e attended to at once. I can do nothing for you."

"How long can I live?" asked Arnold.

The physician thoughtfully stroked his gray beard. "It depends," he
finally said; "if the knife be withdrawn you may live three minutes; if
it be allowed to remain you may possibly live an hour or two--not
longer."

Arnold never flinched.

"Thank you," he said, smiling faintly through his pain; "my friend here
will pay you. I have some things to do. Let the knife remain." He
turned his eyes to mine, and, pressing my hand, said, affectionately,
"And I thank you, too, old fellow, for not pulling it out."

The physician, moved by a sense of delicacy, left the room, saying,
"Ring if there is a change. I will be in the hotel office." He had not
gone far when he turned and came back. "Pardon me," said he, "but there
is a young surgeon in the hotel who is said to be a very skilful man.
My specialty is not surgery, but medicine. May I call him?"

"Yes," said I, eagerly; but Arnold smiled and shook his head. "I fear
there will not be time," he said. But I refused to heed him and
directed that the surgeon be called immediately. I was writing at
Arnold's dictation when the two men entered the room.

There was something of nerve and assurance in the young surgeon that
struck my attention. His manner, though quiet, was bold and
straightforward and his movements sure and quick. This young man had
already distinguished himself in the performance of some difficult
hospital laparotomies, and he was at that sanguine age when ambition
looks through the spectacles of experiment. Dr. Raoul Entrefort was the
new-comer's name. He was a Creole, small and dark, and he had travelled
and studied in Europe.

"Speak freely," gasped Arnold, after Dr. Entrefort had made an
examination.

"What think you, doctor?" asked Entrefort of the older man.

"I think," was the reply, "that the knife-blade has penetrated the
ascending aorta, about two inches above the heart. So long as the blade
remains in the wound the escape of blood is comparatively small, though
certain; were the blade withdrawn the heart would almost instantly
empty itself through the aortal wound."

Meanwhile, Entrefort was deftly cutting away the white shirt and the
undershirt, and soon had the breast exposed. He examined the
gem-studded hilt with the keenest interest.

"You are proceeding on the assumption, doctor," he said, "that this
weapon is a knife."

"Certainly," answered Dr. Ro