well riding south in
the wake of the cavaliers of Charles.

For romance, my masters, is no blear-eyed spinster mooning over the
trumpery of a heyday that is gone, but a Miss Mischief offering her
dainty fingers to you before the kiss of your grandfather's lips is yet
dry on them. The damask petticoat, the powdered wig, and the coquettish
little patch by her dimpled little mouth are off and into the garret,
and she sweeps by in a Worth gown, or takes a fence on a thoroughbred,
or waits ankle deep in the clover blossoms for some whistling lover,
while your eyes are yet a-blinking.

The blacksmith-shop sat at a crossroads under a fringe of hickory trees
that skirted a little hill-top. It was scarcely more than a shed, with a
chimney, stone to the roof, and then built of sticks and clay. Out of
this chimney the sparks flew when the smith was working, pitting the
black shingle roof and searing the drooping leaves of the hickories.
Around the shop was the characteristic flotsam, a cart with a mashed
wheel, a plough with a broken mould-board, innumerable rusted tires,
worn wagon-irons, and the other wreckage of this pioneer outpost of the
mechanic.

At the foot of the hill as we came up, the Cardinal caught a stone
between the calks of one of his hind shoes, and Jud got off to pry it
out. Ump and I rode on to the shop and dismounted at the door. Old
Christian was working at the forge welding a cart-iron, pulling the pole
of his bellows, and pausing now and then to turn the iron in the glowing
coals.

He was a man of middle size, perhaps fifty, bald, and wearing an old
leather skull-cap pitted with spark holes. His nose was crooked and his
eyes were set in toward it, narrow and close together. He wore an
ancient leather apron, burned here and there and dirty, and his arms
were bare to the elbows.

I led El Mahdi into the shop, and Christian turned when he heard us
enter. "Can you tack on a shoe?" said I.

The smith looked us over, took his glowing iron from the forge, struck
it a blow or two on the anvil, and plunged it sizzling into the tub of
water that stood beside him. Then he came over to the horse. "Fore or
hind?" he asked.

"Left hind," I answered; "it's broken."

He went to the corner of the shop and came back with his kit,--a little
narrow wooden box on legs, with two places, one for nails and one for
the shoeing tools, and a wooden rod above for handle and shoe-rack. He
set the box beside him, took up the h