back porch and sink fully into my consciousness. I don't know what might
have happened to my shouting Methodist grandmother's worldly though
emotional descendant if father's voice, sharp and clear, with a note of
command I had forgotten it possessed, had not interrupted me.

"Charlotte! Dab!" it called; and we both answered with all speed.

"That Parson Goodloe have got the power to draw the teeth of seven
devils, and you both consider the words of his mouth or he'll git the
teeth outen yourn," Mammy called after us in ambiguous warning.

And upon our arrival on the scene of action being executed upon the
dahlias, we found the commander of the devils awaiting us, though in his
hands was no forked instrument of dentistry, but in one he held a large
slice of rye bread thickly spread with butter, and the other was
disarmed by a ripe red apple. As we drew near he finished a direction to
father and took a huge bite out of the slab of bread that left a gap as
wide as one would expect a Harpeth jaguar to make.

"Harrowing deep makes great growth in all plant life," he was saying
past the slice of bread with agricultural prosiness to father, who had
completely sweated down the very high and stiff collar which he always
wore swathed in a wide tie of black after a Henry Clay cut, in a savage
attack with the hoe upon the mulch that was smothering the dahlias in
richness.

"Does the same deep digging result hold true in biological and psychic
life?" puffed father, and then he leaned on his hoe and looked up at the
young man towering over him. In his eyes was the appeal of disappointed
age calling to the ideals of flaming strength and youth in the