The Master-Knot of Human Fate | Page 6

place like this,--and a
closet with some clothes in it. The man was about your size, but the
feminine garments--well--they are all about the length of my bicycle

skirt, and on the shelf there is a pile of bedding. There is no trap door
leading into either subterranean or overhead apartments. In fact, there is
nothing else, except a chair. It's very uninteresting."
Adam had been moving about the room, and stopped before the
bookshelf. He wound the clock mechanically, and read the titles of the
books aloud. A chemistry, a book on electricity, a Bible, a worn copy
of Tennyson, the "Yankee at King Arthur's Court," and a patent
medicine almanac made up the list.
"There is one mysterious thing," he said, "and that is the packing cases
out under the shed. I can't make up my mind what they contain, and I
don't quite feel that we ought to open them; I should like to; they look
as if they might hold--"
"Canned goods?" she said interrogatively.
"I was going to say books, but I suppose we need canned lobster more,"
he assented. "If you are sure they contain oats, peas, beans, or barley, or
anything that the farmer knows, that would justify me in opening
them." He took up a hatchet, and they went out and inspected the boxes,
which were very large and strong.
"Let's not open them yet," she said. "There is one other treasure in one
of the bureau drawers; it is a box with seeds of almost every kind. They
ought to have known most of those things wouldn't grow up this close
to timber-line."
"Probably they were sent by the congressman from this district," Adam
said dryly. "But I'm not so sure they won't grow. Have you noticed how
warm it is, how very unlike what it has always been? Let us go to the
stables, and see what we can find there."
They went up a path, past a garden, fenced with woven wire, through
which the chickens looked longingly. Under some sashes forming a
primitive greenhouse, lettuce and radishes were making good headway.
Nothing else had come up, though there were many beds, with small
slips of board, like miniature tombstones, showing what had been

planted. The stables and cow-barn were all under one roof, and would
accommodate several horses and a few cows. There was hay and fodder
in a lot adjoining, and a few ordinary farm implements, a plow, a
harrow, and a cultivator in a shed addition.
"Do you know what it is for?" she asked mischievously, as he pulled
out the plow.
"Do you think I never remembered the granger vote in my ambitions?"
he answered. "I can plow, and I have planted and snapped corn, and cut
fodder, and dug potatoes--I wonder if there are any here?"
"Yes," she answered; "in the cellar, at least a bushel, mostly gone to
eyes, but I forget how thick to cut them. If we were only 'The Swiss
Family Robinson,'" she went on, "we should find yams and pineapples
and oranges and sugar-cane and bananas coming up between the rocks.
As it is, I am thankful to the congressman who sent the peas and
morning-glories."
"There is only about enough wheat and corn to plant fifteen acres,"
Adam said, making a rough calculation in his mind. "I will plow a little
over that, so as to have a patch for the potatoes, and get it ready as soon
as possible."
"I know how to plant corn and potatoes," she said eagerly. "Just as soon
as you get part of the land ready, I will begin. You didn't know I was
brought up on a ranch, did you? I never was very fond of recalling it. It
is a perpetual round of conditions unlike any theory ever heard of." She
shrugged her shoulders, and stopped at the rude table under the porch to
crumb some slices of what looked like a kind of cornbread.
"What is it?" he asked curiously.
"That is to enable us to make light of our troubles," she replied
solemnly. "Or, for thy more sweet understanding it is, or at least I hope
it will be, yeast. I found a Twin Brothers yeast cake, and from it,
behold the brethren! I know that raised bread is unhealthy, and that to
get the worth of your money you ought to eat the bran also, and that the

best bread, from the hygienic standpoint, is made from wheat-paste,
and is about the consistency of sole leather; but even if yeast does
shorten our lives, I don't know that I shall give it up on that account."
The planting of their crops took several weeks, and was very hard work,
for neither of them was an expert farmer. When the corn