"Well," said he, after a time, and to himself, "I left the West to find a wife. I've lived out there alone long enough. I want a home, love and comfort and only a wife can bring that." He paused briefly in his mutterings. His face became firm. That will that had asserted itself and made him what he was today, became uppermost. He slowly let the sentiment out of him, which was at once mechanically replaced by a cold set purpose. He smiled then; not a sentimental smile, but one cold, hard, and singularly dry.

"Oh, by the way, Miss Rankin," he essayed, rising, apparently cheerful.

"Do you happen to be acquainted with a family here by the name of McCarthy?"

"McCarthy?"

"Yes. I think the man's a preacher. A Rev. N.J. McCarthy, if I remember correctly." She looked up at him. Her face took on an expression of defined contempt as she grunted a reply.

"Humph!"

"Well...."

"Who doesn't know that old rascal!"

"Indeed!" he echoed, in affected surprise; but in the same instant he had a feeling that he was to hear just this. Still, he maintained his expression of surprise.

"The worst old rascal in the state of Illinois," she pursued with equal contempt.

"Oh, really!"

"Really--yes, _positively_!"

"I cannot understand?"

"Oh well," she emitted, vindictively. "You won't have to inquire far to get the record of N.J. McCarthy. Lordy, no! But now," she started with a heightening of color, "He's got a nice family. Two fine girls, Orlean and Ethel, and his wife is a good little soul, rather helpless and without the force a woman should have; but very nice. But that husband--forget him!"

"This is--er--rather unusual, don't you think?"

"Well, it is," she said. "One would naturally suppose that a man with such a family of moral girls as he has, would not be so--not because he is a preacher." She paused thoughtfully. "Because you know that does not count for a high morality always in our society.... But N.J. McCarthy has been like he is ever since I knew him. He's a rascal of the deep water if the Lord ever made one. And such a hypocrite--there never lived! Added to it, he is the most pious old saint you ever saw! Looks just as innocent as the Christ--and treats his wife like a dog!"

"Oh, no!"

"No!" disdainfully. "Well, you'd better hush!" She paused again, and then as if having reconsidered she turned and said: "I'll not say any more about him. Indeed, I don't like to discuss the man even. He is the very embodiment of rascalism, deceit and hypocrisy. Now, I've said enough. Be a good boy, go out and buy me some cream." And smilingly she got his hat and ushered him outside.

"Well, now what do you think of that," he kept repeating to himself, as he went for the ice cream, "_what do you think of that?_" Suddenly he halted, and raised his hands to his head. He was thinking, thinking, thinking deeply, reflectively. His mind was going back, back, away back into his youth, his earliest youth--no! It was going--had gone back to his childhood!

"N.J. McCarthy, _N.J. McCarthy_? Where did I _know you_! Where, where, _where_!" His head was throbbing, his brain was struggling with something that happened a long time before. A saloon was just to his left, and into it he turned. He wanted to think; but he _didn't_ want to think too fast. He took a glass of beer. It was late September, but rather warm, and when the cold beverage struck his throat, his mind went back into its yesterdays.

It had happened in the extremely southern portion of the state, in that part commonly referred to as "Egypt," where he then lived. He recalled the incident as it occurred about twenty years before, for he was just five years of age at the time. His mother's baby boy they called him, because he was the youngest of four boys in a large family of children.

It was a day in the autumn. He was sure of this because his older brothers had been hunting; they had caught several rabbits and shot a few partridges. He had been allowed to follow for the first time, and had carried the game.... How distinctly it came back to him now.

He had picked the feathers from the quail, and had held the rabbits while his brothers skinned them. And, later, they had placed the game in cold water from their deep well, and had thereupon placed the pan holding the same upon the roof of the summer kitchen, and that night the frost had come. And when morning was again, the ice cold water had drawn the blood from the meat of the game, and the same was clear and white.

"Now, young man," his mother said to him the following morning, "you will get into clean clothes and stay clean, do you understand?"

"Yes, mama, I understand," he answered. "But, mama, why?" he inquired.

Jean Baptiste had always asked such questions and for his doing so his mother had always rebuked him.

"You will ask the questions, my son," she said, raising his child body in her arms and kissing him fondly. "But I don't mind telling you." She stood him on the ground then, and pointed to him with her forefinger.

"Because we are going to have company from town. Big people. The preachers. Lots of them, so little boys should be good, and clean, and be scarce when the preachers are around. They are big men with no time, or care, to waste with little boys!"

"M-um!" he had chimed.

"And, why, mama, do the preachers have no time for little boys? Were they not little boys once themselves?"

"Now, Jean!" she had admonished thereupon, "you are entirely too inquisitive for a little boy. There will be other company, also.

Teachers, and Mrs. Winston, do you understand! So be good." With that she went about her dinner, cooking the rabbits and the quail that he had brought home the day before.

It had seemed an age before, in their spring wagon followed by the lumber wagon, the dignitaries of the occasion wheeled into the yard. He could not recall now how many preachers there were, except that there were many. He was in the way, he recalled, however, because, unlike his other brothers, he was not bashful. But the preachers did not seem to see him. They were all large and tall and stout, he could well remember.

But the teachers took notice of him. One had caught him up fondly, kissed him and thereupon carried him into the house in her arms. She talked with him and he with her. And he could well recall that she listened intently to all he told her regarding his adventures of the day before in the big woods that was at their back. How beautiful and sweet he had thought she was. When she smiled she showed a golden tooth, something new to him, and he did not understand except that it was different from anything he had ever seen before.

After a long time, he thought, dinner was called, and, as was the custom, he was expected to wait. He had very often tried to reason with his mother that he could sit at the corner of the table in a high chair and eat out of a saucer. He had promised always to be good, just as good as he could be, and he would not talk. But his mother would not trust him, and it was understood that he should wait.

At the call of dinner he slid from the teacher's lap upon the floor and went outside. He peeped through the window from where he stood on a block. He saw them eat, and eat, and eat. He saw the quail the boys had shot disappear one after another into the mouths of the big preachers, and since he had counted and knew how many quail there were, he had watched with a growing fear. "Will they not leave one?" he cried.

At last, when he could endure it no longer, he ran into the house, walked into the dining room unseen, and stood looking on. Now, the teacher who had the golden tooth happened to turn and espy him and thereupon she cried:

"Oh, there is my little man, and I know he is hungry! Where did you go, sweet one? Come, now, quick to me," whereupon she held out loving arms into which he went and he had great difficulty in keeping back the tears. But he was hungry, and he had seen the last quail taken from the plate by a preacher who had previously taken two.

Upon her knee she had sat him, and he looked up into all the faces about. He then looked down into her plate and saw a half of quail. His anxious eyes found hers, and then went back to the plate and the half of quail thereon.

"That is for you, sweetness," she cried, and began to take from the table other good things, while he fell to eating, feeding his mouth with both hands for he was never before so hungry.

After a few moments he happened to lift his eyes from the plate. Just to the side of the beloved teacher, he observed a large, tall and stout preacher. He wore a jet black suit and around his throat a clerical vest fit closely; while around his neck he wore a white collar hind part before. The preacher's eyes had found Jean's and he gave a start. The eyes of the other were upon him, and they were angry eyes. He paused in his eats and gazed not understanding, into the eyes that were upon him.

Then suddenly he recalled that he had observed that the preacher had been smiling upon the teacher. He had laughed and joked; and said many things that little Jean had not understood. As far as he could see, it appeared as if the teacher had not wished it; but the flirtation had been kept up.

At last, in his child mind he had understood. His crawling upon the teacher's lap had spoiled it all! The preacher was angry, therefore the expression in his eyes.

From across the table his mother stood observing him. She seemed not to know what to say or do, for it had always been so very hard to keep this one out of grown people's way. So she continued to stand hesitatingly.

"Didn't your mother say that you were to wait," growled the preacher, and his face was darker by the anger that was in it. This frightened Jean. He could find no answer in the moment to such words. His little eyes had then sought those of the teacher, who in reply drew him closely to her.

"Why, Reverend," she cried, amazed, "he's a little boy, a nice child, and hungry!" Whereupon she caressed him again. He was pacified then, and his eyes held some fire when he found the preacher's again. The others, too, had grown more evil. The preacher's lips parted. He leaned slightly forward as he said lowly, angrily:

"You're an impudent, ill mannered little boy, and you need a spanking!"

Then suddenly the child grew strangely angry. He couldn't understand.

Perhaps it was because he had helped secure the quail, all of which the preachers were eating, and felt that in view of this he was entitled to a piece of one. He could not understand afterward how he had said it, but he extended his little face forward, close to the preacher's, as he poured:

"I ain't no impudent 'ittle boy, either! I went to hunt with my brothers yistidy and I carried all the game, and now you goin' eat it all and leave me none when I'm hungry. You're mean man and make me mad!"

As he spoke everything seemed to grow dark around him. He recalled that he was suddenly snatched from the teacher's lap, and carried to the summer kitchen which was all closed and dark inside. He recalled that switches were there, and that soon he felt them. As a rule he cried and begged before he was ever touched; but strangely then he never cried, and he never begged. He just kept his mouth shut tightly, and had borne all the pain inflicted by his mother, and she had punished him longer than she had ever done before. Perhaps it was because she felt she had to make him cry; felt that he _must_ cry else he had not repented. After a time he felt terribly dazed, became sleepy, and gradually fell into a slumber while the blows continued to fall.

How long he slept he could not remember, but gradually he came out of it. There were no more blows then. Yet, his little body felt sore all over. When he looked up (for he was lying on his back in the summer kitchen), his mother sat near and was crying and wiping the tears with her apron, while over him bent the teacher, and she was crying also. And as the tears had fallen unchecked upon his face he had heard the teacher saying:

"It's a shame, an awful shame! The poor, poor little fellow! He was hungry and had helped to get the game. And to be punished so severely because he wanted to eat is a shame! Oh, Mrs. Baptiste, you must pray to your God for forgiveness!" And his mother had cried more than ever then.

Presently he heard a heavy footfall, and peeped upward to see his father standing over him. His father was fair of complexion, and unlike his mother, never said much and was not commonly emotional. But when he was angry he was terrible, and he was angry now. His blue eyes shone like fire.