"I know that, Mr. Battick," Hiram agreed. "After that everybody has the new strain. It must be a quick clean-up in the seed business." "That's it. I don't really know to this day just who it was profited by my loss. In the main, I mean. Almost everybody around my place had some of the seed. That held the gang together and made it impossible for me to get any evidence against the real transgressors. You see, the other neighbors were bribed. "However, my crops had been destroyed, the seed-oats taken out of my granary in the night when I was ill. It was a dirty plot! Bonsall and Burgess were not to be blamed. Nor could they tell me anything. They were bound to secrecy in their contract." "And could you get no satisfaction?" asked Hiram, in sympathy. "I could prove nothing. You cannot patent, or copyright, a seed! Those fellows merely beat me to it." "It was a shame!" Battick laughed bitterly. "They certainly did me dirt," he said. "I sold out and came here. I may be wrong in telling you this. Nobody else knows what I came here for and why I bought the old Pringle place." "No," said Hiram smiling. "Some of the neighbors assume you came here to practice the black art." "Let them! The less they know the better for me. I've chased more of them than you think off the place. That lazy, good-for-nothing Adam Banks--" "Do you mean to say that he has troubled you?" put in Hiram, with some interest. "Yes. And I'll surely fill his pants full of rock salt so that he'll prefer eating off the mantel-shelf for a week, if he doesn't keep away. I don't trust anybody, Mr. Strong, and that's a fact. Unless it is you. I believe I have the finest strain of wheat that was ever bred." He stopped. It was plain that he could not trust Hiram sufficiently to talk intimately about it. He shook his head and looked away. Hiram glanced at him, scrutinizing the worn, hoop-backed figure from the corner of his eye. Yancey Battick was not an old man. He was worse than that. He was a man worn out before his time. The young farm manager could understand just how hope and faith had dried up in this unfortunate man and left only a husk. Fate and unkind circumstances, as well as wicked men, had sadly treated Yancey Battick. His best efforts had gone for nothing. His attempts to win a competence for his old age had been frustrated. Perhaps there were more personal sorrows--heart-breaking sorrows--in Yancey Battick's life that he had not touched upon in his angry and bitter narrative. Hiram's own heart warmed toward him, unlovely as he was physically. If he could help Yancey Battick he was determined to do so. "I am mighty sorry for your bad luck, Mr. Battick," Hiram said, rising at last from his seat on the log. "I really did not intend annoying you when I came over here to look at your wheat. It looked so much better than that on Sunnyside that I was curious." "Un-huh," muttered Battick. "I understand you, Mr. Strong. I presume you are all right."