. And he went on to tell
about his life, how he'd most worked himself to death tryin' to support
her and the children, and how she couldn't cook, and how she never had
the meals ready, and how he'd come home so hungry he could eat glue, and
she'd be talkin' over the back fence with Laura Bates, and how he didn't
like her any more anyway, because she had lost most of her teeth, and
spluttered her words. Then he'd get drunk, he said, to forget. And just
then a voice said, "No drunkard shall enter the kingdom of heaven." It
was Doc Lyon in a separate place, behind another iron door. And Joe Pink
turned on him and said: "I suppose dog killers and house burners and
cow-cutters and murderers get in. They do, do they? Well, you can send
Joe Pink down to the devil. I don't want to go nowhere where you go--you
can bet on that."

[Illustration: Doc Lyon]

By this time we could see clear into the dark, and there stood Doc Lyon
quiet like, his hands holding the bars, awful white hands, and his eyes
bright like a snake's when it raises up to strike. Then Doc Lyon began
to talk. First he was talking about Mitch's dog. He said it wasn't
decent to have that dog around where children could see her, and that he
had killed her because God told him to. Then he began to talk the Bible
and talk about Ohalibah and say: "She doted on her lovers, on the
Assyrians, her neighbors, which were clothed with blue, governors and
rulers, all of them desirable young men, horsemen riding upon horses.
And I will set my jealousy against thee, and they shall deal with thee
in fury; they shall take away thy nose and thine ears; and thy residue
shall fall by the sword. They shall also strip thee of thy clothes and
take away thy fair jewels." And so he went on for a long time. And Mitch
whispered to me, "He's quoting from Ezekiel"--Mitch had heard his pa
read it to his ma and he knew it.

Then Doc Lyon went on to talk about my ma, and to say that he didn't
mean to kill her, but only to cut off her ears and her nose, because she
was too pretty, and was an abomination to the Lord because she was so
pretty, and the Lord had told him to do it. And then he said the Lord
had told him to remove Nancy Allen because she lived with Old Bender and
his wife, and it wasn't right. He was awful crazy; for if ever there was
a harmless old couple and a harmless old woman, it was the Benders and
Nancy Allen. And why did he want to kill her for livin' with the
Benders? She ha