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“‘Twas me that did it,” he muttered, as I led him toward the door — “me, the shoemaker of Jerusalem.”

I got him to the sidewalk, and in the augmented light I saw that his face was seared and lined and warped by a sadness almost incredibly the product of a single lifetime.

And then high up in the firmamental darkness we heard the clamant cries of some great, passing birds. My Wandering Jew lifted his hand, with side-tilted head.

“The Seven Whistlers!” he said, as one introduces well-known friends.

“Wild geese,” said I; “but I confess that their number is beyond me.”

“They follow me everywhere,” he said. “‘Twas so commanded. What ye hear is the souls of the seven Jews that helped with the Crucifixion. Sometimes they’re plovers and sometimes geese, but ye’ll find them always flyin’ where I go.”

I stood, uncertain how to take my leave. I looked down the street, shuffled my feet, looked back again — and felt my hair rise. The old man had disappeared.

And then my capillaries relaxed, for I dimly saw him footing it away through the darkness. But he walked so swiftly and silently and contrary to the gait promised by his age that my composure was not all restored, though I knew not why.

That night I was foolish enough to take down some dust-covered volumes from my modest shelves. I searched “Hermippus Redivvus” and “Salathiel” and the “Pepys Collection” in vain. And then in a book called “The Citizen of the World,” and in one two centuries old, I came upon what I desired. Michob Ader had indeed come to Paris in the year 1643, and related to the Turkish Spy an extraordinary story. He claimed to be the Wandering Jew, and that —

But here I fell asleep, for my editorial duties had not been light that day.

Judge Hoover was the Bugle’s candidate for congress. Having to confer with him, I sought his home early the next morning; and we walked together down town through a little street with which I was unfamiliar.

“Did you ever hear of Michob Ader?” I asked him, smiling.

“Why, yes,” said the judge. “And that reminds me of my shoes he has for mending. Here is his shop now.”

Judge Hoover stepped into a dingy, small shop. I looked up at the sign, and saw “Mike O’Bader, Boot and Shoe Maker,” on it. Some wild geese passed above, honking clearly. I scratched my ear and frowned, and then trailed into the shop.

There sat my Wandering Jew on his shoemaker’s bench, trimming a half-sole. He was drabbled with dew, grass-stained, unkempt, and miserable; and on his face was still the unexplained wretchedness, the problematic sorrow, the esoteric woe, that had been written there by nothing less, it seemed, than the stylus of the centuries.

Judge Hoover inquired kindly concerning his shoes. The old shoemaker looked up, and spoke sanely enough. He had been ill, he said, for a few days. The next day the shoes would be ready. He looked at me, and I could see that I had no place in his memory. So out we went, and on our way.

“Old Mike,” remarked the candidate, “has been on one of his sprees. He gets crazy drunk regularly once a month. But he’s a good shoemaker.”

“What is his history?” I inquired.

“Whiskey,” epitomized Judge Hoover. “That explains him.”

I was silent, but I did not accept the explanation. And so, when I had the chance, I asked old man Sellers, who browsed daily on my exchanges.

“Mike O’Bader,” said he, “was makin’ shoes in Montopolis when I come here goin’ on fifteen year ago. I guess whiskey’s his trouble. Once a month he gets off the track, and stays so a week. He’s got a rigmarole somethin’ about his bein’ a Jew pedler that he tells ev’rybody. Nobody won’t listen to him any more. When he’s sober he ain’t sich a fool — he’s got a sight of books in the back room of his shop that he reads. I guess you can lay all his trouble to whiskey.”