Although the Pollocks did not work on Saturday afternoon, Hiram did not feel as though he could stop at this time. Most of the farmers had already planted their last piece of corn. Monday would be the fifteenth of the month. So the young farmer got his home-made corn-row marker down to the river-bottom and began marking the piece that afternoon. This marker ran out three rows at each trip across the field, and with a white stake at either end, the youth managed to run his rows very straight. He had a good eye. In this case he did not check-row his field. The land was rich--phenomenally rich, he believed. If he was going to have a crop of corn here, he wanted a crop worth while. On the uplands the farmers were satisfied with from thirty to fifty baskets of ear-corn to the acre. If this lowland was what he believed it was, Hiram was sure it would make twice that. And at that his corn crop here would only average twenty-five dollars to the acre--not a phenomenal profit for Mrs. Atterson in that. But the land would be getting into shape for a better crop, and although corn is a crop that will soon impoverish ground, if planted year after year on the same piece, Hiram knew that the humus in this soil on the lowland was almost inexhaustible. So he marked his rows the long way of the field--running with the river. One of the implements left by Uncle Jeptha had been a one-horse corn-planter with a fertilizer attachment. Hiram used this, dropping two or three grains twenty-four inches apart, and setting the fertilizer attachment to one hundred and fifty pounds to the acre. He was until the next Wednesday night planting the piece. Meanwhile it had not rained, and the river continued to recede. It was now almost as low as it had been the day Lettie Bronson's boating party had been “wrecked” under the big sycamore. Hiram had not seen the Bronsons for some weeks, but about the time he got his late corn planted, Mr. Bronson drove into the Atterson yard, and found Hiram cultivating his first corn with the five-tooth cultivator. “Well, well, Hiram!” exclaimed the Westerner, looking with a broad smile over the field. “That's as pretty a field of corn as I ever saw. I don't believe there is a hill missing.” “Only a few on the far edge, where the moles have been at work.” “Moles don't eat corn, Hiram.” “So they say,” returned the young farmer, quietly. “I never could make up my mind about it. “I'm sure, however, that if they are only after slugs and worms which are drawn to the corn hills by the commercial fertilizer, the moles do fully as much damage as the slugs would. “You see, they make a cavity under the corn hill, and the roots of the plant wither. Excuse me, but I'd rather have Mr. Mole in somebody else's garden.” Mr. Bronson laughed. “Well, what the little gray fellows eat won't kill us. But they do spoil otherwise handsome rows. How did you get such a good stand of corn, Hiram?”