“My name is Peterkin,” he remarked by way of introduction. “They call me Father Peterkin along o’ the gran’child’en.” He was a garrulous soul, I suspected, and would not be averse to imparting the information I wanted.
“There’s not much travel this way,” I began, as we turned out of the cleared space into the deep tunnel of the trees. Immediately the twilight enveloped us, though now and then the dusky glow in the sky was still visible. The air was sharp with the tang of autumn; with the effluvium of rotting leaves, the drift of wood smoke, the ripe flavour of crushed apples.
“Thar’s nary a stranger, thoughten he was a doctor, been to Jur’dn’s End as fur back as I kin recollect. Ain’t you the new doctor?”
“Yes, I am the doctor.” I glanced down at the gnomelike shape in the wood brown overcoat. “Is it much farther?”
“Naw, suh, we’re all but thar jest as soon as we come out of Whitten woods.”
“If the road is so little travelled, how do you happen to be going there?”
Without turning his head, the old man wagged his crescent shaped profile. “Oh, I live on the place. My son Tony works a slice of the farm on shares, and I manage to lend a hand at the harvest or corn shuckin’, and, now-and-agen, with the cider. The old gentleman used to run the place that away afore he went deranged, an’ now that the young one is laid up, thar ain’t nobody to look arter the farm but Miss Judith. Them old ladies don’t count. Thar’s three of ’em, but they’re all addle-brained an’ look as if the buzzards had picked ’em. I reckon that comes from bein’ shut up with crazy folks in that thar old tumbledown house. The roof ain’t been patched fur so long that the shingles have most rotted away, an’ thar’s times, Tony says, when you kin skearcely hear yo’ years fur the rumpus the wrens an’ rats are makin’ overhead.”
“What is the trouble with them—the Jordans, I mean?”
“Jest run to seed, suh, I reckon.”
“Is there no man of the family left?”