ll there is to it."

"But why not? Can't you turn the case over? I'll bet my hat it's a
dead-beat case at that!"

Burns nodded again. "It is."

"You're an ass, then."

"Perhaps."

"You don't expect--her--to stay in Washington waiting for you, do you,
when she only came up for that wedding and is going straight back to
keep some other engagements? That's what Win says she's to do."

"No, I don't expect her to wait." Burns pulled the slouch hat lower yet.
Chester could barely see his eyes. He could only hear the tone of his
denial of any such absurd expectation.

Chester rose and stood looking down at his friend, who had folded his
left arm over his right in its sling, as he sat on the chair arm, and
looked the picture of dogged resignation.

"I suppose there's some reason at the bottom of what strikes me as pure
foolishness," he admitted. "You won't do me the honour of mentioning
it?"

"Case of infected wound in the foot. Threatened tetanus. Five-year-old
child."

"Nobody competent to treat the case but you?"

Burns looked up. Chester saw his eyes now, gloomy but resolute. "No.
It's up to me alone. I owe it to the woman. It's the only child she has
left: a girl. It was her boy I sent to a better world with maledictions
on his mother's head."

Comprehension dawned at last on Chester's face. He saw that, taking into
consideration Burns's feeling in that matter, there was really nothing
to be said. "I hope you win out," he evolved at length from the
confusion of ideas in his mind.

"I hope I do." Burns rose. "I must send a telegram," he said, and went
to the telephone in the inner office.

While he was there Chester heard the honk of the Imp's horn outside.
When Burns came back he opened the outer door and called to Johnny
Caruthers, to know if he had obtained the serum for which he had been
sent to the druggist. Johnny shouted back that he had. Burns turned to
Chester.

"Good night," he said. "Much obliged for waiting up for me."

Then, with a certain fighting expression on his lips which Chester had
learned to know meant that his whole purpose was set on the attainment
of an end for which no price could be too great to pay, Burns went out
to Johnny Caruthers and the Green Imp.

CHAPTER XII. IN WHICH HE HAS HIS OWN WAY

"Doc"--Joe Tressler followed Burns down the path, leaving his wife
standing in the doorway, her eyes fixed, on the retreating figure of the
man who had saved to her her one