y
began to compare their discoveries.

"He was a Hambletonian," began Jud; "don't you see how long the shoe is
from the toe to the cork?" Ump nodded. "An' he was curbed," Jud went on;
"his feet set too close under him fer a straight-legged horse. Still,
that ain't enough."

"Put this to it," said the hunchback, "an' you've got your hand on him.
Them's store nails hammered into a store shoe, an' the corks are beat
squat. That's Stone's shoein'. Now you know him."

Then I knew him too. Lem Marks rode a curbed Hambletonian, and Stone was
Woodford's blacksmith.

Jud got up and waved his great hand towards the south country.

"They're all ridin'," he said, "every mother's son of the gang. An' they
know where we are."

"With rings on their fingers, an' bells on their toes," gabbled Ump;
"an' we know where they are."

Then I heard the voice of the old waggon-maker calling us to breakfast.

CHAPTER VI

THE MAID AND THE INTRUDERS

There are mornings that cling in the memory like a face caught for a
moment in some crowded street and lost; mornings when no cloud curtains
the doorway of the sun; when the snaffle-chains rattle sharp in the
crisp air and the timber cracks in the frost. They are good to remember
when the wrist has lost its power and the bridle-fingers stiffen, and
they are clear with a mystic clearness, the elders say, when one is
passing to the ghosts.

It was such a morning when I stood in the doorway of the old
waggon-maker's house. The light was driving the white fogs into the
north. A cool, sweet air came down from the wooded hill, laden with the
smell of the beech leaves, and the little people of the bushes were
beginning to tumble out of their beds.

We asked old Simon if he had heard a horse in the night, and he replied
that he had heard one stop for a few moments a little before dawn and
presently pass on up the road in a trot. Doubtless, he insisted, the
rider had dismounted for a drink of his celebrated spring water. We kept
our own counsels. If the henchmen of Woodford hunted water in the early
morning, it would be, in the opinion of Ump, "when the cows come home."

We went over every inch of the horses from their hocks to their silk
noses, and every stitch of our riding gear, to be sure that no deviltry
had been done. But we found nothing. Evidently Marks was merely spying
out the land. Then we led the horses out for the journey. El Mahdi had
to duck his head to get under the low