he abandonment of a shepherd's dog at the day's end.

"I will put a stitch in your boots for you while you sleep," said the
host casually. "The thread is rotten, I can see. Look here--and here!"

He stooped, and with a quick turn of the awl which he carried in his
belt he snapped the sewing at the join of the leg and the upper leather,
bringing the frayed ends of the thread out to view.

Without answering, the soldier looked round for the boot-jack, lacking
which, no German or Polish bedroom is complete.

When the bootmaker had gone, carrying the boots under his arm, the
soldier, left to himself, made a grimace at the closed door. Without
boots he was a prisoner in the house. He could hear his host at work
already, downstairs in the shop, of which the door opened to the stairs
and allowed passage to that smell of leather which breeds Radical
convictions.

The regular "tap-tap" of the cobbler's hammer continued for an hour
until dusk, and all the while the soldier lay dressed on his bed. Soon
after, a creaking of the stairs told of the surreptitious approach of
the unwilling host. He listened outside, and even tried the door, but
found it bolted. The soldier, open-eyed on the bed, snored aloud. At the
sound of the key on the outside of the door he made a grimace again. His
features were very mobile, for Schleswig.

He heard the bootmaker descend the stairs again almost noiselessly,
and, rising from the bed, he took his station at the window. All the
Langgasse would seem to be eating-houses. The basement, which has a
separate door, gives forth odours of simple Pomeranian meats, and every
other house bears to this day the curt but comforting inscription, "Here
one eats." It was only to be supposed that the bootmaker at the end of
his day would repair for supper to some special haunt near by.

But the smell of cooking mingling with that of leather told that he was
preparing his own evening meal. He was, it seemed, an unsociable man,
who had but a son beneath his roof, and mostly lived alone.

Seated near the window, where the sunset light yet lingered, the
Schleswiger opened his haversack, which was well supplied, and finding
paper, pens and ink, fell to writing with one eye watchful of the window
and both ears listening for any movement in the room below.

He wrote easily with a running pen, and sometimes he smiled as he wrote.
More than once he paused and looked across the Neuer Markt above the
trees and the roof