e livid, the little
nails, lying against the white sheet, were blue. The child's efforts to
breathe were most distressing, and each gasp cut the father like a
knife. Mrs. Carteret was weeping hysterically. "How is he, doctor?"
asked the major.

"He is very low," replied the young man. "Nothing short of
tracheotomy--an operation to open the windpipe--will relieve him.
Without it, in half or three quarters of an hour he will be unable to
breathe. It is a delicate operation, a mistake in which would be as
fatal as the disease. I have neither the knowledge nor the experience to
attempt it, and your child's life is too valuable for a student to
practice upon. Neither have I the instruments here."

"What shall we do?" demanded Carteret. "We have called all the best
doctors, and none are available."

The young doctor's brow was wrinkled with thought. He knew a doctor who
could perform the operation. He had heard, also, of a certain event at
Carteret's house some months before, when an unwelcome physician had
been excluded from a consultation,--but it was the last chance.

"There is but one other doctor in town who has performed the operation,
so far as I know," he declared, "and that is Dr. Miller. If you can get
him, he can save your child's life."

Carteret hesitated involuntarily. All the incidents, all the arguments,
of the occasion when he had refused to admit the colored doctor to his
house, came up vividly before his memory. He had acted in accordance
with his lifelong beliefs, and had carried his point; but the present
situation was different,--this was a case of imperative necessity, and
every other interest or consideration must give way before the imminence
of his child's peril. That the doctor would refuse the call, he did not
imagine: it would be too great an honor for a negro to decline,--unless
some bitterness might have grown out of the proceedings of the
afternoon. That this doctor was a man of some education he knew; and he
had been told that he was a man of fine feeling,--for a negro,--and
might easily have taken to heart the day's events. Nevertheless, he
could hardly refuse a professional call,--professional ethics would
require him to respond. Carteret had no reason to suppose that Miller
had ever learned of what had occurred at the house during Dr. Burns's
visit to Wellington. The major himself had never mentioned the
controversy, and no doubt the other gentlemen had been equally silent.

"I'll go