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.
"I am sick of my life. I have sought leadership and have not found it. Oh
Father! Send down to men a new Christ, one to get hold of us, a modern
Christ with a pipe in his mouth who will swear and knock us about so that
we vermin who pretend to be made in Thy image will understand.
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