visit, young man, nor the nature of my debt.

“Oh!” exclaimed Richard, with something of a waggish leer, “thou owest
the lad for the venison, I suppose that thou killed, Cousin ‘Duke!
Marmaduke! Marmaduke! That was a marvellous tale of thine about the
buck! Here, young man, are two dollars for the deer, and Judge Temple
can do no less than pay the doctor. I shall charge you nothing for my
services, but you shall not fare the worst for that. Come, come,
‘Duke, don’t he down hearted about it; if you missed the buck, you
contrived to shoot this poor fellow through a pine-tree. Now I own
that you have beat me; I never did such a thing in all my life.”

“And I hope never will,” returned the Judge, “if you are to experience
the uneasiness that I have suffered; but be of good cheer, my young
friend, the injury must be small, as thou movest thy arm with apparent
freedom.

“Don’t make the matter worse, ‘Duke, by pretending to talk about
surgery,” interrupted Mr. Jones, with a contemptuous wave of the hand:
“it is a science that can only be learned by practice. You know that
my grandfather was a doctor, but you haven’t got a drop of medical
blood in your veins. These kind of things run in families. All my
family by my father’s side had a knack at physic. ‘There was my uncle
that was killed at Brandywine—he died as easy again as any other man
the regiment, just from knowing how to hold his breath naturally. Few
men know how to breathe naturally.”

“I doubt not, Dickon,” returned the Judge, meeting the bright smile
which, in spite of himself, stole over the stranger’s features, “that
thy family thoroughly under stand the art of letting life slip through