Boaz sat back.  Beneath his passive exterior his nerves thrummed; his muscles had grown as hard as wood.  Yes!  Yes!  But no!  He had heard nothing; no more than a single step, a single foot-pressure on the planks within the door.  Dear God!  He could not tell!

Going through the pain of an enormous effort, he opened his lips.

“What can I do for you?”

“Well, I—­I don’t know.  To tell the truth—­”

The voice was unfamiliar, but it might be assumed.  Boaz held himself.  His face remained blank, interrogating, slightly helpless.  “I am a little deaf,” he said.  “Come nearer.”

The footfalls came half way across the intervening floor, and there appeared to hesitate.  The voice, too, had a note of uncertainty.

“I was just looking around.  I have a pair of—­well, you mend shoes?”

Boaz nodded his head.  It was not in response to the words, for they meant nothing.  What he had heard was the footfalls on the floor.

Now he was sure.  As has been said, for a moment at least after he had heard them he was unshakably sure.  The congestion of his muscles had passed.  He was at peace.

The voice became audible once more.  Before the massive preoccupation of the blind man it became still less certain of itself.

“Well, I haven’t got the shoes with me.  I was—­just looking around.”

It was amazing to Boaz, this miraculous sensation of peace.

“Wait!” Then, bending his head as if listening to the winter wind, “It’s cold to-night.  You’ve left the door open.  But wait!” Leaning down, his hand fell on a rope’s end hanging by the chair.  The gesture was one continuous, undeviating movement of the hand.  No hesitation.  No groping.  How many hundreds, how many thousands of times, had his hand schooled itself in that gesture!

A single strong pull.  With a little bang the front door had swung to and latched itself.  Not only the front door.  The other door, leading to the rear, had closed too and latched itself with a little bang.  And leaning forward from his chair, Boaz blew out the light.

There was not a sound in the shop.  Outside, feet continued to go by, ringing on the frozen road; voices were lifted; the wind hustled about the corners of the wooden shell with a continuous, shrill note of whistling.  All of this outside, as on another planet.  Within the blackness of the shop the complete silence persisted,

Boaz listened.  Sitting on the edge of his chair, half-crouching, his head, with its long, unkempt, white hair, bent slightly to one side, he concentrated upon this chambered silence the full powers of his senses.  He hardly breathed.

The other person in that room could not be breathing at all, it seemed.

No, there was not a breath, not the stirring of a sole on wood, not the infinitesimal rustle of any fabric.  It was as if in this utter stoppage of sound, even the blood had ceased to flow in the veins and arteries of that man, who was like a rat caught in a trap.