rain in the granary, came in and asked what the trouble was.

"Squire," said Dennett, "I want another man to shake down here for me.
That's a queer Dick you've put up there."

The Old Squire spoke to Addison to get up and shake out the grain and
bade Halse come down and assist me with the straw. Halse climbed down,
muttering to himself. "I want to get a drink of water," he said; and as
he went out past the beater, he made a saucy remark to Dennett;
whereupon the latter seized a whip-stock and aimed a blow at him. Halse
dodged it and ran. Dennett chased him out of the barn; and Halse took
refuge in the wood-shed.

The Old Squire was at first inclined to reprove Dennett for this
apparently unwarranted act; he considered that he had no right to
chastise Halse. "I will attend to that part of the business, myself," he
said, somewhat sharply.

"All right, Squire," said Dennett. "But I want you to understand you've
got a bad boy there. Throwing stones into a beater is rough business. He
might kill somebody."

Halse did not come back to help me, at once; and at length Gramp went to
the house, in search of him. Ellen subsequently told me, that Halse had
at first refused to come out, on the pretext that Dennett would injure
him. The Old Squire assured him that he should not be hurt. Still he
refused to go. Thereupon the old gentleman went in search of a
horsewhip, himself; and as a net result of the proceedings, Halse made
his appearance beside me, sniffing.

"I wish it had stove his old machine all to flinders and him with it,"
he said to me, revengefully.

"Did you throw the stone into the beater?" I asked. The machine made so
much noise that I did not distinctly hear what Halse replied, but I
thought that he denied doing it; and whether he actually did it, or
whether the stone slid down with the grain owing to his carelessness, I
never knew. Addison shook down till night; and the next day Asa Doane
came to help us; for the Old Squire deemed it too hard for boys of our
age to handle the grain and straw, unassisted.

In May, before I came to the farm, Addison and Halse had planted a large
melon bed, in the corn field, on a spot where a heap of barnyard
dressing had stood. There were both watermelons and musk-melons. These
had ripened slowly during August and, by the time of the September
town-meeting, were fit for eating.

The election for governor, with other State and county officers, was
held on the second Monday o