s a flower-pot and
an angel on it, with an affecting inscription, can buy one of that
kind, at a sacrifice for cash, from Keyser. He thinks the bad dream
must have been caused by eating too much at supper.

After he felt assured that he should have to remain a little longer
in this troublous world, Mr. Keyser determined to effect some
improvements of his farm that he had thought of. He greatly needed a
constant supply of water, and he resolved to bore an artesian well in
the barn-yard. The boring was done with a two-inch auger fixed in the
end of an iron rod, which was twisted around by a wheel worked by two
men. One day, after they had gone down a good many feet, they tried to
pull the rod out, but it would not come. They were afraid to use much
force lest the auger should come off and stay in the hole, and so, as
the boring went along well enough, they concluded to keep on turning,
and to trust to the force of the water, when they struck it, to drive
the loose dirt up from the hole. When they had gone down about three
hundred and fifty feet, they began to think it queer that there were
no signs of water, but they bored a hundred feet farther; and one
day, just as they were beginning on another hundred, something odd
happened.

On the day in question Keyser's boy came running into the house and
told him to come into the garden quick, for there was some kind of an
extraordinary animal with a sharp nose burrowing out of the ground.
Keyser concluded that it must be either a potato-bug or a grasshopper
that had been hatched in the spring, and he took out a bottle of
poison to drop on it when it came up. When Keyser reached the spot, a
couple of hundred yards from where they were boring the well, there
certainly was some kind of a creature slowly pushing its way up
through the sod. Its nose seemed to resemble a sharp point like steel.
Keyser dropped some poison on it; but it didn't appear to mind the
stuff, but kept slowly creeping up from the ground. Then Keyser felt
it, and was astonished to find that it felt exactly like the end of a
fork-prong. He sent the boy over to call Perkins and the rest of the
neighbors. Pretty soon a large crowd collected, and by this time the
animal had emerged to the extent of a couple of inches.

[Illustration: A QUEER PLANT]

Everybody was amazed to see that it looked exactly like the end of a
large auger; and two or three timid men were so scared at the idea of
such a thing actually gr