Goodman Penance, before being Raised by his Master, was a Puritan patriarch with two daughters whom he was deeply ashamed of, as he wanted to continue his line; he had one sickly son that he wasn't sure would live through early childhood. He lived in cold, unforgiving New York, with cold and desolate winters that lent him a disposition dourer than his God-given mien.
His flesh was the overcast gray of the skies, his eyes like the pall of darkness that so often covered them in the cold, long winter months; he wore the black of the sparse charcoal in their hearth, which was ever faintly lit so that through cold they would understand the Passion of their Lord. The buckle at his belt symbolized the restraint of his loins, his vow to chastity prior to his exceptionally frigid marriage: his woman's hair was dusty brown and her eyes were crueler than his own, her lips an ironed line of cranberry-red that only opened to chastise and never to kiss.
He resented both of his daughters for their theft of the potency of his line and the youthful vigor of his wife, but, of them, he hated particularly Prudence Chastity Wetherbell God-fear Penance. Prudence never lived up to her name. She was always outspoken, transgressing her most holiest of roles as a servile, meek woman of the Christian faith. She forsook her duty as a dutiful daughter of God, and more importantly, of Goodman Penance; she was caught in an act of Lesbianism, the foulest perversion of weak womanly urges, which should be directed toward the production of God-fearing, plain, Christian children.
This act flew in the face of the entire natural order.
She had listened to the call of Satan and he had slithered round her loins and ignited them with a lustful, perverse passion for the milky, freckled bosom of her married sister Goodwife Elizabeth, whose skirt had been somewhat displaced from her delicate ankle at the last church service, revealing a sliver of cream-colored skin. And, as all good Puritan men know, the ankle is attached, most regrettably, to the shin, which is attached to the knee, which is attached to the thigh, which is attached to the womanly flower of which we shall not speak, as we are good Puritan men.
This cut down the reputation, the soul, and, worst, the faith of Goodman Penance: for if he could not shepherd his own daughters to the path of righteousness, how could he shepherd an entire flock of goodly people?
It was at Prudence Chastity Wetherbell God-fear's trial, at the end of which she would likely be exiled from the parish of Henbristle, that Goodman Penance died. In a moment he had fallen, feverish and fainting from the shame of it, and had struck his head upon the hoe which Goodman Gingrich had just earlier driven into the fertile hills in order to spread his seed.