"Well, to get out of it, I told the old rascal what I thought of his suggestion and left him. I never saw him again until near conference, and then not to speak with him. I was confident that I had satisfied the people, and that I would be sent back without any argument.
"So imagine when I went to conference and when the charges were being read off and I heard the Secretary call 'Reverend Speed to Mitchfield!' instead of the town from which I had gone.
"I was just sick, man; so sick until I almost dropped dead on the floor! Oh, the agony it gave me! I finally got outside some way, and stood leaning against the church. How long I stood thus, I never knew; but the church let out by and by, while I still stood there—and let me explain. Mitchfield was a charge that contained exactly a dozen members—the Reverend McCarthy came out and I looked up straight into his eyes.... I knew then why I had been sent to Mitchfield instead of back to the charge I had been at.
"Well, I went to Mitchfield, and by working around town by the day, in connection with the charge, I managed to make it. Some months later, I married the girl I have spoken of, and we began to keep house in Mitchfield.
"It was pretty hard, and sometimes I don't wonder at what later happened. But to make a long story short, I was compelled to get work in a near-by town to make a living for me and my wife, and was gone all the week until Saturday night. At the end of six months, Reverend McCarthy had taken my wife, and she had left me and was living in St. Louis!"
Baptiste was regarding him strangely.
"Have you heard the rest of it?" the other paused to ask. "Well, Reverend McCarthy became the father of her two sons. One was killed some years ago, the other lives in St. Louis."
"But what—what became of their mother?" Baptiste inquired curiously.
"Her? What becomes of women who are deceived? If you visited St. Louis and the district, you might find her. She was there the last I heard of her."
"And you?"