The rest of the town agreed with Valmore, and McCarthy, knowing this,
sunned himself in the town's displeasure. For the sake of the public furor
it brought down upon his head he proclaimed himself a socialist, an
anarchist, an atheist, a pagan. Among all the McCarthy boys he alone cared
greatly about women, and he made public and open declarations of his
passion for them. Before the men gathered about the stove in Wildman's
grocery store he would stand whipping them into a frenzy by declaring for
free love, and vowing that he would have the best of any woman who gave
him the chance.

For this man the frugal, hard working newsboy had conceived a regard
amounting to a passion. As he listened to McCarthy he got continuous
delightful little thrills. "There is nothing he would not dare," thought
the boy. "He is the freest, the boldest, the bravest man in town." When
the young Irishman, seeing the admiration in his eyes, flung him a silver
dollar saying, "That is for your fine brown eyes, my boy; it I had them I
would have half the women in town after me," Sam kept the dollar in his
pocket and counted it a kind of treasure like the rose given a lover by
his sweetheart.

* * * * *

It was past eleven o'clock when Hop Higgins returned to town with
McCarthy, driving quietly along the street and through an alley at the
back of the town hall. The crowd upon the street had broken up. Sam had
gone from one to another of the muttering groups, his heart quaking with
fear. Now he stood at the back of the mass of men gathered at the jail
door. An oil lamp, burning at the top of the post above the door, threw
dancing, flickering lights on the faces of the men before him. The thunder
storm that had threatened had not come, but the unnatural warm wind