The fat man had wrapped Jesse Plum in a huge brown horse-blanket; now someone brought the old man a pewter tankard. At the rim of it gleamed Jesse's little blue eyes, unfocused like those of a baby at the breast. At length Reuben heard someone drawl in unbelieving admiration: "Godso-o-o!" Jesse's grimy fingers fluttered; a frowzy-haired boy in a grubby apron giggled and snatched the tankard before it could hit the floor. Jesse collapsed into himself, a wired skeleton from which rose the bubble and rasp of a sudden snore. The fat man was talking in lardy tones. "Hoy! Killed an Inj'an, he did say. He don't look it." Jowls shaking and puffy fingers gentle, he twitched away the blanket to examine Jesse's burnt side. "Bad. Gun blowed, he said. We'd ought to have goose-grease." The ragged boy was peeking at it. The fat man lifted him away by a greasy spreading ear. "Mind thy God-damned manners, pup--a'n't we all brothers in Christ? Go fetch cobwebs. Good as grease, they'll mend a burn." Jesse Plum was carried away, his slumber undisturbed, and Ben was talking with the old woman. Reuben supposed he ought to listen, say something himself. Their speech came to him disconnected and obscure. "Grandmother in Springfield--Madam Rachel Cory ... great-uncle--Mr. John Kenny of Roxbury." "... sleigh gone a'ready to Hadley with others from Deerfield--be there more on the way?" "I think there was no one near us." "... to your grandmother--certainly...." Most unmanly, Reuben thought, to let his head sink, to leave Ben the whole burden of caring for him, but with that head an unmanageable lump of exhaustion there was no help for it. He found it strange that Ben's voice should be rumbling directly under his ear and yet sound far away. "Ma'am, if my brother might rest in a room where it's quiet?" Reuben tried to protest as he was lifted. He could walk. The protest fell short of words. An alien hand touched him, someone else offering to take him. Ben's voice was oddly impatient: "Nay, I'll carry him...." Reuben sensed the passage of a creaking stairway. Ben let him down, on a cot, and as he stretched out his vision cleared, showing him a narrow room, and Jesse Plum on a pallet nearby, snug in his horse-blanket, brown gnarled feet innocently protruding, Adam's apple bobbing with his snores. The old woman was hovering. "Nay then, boys, you bide here long as you're a-mind. Jerusha'll get a cart, or you might wait on the sleigh's returning if you wish. Eh, Lord, we saw the fires on the sky before dawn, I'd only just come down to see after breakfast. Anyone'd know you for brothers--eh, Lord, yes! What's your name?" "Reuben and Benjamin Cory--I'm Benjamin." "Eh, Lord, yes! I'm Goody Hawks, and you can trust my Jerusha--he'll get you to Springfield one way or t'other. Some tea, ha?"