in going was to be the means of bringing back the earliest intelligence to Mr. and Mrs. Harwood, whose anxious sufferings, particularly those of the latter, have of course been dreadful.  They went down on Tuesday, and James came back the next day, bringing such favourable accounts as greatly to lessen the distress of the family at Deane, though it will probably be a long while before Mrs. Harwood can be quite at ease. One most material comfort, however, they have; the assurance of its being really an accidental wound, which is not only positively declared by Earle himself, but is 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. {63} 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 trees.  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 enter what I call the elm walk, was likewise blown down; the maple bearing the weathercock was broke in two, and what I regret more than all the rest is, that all the three elms which grew in Hall’s meadow, and gave such ornament to it, are gone; two were blown down, and the other so much injured that it cannot stand.  I am happy to add, however, that no greater evil than the loss of trees has been the consequence of the storm in this place, or in our immediate neighbourhood.  We grieve, therefore, in some comfort.

   ’I am yours ever,
   ‘J.  A.’

The next letter, written four days later than the former, was addressed to Miss Lloyd, an intimate friend, whose sister (my mother) was married to Jane’s eldest brother:—­

   ’Steventon, Wednesday evening, Nov. 12th.