"I knew you'd say it. Well, we'll operate, Miss Merriman."
Donald's voice was calm, impersonal again, and his tone had a steely quality, as though his lancet or scalpel had become endowed with a voice, and spoken.
Silently, and with practised hands, the nurse began to unpack his bag and lay out upon a sheet, which she obtained from Rose and spread over the rough table, the many strange instruments, bottles, rolls of bandages and sponges in their sterile packages.
"Have you any baking soda—saleratus, Rose?"
She nodded.
"Good. Put about a teaspoonful in the smaller kettle, and boil these instruments for ten minutes, while we are making the final preparations. I want some hot water, too."
He turned away, and for a moment stood looking up at the calm heavens in which the stars made openings for the white eternity beyond to shine through. Something in the scene bore his thoughts back to that summer evening when the mountain man of God had tried so earnestly to minister to his own disease. Snatches of sentences re-echoed in his memory. Then he stepped back to Smiles' side and his voice was soft, as he said, "I suppose that, whenever a surgeon begins an operation like this one, he has an unformed prayer deep in his heart, though he may not realize to whom he prays. There was never more occasion for one than to-night, Rose. I know that the Great Healer is nearer to you than to me. Ask Him that my hand may not falter."
She nodded again, sweetly serious.
Once more his accustomed bluntness of manner returned, and he snapped, "Oh, why in the devil didn't I have sense enough to bring another assistant?"
"I am here, doctor," answered the girl.