He heard them moving about the house, the lower floor, prowling here, there, halting for long spaces, advancing, retreating softly on the planks.  About this aimless, interminable perambulation there was something to twist the nerves, something led and at the same time driven like a succession of frail and indecisive charges.

Boaz lifted himself from his chair.  All his impulse called him to make a stir, join battle, cast in the breach the re-enforcement of his presence, authority, good will.  He sank back again; his hands fell down.  The curious impotence of the spectator held him.

He heard footfalls, too, on the upper floor, a little fainter, borne to the inner rather than the outer ear, along the solid causeway of partitions and floor, the legs of his chair, the bony framework of his body.  Very faint indeed.  Sinking back easily into the background of the wind.  They, too, came and went, this room, that, to the passage, the stair-head, and away.  About them too there was the same quality of being led and at the same time of being driven.

Time went by.  In his darkness it seemed to Boaz that hours must have passed.  He heard voices.  Together with the footfalls, that abrupt, brief, and (in view of Wood’s position) astounding interchange of sentences made up his history of the night.  Wood must have opened the door at the head of the stair; by the sound of his voice he would be standing there, peering below perhaps; perhaps listening.

“What’s wrong down there?” he called.  “Why don’t you go to bed?”

After a moment, came Manual’s voice, “Ain’t sleepy.”

“Neither am I. Look here, do you like to play cards?”

“What kind?  Euchre!  I like euchre all right.  Or pitch.”

“Well, what would you say to coming up and having a game of euchre then, Manuel?  If you can’t sleep?”

“That’d be all right.”

The lower footfalls ascended to join the footfalls on the upper floor.  There was the sound of a door closing.

Boaz sat still.  In the gloom he might have been taken for a piece of furniture, of machinery, an extraordinary lay figure, perhaps, for the trying on of the boots he made.  He seemed scarcely to breathe, only the sweat starting from his brow giving him an aspect of life.

He ought to have run, and leaped up that inner stair and pounded with his fists on that door.  He seemed unable to move.  At rare intervals feet passed on the sidewalk outside, just at his elbow, so to say, and yet somehow, to-night, immeasurably far away.  Beyond the orbit of the moon.  He heard Rugg, the policeman, noting the silence of the shop, muttering, “Boaz is to bed to-night,” as he passed.

The wind increased.  It poured against the shop with its deep, continuous sound of a river.  Submerged in its body, Boaz caught the note of the town bell striking midnight.

Once more, after a long time, he heard footfalls.  He heard them coming around the corner of the shop from the house, footfalls half swallowed by the wind, passing discreetly, without haste, retreating, merging step by step with the huge, incessant background of the wind.