ad fallen; her cheek lay close against
that of the big melon, and the vines met over her nose. It was a ghastly
and a grotesque spectacle, and I behaved as any other nine-year-old
would--jumped up and down and screamed, beating my palms together, and
calling alternately for "Father!" and "Cousin 'Ratio!"

Since that horrible moment I have believed stories read and heard of
people being scared to death, or into insanity. In the great, round
world, there was nothing present to me but a cruel expanse of green
below, a white-hot sky above, and at my feet a dead woman, killed by
the razor-like blades thick-set under every leaf, and guarding every
melon. Then all this was swept out of sight by a black wave that took me
off my feet.

I awoke in the shade of the peach orchard. Mr. Owen, the overseer, had
laid me down on the grass, and I heard him say, "She's all right now." I
sat up and stared around me. Cousin Nancy, still in a dead faint, was
stretched upon the ground a little way off, a fluttering swarm of women
about her, with water, brandy, hartshorn, cologne, fans, and burning
feathers, and Cousin 'Ratio, kneeling over her, was calling in her ear,
the tears running down his bristly cheeks.

"Miss Nancy! honey! sugar-lump! wake up! it's me, dearie! The danger is
all over. What a _doggoned_ fool I was to put the side-blades there!"

When she at last revived, she was taken to the house and put to bed. She
was not yet able to sit up when my father and mother drove over for me
in the cool of the afternoon.

"My tomfoolery came near to being the end of the poor dear," said Cousin
'Ratio, walking with us to the carriage, when we had taken leave of his
wife. "I feel mighty bad about it, too, as you may suppose, for it was
my fault in not reminding her of those cussed side-blades. Between
ourselves, Burwell,"--coming nearer to my father and glancing over his
shoulder to be sure none of the servants were within hearing,--"Owen and
I put just exactly _two_ in the whole patch, and they were near the
fence. Miss Nancy never went within a Sabbath day's journey of them. We
made a mighty parade of toting twenty of them past the quarters, taking
two of the hands along to help. They laid them down by the fence, and we
came down after dark and carried all but two off to the old tobacco
barn, and hid them there. I wasn't likely to rust my best side-blades by
burying them in the dirt. But I'd rather have ruined them all and lost
every bl