committed murder. I don't
believe in law suits, but if he ain't got a damage case agin the
preacher that married him, then I'm wrong."

But no one ever heard the old man use harsher language in speaking of
her than to remark that she was "a female Jineral--that's what
Tabitha is."

Perhaps she was, and but for her the Bishop and his household had
starved long ago.

"Furagin' is her strong point"--he would always add--"she'd made
Albert Sydney Johnston a great chief of commissary."

And there was not an herb of any value that Mrs. Watts did not know
all about. Any fair day she might be seen on the mountain side
plucking edibles. Ginseng was her money crop, and every spring she
would daily go into the mountain forests and come back with enough of
its roots to help them out in the winter's pinch.

"Now, if anybody'll study Nature," she would say, "they'll see she
never cal'c'lated to fetch us here 'ithout makin' 'lowance fur to
feed us. The fus' thing that comes up is dandelions--an' I don't want
to stick my tooth in anything that's better than dandelion greens
biled with hog-jowl. I like a biled dinner any way. Sas'fras tea
comes mighty handy with dandelions in the spring, an' them two'll
carry us through April. Then comes wild lettice an' tansy-tea--that's
fur May. Blackberries is good fur June an' the jam'll take us through
winter if Bull Run and Appomattox ain' too healthy. In the summer we
can live on garden truck, an' in the fall there is wild reddishes an'
water-cresses an' spatterdock, an' nuts an' pertatoes come in mighty
handy fur winter wuck. Why, I was born wuckin'--when I was a gal I
cooked, washed and done house-work for a family of ten, an' then had
time to spin ten hanks o' yarn a day."

"Now there's the old man--he's too lazy to wuck--he's like all
parsons, he'd rather preach aroun' all his life on a promise of
heaven than to wuck on earth for cash!"

"How did I ever come to marry Hillard Watts? Wal, he wa'n't that
triflin' when I married him. He didn't have so much religiun then.
But I've allers noticed a man's heredity for no-countness craps out
after he's married. Lookin' back now I reckin' I married him jes' to
res' myself. When I'm wuckin' an' git tired, I watches Hillard doin'
nothin' awhile an' it hopes me pow'ful."

"He gits so busy at it an' seems so contented an' happy."

Besides his wife there were five grandchildren in his
family--children of the old man's son by his second wife. "