s. His arms were not so long, but they
were thicker, and his legs stood under him like posts. But he was slow,
and he had but little light in his head. A tremendous animal was the
club-footed Malan.

Lem Marks stopped at the door, fingered his hat and began to apologise.
He was sorry Peppers was drunk, and we must overlook the vapourings of a
drunkard. He wished us a pleasant journey.

"To the devil," added Ump when the door had closed on him.

CHAPTER IX

CHRISTIAN THE BLACKSMITH

We ate our dinner from the quaint old Dutch blue bowls, and the teacups
with the queer kneeling purple cows on them. Then we went to feed the
horses. Roy brought us a hickory split basket filled with white corn on
the cob, and wiped out a long chestnut trough which lay by the roadside.
We took the bits out of the horses' mouths, leaving the headstalls on
them, and they fell to with the hearty impatience of the very hungry.

I have always liked to see a horse or an ox eat his dinner. Somehow it
makes the bread taste better in one's own mouth. They look so
tremendously content, provokingly so I used to think when I was little,
especially the ox with the yoke banging his horns. I remember how I used
to fill my pockets with "nubbins" and, holding one out to old Berry or
some other patriarch of the work cattle, watch how he reached for it
with his rough tongue, and how surprised he was when I snatched it away
and put it back in my pocket, or gave it to him, and then thrust my
finger against his jaw, pushing in his cheek so that he could not eat
it. He would look so wofully hurt that I laughed with glee until old
Jourdan came along, gathered me up under his arm, and carried me off
kicking to the kingdom of old Liza.

My early experience with the horse was not so entirely satisfactory to
my youthful worship. Somewhere on my shoulder to this day are the faint
marks of teeth, set there long ago on a winter morning when I was taking
liberties with the table etiquette of old Charity.

We lolled in the sunshine while the horses ate, Jud on his back by the
nose of the Cardinal, his fingers linked under his head. I sat on the
poplar horse-block with my hands around my knee, while Ump was in the
road examining El Mahdi's feet. For once he had abandoned the Bay Eagle.

He rubbed the fetlocks, felt around the top of the hoofs with his
finger, scraped away the clinging dirt with the point of a knife blade,
and tried the firmness of each shoe-