The Brother Grober decided to stop for a moment to take up strength, and pulling strongly on the hand brake, brought the old Packard to quivering rest beside a jagged little mesquite bush. Looking vacantly about him, he noted that in the fields scattered white heads of cotton, missed by the mechanical picker, hung broken-necked down their stalks, sprayed with black mud and wagging sadly in the breeze; it all should have been taken up and burned against the bollweevil, but the land no doubt belonged to Spurgis since was house stood up at the end of the road, and poor Spurgis was sick. They had told him about Spurgis less than half an hour ago down at Renfrew’s and he was doing the best he could; already he was on his way up to pray for him. They said down at Renfrew’s that the man had been sick for several years.

He stuck his head out the open window of his car, lifted his red horseshoe chin and nudged urgently at the air, then laying his wide face flat to heaven, closed his eyes in the sun and prepared to attain God’s presence. He must have strength to carry him, for he had been at it all day, up and out for sixty or seventy miles; four sicknesses, three loved ones gone on, and everywhere the complaints and worries of cotton crop failure. You could say, fairly speaking, that he had already completed his duty; he had gotten over into the next county where there were other churches, but this man Spurgis was sick... It might be, he thought in a weary rise of spirits, that God had woven the web of his day to lead him to Spurgis.