"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.