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The hobnails of the boys who ran across the brickfields in the Roman town of Silchester, may still be seen, mingled with the impress of the feet of dogs and hoofs of goats, in the tiles discovered there. Such traces might serve as a metaphor for the footfall of artistic genius, when the form-giver has stamped his thought upon the moist clay, and fire has made that imprint permanent.
At the last moment Amy joined them. "I have a day off instead of Sunday," she told them, "and you're the first humans that have discovered what two feet are made for. I never can get anybody to walk two steps with me," she complained. "Never tried before you acquired those beautiful gray elkskin boots with the ravishing hobnails in 'em," chaffed Bob.
His whole strength had gone to his hands, that were pulling at the latch, and into his feet, that were eating into the wood of the door with the hobnails on his boots. And all that was not enough. He would have done anything to fill those guilty rats with terror!
After he had completed the task, he showed me how to adjust it on my person. Pretty soon I stood before him a proper Tommy Atkins in heavy marching order, feeling like an overloaded camel. On my feet were heavy-soled boots, studded with hobnails, the toes and heels of which were reinforced by steel half-moons.
It couldn't be green and pleasant, the way the country was here. Fellows always said it was hell out there. Well, he didn't give a damn. He went to sleep. He woke up gradually, the warm comfort of sleep giving place slowly to the stiffness of his uncomfortable position with the hobnails of a boot from the back of a pack sticking into his shoulder.
"You must change your shoes," he cried eagerly. "Your hobnails spoil all." I put one of his gossip's shoes on the floor beside my foot. "Now, monsieur, I ask you, how am I to get into that?" "Shall I fetch you Vigo's?" he grinned. "No, Constant's," I said instantly, thinking how it would make him writhe to lend them. "Constant's best," he promised, disappearing.
"Well, you can leave the shoes out, and get some hobnails and put them on the soles of any good heavy shoes. Then there's gloves. They cost about a dollar and a half. As for trousers, you can do with ordinary ones, but you've got to have a coat, March. A chap can't swing a club in a tight-fitting jacket like the one you've got on. Now let's reckon up."
Some of them squeaked; and the peregrinations of the orderly thus afflicted were perhaps more vexatious to the ear of a nervous patient at night than even the clatter of honest hobnails. And the soles were thin. A pair of ward-shoes lasted me on the average one month. If only worn within the ward they might have lasted longer though not so very much longer.
In lieu of them, three square-headed hobnails had been driven into the center of the seam holding the patch of leather to the under part of the instep, or palm of the foot. They were off like a pack of bloodhounds, with the old millman in the lead. Dick started to follow, and then paused. He saw that Bill was standing aside, as if hesitating what to do.
Three hundred thousand, four hundred thousand! The huge multitude! Cheated! All my life it may take me! ... Patience! Patience indeed! ... Fool! fool!" There was a noise of hobnails on the bricks in the bar, and Mrs. Hall had very reluctantly to leave the rest of his soliloquy.
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