Jethro Furber's illness lingered into February, a kind of joint pneumonia and madness, Doctor Orcutt said; and Mr. Clifford Huffley helped with Christmas and was even now arranging for Good Friday. He was a large ruddy man with sandy hair and he would preach his ordination sermon on the first March Sunday. Lucky thing to get him, everybody said, a boy so near and squarely put together. He hoped to remodel; perhaps he'd add. There was also talk of a new affiiation. Miss Samantha Tott would
have a tea next week, inviting only ladies, and Mr. Huffley, then, would tell them how his father, as a missionary, died in Haiti.
Cancer bleached poor Flack's skin gray. Drunk, the Hatstat brothers had a harmless fight. Then the Bencher hound, to everyone's dismay, dropped through the soft Ohio ice in broad daylight.
The Omensetters had moved down river — children, horse, dog, wife, and wagon — no one knew quite where; and it was Israbestis now, no longer Doctor Orcutt, who claimed it had been Henry's purpose all along, in hanging himself in that tree like a trinket, to throw suspicion on Brackett Omensetter. Nearly everyone agreed that with Chamlay so furious against him, Omensetter had been fortunate indeed to escape the blame. The infant lingered on alive, an outcome altogether outside science, Doctor Orcutt said, and Israbestis swore that Omensetter's luck would be a legend on the river — quite a while, he claimed — perhaps forever.
Mr. Huffley had a busy winter; nevertheless he sat with Reverend Furber often, praying earnestly. Consequently he was at Jethro Furber's elbow, gently steering, when one sunny afternoon, the sick man went out walking. The Reverend Furber's cane poked the crust, and once, when he slipped, he swore like a sailor. Mr. Huffley, smiling vacantly, looked away toward Zion. I wonder what will become of me, H ey, Furber said; but at once he went on hastily: no, that's silly; what's going to become of me, has become. Mr. Huffley, however, was bracing.
Furber's only visit was to Mrs. Lucy Pimber, also convalescing. She had cut her hair and shorn years. He offered her the money that was found on Henry's body, but she refused to touch it, leaning toward his palm and counting. So that's what he was getting for the place, she said, at last radiant.
Doctor Orcutt, who was also treating Brackett Omensetter's frost-eaten feet and fingers, had suggested to Mr. Huffley that he might pay a call of charity upon "that place of desolation," but Mr. Huffley reported that two wild girls had twice flung stones through the woods at him.
Furber chuckled.
Really, he said. Stones, eh? Were they real or virtual?
They didn't hit me but they hurt my feelings.
Ah, well, they were spiritual, then, the worst kind. It was one of that sort that brought darkness to Goliath.
In Furber's opinion the new man had small management of words, little imagination, no gift for preaching, and a narrow chest, but from his bed, Furber heard a boisterous choir, and the lusty voice of his replacement leading. This determined him to slip what he called Henry Pimber's hanging money in one of Mr. Huffley's bright new offertory envelopes before he left.