Page:A memoir of Jane Austen (Fourth Edition).pdf/80

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likewise testified by the particular direction of the bullet. Such a wound could not have been received in a duel. At present he is going on very well, but the surgeon will not declare him to be in no danger.[1] Mr. Heathcote met with a genteel little accident the other day in hunting. He got off to lead his horse over a hedge, or a house, or something, and his horse in his haste trod upon his leg, or rather ancle, I believe, and it is not certain whether the small bone is not broke. Martha has accepted Mary's invitation for Lord Portsmouth's ball. He has not yet sent out his own invitations, but that does not signify; Martha comes, and a ball there is to be. I think it will be too early in her mother's absence for me to return with her.

'Sunday Evening.- We have had a dreadful storm of wind in the fore part of this day, which has done a great deal of mischief among our trces. I was sitting alone in the dining-room when an odd kind of crash startled me in a moment afterwards it was repeated. I then went to the window, which I reached just in time to see the last of our two highly valued elms. descend into the Sweep!!!!! The other, which had fallen, I suppose, in the first crash, and which was the nearest to the pond, taking a more easterly direction, sunk among our screen of chestnuts and firs, knocking down one spruce-fir, beating off the head of another, and stripping the two corner chestnuts of several branches in its fall. This is not all. One large elm out of the two on the left-hand side as you

  1. The limb was saved.