In old Jonas's garden in the summer we are speaking of, there were three squares of corn, the finest that had ever been seen on upland. And it was very funny, too: for old Jonas had planted early, and the frost had come down and nipped the corn when it was about three inches high. The negro gardener was in despair; in all his experience, and he was gray-headed, he had never seen anything like this late frost, and he was anxious for the corn to be ploughed up, so that it could be replanted. Old Jonas wouldn't hear to the proposition, and the gardener went about his business, wondering how a man could be so stingy about seed corn, when he had seven or eight bushels stored away in the dry cellar. But, as time went on, the gardener discovered that old Jonas had wisdom on his side of the fence; the corn not only came up again after being cut down, but it grew twice as fast, and almost twice as high as anybody else's corn. In short, there had never before been seen, in that neighbourhood, a roasting-ear patch quite as vigorous. Some of the cornstalks were nearly fourteen feet high, and some of them had as many as four ear-sprouts showing. The patch was so rank and healthy that it attracted the attention of Mr. Sanders. He climbed the fence, and went into old Jonas's garden to give it a close examination. A good breeze was blowing at the time, and the sword-like leaves of the corn were stirred by it, so that they waved up and down and from side to side, whispering to one another, "Whish-whish!" That was enough for Mr. Sanders. He thought instantly of Adelaide, and he named the roasting-ear patch the Whish-Whish Woods, and that was where he proposed to go hunting for the Boogerman, the awful, greedy creature that ate Nunky-Punky's vegetables raw! Lucindy didn't need any training in the quick-lunch line, and in less than no time, if we may deal familiarly with the ticking of the clock, she had cut two biscuits open and inserted in each a juicy slice of ham; and while she was doing this, Adelaide ran to her armoury, where she kept her weapons, offensive and defensive, and came running back with two guns. They were cornstalk guns, but not the less dangerous on that account. They were very long and, as Mr. Sanders said, they had about them an appearance of violence calculated to make the Boogerman fall on his knees and surrender the moment he was discovered. An ordinary gun might miss fire--such things have been known before now--but a cornstalk gun, never! All you have to do when you have a cornstalk gun, is to point it at the destined victim, shut your eyes and say _Bang!_ in a loud voice, and the thing is done. And if people or things--whatever and whoever you shoot at--should be mean enough to remain unhurt, why, then, that is their fault, and much good may their meanness do them!