The next morning Sam appeared bright and early at the shoe-shop of Larry Highgetty.  He had made an arrangement with the cobbler to do whatever work might be assigned him and to accept as full payment one-half the money which would be charged, most of it being for repairs.  As nearly as he could discover by a close questioning of the proprietor of the establishment, the entire receipts did not exceed two dollars per day, and the owner had so few responsibilities and so much surplus that he would be quite glad if he might lounge at one or other of the local places of entertainment while some one else should do the work and keep the establishment open.  Consequently Sam went at the work with great energy, and little by little nearly all the work came to be done by him.

He had hammered away for a few minutes on a sole to be placed on the bottom of a well-worn shoe belonging to a workingman, when a new customer entered the shop.  Sam looked up at him and saw Reynolds Bartram.  He offered a short, spasmodic, disjointed prayer to heaven, for he remembered what the judge’s wife had said, and he had known Reynolds Bartram as a young man of keen wit and high standing as a debater before Sam’s enforced retirement; now, he knew, Bartram had become a lawyer.

“Well, Sam,” said Bartram, as he seated himself in the only chair and proceeded to eye the new cobbler, while the blows of the hammer struck the sole more rapidly and vigorously than before,—­“well, Sam, I understand that you have been turning things upside down, and instead of coming out of the penitentiary a great deal worse man than when you went in, as most other men do, you have been converted.”

“That’s my understandin’ of it, Mr. Bartram,” said the ex-convict, continuing his inflictions upon the bit of leather.

“Sam,” said Bartram, “I am a man of business, and I suppose you are from what I see you doing.  I wish to make you a proposition:  I will pay you cash for two or three hours’ time if you will tell me—­so that I can understand it—­what being converted really amounts to.”

The new cobbler did not cease an instant his attention to the work in his hand.  He merely said,—­

“Mr. Bartram, you’re a very smart man, an’ I’m a very stupid one.  If there’s a stupider man in town the Democratic local committee has never yet been able to find him.  You want to know what bein’ converted means?  You’d better go to Deacon Quickset, or the minister of some one of the churches hereabouts.  I can’t explain anythin’, I don’t know anythin’ but what I feel myself, an’ the more I feel it the more I don’t know how to talk about it.  Deacon Quickset says it don’t ’mount to much.  I s’pose it don’t—­to him, he bein’ so much smarter than me.  But, so far as it goes, I can’t be paid for talkin’ about it, for it didn’t cost me nothin’.”

This was not what the visitor had expected; nevertheless, it is a lawyer’s business to know more than one way of putting a thing.