ch held in it such potentialities--in his hands.

"You seem to have got farther in under his skin than the rest of us,"
observed Chester to King as they walked slowly away. There was a touch
of unconscious jealousy in his tone. He had known R.P. Burns a long
while before Jordan King had reached man's estate. "I never knew him to
say a word about a coming operation before."

"He didn't say it now; I happened to know. Come out and see the rigging
we've put on the car so Aleck can work everything with one hand and two
feet."

"And a few brains, I should say," Chester supplemented.

* * * * *

Though Burns had plenty of other work to keep him busy during the
interval before he should lay hands upon Doctor Van Horn, his mind was
seldom off his coming task. In spite of all that Ellen knew of the past
antagonism between the two men she was in possession of but
comparatively few of the facts. Except where his fiery temper had
entirely overcome him Burns had been silent concerning the many causes
he had had to dislike and distrust the older man.

As what is called "a fashionable physician," having for his patients
few outside of the wealthy class, Dr. James Van Horn had occupied a
field of practice entirely different from that of R.P. Burns. Though
Burns numbered on his list many of the city's best known and most
prosperous citizens, he held them by virtue of a manner of address and a
system of treatment differing in no wise from that which he employed
upon the poorest and humblest who came to him. If people liked him it
was for no blandishments of his, only for his sturdy manliness, his
absolute honesty, and a certain not unattractive bluntness of speech
whose humour often atoned for its thrust.

As for his skill, there was no question that it ranked higher than that
of his special rival. As for his success, it had steadily increased.
And, as all who knew him could testify, when it came to that "last
ditch" in which lay a human being fighting for his life, Burns's
reputation for standing by, sleeves rolled up and body stiff with
resistance of the threatening evil, was such that there was no man to
compete with him.

It was inevitable that in a city of the moderate size of that in which
these two men practised there should arise situations which sometimes
brought about a clash between them. The patient of one, having arrived
at serious straits, often called for a consultation with the othe