droll, unconscious, warm-hearted way. Still Joe liked Billy. In fact,
everybody liked Billy. And he was welcomed everywhere and nowhere more
than in George Hoskins' blacksmith shop.

Next to the bank building George Hoskins was considered the most solid
thing in town. He was the brawny blacksmith and people said a very
rich man. He was big in every way. Big in body, big in temper, big in
his friendships, big in his drinks. He was indeed so big a man that he
did not know how to be mean or little in any way. He did not know his
own great strength nor think much of the weakness of his fellows. His
grand proportions and great simplicity were what attracted men to him.
Women did not know and so could not like him.

To them George Hoskins was a great, grimy ogre. George, big in all
things, was big in his love for the tiny woman who was his wife. Other
women George did not see though he spoke to them on the street. He had
pleaded on bended knees for the love of his tiny woman and when he got
her all other women became just strange shadows. So only his wife and
Doc Philipps knew how tender a heart was his.

Green Valley housewives caught glimpses of this man's great figure
towering above the roaring forge and saw the crowd of lesser men, their
husbands, gathered about him. They went home and told each other that
George Hoskins was a big, rude brute, that he drank like a fish and
would bring the town to ruin, for he was the village president.

And while they were saying these things about George Hoskins he was
perhaps throwing out of his shop some smug traveling man who had
stepped into it to get in out of the rain and had mistakenly tried to
make himself at home there by telling a filthy yarn that sullied all