“I’m going to telephone.  They say the road’s impassable.”

He had no telephone in his office; he used one in the store below.  A small economy fairly typical of Hazen.

“I’ll wait in the office,” I told him.

“Go ahead,” he agreed, halfway down the stairs.

I went up to his office and closed the drafts of the stove—­it was red-hot—­and tried to open the one window, but it was nailed fast.  Then Hazen came back up the stairs grumbling.

“Damn the snow!” he said.  “The wire is down.”

“Where to?” I asked.

“My house, man!  To my house!”

“You wanted to telephone home that you—­”

“I can’t get home to-night.  You’ll have to go to the hotel.”

I nodded good-naturedly.

“All right.  You, too, I suppose.”

“I’ll sleep here,” he said.

I looked round.  There was no bed, no cot, nothing but the two stiff chairs.  He saw my glance and said angrily:  “I’ve slept on the floor before.”

I was always interested in the man’s mental processes.

“You wanted to telephone Mrs. Kinch not to worry?” I suggested.

“Pshaw, let her fret!” said Hazen.  “I wanted to ask after my boy.”  His eyes expanded, he rubbed his hands a little, cackling.  “A fine boy, sir!  A fine boy!”

It was then we heard Doan Marshey coming up the stairs.  We heard his stumbling steps as he began the last flight and Hazen seemed to cock his ears as he listened.  Then he sat still and watched the door.  The steps climbed nearer; they stopped in the dim little hall outside the door and someone fumbled with the knob.  When the door opened we saw who it was.  I knew Marshey.  He lived a little beyond Hazen on the same road.  Lived in a two-room cabin—­it was little more—­with his wife and his five children; lived meanly and pitiably, grovelling in the soil for daily bread, sweating life out of the earth—­life and no more.  A thin man, racking thin; a forward-thrusting neck and a bony face and a sad and drooping moustache about his mouth.  His eyes were meek and weary.

He stood in the doorway blinking at us; and with his gloved hands—­they were stiff and awkward with the cold—­he unwound the ragged muffler that was about his neck and he brushed weakly at the snow upon his head and his shoulders.  Hazen said angrily: 

“Come in!  Do you want my stove to heat the town?”

Doan shuffled in and he shut the door behind him.  He said:  “Howdy, Mr. Kinch.”  And he smiled in a humble and placating way.

Hazen said:  “What’s your business?  Your interest is due.”

Doan nodded.

“Yeah.  I know, Mr. Kinch.  I cain’t pay it all.”

Kinch exclaimed impatiently:  “An old story!  How much can you pay?”

“Eleven dollars and fifty cents,” said Doan.

“You owe twenty.”

“I aim to pay it when the hens begin to lay.”