THE NINTH MAN
felt I had best stick my own knife in my breast and not wait for who knows what death at the hands of Mazzaleone. I knew why men and women sat silent and brooding, for I sat that way also. I pondered this and that means that I might find of ridding myself of the cobbler's son. So I, together with the rest of San Moglio, brooded with fear in the thoughts of death and thoughts of murder. And the cobbler's son read my thoughts, for he stayed well withindoors and grinned at me as I passed.
For comfort I sought Brother Agnello, and found him preaching to some gaping women at a street corner, telling them that through the mouths of children it had been revealed to him that it was God's will that he should take the blood of San Moglio on him, but his words were to me like the babbling of a madman, for I sat now in the dolorous heart of San Moglio and I knew that its heart was full of hate. The sight of him became bitter to me, and it seemed to me I encountered him always when I went abroad, and the blond child with him. Now the children tormented him, now men
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