course, some quite gratuitous and
unforeseeable catastrophe.

Not that he was not human, or even incapable of laughter or passion.
He was, in a way, immensely accessible. He never clapped one on the
shoulder; on the other hand, he never failed to speak. Not even to
Boaz.

Returning from the bank in the afternoon, he had always a word for
the cobbler. Passing out again to supper at his boarding-place, he
had another, about the weather, the prospects of rain. And if Boaz
were at work in the dark when he returned from an evening at the
Board of Trade, there was a "Good night, Mr. Negro!"

On Boaz's part, his attitude toward his lodger was curious and
paradoxical. He did not pretend to anything less than reverence for
the young man's position; precisely on account of that position he
was conscious toward Wood of a vague distrust. This was because he
was an uneducated fellow.

To the uneducated the idea of large finance is as uncomfortable as
the idea of the law. It must be said for Boaz that, responsive to
Wood's unfailing civility, he fought against this sensation of dim
and somehow shameful distrust.

Nevertheless his whole parental soul was in arms that evening, when,
returning from the bank and finding the shop empty of loungers, Wood
paused a moment to propose the bit of advice already referred to.

"Haven't you ever thought of having Manuel learn the trade?"

A suspicion, a kind of premonition, lighted the fires of defence.

"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