One morning, two days later, as the storekeeper was at his desk in the rear writing letters, his attention was called by a keen whistle from Cahews, who stood in the front-door wildly signalling him to approach. And going to the clerk, who was now on the front porch staring toward the lion's cage, he saw that Seth Woods, the begrimed shoemaker, had torn down the placard and stood looking into the cage.
"He's mad about it, I'll bet," was Henley's troubled comment. "I reckon folks have been guying him. That railroad man said he consented to let me use the lot. Maybe he lied to close the trade."
"Maybe he did," agreed Cahews; "but look! What do you make of that?"
A negro man with the shoemakers bench on his shoulder had turned the corner and was headed for the cage. "Put it inside an' go back for the rest," they heard Woods order.
Wonderingly, Henley strode across the street and reached the cage just after the negro had put down the bench on the inside and was coming out of the narrow doorway.
"What's the meaning of this?" Henley inquired of the shoemaker.
"Why," and a complacent smile broke through the grime on Woods's face, "it means, Alf, that I'm at last my own landlord. I've been paying old Welborne fifty dollars a year rent fer that little hole in a wall, away back from the square, because I couldn't get enough ahead to build on this lot or get any other shop. I think I've had a stroke of luck, and, strange to say, it come through a woman. Yesterday evening Dixie Hart come in my shop and axed me if I could straighten the heels of her shoes while she set thar. I told her certainly, an' while I was at work we got to talking first on one topic and then on another. She likes my wife an' daughter, an' she said a good deal about 'em. She axed me if I had any objections to lettin' this cage, which she said she had raked in from you at a big bargain, to set on my lot till somebody come along and bought it. I thought buyin' sech a thing was a powerful quar thing for a young woman to do, but of course I didn't say so to her, for it wa'n't any o' my business. Well, one thing fetched on another till she got to lookin' about my shop while I was trimmin' the heel-taps, an' all at once she wanted to know—if thar was no harm in axin'—what rent I was payin'. I told 'er fifty dollars, an' she whistled kind o' keenlike an' said: 'My gracious! an' got a vacant lot, too, right in the heart o' the square.' I explained to her that I wasn't able to build a shop, an' was afraid I never would be, gettin' old like I am an' so many to feed. Then, Alf, what you think that gal said? As cool as a cucumber in a spring branch, as she set thar wigglin' her toes in 'er stockin' feet, she said: 'You'd better listen to me, an' I'll fix you so you won't have any rent to pay. That lion's cage, just at it stands, with the door openin' on the sidewalk, would make the dandiest shoe-shop in seven States. It's plenty wide and long; it is well-roofed with painted sheet-iron, an' would be as tight in cold weather as a jar of preserves. It faces every street that leads into the square, and you'd get twice as much custom there as you do away back here next to this little pig-trail alley.' By gum, what she said struck me like a bolt of lightnin'. I'd examined the cage, as everybody else in town has, I reckon, an' I knowed all about it, so I up an' axed 'er what she'd paid you for it, an' she kind o' dodged my question.
"'Has that got anything to do with it?' she axed, an' I told 'er, I did, that I heard you was offerin' it fer twenty-five dollars. That seemed to set 'er studyin' fer a minute, an' then she said:
"'To tell you the truth, Mr. Woods, that is all I had to pay, but I got it, you mought say, at that figure by the very skin o' my teeth. In a thoughtless moment Alf Henley said he'd take twenty-five, and, knowing what it was railly worth, I yanked out the money on the spot and laid it down. He's a gentleman'—she said—'Alf Henley is a plumb gentleman, but he tried his level best to back down. Jim Cahews will testify that I was actually obliged to leave the money on the counter and walk out before he'd give in.' Is that so, Alf?"
"I am obliged to say it is, Seth," Henley answered, flushing. "Some'n like that actually did take place."