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Ah, that summons! at which majesty welks and shrivels, the king and soldier starts and cowers, and, armour and all, withers from the air! But why has he not spoken before? why not now ere the cock could claim him? He cannot trust the men.
He slept upon his wrath, and in the morning early, at an hour when he knew there would be no loafers in the place, he went to an out-dated saddler's shop, and asked the owner, a veteran of his father's regiment, "Welks, do you happen to have a cowhide among your antiquities?" "Regular old style?" Welks returned. "Kind they make out of a cow's hide and use on a man's?"
"Something of that sort," said Richard, with a slight smile. The saddler said nothing more, but rummaged among the riff-raff on an upper shelf. He got down with the tapering, translucent, wicked-looking thing in his hand. "I reckon that's what you're after, squire." "Reckon it is, Welks," said Richard, drawing it through his tubed left hand.
Then he buttoned it under his coat, and paid the quarter which Welks said had always been the price of a cowhide even since he could remember, and walked away towards the station. "How's the old colonel" Welks called after him, having forgotten to ask before. "The colonel's all right," Richard called back, without looking round. He walked up and down in front of the station.
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