"Melons, this is all irrelevant and impertinent to the case. _You_
took those bananas. Your proposition regarding Carrots, even if I were
inclined to accept it as credible information, does not alter the
material issue. You took those bananas. The offense under the statutes
of California is felony. How far Carrots may have been accessory to
the fact either before or after it is not my intention at present to
discuss. The act is complete. Your present conduct shows the _animo
furandi_ to have been equally clear."
By the time I had finished this exordium Melons had disappeared, as I
fully expected.
He never reappeared. The remorse that I have experienced for the part
I had taken in what I fear may have resulted in his utter and complete
extermination, alas! he may not know, except through these pages. For
I have never seen him since. Whether he ran away and went to sea to
reappear at some future day as the most ancient of mariners, or whether
he buried himself completely in his trousers, I never shall know. I
have read the papers anxiously for accounts of him. I have gone to the
police office in the vain attempt of identifying him as a lost child.
But I never saw him or heard of him since. Strange fears have sometimes
crossed my mind that his venerable appearance may have been actually
the result of senility, and that he may have been gathered peacefully
to his fathers in a green old age. I have even had doubts of his
existence, and have sometimes thought that he was providentially and
mysteriously offered to fill the void I have before alluded to. In that
hope I have written these pages.--_Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands, and other
Sketches._