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.
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