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 growing out of the earth that they suddenly
got over the fence and left. Perkins couldn't account for it; but he
suggested that maybe somebody might have planted a gimlet there, and
it had taken root and blossomed out into an auger; but he admitted
that he had never heard of such a thing before.

The excitement increased so that the men who were boring the artesian
well knocked off and came over to see the phenomenon. It was noticed
that as soon as they stopped work the auger ceased to grow; and when
they arrived, they looked at it for a minute, and one of them said,

"Bill, do you recognize that auger?"

"I think I do," said Bill.