SHADOW & SCYTHE BENEATH SWORD 307 



" I seeded it down with my best wheat," he 

 answered, " and when it was well up it was the 

 thickest crop in Springbrook, only you couldn't tell 

 whether it was wheat or wild oats that had been 

 seeded. So I ploughed a good fire-guard and fired 

 the lot. I guess they are right out of the land now." 



I think they must have been too, because this 

 year Mr. George Robb is putting up quite the 

 biggest and most modern of any of the many modern 

 houses in Springbrook. 



But to return to the field which was destined to 

 be the strength or the weakness of my own proposi- 

 tion. It was certain that by double discing, 

 followed immediately by continual harrowing, I 

 might have produced, and immediately killed, the 

 greater part of the surface weed-seed which had 

 fallen through the crops of the seasons of 1905 and 

 1906. The very deep ploughing of 1907 not only 

 turned up the wild oats which my predecessor had 

 deliberately buried out of the way of the average 

 turning of seed-bed soil, but it retained all the 

 surface seed shed from the two crops I had harvested, 

 laying up a fresh edition of disappointment, loss, 

 and toil. Meantime I faithfully practised the good 

 methods I knew of. Patrick O'Hara made clear to 

 me the excellent work and time-saving that is 

 accomplished by immediately following newly 

 ploughed land with a stroke of the harrows. In this 

 way the soil has no time to cake in chunks, a great 

 deal of weed is pulled out of root to the surface, 

 and pulverization is accomplished in the end with 

 far less work. Every day at four o'clock I went 

 out with the harrows and relieved Pat so that he 

 was able to get well on with the chores before supper 



