t flashed on him that the
men--well, they certainly hadn't been looking up to him as he had been
fondly imagining. He went at his work resolutely, but blunderingly; he
spoiled a plank and all but clogged the machine. His temper got clean
away from him, and he shook with a rage hard to restrain from venting
itself against the inanimate objects whose possessing devils he could
hear jeering at him through the roar of the machinery.

"Steady! Steady!" warned good-natured Rollins. "You'll drop a hand under
that knife."

The words had just reached Arthur when he gave a sharp cry. With a cut
as clean as the edge that made it, off came the little finger of his
left hand, and he was staring at it as it lay upon the bed of the
planer, twitching, seeming to breathe as its blood pulsed out, while the
blood spurted from his maimed hand. In an instant Lorry Tague had the
machine still.

"A bucket of clean water," he yelled to the man at the next planer.

He grabbed dazed Arthur's hand, and pressed hard with his powerful thumb
and forefinger upon the edges of the wound.

"A doctor!" he shouted at the men crowding round.

Arthur did not realize what had happened until he found himself forced to
his knees, his hand submerged in the ice-cold water, Lorry still holding
shut the severed veins and arteries.

"Another bucket of water, you, Bill," cried Lorry.

When it came he had Bill Johnstone throw the severed finger into it. Bud
Rollins, who had jumped through the window into the street in a dash for
a physician, saw Doctor Schulze's buggy just turning out of High Street.
He gave chase, had Schulze beside Arthur within two minutes. More water,
both hot and cold, was brought, and a cleared work bench; with swift,
sure fingers the doctor cleaned the stump, cleaned the severed finger,
joined and sewed them, bandaged the hand.

"Now, I'll take you home," he said. "I guess you've distinguished
yourself enough for the day."

Arthur followed him, silent and meek as a humbled dog. As they were
driving along Schulze misread a mournful look which Arthur cast at his
bandaged hand. "It's nothing--nothing at all," he said gruffly. "In a
week or less you could be back at work." The accompanying sardonic grin
said plain as print, "But this dainty dandy is done with work."

Weak and done though Arthur was, some blood came into his pale face and
he bit his lip with anger.

Schulze saw these signs.

"Several men are _killed_ every year in t