perience. Gordon went directly to his patient. Beside him sat Georgie
K. He looked at the two doctors and shook his head gravely. His great
blond face was unshaven and paled with watching. Nobody spoke a word.
All three looked at the man in the bed, who lay either asleep, or
feigning sleep, or in a stupor. Gordon felt for his pulse softly, with
keen eyes upon his face. This face was unspeakably ghastly. The throat
was swathed in bandages. There was one tiny spot of red on the white of
the linen. The man's eyes were rolled upward. Around an abrasion on the
cheek, which glistened oily with some unguent which had been applied to
it, was a circle of painful red clearly defined from the pallor of the
rest of the cheek.

Gordon spoke. "How do you feel?" he asked of the man, who evidently
heard and understood, but did not reply. He simply made a little motion
of facial muscles, of shoulders, of his whole body under the
bed-clothes, which indicated rage and impatience.

"Does that place on your cheek burn?" asked Gordon.

Again there was no answer, this time not even any motion.

"Have you any pain?" asked Gordon. The man lay motionless. "Is there any
one in the parlor?" Gordon asked abruptly of Georgie K.

"No, Doc. You can go right in there."

Gordon beckoned to James, and the two went downstairs, and entered the
room of the wax flowers and the stuffed canary.

"It looks like erysipelas," Gordon said with no preface.

James nodded.

"All I have done so far, in the absence of any positive proof of the
truth of that diagnosis, is to apply what you will think an old woman's
remedy, but I have known it to give good results in light cases, and I
did not like to resort to the more strenuous methods until I was sure of
my ground, for fear of complications. I applied a little mutton tallow,
and that was all, but the inflammation has increased since I saw him. It
now looks to me like a clearly defined case of erysipelas."

"It does to me," said James.

"So far--the--wound in the throat seems to be doing well," said Gordon
gloomily. Then he looked at the younger physician with an odd, helpless
expression. "His life must be saved," said he. "Which do you prefer of
the two methods of treating the disease--that is, of the two primary
ones? Of course, there are methods innumerable. I may have grown rusty
in my country practice. Do you prefer the leaches, the nitrate of
silver, the low diet, or the reverse?"

"I think I prefer