had despatched a telegram and written a message for Mr. Graham
he followed the doctor to his car. The professional man seemed eagerly
delighted, as though Roderick were merely a wonderful new specimen he
had found and upon which he intended to experiment. He chattered away
happily on the way to the hospital.

"Yes, Berger will be very much interested. Yours is really a rare
case, from a medical standpoint, Mr. McRae. Quite unique. You said
you believed it was injured when you were only six years old?"

He seemed almost pleased, but Roderick did not care. The pain in his
arm and that fiercer pain raging in his heart made him indifferent.
"My father! My father!" he was repeating to himself in anguished
inquiry. What had happened to his father? Perhaps he was dying, while
his son lingered far away from him. And what an age he had to wait for
that train, and what another age to wait till it crawled back to
Algonquin! He remembered with wonder the strange wild impulse he had
had the night before to leap across into the home-bound train and go
back. He speculated upon what might have happened, until his brain
reeled. And when would he get another telegram? And why had not
Lawyer Ed told him more? He asked himself these futile questions over
and over in wild impatience. The fever of the night before had
returned, his head was hot, and ached as if it would burst.

He obeyed the doctor's orders mechanically. His mind was focussed on
the time for the train to leave and in the interval he did not care
what they did with him. So he let himself be put into a bare little
white room, heavy with the smell of disinfectants, while a nurse in a
blue uniform and a young house surgeon in white and a silent footed
orderly moved about him.

The nurse's blue dress reminded him of another blue gown, one for which
he used to watch at the office window on summer mornings. He followed
it with his eyes, as the great surgeon took him in hand and examined
and questioned him. He answered mechanically, his parched lips
uttering things with which his fevered brain seemed to have no interest.

He listened in a detached way, as though the doctor were speaking of
some one else as, with many technical terms, he diagnosed the case.
Doctor Nicholls was there, and two young house surgeons, all eagerly
listening, but the patient's mind was away in the old farm house on the
shore of Lake Algonquin desperately seeking relief from its suspe