"Baba, my friend," replied the Goblin, "I was just thinking that if all the acts of your life had been as good and as humane as your mechanical skill is perfect, you would not now be floundering in the meshes of vice and dissipation. You are making a good pair of shoes there."
The shoemaker worked away without raising his head, but responded spitefully, "Where is the use of making them good?—I get no pay for them."
"Why, who," inquired the occupant of the three-legged stool, "is so ungenerous as to want such shoes without paying for them?"
"They are," answered the busy workman, "for the owner of this miserable shanty, and he complains because I am only six months behind with my rent—a most unreasonable man. If he does not get his shoes to-morrow, he will turn me out; I must have some place to work, and so am forced to do the bidding of this grasping landlord."
"Ah, it is you who are unreasoning," exclaimed Baba's visitor, sorrowfully; "it is you who are in fault. If you would but remain away from the tavern and the vile associates whom you meet there, all would be well with you, you might redeem yourself."
Nick felt this rebuke so very keenly that he turned savagely toward the one who had dared to tell him so plainly of his degradation, and demanded. "Who are you, and why have you disturbed the quiet of this mean hovel to insult me in my misery?"
"Because I wish to serve you," answered it of the waving brown hair.
"You cannot serve me. I will drive you out," threatened the now infuriated cobbler; "I will throw you from the window—I will kill you."
The red eyes of the Goblin danced and twinkled in their caverns; a merry, careless laugh came bubbling forth as it answered, "I will not leave your shop, nor will you throw me from the window, nor yet kill me, Nick Baba. Why, you silly fellow, the sharpest tool on your bench cannot draw blood from me, and that blackened lapstone, if driven with all the force of your great arm through my seeming substance, would leave me sitting here still, not to mock, but to try and save you."
The baffled and stricken shoemaker looked up and muttered. "Then you are not human, you are a demon. But, after all," added Nick, softening, "whether you are of this world or of some other, you are right in what you say."