“[…] old Squint was the hardest man in Somerset County. A man so mean he squeezed the good out of the Holy Bible and beat us with it, and swore that God Himself had inflicted me and Harold on him, like he was Job and we was Boils and Pestilence.” 

Homer’s wicked uncle resents having to care for Homer and Harold, and he takes it out on the boys. God tested Job’s loyalty by afflicting him with illness, poverty, and other losses; Squinton glorifies his meanness by making an inconvenience seem like a Biblical plague. 

“But as strict as he can be about never lying, I’m pretty sure Harold won’t mind if I bend the truth to stay alive.” 

Homer has a knack for telling tall tales—he’s a born storyteller—but his big brother objects to this callous disregard for truth and insists that Homer stop. Now that Harold has been kidnapped and sent to the army, Homer no longer feels himself under any such obligation, because saving Harold is more important, and lies told during that effort are justified.

“The house on the hill gets bigger and bigger the closer I get. There are puffy white clouds reflected in the windows and the clouds are moving against the sky, and that makes it look like the whole house is moving, too. It’s like I can feel the earth turning and have to be careful where to put my feet. The whole thing makes me so dizzy that the gentle green hill seems to get steeper and steeper and finally it tips up and I’m facedown in the grass.”

Forced by bounty hunter Smelt to talk his way into Jebediah Brewster’s home and spy out the location of runaway enslaved people hidden there, Homer approaches the big house, but its lavish beauty overwhelms the impoverished orphan. Already faint from hunger, he collapses on the front lawn.