swamped."

He took up the misty excuse and explanation. "I had a feeling for him
from the start; and then that Logan Trial to-day, and the way he talked
out straight, and told the truth to shame the devil--it's what does a
man good! And going bung over a horserace--that's what got me too, where
I was young and tender. Swatted that Burlingame every time--one eye,
two eyes all black, teeth out, nose flattened--called him an
'outrageous lawyer'--my, that last clip was a good one! You bet he's a
sport--Crozier."

Kitty nodded eagerly while still wiping her red eyes. "He made the judge
smile--I saw it, not ten minutes before his honour put on the black cap.
You couldn't have believed it, if you hadn't seen it--

"Here, let go my hand," she added, suddenly conscious of the enormity
John Sibley was committing by squeezing it now.

It is perfectly true that she did not quite realise that he had taken
her hand--that he had taken her hand. She was conscious in a nice,
sympathetic way that her hand had been taken, but it was lost in the
abstraction of her emotion.

"Oh, here, let it go quick!" she added--"and not because mother's
coming, either," she added as the door opened and her mother came
out--not to spy, not to reproach her daughter for sitting with a man
in the moonlight at ten o'clock at night, but--good, practical soul--to
bring them each a cup of beef-tea.

"Here, you two," she said as she hurried to them. "You need something
after that business in there, and there isn't time to get supper ready.
It's as good for you as supper, anyway. I don't believe in underfeeding.
Nothing's too good to swallow."

She watched them sip the tea slowly like two schoolchildren.

"And when you've drunk it you must go right to bed, Kitty," she added
presently. "You've had your own way, and you saw the thing through; but
there's always a reaction, and you'll pay for it. It wasn't fit work for
a girl of your age; but I'm proud of your nerve, and I'm glad you showed
the Young Doctor what you can do. You've got your father's brains and
my grit," she added with a sigh of satisfaction. "Come along--bed now,
Kitty. If you get too tired you'll have bad dreams."

Perhaps she was too tired. In any case she had dreams. Just as the great
surgeon performed his operation over and over in his sleep, so Kitty
Tynan, through long hours that night, and for many nights afterwards,
saw the swift knives, helped to staunch the blood, held the basin,