Coldriver's population was less than four hundred. It required a great
deal of religion to get that four hundred safely past the snares and
pitfalls of Coldriver, for there were no fewer than five full-grown
churches, of which the Roman Catholic was the fifth, and a body of folks
who met in one another's houses of a Sabbath under the denomination of
the United Brethren. Five churches worshiped God through the crackling
parchment of their mortgages, when one, or at most two, might have
pointed the way to heaven free and clear, and with no worries over
semiannual interest.
When Pettybone turned apostate there was such a commotion as had never
before disturbed Coldriver; it subsided, and was forgotten as the years
dragged on, by all but Pettybone and Hooper, who continued tenaciously
to hate each other with a bitter hatred--and the more so that their
financial affairs were so inextricably mingled.
Even when Pettybone's leg was mashed by a log, and he lay between life
and death, there was no hint of a reconciliation; and when Pettybone
appeared again on Coldriver's streets, hobbling on a peg leg of his own
fashioning, the fires of vindictiveness burned higher and hotter than
ever.
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