As he sat on the doorstep by the cobbler's bench, which was pushed far forward to get the afternoon light, he took up the short sharp shoemaker's knife, looked at it, held it in his hands and pared his coarse nails with it, whistling a little tune.
"That is a good knife," he observed carelessly.
The cobbler looked up and saw what he was doing.
"Black soul!" he cried out angrily. "That is my welt-knife, like a razor, and he pares his hoofs with it!"
But Stefanone dropped it into the little box of tools on the front of the bench, and whistled softly.
"You seem to me a silly boy!" said the cobbler, still wrathful.
"Apoplexy, how you talk!" answered Stefanone. "But I seem so to myself, sometimes."
CHAPTER XLIV.
The life of Paul Griggs was not less lonely than it had been before the day on which he had received and read Gloria's letters to Reanda, but it was changed. Everything which had belonged to the dead woman was gone from the room in which he sat and worked as usual. Even the position of the furniture was changed. But he worked on as steadily as before.