More time lost to lessons: Gideon Hibbs nourished that thought so obviously that there was no occasion for him to utter it aloud. He was not attending the funeral, having been only distantly acquainted with the Dyckman family. Acidly, with a kind of humor occasionally encountered at the borders of philosophy, he remarked to John Kenny that he was the fourth son in a family of twelve; all his brothers and sisters had married and begotten young, of whom the expected percentage had died, and thus he found himself already in possession of a massive collection of pallbearer's gloves, for the which he could discover no practical application whatsoever (although familiar with the rumor that some persons of a weightier worth than himself had turned a fair penny in disposing of such); he would therefore, with Mr. Kenny's permission, remain at home and take advantage of the peace and quiet to do a trifle more on a work which had engaged him now for ten years, namely an employment of the sternest logic--(it could not be published in the colonies)--in a demonstration of the immortality of the soul. Mr. Kenny sighed and patted his dusty back. The few who were present with Mr. Kenny and the boys bulked like a multitude in the spotless parlor of the Dyckman house. More unobtrusive than the Jenks' slave Clarissa, Constable Derry was there--so far as was known, the corpse had not bled in anyone's presence. There were Jan's two small girls red-nosed in doll-like silence, his stricken wife, a handful of dour strangers, Captain Jenks thoroughly sober and looking like the vast man he was instead of a ruin, Faith and Charity stiff and amazingly pale in black, Clarissa self-effacing, and Madam Prudence Jenks with a black enameled comb instead of a red one. The Lutheran dominie did not exhort, nor shout, nor whine, but spoke all manner of pleasant things concerning the nature of the dead man, and then entered on the main stream of his discourse--this a poetic enumeration and description of the mercies of God, announced with mild certainty as though he had been directly instructed in the matter and had been astonished at the kindness of the Lord in assenting to some of his own small suggestions. Unhesitatingly he implied that if any soul could rest sure of heaven it was the soul of Jan Dyckman. A gentle spirit, this minister: incapable of learning how to be content with discontent, he had luckily never needed to learn it, since not every son of Adam is obliged to go to school. At some time during this passage of consolation a kerchief tumbled from Faith's restless hand. Ben was able to find and return it to her, not prevented, not even much scared by the polar stare of Captain Jenks. He won a pressure of her fingers and a sudden blue-eyed look of such depth and sweetness that she might have been saying aloud: "I am with you." Reuben sat motionless, all gold and ivory.