im to his own business. But it
was not our intention to depart with a barefooted horse, even if the
devil were the blacksmith.

"Christian," said Ump, "you're not through with this horse."

The blacksmith paid no attention. He pumped his bellows with his back
toward us.

"Christian!" repeated the hunchback, and his voice was the ugliest thing
I have ever heard. It was low and soft and went whistling through the
shop. "Do you hear me, Christian?"

The smith turned like an animal that hears a hissing by his heels, threw
the tongs on the floor, and glared at Ump. "I won't do it," he snarled.

"Easy, Christian," said the hunchback, with the same wheedling voice
that came so strangely through his crooked mouth. "Think about it, man.
The horse is barefoot. We should be much obliged to you."

I do not believe that this man was a coward. It was his boast that he
could shoe anything that could walk into his shop, and he lived up to
the boast. I give him that due, on my honour. Many a devil walked into
that shop wearing the hoof and hide of a horse and came out with iron
nailed on his feet; for example, horses like the Black Abbot that fought
and screamed when we put a saddle on him first and rolled on the earth
until he crushed the saddle-tree and the stirrups into splinters; and
horses like El Mahdi that tried to kill the blacksmith as though he were
an annoying fly. It was dangerous business, and I do not believe that
old Christian was a coward.

But what show had he? An arm's length away was the powerful Jud whose
hand had just now held the smith out over the corner of the world; and
the hunchback squatted on the floor with the striking hammer in his long
fingers, the red glint under his half-closed eyelids, and that dangerous
purring speech in his mouth. What show had he?

The man looked up at the roof, blackened with the smoke of half a
century, and then down at the floor, and the resolution died in his
face. He gathered up his scattered tools and went over to the horse,
lifted his foot, cut the nails, and removed the pieces of broken shoe.

Then he climbed on the anvil, and began to move the manufactured shoes
that were set in rows along the rafters, looking for a size that would
fit.

"Them won't do," said Ump. "You'll have to make a shoe, Christian."

The man got down without a word, seized a bar of iron and thrust it into
the coals. Jud caught the pole of his bellows, and pumped it for him.
The smith turned