"Cracky! Look at that!" ejaculated Orrin. "Why, Strong, _the darned thing works_!" "Of course it works. Didn't I tell you it would?" replied the young farm manager. They went on along the road, and at every such opening the yellow flood poured forth. That particular twenty acres of Sunnyside Farm would never be sour or lumpy to work as long as Hiram's simple underdraining scheme continued to work so successfully as it was now doing. They were about to turn to go back to the house when Orrin clutched Hiram by the arm and pointed toward Yancey Battick's place. "What's the matter down there do you suppose?" he asked, with anxiety. There was a sudden glow against the sky, seemingly rising from behind Battick's buildings. Then a long streamer of flame bannered into the air above the treetops. "It's a fire! Something's burning!" declared Hiram. The two lads set off on a hard run down the road toward the old Pringle homestead which Yancey Battick occupied. CHAPTER XX A BARGAIN Before Hiram Strong and Orrin Post reached the strip of woodland that divided the open field of Sunnyside from the old Pringle place they heard somebody shouting. After the passing of the rain and the terrible gale of wind the whole countryside seemed very quiet. This raucous voice could have been heard a mile: "Fire! Fire!" "It must be his house," Orrin panted, having some difficulty in keeping up with the young farm manager. "That flame is too far back for the house," Hiram rejoined with confidence. "The barn, then?" "It is something at any rate," was the grim reply. The flames were streaming high in the air; yet before the young fellows reached Battick's gate the fire seemed decreasing. They could still hear Battick hoarsely shouting. Entering by the gate they dashed around the house and out behind the barns. Hiram had felt, although he had not said it to Orrin, that he knew the nature of the disaster. Yancey Battick's stack of wheat was more than half consumed! He had been running madly from pump to stack, trying to throw enough water on the sheaves to put out the fire. But the blaze had burned up through the very heart of the stack. It must have, indeed, to have burned the wheat at all after the exceedingly heavy rain of three hours before. "You're too late! Too late!" shrieked the man wildly. "They have got me again. What did I tell you, Strong?" for he recognized the young manager of Sunnyside by the fading light of the fire. "Why didn't you pull the stack to pieces?" shouted Orrin, beginning to burrow into the bottom of the stack which the fire seemed not to have consumed, a good deal as a terrier would burrow for a rat. "Come on, Hiram. We can save some of this wheat." But the sheaves which he dragged out proved to have had their heads entirely burned. Although the flames soon flickered out and left but a smouldering heap, there was but very little wheat left.