ost on the
prairie for twenty-four hours. He said that Meydon's only got twenty-four
hours, if the trick isn't done! Well--"

He took a penny from his pocket. "I'll toss for it. Heads he does it, and
tails he doesn't."

He tossed. It came down heads. "Well, there's one more fool in the world
than I thought," he said, philosophically, as though he had settled the
question; as though the man riding away into the prairie with a dark
problem to be solved had told the penny what he meant to do.

* * * * *

Mrs. Meydon, Father Bourassa, and Finden stood in the little waiting-room
of the hospital at Jansen, one at each window, and watched the wild
thunderstorm which had broken over the prairie. The white heliographs of
the elements flashed their warnings across the black sky, and the roaring
artillery of the thunder came after, making the circle of prairie and tree
and stream a theatre of anger and conflict. The streets of Jansen were
washed with flood, and the green and gold things of garden and field and
harvest crumbled beneath the sheets of rain.

The faces at the window of the little room of the hospital, however, were
but half-conscious of the storm; it seemed only an accompaniment of their
thoughts, to typify the elements of tragedy surrounding them.

For Varley there had been but one thing to do. A life might be saved, and
it was his duty to save it. He had ridden back from the prairie as the sun
was setting the night before, and had made all arrangements at the
hospital, giving orders that Meydon should have no food whatever till the
operation was performed the next afternoon, and nothing to drink except a
little brandy-and-water.

The operation was performed successfully, and Varley had issued from the
operating-room with the look of a man who had gone through an ordeal which
had taxed his nerve to the utmost, to find Valerie Meydon waiting, with a
piteous, dazed look in her eyes. But this look passed when she heard him
say, "All right!"

The words brought a sense of relief, for if he had failed, it would have
seemed almost unbearable in the circumstances--the cup of trembling must
be drunk to the dregs.

Few words had passed between them, and he had gone, while she remained
behind with Father Bourassa, till the patient should wake from the sleep
into which he had fallen when Varley left.

But within two hours they sent for Varley again, for Meydon was in evident