"What's up with your foot?" putting my hand in my pocket. "Oh,
it's a crimson nail in my boot," he said. "I thought I got the
blanky thing out this morning; but I didn't."

There just happened to be an old bag of shoemaker's tools in the bar,
belonging to an old cobbler who was lying dead drunk on the veranda.
So I said, taking my hand out of my pocket again:

"Lend us the boot, and I'll fix it in a minute. That's my old
trade."

"Oh, so you're a shoemaker," he said. "I'd never have thought
it."

He laughs one of his useless laughs that wasn't wanted, and slips off
the boot--he hadn't laced it up--and hands it across the bar to me.
It was an ugly brute--a great thick, iron-bound, boiler-plated navvy's
boot. It made me feel sore when I looked at it.

I got the bag and pretended to fix the nail; but I didn't.

"There's a couple of nails gone from the sole," I said. "I'll put
'em in if I can find any hobnails, and it'll save the sole," and I
rooted in the bag and found a good long nail, and shoved it right
through the sole on the sly. He'd been a bit of a sprinter in his
time, and I thought it might be better for me in the near future if
the spikes of his running-shoes were inside.

"There, you'll find that better, I fancy," I said, standing the boot
on the bar counter, but keeping my hand on it in an absent-minded kind