The unfettered guests, Mr. Nathan Lindsay, Gran'dad Doggett, who was staying with his daughter, Lindy Gumm, over on the River,—and Mr. Galvin Brock (he of the mole and the nose) who had been young Callie Doggett's second husband, lingered.
Mr. Lindsay, who held himself a step above the Doggetts, but was not averse to a Sunday's visit to that hospitable household, had suggested that it was warmer outdoors than in the house. The three guests, with their host and his youngest son, sat in the pleasant warmth of the late afternoon's sunshine, at the woodpile on the west side of the house.
Mr. Brock's usual manner of answering a question was by an assenting or dissenting grunt. This time, however, his mouth left its grim line an instant.
"If it keeps as dry as it is now," he observed, "nobody's tobaccer will see a killin' frost unhoused."
During the Civil War, Gran'dad Doggett, on account of what he called "a leetle shootin' scrape, but nothin' criminal," had brought his young family from Bell County, in the Kentucky Mountains, to the Blue Grass. Before this flitting of necessity, he had been a Justice of the Peace, which fact, ever afterward caused him to affect an air of conscious superiority toward his son.
"More than that, Ephriam," he remarked, corroborating Mr. Brock's observation, "more than that, frost don't never kill in the dark o' the moon. I'd 'a' thought in the thirty year you've been a raisin' terbaccer, you'd 'a' learned that!"
"That's right, old man, yes, sir"—Mr. Doggett's slow drawl was affable in the extreme—"that's jest what I told the boys. A body hain't no use to cross a bridge afore they gits to hit! Jim now, he wuz might' night' wilted down along in July, afeerd the best part o' his crop wuz a Frenchin', but hit growed off all right, and now hit's the best terbaccer he's got! I'm afeerd he'll have too much fer his barn and he'll want to put some in mine.
"I says to Jim and Mr. Castle last week, 'I hain't a aimin' to let you scrouge up and burn up my terbaccer.' Although a heap o' men, when they are a leetle short o' room, they'll push up the sticks together, hit's a poor way! Terbaccer'll rot, ef you crowd hit, ever' time. The rot'll start up whar the stem jines the stalk, and hit'll drap off ef you don't watch.
"Yes, sir, Jim's got a fine crop. Ef he could save ever' leaf, he'd have two thousand pounds to the acre, jest about. Some o' this farm's mighty tired, but I 'low they hain't no sech land as them ten acres in the world fer richness!
"Although when I wuz in town on a Court day last—Monday wuz a week—a Texas feller wuz a tellin' about how rich the ground is thar. He says the crops thar is astoundin', the dirt is so rich; he says he raised one punkin'—jest an ordinary sized one too, fer Texas,—and his old sow, she made a bed in hit fer her peegs! Yes, sir!"