of these candles is favourable to the operation, and it is seldom that we hard students enjoy good eyesight."
While speaking, Elnathan placed a pair of large iron-rimmed spectacles on his face, where they dropped, as it were by long practice, to the extremity of his slim, pug nose; and if they were of no service as assistants to his eyes, neither were they any impediment to his vision; for his little, gray organs were twinkling above them, like two stars emerging from the cover of an envious cloud. The action was unheeded by all but Remarkable, who observed to Benjamin—
"Doctor Todd is a comely man to look on, and a disp'ut pretty spoken one too. How well he seems in spectacles. I declare, they give a grand look to a body's face. I have quite a great mind to try them myself."
The speech of the stranger recalled the recollection of Miss Temple, who started, as if from deep abstraction, and, colouring excessively, she motioned to a young woman, who served in the capacity of a maid, and retired, with an air of womanly reserve.
The field was now left to the physician and his patient, while the different personages who remained, gathered around the latter, with faces expressing the various degrees of interest, that each one felt in his condition. Major Hartmann alone retained his seat, where he continued to throw out vast quantities of smoke, now rolling his eyes up to the ceiling, as if musing on the uncertainty of life, and now bending them on the wounded man, with an expression, that bespoke some consciousness of his situation.
In the mean time, Elnathan, to whom the sight of a gun-shot wound was a perfect novelty, commenced his preparations, with a solemnity and
