Trumbull

Trumbull first appears in The Hamlet as the man who has been the blacksmith of Frenchman's Bend for "almost twenty years" (69). An elderly man who is "hale, morose and efficient," his character "invites no curiosity" until he is displaced by two of Flem Snopes' cousins, I.O. and Eck (73). Immediately afterward he disappears from Frenchman's Bend, driving "through the village with his wife, in a wagon loaded with household goods," and is never seen again (72). When he is seen again in Faulkner's re-telling of this episode in The Town, Trumbull's tenure has been "fifty years" when Flem tries to replace him (38), and in this version, after I.O. and Eck prove their incompetence, he gets his job back.