ng all the water you can.--Here you," to the other man,
"get that table out and under the window there. Clean it; scrub it;
scald it. Clean, man, clean, as you never cleaned a thing before. You,
Mrs. Strang, will be my helper. No sheets, I suppose. Well, we'll manage
somehow.--You're his brother, sir. I'll give the anaesthetic, but you
must keep it going afterward. Now listen, while I instruct you. In the
first place--but before that, can you take a pulse?..."

IV

Noted for his daring and success as a surgeon, through the days and
weeks that followed Linday exceeded himself in daring and success.
Never, because of the frightful mangling and breakage, and because of
the long delay, had he encountered so terrible a case. But he had never
had a healthier specimen of human wreck to work upon. Even then he would
have failed, had it not been for the patient's catlike vitality and
almost uncanny physical and mental grip on life.

There were days of high temperature and delirium; days of heart-sinking
when Strang's pulse was barely perceptible; days when he lay conscious,
eyes weary and drawn, the sweat of pain on his face. Linday was
indefatigable, cruelly efficient, audacious and fortunate, daring hazard
after hazard and winning. He was not content to make the man live. He
devoted himself to the intricate and perilous problem of making him
whole and strong again.

"He will be a cripple?" Madge queried.

"He will not merely walk and talk and be a limping caricature of his
former self," Linday told her. "He shall run and leap, swim riffles,
ride bears, fight panthers, and do all things to the top of his fool
desire. And, I warn you, he will fascinate women just as of old. Will
you like that? Are you content? Remember, you will not be with him."

"Go on, go on," she breathed. "Make him whole. Make him what he was."

More than once, whenever Strang's recuperation permitted, Linday put him
under the anaesthetic and did terrible things, cutting and sewing,
rewiring and connecting up the disrupted organism. Later, developed a
hitch in the left arm. Strang could lift it so far, and no farther.
Linday applied himself to the problem. It was a case of more wires,
shrunken, twisted, disconnected. Again it was cut and switch and ease
and disentangle. And all that saved Strang was his tremendous vitality
and the health of his flesh.

"You will kill him," his brother complained. "Let him be. For God's sake
let him be. A live and