I cannot forget that day on which I had occasion to say to him; "Mr. Gessler, that last pair of town walking-boots creaked, you know." He looked at me for a time without replying, as if expecting me to withdraw or qualify the statement, then said: "It shouldn't have creaked." "It did, I'm afraid." "You got them wet before they found themselves?" "I don't think so." At that he lowered his eyes, as if hunting for memory of those boots, and I felt sorry I had mentioned this grave thing.

"Send them back!" he said; "I will look at them." A feeling of compassion for my creaking boots surged up in me, so well could I imagine the sorrowful long curiosity of regard which he would bend on them.

"Some boots," he said slowly, "are bad from birth. If I can do nothing with them, I take off your bill." Once (once only) I went absent-mindedly into his shop in a pair of boots bought in an emergency at some large firm's.

He took my order without showing me any leather, and I could feel his eyes penetrating the inferior integument of my foot.

At last he said: "Those are not my boots." The tone was not one of anger, nor of sorrow, not even of contempt, but there was in it something quiet that froze the blood.

He put his hand down and pressed a finger on the place where the left boot, endeavouring to be fashionable, was not quite comfortable.

"It hurts you there," he said. "Those big firms have no self-respect. Drash!" And then, as if something had given way within him, he spoke long and bitterly.

It was the only time I ever heard him discuss the conditions and hardships of his trade.

"They get it all," he said, "They get it by advertisement, not by work. They take it away from us, who love our boots. It comes to this -- bresently I have no work. Every year it gets less you will see." And looking at his lined face I saw things I had never noticed before, bitter things and bitter struggle -- and what a lot of grey hairs there seemed suddenly in his red beard!

As best I could, I explained the circumstances of the purchase of those ill-omened boots.