h his and while all the time the live
end of the cigar continued to rest against Kwaque's finger, "the older I
get the more convinced I am that there are too many ill-advised and hasty
operations."

Still fire and flesh pressed together, and a tiny spiral of smoke began
to arise from Kwaque's finger-end that was different in colour from the
smoke of a cigar-end.

"Now take that patient of Doctor Hadley's. I've saved him, not merely
the risk of an operation for appendicitis, but the cost of it, and the
hospital expenses. I shall charge him nothing for what I did. Hadley's
charge will be merely nominal. Doctor Granville, at the outside, will
cure his pyorrhea with emetine for no more than a paltry fifty dollars.
Yes, by George, besides the risk to his life, and the discomfort, I've
saved that man, all told, a cold thousand dollars to surgeon, hospital,
and nurses."

And while he talked on, holding Daughtry's eyes, a smell of roast meat
began to pervade the air. Doctor Emory smelled it eagerly. So did Miss
Judson smell it, but she had been warned and gave no notice. Nor did she
look at the juxtaposition of cigar and finger, although she knew by the
evidence of her nose that it still obtained.

"What's burning?" Daughtry demanded suddenly, sniffing the air and
glancing around.

"Pretty rotten cigar," Doctor Emory observed, having removed it from
contact with Kwaque's finger and now examining it with critical
disapproval. He held it close to his nose, and his face portrayed
disgust. "I won't say cabbage leaves. I'll merely say it's something I
don't know and don't care to know. That's the trouble. They get out a
good, new brand of cigar, advertise it, put the best of tobacco into it,
and, when it has taken with the public, put in inferior tobacco and ride
the popularity of it. No more in mine, thank you. This day I change my
brand."

So speaking, he tossed the cigar into a cuspidor. And Kwaque, leaning
back in the queerest chair in which he had ever sat, was unaware that the
end of his finger had been burned and roasted half an inch deep, and
merely wondered when the medicine doctor would cease talking and begin
looking at the swelling that hurt his side under his arm.

And for the first time in his life, and for the ultimate time, Dag
Daughtry fell down. It was an irretrievable fall-down. Life, in its
freedom of come and go, by heaving sea and reeling deck, through the home
of the trade-winds, back