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190 the inhospitable threshold, yet so soon as they had uttered a few expletives, and felt their stare sink beneath the sullen and chilling asperity of the host, they satisfied themselves, that though it was damned unlucky for their friend, yet they could do nothing for him at present; and promising to send to enquire after him the next day, they remounted and rode homeward, with an eye more attentive than usual to the motion of their steeds. They did not however depart till the surgeon of the town had made his appearance, and declared that the patient must not on any account be moved. A lord's leg was a windfall that did not happen every day to the surgeon of. All this while we may imagine the state of anxiety experienced in the town, and the agonized endurance of those rural nerves which are produced in scanty populations, and have so Talicotian a sympathy with the affairs of other people. One day—two days—three days—a week—a fortnight, nay, a month passed, and the lord was still the inmate of Mr. Welford's abode. Leaving the gossips to feed on their curiosity,—"Cannibals of their own