There was a pause. Hoag's eyelashes fluttered. “Yes, yes, I reckon so,” he said. “I was goin' on to say—”
But some sound in the street had caught Tye's attention and, forgetful of his customer, he rose and stood at the door and looked out. The wrinkles on his brow and about his kindly eyes were drawn and deepened as he peered over the brass rims of his glasses. Hoag heard him sigh again, and saw him rubbing the sole of the shoe absent-mindedly.
“What's goin' on?” the tanner asked, without moving from his chair.
“It's that poor nigger Pete Watson's wife an' daughters,” was the answer. “They've come to claim the body—Dick Morgan is showin' 'em which way to go. Lord, Lord, they do look pitiful! They ain't even cryin'—niggers seldom do at sech a time. Looks like they won't shed tears before the whites for fear it will make 'em mad. They learnt who the'r masters was before the war, an' they ain't over it. I knowed Pete Watson—I've mended shoes for 'im. He was always a civil nigger, an' clever enough. I've had talks with 'im, an' I've been astonished to hear what sensible ideas he had. He appeared to me to be a Christian—a Christian that understood what the Lord really meant when he was here on earth, an' that's rare even among the whites.”
Silas came back to his bench and slowly sat down. “Lord, Lord, what a pity, what a pity!” he continued to mutter.
“They say he was undoubtedly guilty.” Hoag felt his anger rising, and yet he realized that he must restrain himself. “That is the current report, anyway,” he said.
“It always is the report,” Silas said. “Even if a mistake was made the public would never know it. The gang that did the work would see to that.”
“We are gittin' away from what we was talkin' about,” Hoag said. “I was asking you what you thought about me startin' a little shoe-plant?”
“I'm afraid it wouldn't pay,” Silas said, deliberately. “They make shoes a sight cheaper in the big works up North than you possibly could down here in the backwoods with untrained help. It's been tried, without success, several times here an' thar. The Yankees understand the knack o' splittin' leather an' usin' both halves, an' even the middle, for different purposes. You can't make shoes right an' put in good stock at the prices Northern made-up goods fetch.” Silas selected a woman's shoe from a pile on the floor, and with his blackened thumb pried the worn bottom open. “Look at that—stuffed with leather shavin's an' glue! That's what you'd have to contend with. When folks go to buy they go by looks, not quality. Then yore help would fall down on you. You can't turn easy-goin', jolly singin' an' dancin' black boys an' gals into drudgin' machines all at once. They come from a drowsy, savage race an' a hot climate, an' you can't make 'em over in a day. La, la—” The shoemaker bent sideways to look out of the doorway toward the spot where the lynching had occurred. “That's why that thing seems so pitiful.”
Hoag felt his ire rising, but he curbed himself. “They say—folks say, I'm told—that the nigger was guilty,” he muttered. “When the neighbors first went to his house they found the old hat Rose had on when he was murdered. That fact may not be generally known.”