"James!--Wait a moment for me! Where are you?" added the merchant; and walking quickly to the pea-rows, he saw his brother leave them and dexterously make for the tall Indian-corn. Now Uncle Dozie was not in the least deaf; and his brother was utterly at a loss to account for his evading him in the first place, and for his not answering in the second. He thought the man had lost his senses: he was mistaken, Uncle Dozie had only lost his heart. Determined not to give up the chase, still calling the retreating Uncle Dozie, he pursued him from the pea-rows into the windings of the corn-hills, across the walk to another growth of peas near the garden paling. Here, strange to say, in a manner quite inexplicable to his brother, Uncle Dozie and his vegetables suddenly disappeared! Mr. Hubbard was completely at fault: he could scarcely believe that he was in his own garden, and that it was his own brother James whom he had been pursuing, and who seemed at that instant to have vanished from before his eyes--through the fence, he should have said, had such a thing been possible. Mr. Hubbard was a resolute man; he determined to sift the matter to the bottom. Still calling upon the fugitive, he made his way to the garden paling through the defile of the peas. No one was there--a broad, open bed lay on either hand, and before him the fence. At last he observed a foot-print in the earth near the paling, and a rustling sound beyond. He advanced and looked over, and to his unspeakable amazement, saw his brother, James Hubbard, busily engaged there, in collecting the scattered vegetables which had fallen from his basket. "Jem!--I have caught you at last, have I? What in the name of common sense are you about there?" No reply was made, but Uncle Dozie proceeded to gather up his cauliflowers, peas and tomatoes, to the best of his ability. "Did you fly over the fence, or through it?" asked his brother, quite surprised. "Neither one nor the other," replied Uncle Dozie, sulkily. "I came through the gate." "Gate!--why there never was a gate here!" "There is one now." And so there was; part of the paling had been turned into a narrow gate. "Why, who cut this gate, I should like to know?" "I did." "You did, Jem? What for?--What is the use of it?" "To go through." "To go where? It only leads into Mrs. Wyllys's garden." Uncle Dozie made no answer. "What are you doing with those vegetables? I am really curious to know." "Going to carry them down there," said Uncle Dozie. "Down where?" repeated Uncle Josie, looking on the ground strewed with vegetables. "Over there." "Over where?" asked the merchant, raising his eyes towards a neighbouring barn before him. "Yonder," added Uncle Dozie, making a sort of indescribable nod backward with his head. "Yonder!--In the street do you mean? Are you going to throw them away?" "Throw away such a cauliflower as this!" exclaimed Uncle Dozie, with great indignation. "What are you going to do with them, then?"