Jim Green was the sort of agriculturalist who worked hard by day and slept hard by night. It therefore required several successive attempts one very early morning before his more wakeful wife succeeded in arousing him.
“Wake up! wake up!” said she, in a loud whisper, meanwhile nudging her sleeping husband vigorously.
“Why—why, what’s the matter?” said Jim.
“There’s somebody in the cellar,” she whispered, “I’ve been hearing strange noises for several minutes.”
Jim was now wide awake and hastily slipping on a few clothes, he made his way to a window and in the dim light soon made out the figure of a man crouched down by the cellar window, evidently working with a partner. Further strain of the eyes revealed a pile of what Jim’s experienced vision showed him to be salt pork, lying on the ground at the man’s elbow. Jim tiptoed to a side door, opened it quietly and made his way as silently as possible to where the man was kneeling. But the slight rustle of his clothing or the jar of his footsteps alarmed the watcher at the window and, glancing over his shoulder, he hastily dodged around the corner of the wood shed.
Jim promptly took the missing man’s place by the cellar window and awaited developments. Shortly thereafter a man in the cellar came to the window by which Jim was crouching and passed out several pieces of very damp salt pork which Jim received silently.
“I’ve got all there is in the barrel,” he whispered, “except the last layer. Probably we better leave that so the folks here won’t be entirely out of pork.”
“No,” Jim whispered, “pull it all out; what do we care whether they have any pork or not?”
The man in the cellar went back and, plunging his arm deep in the clammy brine, succeeded in digging up the last layer of pork which he brought to the window, passing it up to the owner outside. He then climbed out of the cellar window himself, where he was promptly collared by Jim and identified as a shiftless farm laborer of the neighborhood. He was soon released, however, after he had revealed the name of his partner, another bird of similar feather.
Not until long after the two prowlers had removed from the neighborhood, did Jim tell the story. Neighbors then remembered that when Jim Green needed farm help, the two pork thieves always responded promptly.