In the midst of it he heard the shop door open, and presently the sound of rapping on the counter.  Another customer!

Mr. Kane called out, “Wait a moment,” and continued his ministrations.  After a pause the rapping recommenced.  Kane was just securing the last strip of plaster and preserved a preoccupied silence.  Then the door flew open abruptly and a figure appeared impatiently on the threshold.  It was that of a miner recently returned from the gold diggings—­so recently that he evidently had not had time to change his clothes at his adjacent hotel, and stood there in his high boots, duck trousers, and flannel shirt, over which his coat was slung like a hussar’s jacket from his shoulder.  Kane would have uttered an indignant protest at the intrusion, had not the intruder himself as quickly recoiled with an astonishment and contrition that was beyond the effect of any reproval.  He literally gasped at the spectacle before him.  A handsomely dressed woman reclining in a chair; lace and jewelry and ribbons depending from her saturated shoulders; tresses of golden hair filling her lap and lying on the floor; a pail of ruddy water and a sponge at her feet, and a pale young man bending over her head with a spirit lamp and strips of yellow plaster!

“’Scuse me, pard!  I was just dropping in; don’t you hurry!  I kin wait,” he stammered, falling back, and then the door closed abruptly behind him.

Kane gathered up the shorn locks, wiped the face and neck of his patient with a clean towel and his own handkerchief, threw her gorgeous opera cloak over her shoulders, and assisted her to rise.  She did so, weakly but obediently; she was evidently stunned and cowed in some mysterious way by his material attitude, perhaps, or her sudden realization of her position; at least the contrast between her aggressive entrance into the shop and her subdued preparation for her departure was so remarkable that it affected even Kane’s preoccupation.

“There,” he said, slightly relaxing his severe demeanor with an encouraging smile, “I think this will do; we’ve stopped the bleeding.  It will probably smart a little as the plaster sets closer.  I can send my partner, Dr. Sparlow, to you in the morning.”

She looked at him curiously and with a strange smile.  “And zees Doctor Sparrlow—­eez he like you, M’sieu?”

“He is older, and very well known,” said the young man seriously.  “I can safely recommend him.”

“Ah,” she repeated, with a pensive smile which made Kane think her quite pretty.  “Ah—­he ez older—­your Doctor Sparrlow—­but you are strong, M’sieu.”

“And,” said Kane vaguely, “he will tell you what to do.”

“Ah,” she repeated again softly, with the same smile, “he will tell me what to do if I shall not know myself.  Dat ez good.”

Kane had already wrapped her shorn locks in a piece of spotless white paper and tied it up with narrow white ribbon in the dainty fashion dear to druggists’ clerks.  As he handed it to her she felt in her pocket and produced a handful of gold.