trumpet of his hands and shout after the fleeing boy. "Do you sleep out
alone in them green pastures?" Freedom Smith would roar again.

Sam got up and went out of the grocery. As he hurried along, blind with
wrath, he felt he would like a stand-up fight with some one. And, then,
hurrying and avoiding the people, he merged with the crowd on the street
and became a witness to the strange thing that happened that night in
Caxton.

* * * * *

In Main Street hushed people stood about in groups talking. The air was
heavy with excitement. Solitary figures went from group to group
whispering hoarsely. Mike McCarthy, the man who had denied God and who had
won a place for himself in the affection of the newsboy, had assaulted a
man with a pocket knife and had left him bleeding and wounded beside a
country road. Something big and sensational had happened in the life of
the town.

Mike McCarthy and Sam were friends. For years the man had idled upon the
streets of the town, loitering about, boasting and talking. He had sat for
hours in a chair under a tree before the New Leland House, reading books,
doing tricks with cards, engaging in long discussions with John Telfer or
any who would stand up to him.

Mike McCarthy got into trouble in a fight over a woman. A young farmer
living at the edge of Caxton had come home from the fields to find his
wife in the bold Irishman's arms and the two men had gone out of the house
together to fight in the road. The woman, weeping in the house, followed
to ask forgiveness of her husband. Running in the gathering darkness along