atient's
arm.

"We must put an end to such alarms as this, Master Rayburn," said Sir
Morton angrily.

"Ay; and the sooner the better," cried that gentleman, as he carefully
re-bandaged the lad's hurt.--"I wonder," he said to himself, "whether
Ralph has told him how he obtained his wound? Is this the beginning of
the end?"

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

WHAT SIR MORTON SAID.

Master Rayburn, the old scholar, angler, and, in a small way,
naturalist, had no pretensions to being either physician or surgeon; but
there was neither within a day's journey, and in the course of a long
career, he had found out that in ordinary cases nature herself is the
great curer of ills. He had noticed how animals, if suffering from
injuries, would keep the place clean with their tongues, and curl up and
rest till the wounds healed; that if they suffered from over-eating they
would starve themselves till they grew better; that at certain times of
the year they would, if carnivorous creatures, eat grass, or, if
herbivorous, find a place where the rock-salt which lay amongst the
gypsum was laid bare, and lick it; and that even the birds looked out
for lime at egg-laying time to form shell, and swallowed plenty of tiny
stones to help their digestion.

He was his own doctor when he was unwell, which, with his healthy,
abstemious, open-air life, was not often; and by degrees the people for
miles round found out that he made decoctions of herbs--camomile and
dandelion, foxglove, rue, and agrimony, which had virtues of their own.
He it was who cured Dan Rugg of that affection which made the joints of
his toes and fingers grow stiff, by making him sit for an hour a day,
holding hands and feet in the warm water which gushed out of one part of
the cliff to run into the river, and coated sticks and stones with a
hard stony shell, not unlike the fur found in an old tin kettle.

He knew that if a man broke a leg, arm, or rib, and the bones were laid
carefully in their places, and bandaged so that they could not move,
nature would make bony matter ooze from the broken ends and gradually
harden, forming a knob, perhaps, at the joining, but making the place
grow up stronger than ever; and it took no great amount of gumption to
grasp the fact that what was good for a cut finger was equally good for
arm, head, leg, or thigh; that is to say, to wash the bleeding wound
clean, lay the cut edges together, and sew and bandage them so that they
kept in place. W