“For bleaching. Saves time, room, and trouble. Banking celery, even with a plow, is not alone old-fashioned, and cumbersome, but is apt to leave the blanched celery much dirtier.” “But you'll need an awful lot of board for six acres, Hiram!” gasped Henry. “I don't know. I shall run the trenches four feet apart, and you mustn't suppose, Henry, that I shall blanch all six acres at once. The boards can be used over and over again.” “I didn't think of that,” admitted his friend. Henry was eagerly interested in his selected studies at the experiment station and college, and Abel Pollock followed his son's work there with growing approval, too. “It does beat all,” he admitted to Hiram, “what that boy has learned already about practical things. Book-farming ain't all flapdoodle, that's sure!” So the year ended--quietly, peacefully, and with no little happiness in the Atterson farmhouse, despite the cloud that overshadowed the farm-title, and the doubts which faced them about the next season's work. They sat up on New Year's eve to see the old year out and the new in, and had a merry evening although there were only the family. When the distant whistles blew at midnight they went out upon the back porch to listen. It was a dark night, for thick clouds shrouded the stars. Only the unbroken coverlet of snow (it had fallen that morning) aided them to see about the empty fields. In the far distance was the twinkle of a single light--that in an upper chamber of the Pollock house. Dickersons' was mantled in shadow, and those two houses were the only ones in sight of the Atterson place. “And I was afraid when we came out here that I'd be dead of loneliness in a month--with no near neighbors,” admitted Mother Atterson. “But I've been so busy that I ain't never minded it---- “What's that light, Hiram?” Her cry was echoed by Sister. Behind the bam a sudden glow was spreading against the low-hung clouds. It was too far away for one of their out-buildings to be afire; but Hiram set off immediately, although he only had slippers on, for the corner of the barnyard fence. When he reached this point he saw that one of the fodder stacks in the cornfield was afire. The whole top of the stack was ablaze. “Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” cried Sister, who had followed him. “What can we do?” “Nothing,”, said Hiram. “There's no wind, and it won't spread to another stack. But that one is past redemption, for sure!” Hiram hastened back to the house and put on his boots. But he did not wade through the snow to the fodder stack that was burning so briskly. He merely made a detour around it, at some yards distant. Nowhere did he see the mark of a footprint. How the stack had been set afire was a mystery. Hiram had stacked the fodder himself, with the help of Sister, who had pitched the bundles up to him. The young farmer did not smoke, and he seldom carried matches loose in his pockets.