of his active life
to the alleviation of sorrow and suffering; a man who had lived up to
the noble vows of a noble profession; a man who locked in his honorable
breast the secrets of a hundred families, whose face was as kindly,
whose touch was as gentle, in the wards of the great public hospitals
as it was beside the laced curtains of the dying Narcissa; a man who,
through long contact with suffering, had acquired a universal
tenderness and breadth of kindly philosophy; a man who, day and night,
was at the beck and call of anguish; a man who never asked the creed,
belief, moral or worldly standing of the sufferer, or even his ability
to pay the few coins that enabled him (the physician) to exist and
practice his calling; in brief, a man who so nearly lived up to the
example of the Great Master that it seems strange I am writing of him
as a doctor of medicine and not of divinity.

The note was in pencil, characteristically brief, and ran thus:--

"Here is the man I spoke of. He ought to be good material for you."

For a moment I sat looking from the note to the man, and sounding the
"dim perilous depths" of my memory for the meaning of this mysterious
communication. The good "material," however, soon relieved my
embarrassment by putting his hand on his waistcoat, coming toward me,
and saying, "It is just here, you can feel it."

It was not necessary for me to do so. In a flash I remembered that my
medical friend had told me of a certain poor patient, once a soldier,
who, among his other trials and uncertainties, was afflicted with an
aneurism caused by the buckle of his knapsack pressing upon the arch of
the aorta. It was liable to burst at any shock or any moment. The
poor fellow's yoke had indeed been too heavy.

In the presence of such a tremendous possibility I think for an instant
I felt anxious only about myself. What I should do; how dispose of the
body; how explain the circumstance of his taking off; how evade the
ubiquitous reporter and the coroner's inquest; how a suspicion might
arise that I had in some way, through negligence or for some dark
purpose, unknown to the jury, precipitated the catastrophe, all flashed
before me. Even the note, with its darkly suggestive offer of "good
material" for me, looked diabolically significant. What might not an
intelligent lawyer make of it?

I tore it up instantly, and with feverish courtesy begged him to be
seated.

"You don't care to feel it?" he asked