uring the Summer, boiled green, and sweet and good it was. Mother Blake
had canned some plain corn, and had also put away more, mixed with lima
beans, making succotash as the Indians used to do.

Daddy Blake soon began to dig the late potatoes, which would be kept down
cellar in the dark to be eaten as they were needed during the long Winter.

"And I think we'll have enough to last us until Spring," he said, "and
perhaps have some for seed. Our garden has been a great success, even if
the hail did spoil some things and bugs and worms part of other crops."

The potatoes were really Uncle Pennywait's crop--at least he had planted
most of them and called them his, for the tomatoes were Daddy Blake's. And
Uncle Pennywait kept careful count of every quart and bushel of the
potatoes that were eaten, or put away for Winter.

"Because I want that ten dollar prize," he said.

Hal and Mab looked at one another anxiously.

"Who would win it?" they wondered.

Finally there were some cold, sharp frosts, so that the tomato and other
vines were all shriveled up when Hal and Mab went out to the garden to
look at them.

"Oh, Daddy! Will they straighten up again?" they asked.

"No. Their work is done. We shall have to plant new seeds to make new
vines, but we shall have to wait until Spring comes again. The earth is
soon going to sleep for the Winter, when nothing will grow in it. But it
is time to get in your corn and beans, children. You must cut your yellow
corn, Hal, and the other kind, too, and let the ears get dry, ready for
husking."

"What other kind of corn, Daddy?" Hal asked.

"Come and I'll show you," his father said.

Mr. Blake led the way down to the corn patch of the garden. At the end he
plucked an ear of corn, stripped away the half dried husk, and showed Hal
and Mab some sharp-pointed kernels.

"That's the kind of corn that pops," said the children's father. "I sowed
a few hills for you without saying anything. I wanted it as a surprise."

"And will it really pop?" asked Hal, his eyes shining.

"Try some and see," advised Daddy Blake. And later, when the ears of
popcorn had dried, and the kernels were shelled into the popper and shaken
over the fire, they burst out into big, white bunches like snow flakes.

"What makes pop-corn?" asked Hal.

"Well the heat of the fire turns into steam the water that is inside the
kernel of corn," said Mr. Blake. "Though you can not see it, there is
water in corn, beans