e melon-bed with the greatest care. Then he opened the paper and
poured the magical seeds into his hand.

There were only _four_--four wee seeds, each no bigger than a pin's
head! His first impulse was to fling them away in wrath, for he
thought such little things couldn't possibly make as big a fortune as
he wanted. But then he reflected, "Fairies are little, so I suppose
their seeds are little, too. I'll try them, anyhow." And with that he
put them in the ground and carefully covered them.

In an instant, the ground burst open in four places, and up shot four
sturdy melon-vines, that grew east, west, north, south!

Grew? No! they raced, they tore, they dashed through the country far
and wide! In no time, before Nimble Jim could get back to the house
door, the whole yard was full of melon-vine, and one great big melon,
bigger than the cottage itself, blocked the door-way.

[Illustration: THE MAGIC MELON OVERRUNS THE COUNTRY.]

"Oh! oh! oh!" roared Jim. "What _have_ I done? What _shall_ I do?" And
with his spade he cut a hole through the melon. It took him a whole
hour, and when he got into the house he found that his poor mother had
fainted from fright.

And all the time the vine and melons kept growing--east, west, north,
south.

Nimble Jim was frantic!

But the vines didn't mind Jim. On they went, growing like mad, a mile
a minute, faster than any railroad train. The big arms filled up the
main roads; the smaller ones crammed themselves into the lanes and
by-paths, while the tendrils embraced the tall trees, the houses, and
the church steeples, and snarled up everything. The leaves grew
so large, thick and green that they covered the whole face of the
country, shutting out the sun from the fields so the crops couldn't
grow; and the whole kingdom became so dark from the awful shade of
Nimble Jim's magic melon-vine, that the people had to burn candles day
and night.

It grew like mad. On! on! Stem, branch, leaf, tendril, fruit--on, on
it went! The melons grew--great, round, smooth, rich, ripe, juicy
melons, as big as houses--at the cross-roads, on the roads, in the
fields, filling barn-yards and door-yards so people and cattle
couldn't pass, or go in or out, till they had eaten their way through
the melons, or got ladders and climbed over, or dug trenches and
crawled under! On, on it went, surrounding the king's palaces and
choking up his forts! Down, down it grew into the brooks and rivers,
and out into th