He was sorry the coin-sack had slipped, because he did not like to have the responsibility of secret sharer cast upon any one, even upon Boaz, even by accident.  On the other hand, how tremendously fortunate that it had been Boaz and not another.  So far as that went, Wood had no more anxiety now than before.  One incorruptible knows another.

“I’d trust you, Mr. Negro” (that was one of the fragments which came and stuck in the cobbler’s brain), “as far as I would myself.  As long as it’s only you.  I’m just going up here and throw it under the bed.  Oh, yes, certainly.”

Boaz ate no supper.  For the first time in his life food was dry in his gullet.  Even under those other successive crushing blows of Fate the full and generous habit of his functionings had carried on unabated; he had always eaten what was set before him.  To-night, over his untouched plate, he watched Manuel with his sightless eyes, keeping track of his every mouthful, word, intonation, breath.  What profit he expected to extract from this catlike surveillance it is impossible to say.

When they arose from the supper-table Boaz made another Herculean effort.  “Manuel, you’re a good boy!”

The formula had a quality of appeal, of despair, and of command.

“Manuel, you should be short of money, maybe.  Look, what’s this?  A tenner?  Well, there’s a piece for the pocket; go and enjoy yourself.”

He would have been frightened had Manuel, upsetting tradition, declined the offering.  With the morbid contrariness of the human imagination, the boy’s avid grasping gave him no comfort.

He went out into the shop, where it was already dark, drew to him his last, his tools, mallets, cutters, pegs, leather.  And having prepared to work, he remained idle.  He found himself listening.

It has been observed that the large phenomena of sunlight and darkness were nothing to Boaz Negro.  A busy night was broad day.  Yet there was a difference; he knew it with the blind man’s eyes, the ears.

Day was a vast confusion, or rather a wide fabric, of sounds; great and little sounds all woven together, voices, footfalls, wheels, far-off whistles and foghorns, flies buzzing in the sun.  Night was another thing.  Still there were voices and footfalls, but rarer, emerging from the large, pure body of silence as definite, surprising, and yet familiar entities.

To-night there was an easterly wind, coming off the water and carrying the sound of waves.  So far as other fugitive sounds were concerned it was the same as silence.  The wind made little difference to the ears.  It nullified, from one direction at least, the other two visual processes of the blind, the sense of touch and the sense of smell.  It blew away from the shop, toward the living-house.

As has been said, Boaz found himself listening, scrutinizing with an extraordinary attention, this immense background of sound.  He heard footfalls.  The story of that night was written, for him, in footfalls.