an across the room to admit the caller, the melons rolling in
every direction. Joe glanced at them apprehensively, and then gave his
undivided attention to the harness mending.

The visitor who entered the room on Ralph's hospitable invitation was
our near neighbor, Caleb Wilson. Mr. Wilson glanced at the array of
hard little spheres on the floor and laughed.

"I'll bet a cent you've been up to mischief, youngster," he said,
nodding to me as I handed him a chair.

He looked smilingly at Ralph, who retreated to Joe's side, and made no
answer.

"Ralph, do you hear Mr. Wilson?" Jessie sternly inquired.

"'Ess; me hears him."

"Why don't you answer him, then?"

"'Tause he didn't ask me nuffin'."

Joe's sombre face lighted up; his white ivories gleamed out suddenly
like a flash of sunlight through a storm cloud. To Joe's mind few
people had a right to question the doings of a Gordon, of any age or
degree, and Mr. Wilson was not one of the favored few. Our genial
neighbor laughed.

"That's right, my little man; I didn't. I made a statement, and you
seem to be sharp enough already to see the difference."

He had been carrying a covered tin pail in his hand. He now set it on
the floor beside his chair, while Jessie, who had it much at heart
that her little brother must be properly trained, remarked:

"Ralph has been very naughty."

"He'll come out all right; don't you go to worrying about him, Miss
Jessie," Mr. Wilson admonished her, cheerfully. "He's nothing but a
baby, anyway," he continued, "but what even a baby can want of all
those little green knobs of cantaloupes is more'n I can tell, but
seeing 'em calls to my mind a fruit speculation of mine, last summer."

"I thought you were a cattleman?" I interrupted, involuntarily.

Mr. Wilson glanced down at the pail beside his chair. "Well, I am,
Leslie, but a cattleman doesn't have to be sensible all the time. I
had a kind of spell last summer when I wasn't sensible, and while it
was at its height I got hold of a pile of young tomato plants and set
'em out. You see, as everybody else, pretty nigh, is in the cattle
business, too, there ain't much fruit raised around here, and so I
'lowed I'd be able to dispose of my tomato crop to good advantage.
Along in August the crop was ready to market, and it was a hummer, no
mistake. The construction gang and the engineers were working on the
big storage reservoirs out beyond Turtle Shell Buttes then, just as
they are no