darkness beside Sam, stood before Telfer. "The boy should be going home,"
he said; "this isn't fit for him to hear."

Telfer laughed and drew Sam closer to him. "He has heard enough lies in
this town," he said. "Truth won't hurt him. I would not go myself, nor
would you, and the boy shall not go. This McCarthy has a brain. Although
he is half insane now he is trying to work something out. The boy and I
will stay to hear."

The voice from the jail continued calling out the names of Caxton wives.
Voices in the group before the jail door began shouting: "This should be
stopped. Let us tear down the jail."

McCarthy laughed aloud. "They squirm, oh Father, they squirm; I have them
in the pit and I torture them," he cried.

An ugly feeling of satisfaction came over Sam. He had a sense of the fact
that the names shouted from the jail would be repeated over and over
through the town. One of the women whose names had been called out had
stood with the evangelist at the back of the church trying to induce the
wife of the baker to rise and be counted in the fold with the lambs.

The rain, falling on the shoulders of the men by the jail door, changed to
hail, the air grew colder and the hailstones rattled on the roofs of
buildings. Some of the men joined Telfer and Valmore, talking in low,
excited voices. "And Mary McKane, too, the hypocrite," Sam heard one of
them say.

The voice inside the jail changed. Still praying, Mike McCarthy seemed
also to be talking to the group in the darkness outside.