ted upon plans for making the acquaintance of
Wilhelm, but it was plain that he was either very bashful or so
immersed in his pursuits as to be indifferent to the charms of woman,
for he had never made an attempt to see Nora in all the six months she
had been his neighbor, and she was well worth seeing.

Accordingly, she decided that if she did not wish to indefinitely
postpone making the acquaintance of the poulterer, she must take the
initiative. Timothy Sullivan was a market gardener. Klingenspiel was
not the only man in the neighborhood who grew big things. Mr. Sullivan
was experimenting upon some cabbages of unusual size. He had started
them in a hothouse during the winter. Later transferred to the garden,
they had attained an amplitude such as few if any cabbages had ever
attained before. In the pleasant light of the moon, even now was he
engaged with the cabbages, pouring something upon them from a watering
pot. As she watched her father, it occurred to Nora that she could
find no more suitable excuse for visiting Mr. Klingenspiel than in
carrying him some present in return for the goose's left leg he had
presented her family for a Sunday dinner, and that there was no more
appropriate present than one of the great cabbages.

No sooner had her father gone in than, selecting the largest cabbage,
she started off with it, putting it in a small push-cart, as it was so
large as to be too heavy and inconvenient to carry. It was somewhat
late to call, but the evening was so delightful that Wilhelm
Klingenspiel could hardly have gone to bed. Proceeding on her way, as
the road passed into the swampy land of Klingenspiel's domain, her
attention was engaged by the fact that a most singular commotion was
taking place among the giant batrachians at some remote place south of
the road. Their ordinary calls had increased both in volume and
frequency, and at intervals she heard the sound of crashing in the
brake and brush, as if some objects of unheard of size were falling
into the marsh. Looking in the direction whence the sounds came, she
saw indistinct and vague against the night sky, an enormous rounded
thing rise in the air and descend, whereupon was borne to her another
of the strange crashings. These inexplicable sounds and the
inexplicable sight would have frightened Miss Sullivan had she not the
resources with which modern science fortifies the mind against
credulity and superstition. The round object, she told herself,