woman," she purred.

"A widower I know has got his eye on a good woman, and he can git her he thinks, if somebody else don't git too much encouragement from the neighbors."

"That somebody'll git none from a neighbor that _I_ can answer fer,"

Mrs. Doggett a.s.sured him with a wink.

Nameless and enigmatical as was the last of this conversation, these two former law kinsman and kinswoman understood and appreciated. When Mr.

Brock stepped out in the yard, the lantern was not more cheerful than his countenance in the darkness, and when Mrs. Doggett returned to the bosom of her family, she wore the complacent look of the cat that has just returned from the pigeon's nest.

CHAPTER V

A VISIT TO THE SEERESS

"When things are come to the execution, there is no secrecy comparable to celerity."

"Ef hit hain't done turned plumb warm ag'in! Lord, that jest suits me to a T!"

Quick changes come in the weather in Kentucky, and when, at four o'clock the next morning after the visit of her whilom son-in-law, Mrs. Doggett poked her head from the door over which the gaunt pine leaned, a summer-like breeze met her thin cheek.

She began her preparations for a journey with a rejoicing spirit, and by the time the men arose, her gallon tin bucket of b.u.t.ter, and half-peck basket of eggs were weighed, counted, and safely packed under the seat of the rickety "no-topped" buggy that occupied the leaky shed,--formerly the kitchen of the house; her kitchen that shone with cleanliness was swept and dusted, and a hot breakfast of coffee, biscuit, and fried slices of a shoulder of fresh pork, smoked on the green-figured oil-cloth.

"You're up a half-hour ahead o' time, hain't you, Ann?" mumbled Mr.

Doggett, with his face in the meal-sack towel which hung at the end of the kitchen mantel.

"Yes," a.s.sented Mrs. Doggett, "I am. I got to studdyin' in the night about pore Bob Ed House. Susie said when Gil wuz over thar last week, Bob Ed tuck a sinkin' spell, and they like to 'a' never brought him to!

Sometimes they'll live deceivin' with consumption, but he might drap off any time and me never see him no more, so I tuck a notion I'd go today: I been threatenin' to go long enough. Jest step out and ring the bell fer me, will you?"

The boys had come in from the barn lot, and were on the porch, but the big farm bell that came to be her's when the Castles moved to town, and which she had had hung in the top of the highest locust in her back yard, was Mrs. Doggett's crowning glory of possessions; it gave her a certain feeling of equality with "well-off" people, and she would have sooner sat down to her table without plates, than to have omitted the ringing of the bell.

"Gona take Bob Ed anytheng to eat, Ma?" asked Dock, using a big biscuit for a gravy swab.

"I'm gona take him a sack o' sausage, and that squirrel Joey killed yistiddy, to make him a nice stew, and considerin' I have to pa.s.s the store, I thought I'd as well take my b.u.t.ter'n aigs. I've got ever'thing ready in the buggy, and jest as soon as somebody gits Big Money hooked up fer me, I'll be off. Hit's a good five miles over to Bob Ed's, hain't hit, Eph?"

"Six, nigh about," corrected her husband: "hit's a mile yonside town; but, old lady," he looked at her in surprise, "hain't you a goin' to take Lily Pearl?"

Mrs. Doggett looked out of the window, contemplating the clear sky.

"I'm afeerd we're a gona have fallin' weather afore I git back," she averred: "and I wouldn't have Lily Pearl to git wet fer nothin'. She's puned around so much lately, I 'lowed maybe the worms is sorter workin'

on her. You can take her over to the strippin'-house with you, and she can take her doll quilt and piece on hit.

"They's plenty victuals in the press,--I baked three dried apple pies last night, and thar's stewed punkin, and a dish o' lye hominy, and a cold hog's head, and sorghum mola.s.ses, and plenty milk and b.u.t.ter. The corn-bread'll be cold by dinner, but I made dodgers, and put a whole lot o' cracklin's in hit, so hit'd eat good, anyhow. Thar won't be n.o.body here to ring the bell fer you, but you can hear Mrs. Bratcher's. Sence we got ourn, she rings hern at half-past 'leven."

At half-past six, Mr. Doggett held open the back gate for Mrs. Doggett's exit.

"Well, old lady," he congratulated her, "this time next year, you'll be settin' on a different lookin' set o' wheels, ef them two peegs thar keeps a growin' like they're a growin' now!"

Mrs. Doggett looked proudly toward the hovel in the corner of the yard--the habitation of her pet pigs, "Baby" and "Honey"--which together with their progeny were dedicated to the cause of a new buggy.

"Hain't they a growin'!" she agreed. "Eph, fer goodness sake, don't fergit to slop 'em at dinner, and see the door is shet. Them smart thengs, they know I'm a goin' away," she added, as a succession of melancholy squeals came over the half door of the piggery.

"Big Money," named by Lily Pearl, who heard her grandfather say when he was a new acquisition, that he was "worth big money," was raw-boned and angular, and his coat was an unbeauteous dirty white, but he was a horse of spirit, and in a half hour's time, Mrs. Doggett had crossed the pasture field, pa.s.sed the rocky "dirt-road," and was well on her way on the turnpike toward the store.

The merchant was a slow clerk, and her trading occupied considerable time, however, so that the two who purposed to accompany her on her journey, had ample time to overtake her. When she came out on the platform of the store-house, she was horrified to see two familiar glossy-backed creatures rubbing against the rear wheels of her equipage.

"Great day in the mornin'!" she exclaimed, "ef thar hain't my pigs! The outdacious pieces has rooted their door open and trailed me down! The wind sh.o.r.ely blowed the pastur gate open, and now what _am_ I to do?"

"Better just let them follow you on, Mrs. Doggett," suggested the pleasant-faced keeper of the store, "if you haven't far to go, and you can shut them up until you get ready to go back home."

"Oh, I hain't goin' but a little ways," lightly equivocated Mrs.

Doggett, "jest yonside the covered bridge, and I guess I can hold Big Money to a walk, that fur."

Once well past the bridge, seated in her present carriage, with her future carriage tagging contentedly behind, Mrs. Doggett in real vexation, drew rein to consider. Her intention had been to stop a few minutes at the house of sickness, then to continue her travels two miles further; but by leaving off her visit to the sick man, crossing the river at a deep ford a hundred yards below the bridge, and driving over a fearfully rocky and steep road, she could cut off three miles of the way.

"Now hain't that the awfulest fix a body ever wuz in!"

She shook her fist at the two black scape-graces that had lain down contentedly when she stopped. "Ef I wuz to go on by town, I wouldn't git to whar I'm goin' by dinner, let alone reskin' bein' tuck up fer a wanderer from the ejut-house! Ef I wuzn't afeerd o' them mean thengs a drowndin' I'd cross the river and take the nigh cut to ole July's. I b'leeve I'll resk hit anyhow!"

She lifted the bundles to the seat beside her, and with shaking fingers clutched the reins, and turned her horse down the steep slope into the river. It was both wide and deep, and in her ignorance of the exact ford, Mrs. Doggett drove a yard below it. The water rose in the bed of the buggy, baptizing her feet: Big Money, when his front feet went down in an unexpected hole, floundered momentarily, but in an instant, he recovered himself and breasted the water gallantly.

When, from the safety of the opposite bank, Mrs. Doggett dared to look back, she was filled with new consternation. The pigs had not crossed, but were running along the bank in evident search of a less watery highway!

"O mercy goodness!" she lamented, "a body can't have no luck, no how!

Now Hewitt Jefferson--a claimin' ever'theng that's loose--he'll come along and swear they're his, and I'll never see 'em ag'in! I ought to 'a' tuck 'em back home anyhow!"

In an agony of apprehension, she leaped from her vehicle from whose bed the water was running off in streams.

"Come on Baby! Come on Honey!" she pleaded shrilly: "come on to Mammy!"

The pigs heard and, after a moment's hesitation, came to the edge of the water, plunged in and swam across. When they crawled up the bank and shook themselves, Mrs. Doggett, unmindful of their wet hides, hugged them in her delight, climbed into her buggy, wiped her eyes, and chirruped to Big Money. It was a long hard pull; the highway was a succession of rocky ledges up hill a quarter of a mile, and down hill there was more than a mile of the same rugged road. But the aged and twine-mended harness had mercy on the shaken driver, and held together: Big Money did his best, and the pigs climbed valiantly.

Mrs. Doggett was quite herself again when the foot of the hill reached, she came in sight of a mud-daubed log-cabin in the valley, with a mighty clump of cedar trees a hundred yards to the left of it, and a section of scattered beeches and undergrowth to the right. The hut was set quite in the open, with no yard fence about it, and looked a lonely and melancholy place.

Hanging on the front wall of the cabin, under the newly-built lean-to porch, with its pillars of cedar trunks, from the freshly cut knots of which came a pungently sweet smell,--a long snake's "shed" dangled, and beside it swung a dried beef's gall.

In lieu of a porch floor, flat rocks were placed irregularly about. The door of the cabin hung open, revealing walls papered with newspapers. A corner cupboard occupied one corner of the room: a lounge covered with a calico quilt, another, and, drawn up before the blazing wood fire, over which smoked a steaming pot, were a wooden stool and a small table. A little baking-oven, covered with live coals, sat on one end of the hearth, and over everything was a decent air of cleanliness.

As Mrs. Doggett neared the cabin, a fat old negress, wearing a faded black calico mourning-dress, and carrying a bundle of sticks, came out of the wood. This was July Pullins, whose living was her pension, and whose pastime was fortune-telling. Her seamed light-brown face wrinkled itself in smiles when she recognized her old acquaintance.

"_Is_ dat you, Mis' Doggett?" she cried, as she waddled up. "I am shoah a proud crittur to see you! Laws, I sees you ain't had no easy time a gittin' heah!" she added in ready sympathy, noting Mrs. Doggett's wet skirts, her sweating horse, and panting swine.

"Law mercy, July, I hain't had sech a time sence I was borned!"

exclaimed Mrs. Doggett, and while old July unharnessed Big Money, and blanketed him with an ancient linsey quilt, she related her trials.

"I knows what you come for: you's worried about a marriage, and wants to consultify me about hit, doan' you?" cackled July, as she helped her guest unlace her wet shoes in front of the fire: "but wid yoah p'mission, dat'll keep ontwell de last theng after dinner. I wants to talk ober de news some wid you! Lawd, 'scuse me, Mis' Ann, heah I is, settin' up, talkin' to white folks wid my head-rag on!" She lifted her hand to pull the white rag from her wrapped hair, but Mrs. Doggett interposed.