These heads were now about half developed. The straw was already three feet and a half tall, and the bearded, three-sided heads had been most promising only a day or two before. Now the tiny green bugs (and occasionally a long fly into which the insect develops) were evidently sucking the life of the plant. The presence of both the louse-like insect and the adult fly on the same staff of wheat proved to Hiram's mind at once that the creatures were of a single species and that their growth and development was very rapid--like that of hard-shell from soft-shell potato beetles. "What do you call those things?" demanded Miss Pringle looking askance at the green insects. "It is the English grain louse," Hiram announced with conviction. "I have been reading about the pest this winter. The louse did considerable damage in grain last year in New Jersey and other parts of the East. But how did it get into our wheat?" "Ah-h!" groaned Yancey Battick. "You can easily answer that. It was put here by those that mean to ruin our crop. And between two days, too." "Do you really think that possible?" Hiram said. "And yet, what I have read about this pest suggests that it does not come suddenly into a new field of wheat in this way, unless it has already been a scourge in some near-by patch of grain the winter before. In such an open winter as we have had it might have hybernated on the plants. Then, in April, it begins really to reproduce. But we have watched this wheat so closely--" "I tell you the lice have been brought here," Battick cried almost wildly. "It did not just _happen_." "You'd surely think so," Delia Pringle said. "I never saw those things before. But I heard the other day that some pest had attacked wheat fields over back of the hill--to the north of us." "Which farms?" Hiram asked quickly. "Seems to me they said Wilson Banks' wheat was the worst affected." "Adam's father?" "Ah-h!" ejaculated Yancey Battick. "What did I tell you?" Of course, this gossip proved nothing, and Hiram very well knew it. But both Battick and Miss Pringle seemed so sure! "Let's go and look at the affected patch," Hiram said slowly, and, of course, Sister trailed along with him to the far corner of the field. She clung to his arm and chattered away at a great rate, giving Hiram all the news of Scoville and the Atterson farm neighborhood. Naturally this forced Miss Pringle and Battick into each other's company for the walk. They did not make a very friendly looking pair, however, for Battick's gaze was fixed on the ground while Miss Pringle had her head in the air and did not vouchsafe him a glance! The party came to the corner of the field where Battick had found the specimens of the grain louse. A patch several yards square was turning yellow.