"No, I will go
to bed. What time is it?"
"It is only seven o'clock--but no matter."
"No, it is no matter. To-morrow I must be astir by five."
"Good," said the shoemaker. "But you will get your money's worth.
The bed is a good one. It is my son's. He is away, and I am alone
in the house."
He led the way upstairs as he spoke, going heavily one step at a
time, so that the whole house seemed to shake beneath his tread.
The room was that attic in the roof which has a dormer window
overhanging the linden tree. It was small and not too clean; for
Konigsberg was once a Polish city, and is not far from the Russian
frontier.
The soldier hardly noticed his surroundings, but sat down instantly,
with the abandonment of a shepherd's dog at the day's end.
"I will put a stitch in your boots for you while you sleep," said
the host casually. "The thread is rotten, I can see. Look here--
and here!"
He stooped, and with a quick turn of the awl which he carried in his
belt he snapped the sewing at the join of the leg and the upper
leather, bringing the frayed ends of the thread out to view.
Without answering, the soldier looked round for the boot-jack,
lacking which, no German or Polish bedroom is complete.
When the bootmaker had gone, carrying the boots under his arm, the
soldier, left to himself, made a grimace at the closed door.
Without boots he was a prisoner in the house. He could hear his
host at work already, downstairs in the shop, of which the door
opened to the stairs and allowed passage to that smell of leather
which breeds Radical convictions.
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