Mike McCarthy did not ride swearing and singing with the five brothers
along the dark road. He did not work all day in the hot corn fields. He
was the family gentleman, and, wearing good clothes, strolled instead upon
the street or loitered in the shade before the New Leland House. Mike had
been educated. For some years he had attended a college in Indiana from
which he was expelled for an affair with a woman. After his return from
college he stayed in Caxton, living at the hotel and making a pretence of
studying law in the office of old Judge Reynolds. He paid slight attention
to the study of law, but with infinite patience had so trained his hands
that he became wonderfully dexterous with coins and cards, plucking them
out of the air and making them appear in the shoes, the hats, and even in
the mouths, of bystanders. During the day he walked the streets looking at
the girl clerks in the stores, or stood upon the station platform waving
his hand to women passengers on passing trains. He told John Telfer that
the flattery of women was a lost art that he intended to restore. Mike
McCarthy carried in his pockets books which he read sitting in a chair
before the hotel or on the stones before store windows. When on Saturdays
the streets were filled with people, he stood on the corners giving
gratuitous performances of his magical art with cards and coins, and
eyeing country girls in the crowd. Once, a woman, the town stationer's
wife, shouted at him, calling him a lazy lout, whereupon he threw a coin
in the air, and when it did not come down rushed toward her shouting, "She
has it in her stocking." When the stationer's wife ran into her shop and
banged the door the crowd laughed and shouted with delight.

Telfer had a liking for the tall, grey-eyed, loitering McCarthy and
sometimes sat with him discussing a novel or a poem; Sam in the background
listened eagerly. Valmore did not care for the man, shaking his head and
declaring that such a fellow could come to no good end.