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