The old man glanced up at him sharply. "No, but they're all alike." He leaned forward suddenly and took Comethup by the shoulder and drew him toward himself, looking straight into his eyes. Comethup's heart beat a little faster than usual, but he did not flinch. "Well," said the captain, after the scrutiny had lasted for some moments, "what do you make of him?" The shoemaker, still keeping a grip of Comethup's shoulder, looked up at the captain and spoke in a low voice. "A good face," he said, "and the eyes of one who will dream dreams, and carry them with him always. I've dreamed my dreams, but"--he passed his hand over his forehead in a lost, dazed fashion--"I've lost them all." He sighed, and took up his hammer and fell to work again, muttering to himself. Presently, coming back to realities with a start, he put down the hammer and asked the captain civilly if he could do anything for him. The captain produced his parcel and began, with great care, to point out exactly what he wanted done and what he desired left undone. The shoemaker obviously saw here a work on which his finest arts could be exercised, and listened with equal care to the minute directions. The business being finished and the price arranged, the captain lingered in the doorway of the little shop and carelessly put a question: "Does she come often to see you?" "When she will," replied the old man, softly hammering. "Sometimes a week goes by and I see nothing of her; and then she'll slip in and sit beside me for an hour, and be gone again--so lightly that I think afterward it's a dream, and that she has not been here at all. It's all dreams; nothing is real." "Oh, I'm afraid some things are very real," said the captain gravely. "No." He brought the hammer down sharply to emphasize the word. "If they were real we could not bear them; we should go mad. It's because they are dreams that we can laugh a little sometimes and say that it doesn't matter, and pray for the hour when we shall wake. Nothing's real, nothing's real; we should be glad of that." He fell to hammering again, in the same hurried fashion as when they had first seen him. Indeed, nothing would rouse him again; even when the captain asked that he might take the girl with him, and she slipped down from the bench and walked with Comethup to the door, the shoemaker merely raised his eyes for a moment to look at her, and went on again with his work. They heard the noise of the hammering long after they had passed through the doorway and through the little street; it only seemed to die away when they came out through the archway into the busier parts of the town.