Unnamed Boarders at Mrs. Beard's

The men who stay at the Beard boarding house are mentioned in both Flags in the Dust and Light in August. The first novel describes them as traveling salesmen, jurors from out of town, weather-stranded countrymen, even two "town young bloods" who keep a room as a place for gambling. Besides Byron Snopes, some - bachelors identified as "clerks, mechanics and such" - live there more permanently (104). In Light in August Byron Bunch lives there with the same kind of men, who come to Jefferson on business or to serve on a jury, or as he puts it, "every durn horsetrader or courtjury that passes through the hallway" (300).