Chapter Eleven.
How the Melons Disappeared.
I think I have said that Uncle Abe knew everything there was to be known about farming, but he was content with his knowledge and never put it to practical use, unless it was in the growing of water-melons. His melons were the biggest and the sweetest, with the reddest hearts and the smoothest rinds in the district. His patch was on the sunny side of the slope, and when the big glistening globes were coming to fruition, the old chap would sit on the worn sod bank above them and watch them “drinking in the sunshine,” as he said. I went over one morning to collect six melons, previously selected, in exchange for a sack of meal, and found him seated on a bank, the picture of misery.
“What’s the matter, Uncle?”
“A go-hoppin’ ghost’s been around here eating my melons.”
“A what?”
“A spook, and he’s walked off with the very six melons you set your mark against.”
I dismounted, and walked into the melon patch, the old man silently pointing out to me, with the stem of his pipe, the severed stems of my melons.
“They’re gone—you see.”