ve beaten him
with knotted towels dipped in ice-water. But the wrecked body on the bed
could stand no such heroic treatment.

It was Le Moyne, after all, who saved Johnny Rosenfeld's life. For, when
staff and nurses had exhausted all their resources, he stepped forward
with a quiet word that brought the internes to their feet astonished.

There was a new treatment for such cases--it had been tried abroad. He
looked at Max.

Max had never heard of it. He threw out his hands.

"Try it, for Heaven's sake," he said. "I'm all in."

The apparatus was not in the house--must be extemporized, indeed, at
last, of odds and ends from the operating-room. K. did the work, his
long fingers deft and skillful--while Mrs. Rosenfeld knelt by the bed
with her face buried; while Sidney sat, dazed and bewildered, on her
little chair inside the door; while night nurses tiptoed along the
corridor, and the night watchman stared incredulous from outside the
door.

When the two great rectangles that were the emergency ward windows
had turned from mirrors reflecting the room to gray rectangles in the
morning light; Johnny Rosenfeld opened his eyes and spoke the first
words that marked his return from the dark valley.

"Gee, this is the life!" he said, and smiled into K.'s watchful face.

When it was clear that the boy would live, K. rose stiffly from the
bedside and went over to Sidney's chair.

"He's all right now," he said--"as all right as he can be, poor lad!"

"You did it--you! How strange that you should know such a thing. How am
I to thank you?"

The internes, talking among themselves, had wandered down to their
dining-room for early coffee. Wilson was giving a few last instructions
as to the boy's care. Quite unexpectedly, Sidney caught K.'s hand and
held it to her lips. The iron repression of the night, of months indeed,
fell away before her simple caress.

"My dear, my dear," he said huskily. "Anything that I can do--for
you--at any time--"

It was after Sidney had crept like a broken thing to her room that
Carlotta Harrison and K. came face to face. Johnny was quite conscious
by that time, a little blue around the lips, but valiantly cheerful.

"More things can happen to a fellow than I ever knew there was!" he
said to his mother, and submitted rather sheepishly to her tears and
caresses.

"You were always a good boy, Johnny," she said. "Just you get well
enough to come home. I'll take care of you the rest of my life.