Uncle Dick

"Uncle Dick" is "a shriveled little old man . . . with a long white beard" (144). He wears "a filthy frock coat," lives in "a mud-daubed hut" in a swamp, and is reputed to eat "frogs and snakes [and] bugs as well" (144). He "cares nothing about money" (146), but makes a living of some kind making and selling "nostrums and charms" (144). Suratt hires him to dowse the garden at the Old Frenchman's place, which he does successfully using a spent cartridge containing a "gold-filled human tooth" dangling from "forked peach branch" (145). He is obviously a kind of conjuror or medicine man, but his speech is full of references to "the Lord" (144, 145).