Hooking Watermelons

eat to the fence of any person who had once got among the melons. Hewing down a hill of corn in the second row from the front, he made a comfortable place for his easy-chair. Amy lingered for a while, enjoying the excitement of the occasion, and they talked in whispers; but finally Arthur sent her in, and as her dress glimmered away down the garden path, he settled himself comfortably for his watch.

In the faint moonlight he could just descry the dark shapes of the melons on the ground in front of him. The crickets were having a high time in the stubble around, and the night air drew sweet autumnal exhalations from the ground; for autumn begins by night a long time before it does by day. The night wind rustled in the corn with a crisp articulateness he had never noticed in daytime, and he felt like an eavesdropper. Then for a while he heard the music of some roving serenaders, down in the village, and grew pensive with the vague reminiscences of golden youth, romance, and the sweet past that nightly mu