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 occasion, but he would take him by the hand, and lead him up stairs to see his brother Toby, and chat an hour by his bed side.

The history of a soldier's wound beguiles the pain of it;—my uncle's visiters at least thought so, and in their daily calls upon him, from the courtesy arising out of that belief, they would frequently turn the discourse to that subject,—and from that subject the discourse would generally roll on to the siege itself.

These conversations were infinitely kind; and my uncle Toby received great relief from them, and would have received much more, but that they brought him into some unforeseen perplexities, which, for three months together, retarded his cure greatly; and if he had