Our old friend Salina sat at a little distance, with her fiery tresses rolled in upright puffs over each temple, and her great horn-comb towering therein like a battlement. A calico gown with very gay colors straggling over it, like honeysuckles and buttercups on a hill-side, adorned her lathy person, leaving a trim foot visible upon a bundle of stalks just within range of uncle Nat's eye. Not that Salina intended it, or that uncle Nat had any particular regard for neatly clad feet, but your strong-minded woman has an instinct which is sure to place the few charms sparsely distributed to the class, in conspicuous relief on all occasions. As Salina sat perched on the base of the corn-stalk, tearing away vigorously at the husks, she cast an admiring glance now and then on the old man as his head rose and fell to the motion of his hands; but that glance was directly withdrawn with a defiant toss of the head, for uncle Nat's eyes never once turned on the trim foot with its calf-skin shoe, much less on its owner, who began to be a little exasperated, as maidens of her class will when their best points are overlooked. "Humph!" muttered the maiden, looking down at her calico, "one might as well have come with a linsey-woolsey frock on for what any body cares." In order to relieve these exasperated feelings Salina seized an ear of corn by the dead silk and rent away the entire husk at once; when lo! a long, plump red ear appeared, the very thing that half a dozen of the prettiest girls on the stalk-heap had been searching and wishing for all the evening. This discovery was hailed with a shout. The possession of a red ear, according to the established usage of all husking parties, entitled every gentleman present to a kiss from the holder. The barn rang again with a clamor of voices and shouts of merry laughter. There was a general crashing down of ears upon the corn-heap. The roguish girls that had failed in finding the red ear, all abandoned work and began dancing over the stalk-heap, clapping their hands like mad things, and sending shout after shout of mellow laughter that went ringing cheerily among the starlit evergreens overhead. But the young men, after the first wild shout, remained unusually silent, looking sheepishly on each other with a shy unwillingness to commence duty. No one seemed urgent to be first, and this very awkwardness set the girls off like mad again. There sat Salina, amid the merry din, brandishing the red ear in her hand, with a grim smile upon her mouth, prepared for a desperate defence. "What's the matter, why don't you begin?" cried a pretty, black-eyed piece of mischief, from the top of the stalk-heap; "why, before this time, I thought you would have been snatching kisses by handsful." "I'd like to see them try, that's all!" said the strong-minded female, sweeping a glance of scornful defiance over the young men.