the distance to
his son's ears.

"Manuel is a good boy!"

"Yes--h'm--yes--I suppose so."

Wood shifted his weight. He seemed uncomfortable.

"Well. I'll be running along, I----ugh! Heavens!"

Something was happening. Boaz heard exclamations, breathings, the
rustle of sleeve-cloth in large, frantic, and futile graspings--all
without understanding. Immediately there was an impact on the floor,
and with it the unmistakable clink of metal. Boaz even heard that
the metal was minted, and that the coins were gold. He understood. A
coin-sack, gripped not quite carefully enough for a moment under the
other's overcoat, had shifted, slipped, escaped, and fallen.

And Manuel had heard!

It was a dreadful moment for Boaz, dreadful in its native sense, as
full of dread. Why? It was a moment of horrid revelation, ruthless
clarification. His son, his link with the departed Angelina, that
"good boy"--Manuel, standing in the shadow of the entry, visible
alone to the blind, had heard the clink of falling gold, and--
_and Boaz wished that he had not_!

There, amazing, disconcerting, destroying, stood the sudden fact.

Sitting as impassive and monumental as ever, his strong, bleached
hands at rest on his work, round drops of sweat came out on Boaz's
forehead. He scarcely took the sense of what Wood was saying. Only
fragments.

"Government money, understand--for the breakwater
workings--huge--too many people know here, everywhere--don't trust
the safe--tin safe--'Noah's Ark'--give you my word--Heavens, no!"

It boiled down to this--the money, more money than was good for that
antiquated "Noah's Ark" at the bank--and whose contemplated sojourn
there overnight was public to too many minds--in short, Wood was not
only incorruptible, he was canny. To what one of those minds, now,
would it occur that he should take away that money bodily, under
casual cover of his coat, to his own lodgings behind the
cobbler-shop of Boaz Negro? For this one, this important night!

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.