had the margin of profit shrunk that a
dry season meant bankruptcy to the smalle