The Old Squire spoke to Addison to get up and shake out the grain and bade Halse come down and assist me with the straw. Halse climbed down, muttering to himself. "I want to get a drink of water," he said; and as he went out past the beater, he made a saucy remark to Dennett; whereupon the latter seized a whip-stock and aimed a blow at him. Halse dodged it and ran. Dennett chased him out of the barn; and Halse took refuge in the wood-shed.
The Old Squire was at first inclined to reprove Dennett for this apparently unwarranted act; he considered that he had no right to chastise Halse. "I will attend to that part of the business, myself," he said, somewhat sharply.
"All right, Squire," said Dennett. "But I want you to understand you've got a bad boy there. Throwing stones into a beater is rough business. He might kill somebody."
Halse did not come back to help me, at once; and at length Gramp went to the house, in search of him. Ellen subsequently told me, that Halse had at first refused to come out, on the pretext that Dennett would injure him. The Old Squire assured him that he should not be hurt. Still he refused to go. Thereupon the old gentleman went in search of a horsewhip, himself; and as a net result of the proceedings, Halse made his appearance beside me, sniffing.
"I wish it had stove his old machine all to flinders and him with it," he said to me, revengefully.
"Did you throw the stone into the beater?" I asked. The machine made so much noise that I did not distinctly hear what Halse replied, but I thought that he denied doing it; and whether he actually did it, or whether the stone slid down with the grain owing to his carelessness, I never knew. Addison shook down till night; and the next day Asa Doane came to help us; for the Old Squire deemed it too hard for boys of our age to handle the grain and straw, unassisted.
In May, before I came to the farm, Addison and Halse had planted a large melon bed, in the corn field, on a spot where a heap of barnyard dressing had stood. There were both watermelons and musk-melons. These had ripened slowly during August and, by the time of the September town-meeting, were fit for eating.
The election for governor, with other State and county officers, was held on the second Monday of September in Maine.
In order to raise a little pocket money, Addison and Halstead carried their melons, also several bushels of good eating apples and pears, to the town-house at the village, early on election day, and rigged a little "booth" for selling from. They set off by sunrise, with old Nancy harnessed in the express wagon.
As I had no part in the planting of the melons, I was not a partner in the sales, although Gramp allowed me to go to the town-meeting with him, later in the forenoon. The distance was seven miles from the farm.