now, also took place during this time, and
Andrew and Uncle Jake, when working in the far corner, made the
extraordinary discovery of an odontologic gold plate of the best
quality and in perfect order. The find created quite a sensation.

As grandma said, it bore evidence that some one had been stealing
grapes during the season, for any person legitimately in the vineyard
would have instituted a search for such a valuable piece of property,
and for a person who could afford such a first-class gold plate to
steal grapes, showed what _some people_ were. It did indeed, for this
person had been wont to clandestinely enter her premises to perpetrate
a far lower grade of crime than pilfering her grapes or destroying her
vineyard. The incident trickled into the columns of 'The Noonoon
Advertiser,' in conjunction with the facetious remark that the invader
would have had to take a lot of grapes to compensate him for what he
had lost; and it was further stated that the article being useless
except to him--its size bespoke it a man's--for whom it had been
modelled, he could have it upon giving satisfactory proof that he was
the owner.

Needless to say, Mr Pornsch did not claim his property, and this
souvenir was the last we heard of him. Andrew took it to Mr S. Messre,
dentist, the man who had seemed to consider it unprofessional that to
fill my teeth should take time, and with him the lad bargained that in
return for the plate he was to tinker up those teeth whose aching I
had allayed with the carbolic acid prescribed for me by the other
dentist.

Dawn and I chuckled in secret, sent a copy of 'The Noonoon Advertiser'
to Carry, and remarked that it was an ill wind that blew no one any
good.

During the fortnight preceding the concert, Ernest Breslaw called at
Clay's several times to see me, and saw me unattended by any extras in
the form of a beautiful young girl, for Dawn blushingly avoided him.
He had to fall back on such outside skirmishing as rowing me on the
river, and though there was no longer an impending election to furnish
him with excuse for loitering in Noonoon, he did not speak of
deserting it in a hurry. He had reached that degree of amorous
collapse when he could manage to shadow the haunts of his desired
young lady regardless of circumstances, and grandma began to suspect
that his attentions had a little more staying power than those of the
week-end admirer.

Seeing that the "red-headed mug" had reappeared,