and through his medicine case. "God, I
must do it alone!" he said.

The old man's injury was a dangerous one: a skilful operation was
necessary. As Secord stood beside the sufferer, he felt his nerves
suddenly go--just as they did in the war before he first took the drug.
His wife was in the next room--he could hear her; he wished she would
make no sound at all. Unless this operation was performed successfully
the sufferer would die--he might die anyhow. Secord tried to gather
himself up to his task, but he felt it was of no use. A month later
when he was more recovered physically he would be able to perform the
operation, but the old man was dying now, while he stood helplessly
stroking his big brown beard. He took up his pocket medicine-case, and
went out where his wife was.

Excited and tearful, she started up to meet him, painfully inquiring.
"Can you save him?" she said. "Oh, James, what is the matter? You are
trembling."

"It's just this way, Lesley: my nerve is broken; I can't perform the
operation as I am, and he will die in an hour if I don't."

She caught him by the arm. "Can you not be strong? You have a will. Will
you not try to save my father, James? Is there no way?"

"Yes, there is one way," he said. He opened the pocket-case and took out
a phial of laudanum. "This is the way. I can pull myself together with
it. It will save his life." There was a dogged look in his face.

"Well? well?" she said. "Oh, my dear father, will you not keep him
here?"

A peculiar cold smile hovered about his lips. "But there is danger to me
in this... and remember, he is very old!"

"Oh," she cried, "how can you be so shocking, so cruel!" She rocked
herself to and fro. "If it will save him--and you need not take it
again, ever!"

"But, I tell you--"

"Do you not hear him--he is dying!" She was mad with grief; she hardly
knew what she said.

Without a word he dropped the tincture swiftly in a wine-glass of water,
drank it off, shivered, drew himself up with a start, gave a sigh as if
some huge struggle was over, and went in to where the old man was. Three
hours after he told his wife that her father was safe.

When, after a hasty kiss, she left him and went into the room of
sickness, and the door closed after her, standing where she had left him
he laughed a hard crackling laugh, and said between his teeth:

"An upset price!"

Then he poured out another portion of the dark tincture--the largest he
had ever tak