and a wish to aid others to survive in this hard fight of living; I knew
that very well. But I did not gain it from the touch of my surgeon's
hands.

The immediate pain of this long cutting which laid open my neck for some
inches through the side muscles was less after the point of the blade
went through and ceased to push forward. Deeper down I did not feel so
much, until finally a gentle searching movement produced a jar strangely
large, something which grated, and nearly sent all the world black
again. I knew then that the knife was on the base of the arrow head;
then I could feel it move softly and gently along the side of the arrow
head--I could almost see it creep along in this delicate part of the
work.

Then, all at once, I felt one hand removed from my neck. Orme, half
rising from his stooping posture, but with the fingers of his left hand
still at the wound, said: "Belknap, let go one of his hands. Just put
your hand on this knife-blade, and feel that artery throb! Isn't it
curious?"

I heard some muttered answer, but the grasp at my wrists did not relax.
"Oh, it's all right now," calmly went on Orme, again stooping. "I
thought you might be interested. It's all over now but pulling out the
head."

I felt again a shiver run through the limbs of the girl. Perhaps she
turned away her head, I do not know. I felt Orme's fingers spreading
widely the sides of the wound along the neck, and the boring of the big
headed bullet molds as they went down after a grip, their impact
softened by the finger extended along the blade knife.

The throbbing artery whose location this man knew so well was protected.
Gently feeling down, the tips of the mold got their grip at last, and an
instant later I felt release from a certain stiff pressure which I had
experienced in my neck. Relief came, then a dizziness and much pain. A
hand patted me twice on the back of the neck.

"All right, my man," said Orme. "All over; and jolly well done, too, if
I do say it myself!"

Belknap put his arm about me and helped me to sit up. I saw Orme holding
out the stained arrow head, long and thin, in his fingers.

"Would you like it?" he said.

"Yes," said I, grinning. And I confess I have it now somewhere about my
house. I doubt if few souvenirs exist to remind one of a scene exactly
similar.

The girl now kept cloths wrung from the hot water on my neck. I thanked
them all as best I could. "I say, you men," remarked Mandy McGovern,
comi