id to herself. "Could be the coverlid under his back is
wrinkled." In response to her question the departed Alamander is said to
have assured his widow that it was his sign of letting her know he was
aware of her presence. However, when curious neighbors accompanied
Rhodie to the burying ground, the mound remained still as a rock. Rhodie
said it was the sign that he had rather she come to his grave alone.

Though there was never an eyewitness to the rippling earth on the grave
save that of Rhodie, whenever anyone found a white feather about the
house he remembered what the old woman on Bear Fork of Puncheon Creek
had said, "It is a sign of death!"

7. LEGEND

CROCKETT'S HOLLOW

When Jasper Tipton married Talithie Burwell and settled on Tipton's Fork
in Crockett's Hollow, folks said no one could ask for a better start.
The Tiptons had given the couple their house seat, a bedstead, a table.
Jasper had a team of mules he had swapped for a yoke of oxen, and he had
a cookstove that he had bought with his own savings. A step stove it
was, two caps below and two higher up. The Burwells had seen to it that
their daughter did not go empty-handed to her man. She had a flock tick,
quilts, coverlids, and a cow. But, old Granny Withers, a midwife from
Caney Creek, sitting in the chimney corner sucking her pipe the night of
the wedding, vowed that all would not be well with the pair. Hadn't a
bat flitted into the room right over Talithie's head when the elder was
speaking the words that joined the two in wedlock? Everyone knew the
sign. Everyone knew too that Talithie Burwell, with her golden hair and
blue eyes, had broken up the match between Jasper and Widow Ashby's
Sabrina. Yet Talithie and Jasper vowed that all was fair in love and
war. If a man's heart turned cold toward a maid, it was none of his
fault. There was nothing to be done about it. You can't change a man's
way with woman, they said. It's writ in the Book.

And soon as Jasper had cast her off, Widow Ashby's Sabrina took to her
bed and there she meant to stay, so she said, the rest of her life.
Or--until she got a sign that would give her heart ease. Sabrina Ashby
didn't mince her words either. "I don't care what the sign may be," she
said it right out, before Granny Withers. That toothless creature
cackled and replied, "I'm satisfied you're knocking center."

Indeed Sabrina was telling the truth. Sh