The Story of the Soil | Page 4

and take it for granted that anything of opposite savor was due to autosuggestion.
CYRIL G. HOPKINS.
University of Illinois, Urbana.

CHAPTER I
THE OLD SOUTH

PERCY JOHNSTON stood waiting on the broad veranda of an old-style Southern home, on a bright November day in 1903. He had just come from Blue Mound Station, three miles away, with suit-case in hand.
"Would it be possible for me to secure room and board here for a few days?" he inquired of the elderly woman who answered his knock.
"Would it be possible?" she repeated, apparently asking herself the question, while she scanned the face of her visitor with kindly eyes that seemed to look beneath the surface.
"I beg your pardon, my name is Johnston,--Percy Johnston--" he said with some embarrassment and hesitation, realizing from her speech and manner that he was not addressing a servant.
"No pardon is needed for that name," she interrupted; "Johnston is a name we're mighty proud of here in the South."
"But I am from the West," he said.
"We're proud of the West, too; and you should feel right welcome here, for this is 'Westover,'" waving her hand toward the inroad fields surrounding the old mansion house. "I am Mrs. West, or at least I used to be. Perhaps the title better belongs to my son's wife at the present time; while I am mother, grandma, and great-grandmother.
"Yes, Sir, you will be very welcome to share our home for a few days if you wish; and we'll take you as a boarder. We used to entertain my husband's friends from Richmond,--and from Washington, too, before the sixties; but since then we have grown poor, and of late years we take some summer boarders. They have all returned to the city, however, the last of them having left only yesterday; so you can have as many rooms as you like.
"Adelaide!" she called.
A rugged girl of seventeen entered the hall from a rear room.
"This is my granddaughter, Adelaide, Mr. Johnston."
Percy looked into her eyes for an instant; then her lashes dropped. He remembered afterward that they were like her grandmother's, and he found himself repeating, "The eye is the window of the soul."
"My Dear, will you ask Wilkes to show Mr. Johnston to the southwest room, and to put a fire in the grate and warm water in the pitcher?"
"Thank you, that will not be necessary," said Percy. "I wish to see and learn as much as possible of the country hereabout, and particularly of the farm lands; and, if I may leave my suit-case to be sent to my room when convenient, I shall take a walk,--perhaps a long walk. When should I be back to supper."
"At six or half past. My son Charles has gone to Montplain, but he will be home for dinner. He knows the lands all about here and will be glad, I am sure, to give you any information possible."
With rapid strides Percy followed the private lane to the open fields of Westover.
"Is he a cowboy, Grandma?" asked Adelaide, in a tone which did not suggest a very high regard for cowboys. "Anyway," she continued, detecting a shade of disapproval in the grandmother's face, "he has a cowboy's hat, but he doesn't wear buckskin trousers or spurs."
Percy's hat was a relic of college life. Two years before he had completed the agricultural course at one of the state universities in the corn belt. Somewhat above the average in size, well proportioned, accustomed to the heaviest farm work, and trained in football at college, he was a sturdy young giant,--" strong as an ox and quick as lightning," in the exaggerated language of his football admirers

CHAPTER II
FORTY ACRES IN THE CORN BELT

PERCY JOHNSTON'S grandfather had gone west from "York State" and secured from the federal government a 160-acre "Claim" of the rich corn belt land. His father had received through inheritance only 40 acres of this; and, marrying his choice from the choir of the local Lutheran congregation, he had farmed his forty and an adjoining eighty acres, "rented on shares," for only three years, when he was taken with pneumonia from exposure and overwork, and died within a week.
Percy was scarcely a year old when his father was laid in the grave; but to the sorrowing mother he was all that life held dear. Existence seemed possible to her only because she could bestow upon him her double affection, and because the double duties which she took upon herself completely occupied her time.
She was not in immediate financial need, for her husband had been able to put some money in the bank during the last year, after having paid for his "outfit;" the forty-acre farm was free from debt, but under the law it must remain the joint property of mother and child for twenty years.
Wisely or unwisely she rejected every