Suddenly the irrepressible Jim Williams broke forth again. A quiver ran over Sam’s body and the blood rose to his cheeks. “Here is another sinner saved,” shouted Jim, pointing to the standing boy. “Count this boy, Sam McPherson, in the fold among the lambs.”
On the platform the brown-bearded minister stood upon a chair and looked over the heads of the people. An ingratiating smile played about his lips. “Let us hear from the young man, Sam McPherson,” he said, raising his hand for silence, and, then, encouragingly, “Sam, what have you to say for the Lord?”
Become the centre for the attention of the people in the church Sam was terror-stricken. The rage against Jim Williams was forgotten in the spasm of fear that seized him. He looked over his shoulder to the door at the back of the church and thought longingly of the quiet street outside. He hesitated, stammered, grew more red and uncertain, and finally burst out: “The Lord,” he said, and then looked about hopelessly, “the Lord maketh me to lie out in green pastures.”
In the seats behind him a titter arose. A young woman sitting among the singers in the choir put her handkerchief to her face and throwing back her head rocked back and forth. A man near the door guffawed loudly and went hurriedly out. All over the church people began laughing.
Sam turned his eyes upon his mother. She was staring straight ahead of her, and her face was red. “I’m going out of this place and I’m never coming back again,” he whispered, and, stepping into the aisle, walked boldly toward the door. He had made up his mind that if the evangelist tried to stop him he would fight. At his back he felt the rows of people looking at him and smiling. The laughter continued.
In the street he hurried along consumed with indignation. “I’ll never go into any church again,” he swore, shaking his fist in the air. The public avowals he had heard in the church seemed to him cheap and unworthy. He wondered why his mother stayed in there. With a sweep of his arm he dismissed all the people in the church. “It is a place to make public asses of the people,” he thought.
Sam McPherson wandered through Main Street, dreading to meet Valmore and John Telfer. Finding the chairs back of the stove in Wildman’s grocery deserted, he hurried past the grocer and hid in a corner. Tears of wrath stood in his eyes. He had been made a fool of. He imagined the scene that would go on when he came upon the street with the papers the next morning. Freedom Smith would be there sitting in the old worn buggy and roaring so that all the street would listen and laugh. “Going to lie out in any green pastures to-night, Sam?” he would shout. “Ain’t you afraid you’ll take cold?” By Geiger’s drug store would stand Valmore and Telfer, eager to join in the fun at his expense. Telfer would pound on the side of the building with his cane and roar with laughter. Valmore would make a trumpet of his hands and shout after the fleeing boy. “Do you sleep out alone in them green pastures?” Freedom Smith would roar again.
Sam got up and went out of the grocery. As he hurried along, blind with wrath, he felt he would like a stand-up fight with some one. And, then, hurrying and avoiding the people, he merged with the crowd on the street and became a witness to the strange thing that happened that night in Caxton.
In Main Street hushed people stood about in groups talking. The air was heavy with excitement. Solitary figures went from group to group whispering hoarsely. Mike McCarthy, the man who had denied God and who had won a place for himself in the affection of the newsboy, had assaulted a man with a pocket knife and had left him bleeding and wounded beside a country road. Something big and sensational had happened in the life of the town.