But he recognized the truth of Delia's homely statement. Since Yancey Battick's illness Hiram and the spinster had become even firmer friends than before. Miss Pringle was shrewd enough to see that Hiram was enamored of Lettie Bronson. But there were other interests Hiram had that Miss Pringle knew about. Long before this time she had not only heard all about Sister, but she had begun a correspondence with the little girl back in Scoville and with Mother Atterson. She could tell those loved ones "back home" more about Hiram and his affairs than the youth himself would have been willing to write about. Hiram was too busy again to send very long letters to Scoville, although during the winter he had been faithful in writing to Sister. Oat harvest came and the Sunnyside Farm crop was all that Hiram had any right to hope for. They stacked the oats ready for the thrashing and then put both big plow-teams to work, turning under the stubble, raking and rolling the land. Jerry and two mates (the first trio-hitch Hiram had driven on Sunnyside), followed behind the land rollers with the drill, sowing cowpeas. Haying and wheat harvest was right ahead of them when Miss Pringle drove past Sunnyside behind her dappled pony one day, bound for Pringleton. "Where are you going to be when I come back, Hiram?" she called to the young farmer. "Right here, or hereabout," he replied. "What do you want, Delia?" "I am going to have something to show you," she said, and drove on. It was two hours later that Hiram chanced to walk down the county road toward Battick's, intending to take a careful look at the green wheat at that end of this roadside field--the wheat in which he, as well as Battick and Mr. Bronson, placed such hopes. Although he did not apprehend that the same danger menaced the new wheat which Yancey Battick did, Hiram seldom allowed two days to go by without a scrutiny of the field. By this time the new wheat proved itself, to the most casual eye, to be a different variety from that growing in the remainder of the field. It was a foot taller, the bearded heads were beginning to fill out, and, as Battick had promised, the plants had spread so in growing that the grain stood quite as thick as in any other part of the twenty acres. Hiram saw a figure moving at the edge of the field at the far corner next to Yancey Battick's land, and he knew it to be Battick himself. These warm days the man was getting around quite briskly and was feeling much like his old self. Before Hiram could cross the ditch and start around the lower end of the wheat field, as he intended, he saw the dappled pony coming up the hill. There was somebody beside Miss Pringle on the seat of the buggy. "Hey, Hiram! Wait!" called the spinster. "I want you to see who I have here."