It was then we heard Doan Marshey coming up the stairs. We heard his stumbling steps as he began the last flight and Hazen seemed to cock his ears as he listened. Then he sat still and watched the door. The steps climbed nearer; they stopped in the dim little hall outside the door and someone fumbled with the knob. When the door opened we saw who it was. I knew Marshey. He lived a little beyond Hazen on the same road. Lived in a two-room cabin--it was little more--with his wife and his five children; lived meanly and pitiably, groveling in the soil for daily bread, sweating life out of the earth--life and no more. A thin man, racking thin; a forward-thrusting neck and a bony face and a sad and drooping mustache about his mouth. His eyes were meek and weary. He stood in the doorway blinking at us; and with his gloved hands--they were stiff and awkward with the cold--he unwound the ragged muffler that was about his neck and brushed weakly at the snow upon his head and his shoulders. Hazen said angrily: “Come in! Do you want my stove to heat the town?” Doan shuffled in and he shut the door behind him. He said: “Howdy, Mr. Kinch.” And he smiled in a humble and placating way. Hazen said: “What’s your business? Your interest is due.” Doan nodded. “Yeah. I know, Mr. Kinch. I cain’t pay it all.” Kinch exclaimed impatiently: “An old story! How much can you pay?” “Eleven dollars and fifty cents,” said Doan. “You owe twenty.” “I aim to pay it when the hens begin to lay.” Hazen laughed scornfully. “You aim to pay! Damn you, Marshey, if your old farm was worth taking I’d have you out in this snow, you old scamp!” Doan pleaded dully: “Don’t you do that, Mr. Kinch! I aim to pay.” Hazen clapped his hand on the table. “Rats! Come! Give me what you’ve got! And Marshey, you’ll have to get the rest. I’m sick of waiting on you.” Marshey came shuffling toward the table. Hazen was sitting with the table between him and the man, and I was a little behind Hazen at one side. Marshey blinked as he came nearer, and his weak nearsighted eyes turned from Hazen to me. I could see that the man was stiff with the cold. When he came to the table in front of Hazen he took off his thick gloves. His hands were blue. He laid the gloves on the table and reached into an inner pocket of his torn coat and drew out a little cloth pouch and he fumbled into this and I heard the clink of coins. He drew out two quarters and laid them on the table before Hazen, and Hazen picked them up. I saw that Marshey’s fingers moved stiffly; I could almost hear them creak with the cold. Then he reached into the pouch again. Something dropped out of the mouth of the little cloth bag and fell soundlessly on the table. It looked to me like a bill, a piece of paper currency. I was about to speak, but Hazen without an instant’s hesitation had dropped his hand on the thing and drawn it unostentatiously toward him. When he lifted his hand the money--if it was money--was gone.