362 WHEAT AND WOMAN 



At the farm a delightful surprise awaited me. 

 Mr. Wilton had communicated with me most 

 regularly in my absence, and in one letter he told 

 me that he had forwarded a sample of the seed- 

 grain to the Government Seed Commissioner to 

 undergo the germination test. I had read the 

 result as forty-six germinative with a heavy heart, 

 as it meant that I really ought not to sow the seed 

 at all ; but if I did sow, it would need a great deal 

 more than the average one bushel two pecks to the 

 acre. But instead of forty-six it proved to be 

 ninety-six per cent, germinative, so that I was 

 provided with some of the best seed in the country 

 which, having been grown on newly broken land, 

 had been, even before winnowing, almost entirely 

 free from weed-seed. Mr. Wilton had done all 

 the cleaning through the winter, and got on as far 

 as possible with the usual preparations for seeding. 

 His charge concluded with my arrival, and he and 

 his family set out almost immediately for Vancouver 

 en route for New Zealand. 



I had arranged with Roddy McMahon to come 

 to me that season for seeding, spring-ploughing, 

 mowing if necessary, and harvest. The next day 

 but one, warmest sunshine having followed on the 

 trail of the snowstorm, the seeder started on its 

 way across the big field. Good Friday fell in that 

 week, and on Easter Eve the thermometer stood at 

 seventy in the shade, and to all appearance the land 

 was as dry as a biscuit. 



It was after dinner that some well-disposed dweller 

 in the air compelled my attention to one of the 

 granaries which had not yet been brought in from 

 the twenty-five-acre field. I scanned it from a 



