Our story begins with the death of our hero. The manner of it was decapitation, the instrument a mowing machine. A young son of the deceased, dumb with horror, seized the paternal head and ran with it to the house.

“There!” ejaculated the young man, bowling the gory pate across the threshold at his mother’s feet, “look at that, will you?”

The old lady adjusted her spectacles, lifted the dripping head into her lap, wiped the face of it with her apron, and gazed into its fishy eyes with tender curiosity. “John,” said she, thoughtfully, “is this yours?”

“No, ma, it ain’t none o’ mine.”

“John,” continued she, with a cold, unimpassioned earnestness, “where did you get this thing?”

“Why, ma,” returned the hopeful, “that’s Pap’s.”

“John”—and there was just a touch of severity in her voice—“when your mother asks you a question you should answer that particular question. Where did you get this?”

“Out in the medder, then, if you’re so derned pertikeller,” retorted the youngster, somewhat piqued; “the mowin’ machine lopped it off.”

The old lady rose and restored the head into the hands of the young man. Then, straightening with some difficulty her aged back, and assuming a matronly dignity of bearing and feature, she emitted the rebuke following:

“My son, the gentleman whom you hold in your hand—any more pointed allusion to whom would be painful to both of us—has punished you a hundred times for meddling with things lying about the farm. Take that head back and put it down where you found it, or you will make your mother very angry.”