He had had a wife, whom he had loved.  Fate, which had scourged him with the initial scourge of blindness, had seen fit to take his Angelina away.  He had had four sons.  Three, one after another, had been removed, leaving only Manuel, the youngest.  Recovering slowly, with agony, from each of these recurrent blows, his unquenchable exuberance had lived.  And there was another thing quite as extraordinary.  He had never done anything but work, and that sort of thing may kill the flame where an abrupt catastrophe fails.  Work in the dark.  Work, work, work!  And accompanied by privation; an almost miserly scale of personal economy.  Yes, indeed, he had “skinned his fingers,” especially in the earlier years.  When it tells most.

How he had worked!  Not alone in the daytime, but also sometimes, when orders were heavy, far into the night.  It was strange for one, passing along that deserted street at midnight, to hear issuing from the black shop of Boaz Negro the rhythmical tap-tap-tap of hammer on wooden peg.

Nor was that sound all:  no man in town could get far past that shop in his nocturnal wandering unobserved.  No more than a dozen footfalls, and from the darkness Boaz’s voice rolled forth, fraternal, stentorian, “Good night, Antone!” “Good night to you, Caleb Snow!”

To Boaz Negro it was still broad day.

Now, because of this, he was what might be called a substantial man.  He owned his place, his shop, opening on the sidewalk, and behind it the dwelling-house with trellised galleries upstairs and down.

And there was always something for his son, a “piece for the pocket,” a dollar-, five-, even a ten-dollar bill if he had “got to have it.”  Manuel was “a good boy.”  Boaz not only said this, he felt that he was assured of it in his understanding, to the infinite peace of his heart.

It was curious that he should be ignorant only of the one nearest to him.  Not because he was physically blind.  Be certain he knew more of other men and of other men’s sons than they or their neighbours did.  More, that is to say, of their hearts, their understandings, their idiosyncrasies, and their ultimate weight in the balance-pan of eternity.

His simple explanation of Manuel was that Manuel “wasn’t too stout.”  To others he said this, and to himself.  Manuel was not indeed too robust.  How should he be vigorous when he never did anything to make him so?  He never worked.  Why should he work, when existence was provided for, and when there was always that “piece for the pocket”?  Even a ten-dollar bill on a Saturday night!  No, Manuel “wasn’t too stout.”

In the shop they let it go at that.  The missteps and frailties of every one else in the world were canvassed there with the most shameless publicity.  But Boaz Negro was a blind man, and in a sense their host.  Those reckless, strong young fellows respected and loved him.  It was allowed to stand at that.  Manuel was “a good boy.”  Which did not prevent them, by the way, from joining later in the general condemnation of that father’s laxity—­“the ruination of the boy!”