But Hiram was not at all sure that he would ever see a celery crop in this bottom-land. Pepper still “hung fire” and he would not go to Mr. Strickland with his option.  
“I don't hafter,” he told Hiram. “When I git ready I'll let ye know, be sure o' that.”
 
The fact was that the railroad had made no further move. Mr. Strickland admitted to Mrs. Atterson that if the strip along the east boundary of the farm was condemned¹ by the railroad, she ought to get a thousand dollars for it.
 
“But if the railroad board should change its mind again,” added the lawyer, “sixteen hundred dollars would not be a speculative² price to pay for your farm—and well Pepper knows it.”
 
“Then Mr. Damocles's sword has got to hang over us, has it?” demanded the old lady.
 
“I am afraid so,” admitted the lawyer, smiling.
 
Mrs. Atterson could not be more troubled than was Hiram himself. Youth feels the sting of such arrows of fortune more keenly than does age. We get “case-hardened” to trouble as the years bend our shoulders.
 
The thought that he might, after all, get nothing but a hundred dollars and his board for all the work he had done in preparation for the second year's crop sometimes embittered³ Hiram's thoughts.
 
Once, when he spoke⁴ to Pepper, and the snaky man sneered⁵ at him and laughed, the young farmer came near attacking him then and there in the street.
 
“I certainly could have given that Pepper as good a thrashing as ever he got,” muttered Hiram. “And even Pete Dickerson never deserved one more than Pepper.”
 
Pete fought shy of Hiram these days, and as the summer waned⁷ the young farmer gradually became less watchful⁸ and expectant of trouble from the direction of the west boundary of the Atterson Eighty.
 
But there was little breathing spell for him in the work of the farm.
 
“When we lay by the corn, you bet dad an' me goes fishing!” Henry Pollock told Hiram, one day.
 
But it wasn't often that the young farmer could take half a day off for any such pleasure.
 
“You've bit off more'n you kin⁶ chaw,” observed Henry.
 
“That's all right; I'll keep chewing at it, just the same,” returned Hiram cheerfully.
 
For the truck crop was bringing them in a bigger sum of money than even Hiram had expected. The season had been very favorable, indeed; Hiram's vegetables had come along in good time, and even the barrels of sweet corn he shipped to Crawberry brought a fair price—much better than he could have got at the local cannery.
 
When the tomato pack came on, however, he did sell many baskets of his “seconds” to the cannery. But the selected tomatoes he continued to ship to Crawberry, and having established a reputation with his produce man for handsome and evenly ripened¹⁰ fruit, the prices received were good all through the season.
 
He saw the sum for tomatoes pass the hundred and fifty dollar mark before frost struck the vines. Even then he was not satisfied. There was a small c............