He returned to the innkeeper with whom he was lodging. Tired and spent he threw himself on the bench. "What is it?" asked the innkeeper. Sandu looked vaguely at him, then, as if afraid to hear the sound of his own voice, he said: "Nothing." The innkeeper felt sorry for him. "Have you found a situation?" "I did not ask for one." "Then how can you hope to get one?" Sandu remained silent. The innkeeper looked strangely at him, shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, and went to attend to his duties. With his elbows on the table, and his head resting in his hands, Sandu gazed in front of him, and who knows where his thoughts would have led him if the innkeeper had not said to him: "Listen, Dinu Talpoane sent to ask whether there was any workman in need of work. Go with the apprentice and he may perhaps engage you. He is a respectable man and does a big trade." Without a word Sandu got up. It seemed to him he must be dreaming. But when he saw the apprentice with an apron stained yellow and with big boots covered with stale sap, his eyes shone, and he could have kissed the innkeeper's hands for very joy. Outside he began to talk to the apprentice, who told him that the master was a splendid man, but his wife was harsh and heaven defend you from her tongue; that the workshop was large and the work considerable, especially in the autumn; and that the master sometimes engaged workmen by the day in order to get a set of hides ready more quickly; and many other things he told him. But Sandu was no longer listening. When the apprentice saw that he asked no further questions, he hesitated to say more, and they walked along together in silence. Sandu knew where he had to go, but he did not know what to say, or what terms to make--by the year, the month, the week; he could not think what would be best to do. What he knew of the workshop of the master-tanner with whom he had learnt his trade, and all he had heard from the hands working there with him, seemed to be buzzing in his brain until he grew so bewildered that he could not have told how many days there are in a week, or how much money he would earn if he worked for a whole month. "Here we are," said the apprentice, stopping in front of a doorway with gates. Sandu felt a cold shiver go through him. For a second he stood still. Three years as apprentice and four years as workman he had worked for one master only, and he would have remained there all his life if he had not been taken to be a soldier, and if the master had not died he would have gone back to him the day he left the army. He felt quite nervous, and if the apprentice had not opened the gate he would not have gone in. "They are eating," said the apprentice, seeing the big yard was empty, and he crossed to the bottom of it where a small house stood built against the old workshop. They were close to the window when they heard people talking in the house, and the clatter of knives.