arrived with the burial-suit, and before Keyser could kick him off the
steps the paper-carrier flung into the door the _Patriot_, in which
that obituary notice occupied a prominent place.

Anybody who wants a good reliable tombstone that has 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