“But by the Lord, Harry!” he exploded, “it was nothing short of a miracle.”
“A miracle?” questioned Barnes. “What about Carl’s part in it?”
The doctor paused a moment. Then he smiled.
“Carl was the miracle,” he answered.
Langdon himself did not get off so easily; his arm was broken below the elbow and the danger did not so much lie in the break as in the stiffness which might result. The doctor did not realize as fully as Barnes what the sheer nimbleness of those fingers of the left hand meant to Carl. Like a good many country physicians, he was greater as a medical man than as a surgeon. He rather took this aftermath of a fracture for granted. Consequently he was a bit surprised at Barnes’ concern in the matter.
“We’ll have his arm out of a sling in six weeks,” declared the doctor. “May be a bit stiff, but—”
“Good heavens!” exploded Barnes. “You’d better amputate it and be done with it.”
“What the devil do you mean?”
“I mean that if you take his fiddle away from him, you take away his soul.”
“His soul?”