choppers, with considerable éclat, when an unfortunate jobber suffered
a fracture of his leg by the tree that he had been felling. It was on
this occasion that our hero encountered the greatest trial his nerves
and moral feeling had ever sustained. In the hour of need, however,
he was not found wanting. Most of the amputations in the new
settlements, and they were quite frequent, were per formed by some one
practitioner who, possessing originally a reputation, was enabled by
this circumstance to acquire an experience that rendered him deserving
of it; and Elnathan had been present at one or two of these
operations. But on the present occasion the man of practice was not
to be obtained, and the duty fell, as a matter of course, to the share
of Mr. Todd. He went to work with a kind of blind desperation,
observing, at the same time, all the externals of decent gravity and
great skill, The sufferer’s name was Milligan, and it was to this
event that Richard alluded, when he spoke of assisting the doctor at
an amputation by holding the leg! The limb was certainly cut off, and
the patient survived the operation. It was, however, two years before
poor Milligan ceased to complain that they had buried the leg in so
narrow a box that it was straitened for room; he could feel the pain
shooting up from the inhumed fragment into the living members.
Marmaduke suggested that the fault might lie in the arteries and
nerves; but Richard, considering the amputation as part of his own
handiwork, strongly repelled the insinuation, at the same time
declaring that he had often heard of men who could tell when it was
about to rain, by the toes of amputated limbs, After two or three
years, notwithstanding, Milligan's complaints gradually diminished,
the leg was dug up, and a larger box furnished, and from that hour no
one had heard the sufferer utter another complaint on the subject.
This gave the public great confidence in Dr. Todd, whose reputation
was hourly increasing, and, luckily for his patients, his information