scend the steps one by one, go through the dark dining
room groping pitifully, and down the side steps out into the beloved
garden. Silently I watched the tall figure with the white hair silvered
radiantly by the moonlight go slowly down the path, past the old
graybeard poplars, and even up to the lilac hedge that ran as a bulwark
in front of the dark chapel door, which I could see was ajar as it
always is.

"He's going for help," I muttered to myself, and I felt the padding of
fear pursuing me, while also something of the Methodist grandmother
within me began a queer calling and a tightening at my throat.

Then something happened that interested me so that I lost all personal
anxiety. Father stopped beside the hedge and picked up something from
the grass. I saw it was a long, heavy hoe. Walking over to a long bed of
early roses he and Dabney had been fertilizing in the late afternoon, he
bent feebly and began to dig the food into their roots. As he swung the
long handle, each blow upon the soft earth became more decided. I crept
down behind the old snowball bush to be nearer him; I didn't dare go to
him in his fight, because I had in my selfish heedlessness brought it
all on, but in a little while he was not alone, for a bent old figure
with grizzled white wool sticking out from under a red flannel nightcap
came quietly along the path with a hoe in his hand, fell in directly
behind his master, and began a rhythmic blow-answering-blow contest with
the fragrant earth and the demon within the man. For at least an hour
the two old friends worked up and down the long bed, until I could see
father begin to totter with weakness.

"Now, come on, Mas' Nick, honey, and go to bed. I'll pour a bucket of
cistern water over you and rub you down so as you'll sleep like a bug in
a rug," the staunch old comrade crooned, with a mother note in his
voice, as he took father's heavy hoe and shouldered it with his.

"I think evening exercise is good for me, Dabney," answered father with
all the dignity and command come back into his voice. "Put both those
hoes in the tool house this time, and I'll not tell Mr. Goodloe you
left one down by the lilac hedge."

"Yes, sir, thanky, sir, fer not telling him," answered Dabney, as he
followed his master to the tool house under the back steps, deposited
the garden implements where he was directed, and then again followed his
idol in through the long dining room window and was lost in the shadow.