As I stood and looked at the yellow envelope fear again gripped my
heart, and without opening it I walked into the house, locking the great
door behind me with trembling fingers, and went toward a light I saw
shining from the trellised back porch and which I did not understand. I
have never in my life been the least bit afraid of anything, except
something within my own body, from the hideous pain of my green-apple
days to the pain I had felt as I talked beside the piano with Nickols in
New York, a thousand miles away; but something made me pause just for a
second in the pantry doorway before I stepped into the light upon the
porch. I shall never forget the scene that was enacted before my
wondering eyes in the dim light of a candle burning upon a table near
the refrigerator.

Father stood with a bowl of ice in his hand and his fingers were just
closing around a squat, black bottle that I knew contained the rarest
and choicest whiskey ever run from a distillery. His iron-gray hair was
rampant, his dressing gown fell away from his throat and showed the
knotting of the great cords that ran down into his shoulders, and his
dark eyes glittered under their heavy, black brows, while his mouth was
twisted and white. Then, as I looked, something happened. A stealthy
padding of feet came around the house from the garden and up the back
steps, under the budding rose vine that was climbing through the trellis
as if to clutch at the light, and a huge figure loomed up from out the
shadow.

It was the powerful Harpeth Jaguar out hunting, and his weapon was a
hoe, while under his arm he carried a roll that looked like a
contribution to a rag man of bedding and old clothes.