thing and they understood. He did not seek to conceal
the truth from himself. He had heard the sharply drawn breath that was
taken through the parted lips of his tense observers as that admirably
handled blade slid from its true course and spoiled what might have been
heralded as a marvellous feat in surgery. It was as if something had
snapped in the minds of these three men who watched. They had looked,
however, upon all that was before him as he worked. They had seen, as he
saw, the thing that no human skill could conquer. He felt their eyes upon
him as he turned the knife quickly, suddenly, surely, and then they had
looked into his eyes as he raised them for a second. He had spared his
grandfather another month of agony, and they had seen everything. It was
not unlikely that the patient might have survived the anaesthetic, and it
was equally probable that subsequent care on the part of the doctor and
the nurse might have kept him alive long enough to permit his case to be
recorded by virtue of his having escaped alive from the operating table,
as one of those exasperatingly smug things known to the profession as a
"successful operation,"--sardonic prelude to an act of God!
There seems to be no such thing as an unsuccessful operation. If God would
only keep his finger out of the business, nothing could go wrong. It is
always the act of God that keeps a man from enjoying the fruits of an
absolutely successful operation. Up to the instant that Braden's knife
took its sanguinary course, there was every indication that the operation
would be successful, even though Mr. Thorpe were to breathe his last while
the necessary stitches were being taken.
He had slept soundly throughout the night just past. For the first night
in a week his mind and body took the rest that had been denied them for so
long. The thing was behind him. It was over. He had earned his right to
sleep. When he laid his head upon the pillow there was no fear of evil
dreams, no qualms, no troubled conscience to baffle the demands of
exhaustion. He had done no wrong. His sleep was long, sweet, refreshing.
He had no fear of God in his soul that night, for he had spoken with God
in the silence of the long night before and he was at peace with Him. No
man could say that he had not tried to save the life of Templeton Thorpe.
He had worked with all the knowledge at his command; he himself felt that
he had worked as one inspired,--so much so, in fact, that he now
|