et on their porch by the
kitchen door. Every mark had been carefully scraped off the barrel, but
on the top head were the words, printed with a lead pencil, 'This is
yourn and I am sorry.'

"Fourteen years before, the Wilburs had lost a large hog very
mysteriously. At that time domestic animals were allowed to run about
much more freely than at present, and they often strayed along the
highway. Sylvester was always in poor circumstances; and I believe that
Wilbur's hog came along the road by night and that Rufus was tempted to
make way with it privately and to conceal all traces of the theft.

"In spite of the words on the head of the barrel, Mr. Wilbur was in some
doubt what to do with the pork and asked my advice. I told him that if I
were in his place I should keep it and say nothing. But I didn't tell
him of my talk with Sylvester about the unpardonable sin," the old
gentleman added, smiling. "That was hardly a proper subject for gossip."

CHAPTER XV

THE CANTALOUPE COAXER

Every spring at the old farm we used to put in a row of hills for
cantaloupes and another for watermelons. But, truth to say, our planting
melons, like our efforts to raise peaches and grapes, was always more or
less of a joke, for frosts usually killed the vines before the melons
were half grown. Nevertheless, spring always filled us with fresh hope
that the summer would prove warm, and that frosts would hold off until
October. But we never really raised a melon fit for the table until the
old Squire and Addison invented the "haymaker."

To make hay properly we thought we needed two successive days of sun.
When rain falls nearly every day haying comes to a standstill, for if
the mown grass is left in the field it blackens and rots; if it is drawn
to the barn, it turns musty in the mow. Usually the sun does its duty,
but once in a while there comes a summer in Maine when there is so much
wet weather that it is nearly impossible to harvest the hay crop. Such a
summer was that of 1868.

At the old farm our rule was to begin haying the day after the Fourth of
July and to push the work as fast as possible, so as to get in most of
the crop before dog-days. That summer I remember we had mowed four acres
of grass on the morning of the fifth. But in the afternoon the sky
clouded, the night turned wet, and the sun scarcely showed again for a
week. A day and a half of clear weather followed; but showers came
before the sodden swaths could b