he hills. As a matter of fact, what's the sense of wearing
a collar at all? Most of us don't even wear shirts. See here, your
majesty,--begging your pardon for disturbing your thoughts with my
foot,--why don't you issue a manifesto or edict or something prohibiting
the use of collars except on holidays, or at weddings, funerals and so
forth?"

Percival yawned. "If Landover didn't have a collar on he'd think he was
stark naked. Gosh, I'd like to go to bed."

"Why don't you? We'll call you as soon as we get any news," said
Flattner.

"No, I'll stick it out a while longer. I say, Flat, it begins to look
as if there's real wheat coming up over there after all. Old Pedro was
telling me today that it looks like a cinch unless we got it sowed too
late and cold weather comes along too soon. I never dreamed we'd get
results. Putting out spring wheat in virgin soil like this is a new
one on me. If it does thrive and deliver, by gosh, a whole lot of
agricultural dope will be knocked to pieces. I thought spring wheat
had to be sown in land that was ploughed the fall before. What's the
explanation?"

"You can't explain nature, A. A.," said Percy Knapendyke. "Nature does
so darned many unnatural things that you can't pin your faith to it at
all. Of course, it was a pure experiment we made. We happened to have
a lot of hard spring wheat, and this alluvial soil, deep and rich, was
worth tackling. Old Pedro was as much surprised as I was when it began
to come up. Using that fertilizer was an experiment, too. He swore it
wouldn't help a bit. Now he just scratches his head and says God did it.
We've got fifty acres out there as green as paint and you can almost
see it grow. If nothing happens we ought to harvest it by the middle of
February, and if God keeps on doing things for us, we may get as much as
twenty-five bushels to the acre. It's different with the oats. You can
plant oats on unploughed land, just as we did, and you can't stop it
growing. The oats field up there along the base of the hills is a peach.
Takes about ninety days for oats to ripen. That means we'll harvest it
in about two months, and we'll beat the cold weather to it. Forty or
fifty to the acre, if we have any luck at all. Potatoes doing well
and--Say, did I tell you what I've found out about that stuff growing
over there in the lowlands beyond the river? Well, it's flax. It's
the same sort of thing that grows in New Zealand. Those plants I was
pointing out to