This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
THE PIONEERS.
89

impatiently; "but here is a youth who needs no deception to lure him to his own benefit. I see, by his eye, that he fears nothing more than delay."

The stranger had, without assistance, bared his own shoulder, when the slight perforation, produced by the passage of the buck-shot, was plainly visible. The intense cold of the evening had stopped the bleeding, and Dr. Todd, casting a furtive glance at the wound, thought it by no means so formidable an affair as he had anticipated. Thus encouraged, he approached his patient, and made some indication of an intention to trace the route that had been taken by the lead.

Remarkable often found occasions, in after days, to recount the minutiæ of that celebrated operation; and when she arrived at this point, she commonly proceeded as follows:—"And then the Doctor tuck out of the pocket-book a long thing, like a knitting-needle, with a button fastened to the end on't; and then he pushed it into the wownd; and then the young man looked awful; and then I thought I should have swaned away—I felt in sitch a disp'ut taking; and then the Doctor had run it right through his shoulder, and shoved the bullet out on t'other side; and so Doctor Todd cured the young man—of a ball that the Judge had shot into him, for all the world, as easy as I could pick out a splinter, with my darning-needle."

Such were the impressions of Remarkable on the subject; and such, doubtless, were the opinions of most of those, who felt it necessary to entertain a species of religious veneration for the abilities and skill of Elnathan; but such was far from the truth.

When the physician attempted to introduce the