THRESHING 51 



securely fixed in the memory of the grain-farmer. 

 My ignorance cost me a considerable sum in more 

 seasons than one, although I levelled up in one 

 year through the ignorance or carelessness of the 

 thresher-man. A new granary had been unsoundly 

 built, and it broke down on its first journey out. It 

 leaned slightly on its right side on an incline, and 

 to its care was confided the grain drawn from a 

 newly broken sixteen-acre field. The thresher-man 

 debited me with three hundred and fifty bushels in 

 that granary, but afterwards when I had sold three 

 hundred and fifty bushels there remained between 

 eighty and a hundred bushels, which I treasured for 

 seed. The grain was sold on the street, and the 

 dealers at the local elevator are the last in the world 

 to err on the wrong side. The grain, too, was very 

 fine, and perfectly ripe ; but it must have weighed 

 out at the rate of eighty-five pounds to the bushel 

 to have accounted for the margin. 



Apropos of the newly built granaries of my first 

 harvest a story in connexion with bulk and space 

 will serve to show how, among other things, stories 

 grow on the prairie. A neighbour who had been 

 working for Guy Mazey at that first threshing, and 

 between then and now has managed to become the 

 possessor of three farms, was driving his own stook 

 team at my harvest of 191 1. 



The weather was fiendishly cold. Many of the gang 

 were standing by one of the two granaries waiting 

 for something in connexion wth the engine to 

 thaw out, and the topic of conversation was, as is 

 usual at threshing-time, the quality and quantity of 

 the grain. 



" D'you mind the first year you came to the 



