Act 1, Scene 2 Summary

As the scene opens, it is the following Saturday morning and Bertha and Seth are once again in the kitchen; Bertha is cooking while Seth talks about his reservations about Herald Loomis. Apparently Herald has been acting suspiciously, such as standing outside a church and just staring for long periods of time. Seth knows the woman named Martha Pentecost and finds it hard to believe that she would be the Martha for whom Herald is searching.

Bynum passes through the kitchen and heads upstairs, and Seth makes disparaging remarks to Bertha about the old man's weird habits. Seth then returns to the topic of Martha Pentecost who has migrated from the South, become established with a local church, and then moved with that church to Rankin, one of the river towns along the Monongahela. Although this information could be helpful to...