The blacksmith sprang out as the horse jumped, seized the hammer and darted at Ump. I saw the hunchback look around for a weapon. There was none, but he never moved. The next moment his head would have burst like a cracked nut, but in that moment a shadow loomed in the shop door. There was a mad rush like the sudden swoop of some tremendous hawk. The blacksmith was swept off his feet, carried across the shop, and flattened against the chimney of his forge. I looked on, half dazed by the swiftness of the thing. I did not see that it was Jud until old Christian was gasping under the falling mortar of his chimney, his feet dangling and his sooty throat caught in the giant's fingers, that looked like squeezing iron bolts. The staring eyes of the old man were glassy, his face was beginning to get black, his mouth opened, and his extended bare arm holding the hammer began to come slowly down. It rested a moment on the giant's shoulder, then it bent at the elbow, the fingers loosed, and the hammer fell. Old Christian will never be nearer to the pit of his imperial master until he stumbles over its rim. The hunchback glided by me and clapped his hand on Jud's shoulder. "Drop him," he cried. The blood of the giant was booming. The desperate savage, passed sleeping from his father and his father's father, had awaked, and awaked to kill. I could read the sinister intent in the crouch of his shoulders. The hunchback shook him. "Jud," he shouted, "Jud, drop him." The giant turned his head, blinked his eyes for a moment like a man coming out of a sleep, and loosed his hand. The blacksmith slipped to the floor, but he could not stand when he reached it. His knees gave way. He caught the side of the leather bellows, and stumbling around it, sat down on the anvil wheezing like a stallion with the heaves. Ump stooped and picked up the hammer. Then he turned to the puffing giant. "Jud," he said, "you ain't got sense enough to pour rain-water out of a boot." "Why?" said Jud. "Why?" echoed the hunchback, "why? Suppose you had wrung the old blatherskite's neck. How do you reckon we'd get a shoe on this horse?" CHAPTER X ON THE CHOOSING OF ENEMIES It has been suggested by the wise that perhaps every passing event leaves its picture on the nearest background, and may hereafter be reproduced by the ingenuity of man. If so, and if genius led us into this mighty gallery of the past, there is no one thing I would rather look at than the face of a youth who stood rubbing his elbows in the shop of old Christian, the blacksmith. The slides of violent emotion, thrust in when unexpected, work such havoc in a child's face,--that window to the world which half our lives are spent in curtaining!