Summer

Charity, determined to avoid being the subject of malicious gossip in North Dormer, resolves to return to the Mountain. She starts walking early in the morning; despite her morning sickness, she forces down food in order to avoid becoming weak. She passes the abandoned house where she and Harney met so often. Her plan is to have Liff Hyatt bring her to stay with her biological mother, whom she is sure will be kind to a daughter “[…] who was facing the trouble she had known” (125). She experiences dizziness and weakness prior to being found by Liff. He is bringing the minister, Mr. Miles, to the Mountain to see Charity’s dying mother, Mary. Charity has the sense of being entirely alone in the world but refuses to tell the kindly minister what is troubling her.

The houses on the Mountain are mere shacks, and as Charity, Liff, and the minister approach, they learn that Mary has died. The squalid conditions in her shack are primitive and dirty. When one young woman asks Charity’s identity, in a hostile tone, the minister advises that Charity is Mary’s daughter. “‘What? Her too?’ the girl sneered” in response (130).