xt72v6986f33 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt72v6986f33/data/mets.xml Hackley, Sarah Bell. 1909  books b92-126-29177664 English C.M. Clark Publishing Co., : Boston, Mass. : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Tobacco Kentucky. Tobacco tiller  : a tale of the Kentucky tobacco fields / by Sarah Bell Hackley. text Tobacco tiller  : a tale of the Kentucky tobacco fields / by Sarah Bell Hackley. 1909 2002 true xt72v6986f33 section xt72v6986f33 




































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The Tobacco Tiller
    A Tale of heK y
       Toba  F elds



   BY
Belh  l Ha ciy



THE C. M. CLA  PUCOM



ii



I

 































                By
THE C. M. CLARK PUBLISHING CO.,
        Boston, Masschusetts,
             U. S. A.

         Al RI.A Leared.



 
















I CONTENTS



CHAPTER                               PAGU
   I-MR. DOGGETT AT HOME  . . . . . 1

   II-THE MYRTLE BUDS IN Miss LUCY'S
          GARDEN   . . . . . . . . 16

 III-AT THE STRIPPING-HOUSE . . . . 34

 IV-A COMPACT . . . . . . . . . 53

 V-A VISIT TO THE SEERESS . . . . . 73

 VI-A NEIGHBORLY CALL  . . . . . . 101

 VII-RivALs  . . . . . . . . . . 121

 VIII-AT THE TOBACCO BARN  . . . . . 138

 IX-" SURE SOME DISASTER HAS BEFELL "   . 153

 X-NIGHT RIDERS  . . . . . . . . 169

 XI-MoRE NIGHT RIDERS  . . . . . . 185

 XII-THE MAD COW   . . . . . . . . 205

 XIII-MR. DOGGETT'S ACQUISITION . . . . 227

 XIV-MR. DOGGETT LENDS A HAND   . . . 262

 XV-" WEEP No MORE, MY LADY "  . . . 291

 
This page in the original text is blank.



 

















           LIST OF
    I LL US T RAT I O NS






                              PAGE
"I dunno but what we'd better
    move to Texas"    . Frontispiece

"Hit's Jeremiah, my pet," she
    explained soothingly . . .   85

"Mistu Linney, is 'oo lovin'
   Miss Luty".....   .    . 146

"Here's a letter. Lucy Ann," he
   sneered  .......          262

 
This page in the original text is blank.

 










          FOREWORD

  BiaoLD, friend, a multitude traversing a
road shaded at its edge by mighty plants
whose leaves are thick, broad, and rank in
their odor,-the nicotiana tabacum. Who
are they of the multitude
  They are those who have had to do with
the making of the history of the weed whose
cousins are the thorn-apple, and the night-
shade, from the time its existence came to be
known to the civilized nations.
  Listen, friend, to the roll-call.
  Ye whose bread was the banana,-whose
garb was the sunshine,-whose gods were
worshiped in the smoke-cloud from the burn-
ing leaf of the Petun,-whose weapons of
war were arrows, poison-tipped in the oil
of tobacco,-ye red barbarians of Central
America, of the off lying islands, and of the
farther northward country; ye from whom
the world learned to use tobacco,-anower
to your names!

 







ii            FOREWORD

  Sir of the silken robe and waving plume,-
dizzy with visions of the wealth of the Mon-
tezumas to be conquered,-you who in the
beginning of the sixteenth century, presented
the Indian weed to your Sovereign at Madrid,
-Fernando Cortez-answer to your name !
  Sir Francis Drake, the first son of Old
England to look to the borders of the Peaceful
Ocean,-bring forward Ralph Lane, starving
pearl-hunter of Roanoke Island, whom you
rescued. Answer, Lane, you who introduced
the Indian custom of "drinking tobacco"
into your country I
  Noble prisoner of the Tower,-chivalrous
subject of Her Sovereign Majesty, Elizabeth,
in whose honor was named the sunny land
which grew the herb of enchantment,-you
who made the herb fashionable in Britain,
Sir Walter Raleigh, answer to roll call!
  Silversmith, maker of the pipe of silver
of the Queen's Favorite, and of the scales that
enabled him to ascertain the weight of the
smoke of a pipeful of tobacco, and win his
majesty's wager,-answer to your name!
  You, whose name, by courtesy of the

 







              FOREWORD                 iii

great Swedish student of nature, the Indian's
weed bears,-John Nicot, of the Country of
Charlemagne, answer roll-call!
  And you, Madame, of the day-fair face,
and the night-black heart, wife to one King,
and mother to another,-huntress, builder
of the Tuileries,-you, at whose feet lie the
victims of that mid-summer night of horror,
the eve of St. Bartholomew's Day,-you,
Madame, first snuff-taker of Europe, and chris-
tener of the Herbe de La Reine,-Catherine
de Medici,-murderess,-answer to roll-call!
  Mariners of the Mediterranean, Merchants of
Venice, Genoan tradesmen,-ye who enlight-
ened the Levant, and the wide Continent to
the borders of the deepest ocean, as to the
intoxicating delights of the plant solanaceae,-
your names are called!
  Hear all ye, who by might of Sovereign rule,
of priestly power, and example, have en-
deavored to drive the weed of the West from
your domains,-answer to your names!
  Unhappy prisoner of St. Helena, who in
your day of power, secured to your Govern-
ment the exclusive right of making and

 







FvFOREWORD



selling tobacco, - answer to your name I
  Governor of Virginia,-compelled to adjust
the proportion between the corn and the
tobacco to be raised in the cleared lands,-
when the colonists, mad with thoughts of
gold, neglected the culture of that which they
could eat, for that which they could sell,-
Sir Thomas Dale,-answer roll-call!
  Ye one hundred young women of "agreeable
persons and respectable character," whose
over seas passage was paid with the tobacco
of your husbands-to-be,-answer to your
names!
  All ye vast multitude concerned in the
making of the past history of tobacco,-
answer to roll-call!
  They have answered, friend! they have
passed beyond our vision, and yet the tobacco
shadowed highway is traversed by a great
throng.
  Who are they They are the present day
consumers of the weed of the red children of
the woods,-they are the subjects of Edward,
men of the Fatherland, of France, of Spain,
of the cold barren steppes of Russia, of the



iV

 







FOREWORD



parched plains of Africa, of the Americas,
and the islands of the seas; soldiers, sailors,
civilians, barbarians, infidels, Christians, the
earth over, and their number is hundreds of
millions !
  Tobacco! Tobacco for the millions of the
past I Tobacco for the millions of the present!
Whence come the supplies for these Whence
come the supplies for these
  For a time, Virginia supplied the world,
but the culture of the weed spread with its
use, until it came to be grown in many parts
of the old world.
  The United States, however, produces more
tobacco than any other country in the world,
and of her great output,-Kentucky, pos-
sessed of the soil combined with conditions
of climate that makes good tobacco in greater
measure than any other of the States, raises
more than one-third.
  Within Kentucky's borders, friend, the
number of the agricultural folk who depend
for daily bread on crops of tobacco, is great.
Every year's August sees more than three
hundred thousand of Kentucky's rich acres,



V

 







vi            FOREWORD

yellow green with the growing tobacco, and
every year's March sees near three hundred
millions of pounds of matured tobacco sent
away.
  The central and north central parts of the
State, embracing the Blue Grass region,
wherein lies the home of the great Pacificator,
is known as the White Burley District, and
is world-renowned for the quality and quan-
tity of the famous White Burley tobacco,
largely used in the domestic trade. Here this
tobacco is produced at its best.
  In the western part of the State, the lands
south-bounded by the waters of the Cumber-
land, and over which, in the olden day, annual
prairie fires swept, are known as the Regie,
or Dark Tobacco district, and here are grown
the dark heavy varieties of tobacco, adapted
to the export trade.
  A hard life the tobacco tiller's, friend.
He who has not seen the tobacco grown, can
have no conception of the physical hardships
endured, the ceaseless toil, the care and the
anxiety as to the likelihood of failure, that
enter into the growing of a tobacco crop.

 







               FOREWORD                  vii

  It is a crop that requires the very best
quality of land on which to cultivate it,
and the most arduous of toil in its cultivation.
Work may be hard in another crop, but set
the work necessary to raise any crop beside
the labor entailed in a tobacco crop-from
its beginning until it is ready for the manu-
facturer-and friend, it will be as the labor
of the little lad who digs a miniature trench
in the beach sands, beside the completed
digging of the canal that will unite two oceans !

 
This page in the original text is blank.


 












THE TOBACCO TILLER



              CHAPTER I

         Mit. DOGGETT AT HOME
  "Awak, awake my lyre, and tell thy silent mater's humble

  "DocK and me went out this momin' and
scraped up about three tablespoonfuls o'
frost offen that plank a layin' right thar by
the fence,-yes, sir, three tablespoonfuls,
nigh about. Ef we don't watch, some o'
our terbaccer's a goin' to git ketched a stand-
in'. Frost a holdin' off ontel the last o'
September hain't seasonable. What you
thenk about hit, Mr. Brock"
  The pale blue eyes, half-hidden by the
bushy red side-bums that floated wildly out
on either side of Mr. Doggett's face, like
sunburnt bunches of broom sedge blown in a
                   1

 







THE TOBACCO TILLER



high wind, included all his audience with a
comprehensive beam of agreeability. Finally
these pleasant eyes rested, in the enforced
deference due the most prosperous guest, on
the thick-set man with the hog-like neck,
and the enormous mole, that stood, sentinel-
like beside the left nostril of his rose-colored,
aquiline nose.
  For reasons domestic and infantile, a por-
tion of the Doggetts' Sunday's company,-
Susie Dutton and Hattie Leeds, the two
daughters, and Lem and Jim, the two mar-
ried sons, the four spouses and the eight
babes, had taken a reluctant mid-afternoon
departure.
  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. hNt was not averse to a Sun,-
day's visit to that hospitable household, had
suggested that it was warmer outdoors than



2

 







THE TOBACCO TILLER



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
wood-pile 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 ob-
served, "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 after-
ward 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! "



3

 







THE TOBACCO TILLER



  " 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!



4

 







THE TOBACCO TILLER



  "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!"
  Mrs. Doggett, a large, spare, and comely
woman, with high cheek bones and olive
skin, lifted the battered zinc buckets she was
filling with chips.
  "Well, Eph," she vouchsafed, "ef that's
the truth, I dunno but what we'd better
move to Texas. Ef anybody's any worse
needin' a betterin' o' their condition than us,
I dunno who ner what hit is! Look at the
house we have to live in, will you, front and
back! It'd be mighty late when Mr. Castle'd
durst offer to put you in sech a house, wouldn't
hit, Mr. Brock He knows better. He
couldn't put hit off on none his terbaccer
men but Eph!"
  The house, had it been a thing of feeling,
would have shrunk before the scrutiny of



5

 







THE TOBACCO TILLER



the five pairs of eyes lif ted to it, so disrepu-
table was its aspect. Panes were dropping
from the time and weather-gnawed sash in
the windows of the two rooms below; rags
stopped the holes in the one window above
that had a sash in it, and the lank old pine
leaning over the stone-paved walk that led to
the little hingeless gate assisted a wide board
to keep the wind out of the other window.
  "Seems to me, Ephriam, Castle ort to per-
vide a better house fer ye, er make out to
fix up this un," quavered the old man.
  "He ort now, he ort," assented his son,
"though he's been a promisin'-"
  "Promisin'll be all!" broke in Mrs. Dog-
gett. " He's never kept nary promise yit,
about the house, ner nothin' else! But Eph,
he'll jest stay here and put in another three
years a grubbin' canes and choppin' roots-
a clearin' up a thicket, and then git jest half
the terbaccer he raises on hit, like ever'body
else does on ready-cleared land!"'
  "The old lady, she's a poppin' hit to me
and Mr. Castle, hain't she " Mr. Doggett
smiled indulgently in the direction of Mrs.



6

 







THE TOBACCO TILLER      7



Doggett as she went across the rotting planks
that served for a back porch floor, with her
chips. " Although," he went on, " hit's might'
night' the truth. Mr. Castle is mighty close.
  "'Doggett,' he says, 'don't bring in nothin'
but one cow and a horse er two on me to
pastur fer you,' and that's the way he talks,
and me a lookin' after his mar's and colts,
and fixin' up his water-gaps, and all sech
like work outside the terbaccer crop, all the
time, both afore and sence he tuck to livin'
in town.
  " I says to him one day-I says, 'Mr.
Castle, here you are a gittin' rich offen our
work, able to have a conquick mansion, with
burssels cyarpetin', and a brick hin-house,
and me and the boys is a workin' our finger
nails off, and in the house I have to live in
I can't hardly find a dry place to hang my
hoe!' (And hit's the truth, yes, sir, though
Mr. Castle says sence terbaccer is so low, he
has to make a livin' on his other investments.)
Mr. Castle, he never said nothin', jest tuck
up my hoe and went to lookin' at hit,-my
old hoe thar I've used in the terbaccer fer
twenty-five year."



7

 







THE TOBACCO TILLER



  Mr. Doggett pointed to where against the
side of the patched weather-boarding hung a
hand-made hoe, shining like polished silver,
its hickory handle worn to the hard glossi-
ness of Japanese lacquer.
  " I says, 'Mr. Castle, ef that hoe could talk,
hit'd tell o' enough sweat to drownd a ele-
phant in, and o' enough warrysome back-
aches, and arm j'int aches, and gineral all-
over aches to keep one them thar rest cyores
Joey wuz a readin' about, a runnin' at full
blast fer all time to come. Yes, sir, hit
could! And, although a body has a heap
to be thankful fer anyhow, hit's mighty
little I've got to show fer all that sweat and
them aches.'
  " Mr. Castle looked at me mighty hard; then
he says, 'Doggett, you've had a livin'.'
'Yes, sir,' I says, 'but Mr. Castle, I've had
to git out and sometimes work fer other
people! "'
  " 'Pears like to me, Ephriam, takin' your
words fer what they're wuth, movin'd be a
good thing fer ye," suggested Gran'dad at
this moment.



8

 







THE TOBACCO TILLER



  "No, sir, I hain't a needin' none them way-
off States," Mr. Doggett shook his head em-
phatically: "thar's too many quair creeters
in 'em fer me. That feller Fletch Keerby I
had a workin' fer me last spreng, him and his
brother Larkin, they lived out in Texas fer
a while, and Fletch he said one day they wuz
goin' 'long together sommers, and on the way
they ketcht sight o' a beeg snake. Hit wuz
fifteen foot long and beeg as a post, and hit
wuz layin' plumb acrost the road a sunnin'!
Hit wuz one them buoy instructors.
  "Keerby, he told me he says, 'Larkin, ef
a feller had a kag o' damanite, he'd be all
right, but we hain't got hit, so what can we
do Hit won't do to shoot him; I'm afeerd
to, because ef we don't git him, he'll git us!'
Yes, sir, that's what he said. And Larkin
he went and got a club and slipped up on the
snake and hit him back o' the head about
eight inches. Yes, sir! And that snake
jest swapped eends! But he wuz dead, yes,
sir, he wuz dead. He wuz a instructor, a
buoy instructor! "
  " Well, Ephriam," Gran'dad slapped the



9

 







10   THE TOBACCO TILLER



new gray jeans that covered his thin legs,
with a prolonged cackle of derisive mirth,
"you wouldn't be no fust rate hand to kerry
on a funeral-you'd tickle the ondertaker.
They don't have none them buoys in Texas.
They don't live nowhars but in Africy!"
  Mr. Doggett rubbed his narrow forehead
reflectively, ignoring the correction.
  " Whar is hit them mare-maids lives, er
is hit marry-maids I fergit the name.
Keerby, he said he seed a pair o' 'em onct-
in Floridy Gulf hit must 'a' been. He said
they had a woman head and a fish body
hitched onto hit somehow, and ever' scale on
the fish part wuz as beeg as a sasser, and a
shinin' like the sun! He said he never looked
at 'em perticular clos, considerin' they wuzn't
dressed fer company ner cold weather, but
they wuz ondoubtedly the purtiest creeters
a body ever seed!"
  "Did Keerby mention anytheng that wuz
dressed fer winter out thar" asked Gran'dad
with a covert wink at Mr. Brock.
  "Well, Keerby, he said they wuz bars-
them kind that'll hug like a courtin' feller,

 







THE TOBACCO TILLER



and their meat's as sweet as a courtin' feller's
tongue. Keerby says you can p'intedly eat
all the b'ar's fat you can git around ef you
pepper and salt hit right good, and instid o'
sickenin' you, hit'll fatten you."
  "Keerby'll never see as much b'ar's fat
ner nothin' else as he can git around!" jeered
Gran'dad.
  "I'm afeerd he won't," agreed Mr. Dog-
gett. "I'd 'a' kept him longer, he had sech
a good sleight at turnin' off work,-done
more'n three thirds o' the feedin' ginerally,
and ever'theng else accordin'-but the old
lady 'lowed she wuzn't goin' to be et out o'
house and home ef I wuz. Onct he et so long
I thought I'd have to hitch up the team and
pull him away from the table."
  Dock, the twelve-year-old, small and
scrawny, but tough as a hickory withe, who
had up to this time lain stretched on his
front by a hollow log, skilfully executing
with his barlow a colony of ants as fast as
they crawled from the rotting section of buck-
eye, gave a wicked glance at the slender and
hollow-cheeked man of fifty sitting near him.



11

 







12   THE TOBACCO TILLER



  "Mr. Lindsay, he ort to have some o' that
b'ar's fat Keerby wuz a tellin' about to make
him sortie plump up and look purty to Miss
Lucy."
  A slow red crept into Mr. Lindsay's sensi-
tive face.
  "I don't reckon I need any bear's fat yit,
Dock," his voice was low and gentle: "My
mother always told me whatever I done, never
to starve a woman, and I ain't ready to starve
one yit, ef I could git one to have me."
  Mrs. Doggett who had come out again with
her improvised chip baskets, turned toward
him, her black eyes sparkling mischievously.
  "Now Mr. Lindsay, ef I wuz a single man
like you, that'd been to Texas and Missoury,
and seed all over the country you might say,-
a man that knows how to keep on the good
side o' women folks-a not a trackin' in mud
no time, ner never spittin' on the hearth, and
always washin' his feet at night in plowin'-
time-I'd be plumb ashamed to say I couldn't
git no woman to have me!
  "Been here in this neighborhood might'
night' six year, too, and hain't never said

 







THE TOBACCO TILLER



nary word yit as anybody's ever heerd tell
of, to keep Miss Lucy Jeemes from settin'
thar always with her pa and Miss Nancy! I
thenk hit's time he wuz doin' a little courtin'
in that direction, don't you, Mr. Brock"
  The best beginning of a man's enmity is
the suspicion that another man has a better
chance of the regard of a woman he has se-
lected for his own, and though Mr. Brock
had sat during Mrs. Doggett's speech with
stern inscrutable face that conveyed no hint
of his feelings, his heart beat with angry
tumult, and within its inmost chamber was
born a lusty beginning of hatred toward the
pale man sitting on the beech log.
  Callie had been in her grave only six weeks,
but when a man has been twice married,
and twice bereft, may he not, after six weeks,
begin to consider a third partner with pro-
priety, if the consideration is done in secret
And after the convenient pattern set by
other widowers, Mr. Brock had selected a
neighbor, the kind-faced woman who had
been a ministering angel at the death beds
of both his wives, for that third partner.



13

 







14   THE TOBACCO TILLER



His pale grey eyes gave their sidewise glance
at Mr. Lindsay. The warm color on that
gentleman's cheek irritated him strangely;
he rose precipitately, and with a mumbled
word of farewell, took his departure.
  "Mr. Brock got in a mighty hurry all to
onct," said Mr. Doggett, gazing in some
wonderment after the departing figure: "I
can't thenk what tuck him off so suddent."
  After the departure of Mr. Lindsay and
Gran'dad, a few minutes later, Mr. Doggett,
with a pleasing idea in his head, strolled out
to the barn-yard, where Mrs. Doggett milked
the red muley.
  "Ann," he remarked, "I been a thenkin'
about Mr. Lindsay a not havin' no settled
home, ner no nigh kin to take keer o' him, ef
he ever wuz to git down sick. Hit would be
a sorter nice theng fer him and Miss Lucy
Jeemes to marry now, wouldn't hit"
  Mrs. Doggett looked uncertain.
  "Maybe Miss Lucy wouldn't marry him,
Eph," she advanced. "Sometimes I thenk
she's one o' them women that wouldn't
marry any man."

 







       THE TOBACCO TILLER           15

  Mr. Doggett took a few steps out of range
of the milker.
  "Don't you fool yourself, Ann," he chuckled,
"thar's jest one woman in the world that
won't marry! "
  "Who is she" Mrs. Doggett asked cur-
iously.
  " She's a dead woman! " responded Mr.
Doggett.
  "Aw, shet up, Eph!" Mrs. Doggett spoke
with some acerbity. " You jest go git me
some stovewood, ef you want any supper
tonight! "



 












CHAPTER II



THE MYRTLE BUDS IN Miss Lucy's GARDEN
     "No spring or summer's beauty hath such grace,
     As I have seen in one autumnial face."
  FOR more than a half-hour old Milton
James had limped up and down the gravelled
drive that led through the grove of poplars
in front of the lead-colored, one-and-a-half
storied house that was his home, alternately
watching the fat old bay mare and three
cows that pulled at the fodder scattered in
the pasture field over the fence, and the
muddy road that ran across the foot of the
avenue and disappeared over the hill beyond.
  "Lucy Ann beats ever'theng a stayin',"
he muttered, irritably pulling at his sparse
white beard; "jest now in sight, and hit nigh
twelve o'clock!"
  The dark object at length resolved itself
into an old-fashioned and much mud-be-
spattered buggy, drawn by the counterpart
                    16

 







THE TOBACCO TILLER



of the bay in the pasture, and driven by a
woman in black.
  "Lucy Ann, don't drive ag'in the gate-
post!"
  With a hand that slightly trembled, both
from weakness and nervous irritability, the
tall old man, leaning on his stick, his bald
head shining in the December sun, held open
the side gate of the yard, while his daughter,
measuring the space between the white-
washed gate posts with an anxious eye, drove
cautiously in.
  To a person of fifty years, agility is ordi-
narily a stranger. Miss Lucy, carefully pro-
tecting her new black etamine dress skirt
from the wheel, climbed slowly out of the
buggy, and gathered up the numerous bundles
from the floor of the vehicle. Then, while
her father fumbled with the straps of the
harness, she lingered for a moment, watching
him.
  "Pa," she ventured in the apologetic man-
ner of one who expects a rebuff, "spose'n
you let me help take out old Maud. I'm
afraid you'll hurt your bad knee."



17

 







18   THE TOBACCO TILLER



  " Naw, I won't," answered her father
testily: "you'd better jest take them thar
bundles in the house, and put on your ever'
day clothes and holp Nancy about the dinner!
Nancy's been a workin' hard all the time
you've been a gaddin' about town."
  When Miss Lucy came out of the front
bedroom into the sitting-room behind it,
an imaginary speck of dust on a pane of glass
in the door of the tall cherry "press" filled
with gay-colored dishes, caught her eye.
She rubbed the glass carefully with a corner
of her apron, and catching up the little hearth-
broom, stooped to brush up a microscopic
cinder that had fallen from the grate on the
green and red striped rag carpet. Her sister
greeted her with a look of reproach.
  "Do you think, Lucy, I ain't done no clean-
in' up while you was gone" she asked.
  Both the Misses James were alike tall, but
what was angularity in the uncompromisingly
erect figure of Miss Nancy, who had never
known a sick day, was slenderness and deli-
cacy in her elder sister. Miss Nancy's rugged
face found no redeeming beauty in her eyes,

 







THE TOBACCO TILLER



which were gray and cold as the foundation
stones of the house, and carried in their
depths a perpetual look of rebuke to the world
in general, and to her sister in particular; but
the irregularity of Miss Lucy's features seemed
akin to beauty in the light of her dark-blue
eyes, shining with loving kindness,-eyes
that despite their owner's years, held a look
of singularly childlike innocence, and a sort
of timidity that appeals to the chivalry of
men.
  According to Mrs. Doggett, the James'
nearest neighbor, for whom spinsterhood in
one she did not admire required a just re-
proof, but in a friend necessitated an explana-
tion and an apology, "Miss Nancy's never
had any notice as I ever heerd tell of, but to
the best o' my belief, Miss Lucy'd 'a' been
married long ago, ef hit hadn't 'a' been fer
skeer o' them old thengs,"-the "old thengs"
in question being Miss Nancy and her father.
  "How do you like Pa's overcoat, Nancy"
asked Miss Lucy, opening the great bundle
she had laid on the middle star of the sitting-
room bed, and holding up the garment. Miss



19

 







20   THE TOBACCO TILLER



Nancy looked at the neat gray beaver with
cold disapproval.
  "Why'n't you git black" she demanded:
"you wanted a black one, didn't you, Pa"
  The old man looked at the coat and then
over his steel-rimmed spectacles at his elder
daughter whose hand went up to her face in
a nervous, defensive movement,-an ac-
quired gesture that told of a life lived under
the lash of rebuke.
  " I taken this one, Pa, because I got it
cheap; it was a young man's overcoat, left
over from last spring. Jest see how fine
quality it is, and Pa, I wisht you'd look at
the linin'!"
  Mr. James fingered the soft nap of the
garment, and examined its handsome lining
with reluctant eyes.
  "Yes," he admitted grudgingly, "hit is
fine quality. A blind hog will stumble on an
acorn sometimes! "
  Miss Lucy helped him into the coat.
  " Wall," he grumbled triumphantly, " I
knowed thar'd be somethin' wrong. Hit
don't fit: I hain't a goin' to torment myse'f

 







THE TOBACCO TILLER



squez in sech tight armholes as them is!
You'll jest have to take hit back! Go to
town one day to git thengs,-go to town next
day to swap 'em! I thenk next time you start
out to town, you'd better let Nancy-a person
with some jedgement, go with you to keep
you from actin' like a chicken with hit's head
off!"
  "Ef you'd jest go along and try a coat on,
Pa, like I want you to, you might git a bet-
ter fit and be better suited too," remonstrated
Miss Lucy mildly, although her lips trembled,
as she carefully folded the coat, and laid it on
a bottom shelf of the press, and smoothed
the wrinkle on the bed where the bundle had
lain. "And Pa," she added, "Brother and
Sister Avery's a comin' out this evenin' to
stay all night. I told 'em you'd be awful
glad,-you got so lonesome a settin' 'round
since you'd had the rheumatism so bad and
the doctor told you not to work any."
  "Why'n't you git some crackers, Lucy, ef
you knowed comp'ny was comin'" asked
Miss Nancy. "We won't have no time to
bake no lightbread between now and the time



21

 







22   THE TOBACCO TILLER



they git here, and we ought to have somethin'
to eat with the beef soup."
   "I did," replied Miss Lucy following her
sister to the big, low-ceiled kitchen whose wood-
work, cupboard shelves, biscuit board, and
puncheon floor were alike white and immacu-
late with much scrubbing. Miss Nancy emp-
tied the sugar into its jar and poured out the
crackers.
  "Why'n't you git square crackers" she
grumbled, as the round soda biscuits rattled
in the tin can.
  "They didn't have none, Nancy, where I
took the butter, no kind but the round
ones," explained Miss Lucy: "I didn't have
no time to go nowhere else then, it was so
late, and I had to go around through Plum-
ville to get the money the colored woman
owed me on the last dress I made her. I
wanted to order that safety razor for Pa for
Christmas, with the money." She lowered
her voice, so the old man, partially deaf,
could not hear. "Then I wouldn't go back
through town; I thought I ought to save the
mare all the pullin' I could. The apples I

 







THE TOBACCO TILLER



took made a right heavy load goin' "
  " I don't thenk you tried to save her much,"
broke in her father tartly, laying a scant
armful of stovewood by the little cracked
stove whose high polish would have led even
a stove-dealer to strike off ten years from its
real age: "that thar mar's mighty nigh into
the thumps.   I lay you driv' her too
fast!"
  "Why, Pa, I walked her all the way back
from town." Miss Lucy's voice was gently
deprecative.
  "Wall, hit's a good theng you did, because
she's got a shoe off, and her foot's all turned
up like a cheer rocker now."
  "The stock seems to be enjoyin' their
stalks. Who foddered for you today, Pa"
ventured Miss Lucy, thinking to divert his
thoughts.
  " Whar's your mem'ry, Lucy Ann " fretted
Mr. James. "Didn't I go down to Doggett's
yistiddy and git Marshall to promise to
come He's the only one o' the Doggetts that
I can ever git to do anytheng fer me. He's
been about more'n the others, a workin' up



23

 







24   THE TOBACCO TILLER



thar in Ohawo, and he's learnt the value of a
promise. Old Man Doggett'll promise you
anytheng when he hain't got no notion he's
goin' to have time to do hit,-he's so afeerd
o' bein' disagreeable, then he'll tell you he
hated hit awful, but he jest possible couldn't
come!"
  "It's a pity more people ain't afraid of
bein' disagreeable," thought Miss Lucy with
a sigh: "if they was, this'd be a pleasenter
world."
  To Miss Lucy, the minister and his bride
were creatures far above ordinary clay.
Months before his marriage, the young man,
quite alone in the world, had made the gentle
Miss Lucy the confidant of his hopes and fears,
and the marriage of the handsome and mag-
netic young love