o the validity of the option
we can hold him off for a while--maybe until we have made this year's
crop."

"It's goin' to make me lay awake o' nights," sighed the old lady. "And
I thought I'd got through with that when I stopped worryin' about the
gravy."

"Well, we won't talk about next year," agreed Hiram. "I'll do the best I
can for you through this season, if Pepper will let us alone. We've got
the bottom land practically cleared; we might as well plough it and put
in the corn there. If we make a crop you'll get all your money back and
more. Mr. Strickland told me privately that the option, unless it read
that way, would not cover the crops in the ground. And I read the option
carefully. Crops were not mentioned."

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."

"Goodness me!" exclaimed Mother Atterson. "It does seem ridiculous to
hear you talk that a-way. I never owned nothin' but a little bit of
furniture before, and I expected the boarders to tear that all to
pieces. I'm beginning to feel all puffed up and wealthy."

Hiram cut them a