way. 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.

Boaz's muscles tightened all over him. He had the impulse to start up,
to fling open the door, shout into the night, "What are you doing?
Stop there! Say! What are you doing and where are you going?"

And as before, the curious impotence of the spectator held him
motionless. He had not stirred in his chair. And those footfalls,
upon which hinged, as it were, that momentous decade of his life,
were gone.

There was nothing to listen for now. Yet he continued to listen.
Once or twice, half arousing himself, he drew toward him his
unfinished work. And then relapsed into immobility.

As has been said, the wind, making little difference to the ears,
made all the difference in the world with the sense of feeling and
the sense of smell. From the one important direction of the house.
That is how it could come about that Boaz Negro could sit, waiting
and listening to nothing in the shop and remain ignorant of disaster
until the alarm had gone away and come back again, pounding, shouting,
clanging.

"_Fire_!" he heard them bawling in the street. "_Fire! Fire_!"

Only slowly did he understand that the fire was in his own house.

There is nothing stiller in the world than the skeleton of a house
in the dawn after a fire. It is as if everything living, positive,
violent, had been completely drained in the one flaming act of
violence, leaving nothing but negation till the end of time. It is
worse than a tomb. A monstrous stillness! Even the footfalls of the
searchers can not disturb it, for they are separate and superficial.
In its presence they are almost frivolous.

Half an hour after dawn the searchers found the body, if what was
left from that consuming ordeal might be called a body. The
discovery came as a shock. It seemed incredible that the occupant of
that house, no cripple or invalid but an able man in the prime of
youth, should