“Shoemaking,” said Boaz, “is good enough for a blind man.”

“Oh, I don’t know.  At least it’s better than doing nothing at all.”

Boaz’s hammer was still.  He sat silent, monumental.  Outwardly.  For once his unfailing response had failed him, “Manuel ain’t too stout, you know.”  Perhaps it had become suddenly inadequate.

He hated Wood; he despised Wood; more than ever before, a hundredfold more, quite abruptly, he distrusted Wood.

How could a man say such things as Wood had said?  And where Manuel himself might hear!

Where Manuel had heard!  Boaz’s other emotions—­hatred and contempt and distrust—­were overshadowed.  Sitting in darkness, no sound had come to his ears, no footfall, no infinitesimal creaking of a floor-plank.  Yet by some sixth uncanny sense of the blind he was aware that Manuel was standing in the dusk of the entry joining the shop to the house.

Boaz made a Herculean effort.  The voice came out of his throat, harsh, bitter, and loud enough to have carried ten times the distance to his son’s ears.

“Manuel is a good boy!”

“Yes—­h’m—­yes—­I suppose so.”

Wood shifted his weight.  He seemed uncomfortable.

“Well.  I’ll be running along, I——­ugh!  Heavens!”

Something was happening.  Boaz heard exclamations, breathings, the rustle of sleeve-cloth in large, frantic, and futile graspings—­all without understanding.  Immediately there was an impact on the floor, and with it the unmistakable clink of metal.  Boaz even heard that the metal was minted, and that the coins were gold.  He understood.  A coin-sack, gripped not quite carefully enough for a moment under the other’s overcoat, had shifted, slipped, escaped, and fallen.

And Manuel had heard!

It was a dreadful moment for Boaz, dreadful in its native sense, as full of dread.  Why?  It was a moment of horrid revelation, ruthless clarification.  His son, his link with the departed Angelina, that “good boy”—­Manuel, standing in the shadow of the entry, visible alone to the blind, had heard the clink of falling gold, and—­ and Boaz wished that he had not!

There, amazing, disconcerting, destroying, stood the sudden fact.

Sitting as impassive and monumental as ever, his strong, bleached hands at rest on his work, round drops of sweat came out on Boaz’s forehead.  He scarcely took the sense of what Wood was saying.  Only fragments.

“Government money, understand—­for the breakwater workings—­huge—­too many people know here, everywhere—­don’t trust the safe—­tin safe—­’Noah’s Ark’—­give you my word—­Heavens, no!”

It boiled down to this—­the money, more money than was good for that antiquated “Noah’s Ark” at the bank—­and whose contemplated sojourn there overnight was public to too many minds—­in short, Wood was not only incorruptible, he was canny.  To what one of those minds, now, would it occur that he should take away that money bodily, under casual cover of his coat, to his own lodgings behind the cobbler-shop of Boaz Negro?  For this one, this important night!