the sameness of No. 4 rather than with his journey,
he sauntered towards the said gate, and, seating himself in a small
arbour within the garden, surrendered himself to reflection.

The result of this self-conference was a determination to leave the
Golden Fleece by the earliest conveyance which went to that great object
and emporium of all his plans and thoughts, London. As, full of
this resolution and buried in the dream which it conjured up, he
was returning with downcast eyes and unheeding steps through the
stable-yard, to the delights of No. 4, he was suddenly accosted by a
loud and alarmed voice,--

"For God's sake, sir, look out, or--"

The sentence was broken off, the intended warning came too late, our
hero staggered back a few steps, and fell, stunned and motionless,
against the stable door. Unconsciously he had passed just behind the
heels of the stranger's horse, which being by no means in good humour
with the clumsy manoeuvres of his shampooer, the hostler, had taken
advantage of the opportunity presented to him of working off his
irritability, and had consequently inflicted a severe kick upon the
right shoulder of Mr. C. L.

The stranger, honoured by the landlady with the name and title of
Squire Mordaunt, was in the yard at the moment. He hastened towards the
sufferer, who as yet was scarcely sensible, and led him into the house.
The surgeon of the village was sent for and appeared. This disciple of
Galen, commonly known by the name of Jeremiah Bossolton, was a gentleman
considerably more inclined to breadth than length. He was exactly five
feet one inch in height, but thick and solid as a milestone; a wig of
modern cut, carefully curled and powdered, gave somewhat of a modish
and therefore unseemly grace to a solemn eye; a mouth drawn down at
the corners; a nose that had something in it exceedingly consequential;
eyebrows sage and shaggy; ears large and fiery; and a chin that would
have done honour to a mandarin. Now Mr. Jeremiah Bossolton had a certain
peculiarity of speech to which I shall find it difficult to do
justice. Nature had impressed upon his mind a prodigious love of the
grandiloquent; Mr. Bossolton, therefore, disdained the exact language of
the vulgar, and built unto himself a lofty fabric of words in which his
sense managed very frequently to lose itself. Moreover, upon beginning
a sentence of peculiar dignity, Mr. Bossolton was, it must be
confessed, sometimes at a loss to conclude it