would not turn instantly and ride back to a smith-shop. And I have seen him sit over a blacksmith with his narrow face thrust up under the horse's belly, and put his finger on the place where every nail was to go in and the place where it was to come out, and growl and curse and wrangle, until, if I had been that smith, I should have killed him with a hammer.
But the hunchback knew what he was about. Ward said of Ump that, in his field, the land of the horse's foot, he was as much an expert as any professor behind his spectacles. His knowledge came from the observation of a lifetime, gathered by tireless study of every detail. Even now, when I see a great chemist who knows all about some drug; a great surgeon who knows all about the body of a man; or a great oculist who knows all about the human eye, I must class the hunchback with them.
Ump explored El Mahdi's shoes, pulled at the calks, picked at the nails, and prodded into the frog of the foot to see if there was any tendency to gravel. He found a left hind
