The morrow came.  Charlotte and Ellen drove with the two men to the hospital, and watched them disappear within its bare but kindly walls.

“How they can do it!” observed Charlotte, as the car went on.  “I’m proud of them that they can, but the eagerness with which they approach such work, the quiet and coolness, and the way they bear the suspense afterward when the result is still doubtful,—­oh, isn’t it a wonderful profession?”

At noon they returned in the car to the hospital.  It was some time before Leaver and Burns emerged, but when they did it was easy for the two who awaited them to infer that all had gone well.

“It’s a pity to bring this suggestive odour out to you untainted ones,” said Burns, as he took his place opposite Charlotte, “but it can’t be helped.  And as we bring also the news that Jack Leaver has brought down the hospital roof with applause this morning, you won’t mind.”

“What did he do?” Charlotte asked, eagerly.

Burns briefly described the case—­without describing it at all—­after the manner of the profession when enlightening the laity.  He brought out clearly, however, the fact that Leaver had attacked with great skill and success several exceedingly difficult problems, and that his fellow surgeons had been generous enough to concede to him all the honour which was his due.

“And now—­what about your case?” Charlotte asked, realizing suddenly what the morning’s experience was to have been to Burns himself.

“Died on the table,” said Burns, with entire coolness.  His face had sobered at the question, but his expression was by no means crestfallen.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” Charlotte began, earnestly.

But her husband interrupted her.  “No condolences are due, dear.  He gave a dying man the most merciful sort of euthanasia, and at the same time demonstrated a new method as daring as it was triumphant.  With a case taken a month earlier it would have saved a life.  The demonstration is a contribution to science.  If he received no applause it was because we don’t applaud in the presence of death, but there was not a man there who didn’t realize that in certain lines the country surgeon could give them a long handicap and still win.”

Burns looked out of the window without speaking.  His sea-tanned face showed a deeper shade under Leaver’s praise.  Leaver himself smiled at the averted profile of his friend, and went on, while Ellen looked at him as if he had given her something which money could not buy.

“I wish,” said John Leaver, laying a firm-knit hand on Burns’s knee, “you’d come to Baltimore, Red.  Between us we’d do some things pretty well worth doing.  Without undue conceit I think I could promise you a backing to start on that would give you a place in a twelvemonth that couldn’t be taken away from you in a decade.  Why not?  It’s a beautiful city to live in.  Your wife is a Southerner, born and bred; it would be home to her among our people.  My wife and I care more for your friendship than for that of any other people on earth.  What is friendship for, if not to make the most of?”