"Every hill of this corn, and the main part of my crop, came from the two baskets of corn I bought of you a year ago last March. Half of that I discarded. Probably two-thirds of this whole field I shall feed to the cattle. Out of the rest I will sell you what you may need for six dollars a basket, Mr. Brown." "By gum! I want it," exclaimed the old fellow. "Some of it, anyway." "It takes but about fourteen ears of corn, you know, to plant an acre. I'll sell you the same quantity I bought of you, if you like, at the price stated. I think it is worth that to raise seed like this, don't you, Mr. Brown?" "Boy, if what you tell me is true--if this is my corn--then I don't know much about corn growing, after all." "I guess you know about all there is to know about corn growing to date," laughed Hiram. "But you certainly do not know how to select and test your seed. And then, as I told you back there when I bought of you, you were too good to the rats and the mice. Many a kernel of corn is planted the germ of which the sharp little teeth of the rodents have emasculated." Daniel Brown was not the only enthusiastic spectator of Hiram's corn. And the harvest bore out the promise, in spite of a heavy wind-storm that knocked down some of it. This that was blown down had glazed and was well matured. Hiram harvested it at once and sold it to fatten hogs at the market price. This was a small loss compared to the value of the entire crop. This year Sunnyside followed the methods of big corn growers, and most of the corn was husked on the standing stalk, the eager cattle being turned in to graze on the fodder. Fifty head of cattle marched off the farm that fall, stuffed with the cheapest kind of foods, and brought just as good a price as they would had they been winter-fattened with corn. It was agreed that only the new wheat should be raised on Sunnyside the coming year. The partnership in the Staff of Life Wheat still continued, and they expected to sell the crop for seed as high as ten dollars a bushel to the big wheat growers. Hiram's share of the profits of the first crop had been a little over four thousand dollars. He felt that he was actually a wealthy man! But he was thinking larger, and his mental view was much wider than when he had arrived at Sunnyside Farm. He wrote Sister that no small contract would ever satisfy him again. He heard of and saw farmers all through this corn belt making thirty and forty thousand dollars on a single crop. At the County Fair he met and talked with a young man no older than Orrin Post who had cleared that season more than ten thousand dollars from raising corn on shares! "If a man can get hold of a thousand acres, work it with tractors and have ordinary good luck, in one season he can pay for his land," Hiram wrote to his friends in the East. "It sounds big. It almost staggers one to think of it. It is a gamble!