"Both equally necessary members of the body corporate," said Henry,
whose father had been a cordwainer.

"It may be so, my son," said the glover; "but not both alike
honourable. Bethink you, that we employ the hands as pledges of
friendship and good faith, and the feet have no such privilege.
Brave men fight with their hands; cowards employ their feet in
flight. A glove is borne aloft; a shoe is trampled in the mire.
A man greets a friend with his open hand; he spurns a dog, or one
whom he holds as mean as a dog, with his advanced foot. A glove
on the point of a spear is a sign and pledge of faith all the wide
world over, as a gauntlet flung down is a gage of knightly battle;
while I know no other emblem belonging to an old shoe, except that
some crones will fling them after a man by way of good luck, in
which practice I avow myself to entertain no confidence."

"Nay," said the smith, amused with his friend's eloquent pleading
for the dignity of the art he practised, "I am not the man, I
promise you, to disparage the glover's mystery. Bethink you, I am
myself a maker of gauntlets. But the dignity of your ancient craft
removes not my wonder, that the father of this Conachar suffered his
son to learn a trade of any kind from a Lowland craftsman, holding
us, as they do, altogether beneath their magnificent degree, and
a race of contemptible drudges, unworthy of any other fate than to
be ill used and plundered, as often as these bare breeched dunnie
wassals see safety and convenience for doing so."

"Ay," answered the glover, "but there were powerful reasons for--
for--" he withheld something which seemed upon his lips, and went
on: "for Conachar's father acting as he did. Well, I have played