"Reverend McCarthy to Mitchfield!"
"Reverend McCarthy to Mitchfield!" was the echo all through the audience. Impossible! Reverend McCarthy, one of the oldest, and regarded as one of the strongest, one of the ablest ministers to such a forsaken charge. Indeed they could hardly have sent him to a poorer charge, to a less dignified place. It seemed incredible, and the rest of the calls were almost drowned out in the consternation that followed.
Well, it was done. He had been all but silenced, and lowered as much as the Bishop dared to lower him. That was settled, and he returned to Chicago without telegraphing the fact to his family.
With resignation he made the necessary preparations for the trip, and taking Orlean with him, went to the small town. They rented a house, for the place didn't afford a parsonage, and began the long dreary year that was to follow. It was his good fortune, however, when the school board met and decided to separate the Negro children from the whites in the public schools, that they employed his daughter to teach the colored pupils for the year. In this way they were able to get along in very good comfort in the months that followed. So the autumn passed, and also the winter. Spring came and went, and summer had set in when his attorney wrote him that the case had been called, to come into Chicago, and prepare to stand trial in the case of Jean Baptiste, plaintiff, versus Newton Justine McCarthy, defendant.
CHAPTER XIII
WHERE THE WEAK MUST BE STRONG
THE TRIAL was called for early June, and Baptiste reached the city a week or ten days before the time set. He had become very friendly with the Negro lawyer who was conducting his case. He also secured a Gregory lawyer, the one who had conducted the contest case. When he arrived in the city, the lawyer advised that, inasmuch as they had a spare bedroom at his home, and that it would be imperative for them to be close to discuss various phases of the prosecution, he could have the room if he liked. So he accepted it.
It so happened that the lawyer's home was located in the same block on Vernon Avenue as was the McCarthys, and on the same side of the street. Moreover, it had been built at the same time as had that of the McCarthys, and was very much like in appearance the one in which they were living.
One afternoon a few days before the trial, while lingering at the bar of the Keystone Hotel, Baptiste was approached by Glavis, who invited him to a table nearby, where they were very much alone. He ordered the drinks, and when they were served he began: