"Truly you come here into the forest bringing with you life and the world and intellectual values and news. Let us talk a little. Tell me something: are you afraid your footprints will be visible tomorrow if there's fresh snow tonight?"
"That's my business. I've crossed the field before and I know many paths," he muttered. "I'll let you have the cloth for a few crowns."
I shook my head, so the man again neatly folded the cloth and put it back in the bag exactly as though it belonged to him.
"I'll cut it up into material for trousers; then the pieces won't be so large, and I'll be able to sell it."
"You'd better leave enough for a whole suit in one piece," I said, "and cut up the rest for trousers."
"You think so? Yes, maybe you're right."
We calculated how much would be necessary for a grown man's suit, and took down the string from which the letters hung to measure our own clothes, so as to be sure to get the measurements right. Then we cut into the edge of the cloth, and tore it across. In addition to one complete suit, there was enough left for two good-sized pairs of trousers.
Then the man offered to sell me other things out of his sack, and I bought some coffee and a few rolls of tobacco. He put the money away in a leather purse, and I saw how empty the purse was, and the circumstantial and poverty-stricken fashion in which he put the money away, afterward feeling the outside of his pocket.
"You haven't been able to sell me much," I said, "but I don't need any more than that."
"Business is business," said he. "I don't complain."