end in ganging through the warr'ds. Unless the
Colonel would prefer to begin wi' them?" He turned a small, twinkling pair
of blue eyes set in dry wrinkles upon his Chief.

"Not I, Major. This is your department. But I shall ask five minutes more
grace in the interests of the friend I spoke of, Dr. Saxham; with whom I
made an appointment at the half-hour."

"You're no' by any chance meaning the Saxham that wrote 'The Diseases of
Civilisation,' are ye, Colonel? I mind a sentence in it that must have
been a douse of cauld watter--toch! vitriol would be the better worr'd--in
the faces o' some o' the dandy operators. '_Young men_,' he ca'ed them, as
if he was a greybeard himsel', 'young men who, led to take up Surgery by
the houp o' gains an' notoriety, have given themselves nae time to learn
its scienteefic principles--showy operators, who diagnose wi' the knife
an' endeavour to dictate to Nature and no' to assist her.' And yet Saxham
could daur! 'I shall prove that the gastric ulcer can be cured wi'out
exceesion,' he said, or they say he said in the _Lancet_ report o' the
operation on the Grand Duke Waldimir--I cam' across a reprint o' it no'
lang ago--when Sir Henry McGavell sent for him, wi' the sweat o' mortal
terror soakin' his Gladstone collar. He cut a hole in the Duke's stomach,
ye will understand, in front o' the ulcer, clipped off the smaller
intesteene, spliced the twa together wi' a Collins button, and by a
successful deveece o' plumbing--naething less--earned the eterr'nal
gratitude o' the autocrat an' the everlastin' currses o' the Nihilists.
All that, seven years ago, an' the thing is dune the day wi'oot a
hair's-breadth difference. For why? Ye canna paint the lily, or improve
upon perfection. Toch!... Colonel, that man would be worth the waitin'
for, if he stood in your friend's shoes the day!"

"Rejoice then, Major, and be exceeding glad, for I believe this is the
man who wrote the book and plugged--or was it plumbed--the potentate."

The Chief Medical Officer rubbed his hands. "I promise myself a crack or
twa wi' him, then.... But how is it a busy chiel like that can get awa'
from his private patients and his Hospital warr'ds in the London Winter
Season Ahem! ahem!"

By the haste the Medical Officer developed in changing the conversation,
it was plain that he had recalled the circumstances under which the "busy
chiel" had turned his back upon the private patients and the Hospital
wards. "Colonel," he w