After vainly attempting to get eightee–pence, Jem was fain to accept the shilling; and this piece of beautiful workmanship, and admirable “Damascus twist,” was set in the corner behind the door, to be forged into shoes for a cart–horse. So, as Sophocles well observes, all things come round with the rolling years: the best gun–barrels used to be made of the stub–nails and the horse–shoes (though the thing was a superstition); now good horse–shoes shall be made out of the best gun–barrels. But, in despite of this law of nature, those gun–barrels never were made into horse–shoes at all, and for this simple reason:—Rufus Hutton came over from Nowelhurst to have his Polly shodden; meanwhile he would walk up to the Hall, and see how his child Eoa was. It is a most worshipful providence, and as clever as the works of a watch, that all the people who have been far abroad, whether in hot or cold climates (I mean, of course, respectively, and not that a Melville Bay harpooner would fluke in with a Ceylon rifleman), somehow or other, when they come home, groove into, and dovetail with, one another; and not only feel a _pudor_ not to contradict a brother alien, but feel bound by a _sacramentum_ to back up the lies of each other. To this rule of course there are some exceptions (explosive accidents in the _Times_, for instance), but almost every one will admit that it is a rule; just as it is not to tell out of school. As regards Rufus and Eoa, this association was limited (as all of them are now–a–days, except in their powers of swindling), strictly limited to a keen and spicily patriarchal turn. Eoa, somehow or other, with that wonderful feminine instinct (which is far in advance of the canine, but not a whit less jealous) felt that Rue Hutton had admired her, though he was old enough to be her grandfather in those precocious climates. And though she would not have had him, if he had come out of Golconda mine, one stalactite of diamonds, she really never could see that Rosa had any business with him. Therefore, on no account would she go to Geopharmacy Lodge, and she regarded the baby, impending there, as an outrage and an upstart. Dr. Hutton knew more about shoeing a horse than any of the country blacksmiths; and as Polly, in common with many fast trotters, had a trick of throwing her hind–feet inwards, and “cutting” (as it is termed in the art), she liked to have her hind–shoes turned up, and her hoofs rasped in a peculiar manner, which Sweetland alone could execute to her perfect satisfaction. “Ha, Roger, what have you got here?” said Rufus, having returned from the Hall, and inspected Pollyʼs new shoes, which she was very proud to show him. “Naethin’ at all, yer honour, but a bit o’ a old anshent goon, as happed to coom in last avening.”