He stared at the heading on the paper: "My dear Julian." After all, what was there he could say to the boy? He could tell him he was in a hospital. But that might seem weak--as if he wanted sympathy--because he was down.... Herman Medfield never asked for sympathy; his heart was especially hard toward men who did. They were always the devils who were down and out--that asked for sympathy--and hoped to get some of his money to waste--as they had wasted their own. He would give hundreds to a man who stood up to him--when he would not give a dollar to the one that whined. He dipped the pen again and wrote rapidly--a mere note, telling the boy that he was away from home for a while--under the doctor's orders, nothing serious, nothing to worry any one; he should be around again in a few days. He signed it grimly and hunted up the banker's address and directed and sealed it.... That was done! He pushed the letter from him. He was tired. He wanted a cigar. There was a quick knock at the door. Dr. Carmon had finished his operation and made his round of visits in the hospital and he was doing Suite A. Herman Medfield greeted him with relief. "Come in," he said. "Come in and sit down.... I am sorry I cannot offer you a cigar," he added with a little humorous sigh. The doctor sat down. "Hard work, is it?" XII He drew his chair in front of Herman Medfield, leaning forward a little, with his elbows on his knees. "Find it hard, do you?" he asked pleasantly. "I've known easier things," replied Herman Medfield dryly. The doctor regarded him without comment. He reached out a hand to his pulse and took out his watch and sat with bent head a minute. Then he slipped the watch back into his pocket and stood up. "I'd like to put you on that couch a few minutes," he said. "That's right--over there." He rolled up the window-shades and moved the couch nearer to the window. Herman Medfield lay down, half grudgingly. "Now, if you will relax and breathe easily--" The doctor's face had grown absorbed. He seemed not to see Herman Medfield, but something that might have been an abstraction--the essence, or spirit, of Medfield. And while he gazed at this Medfield abstraction, Dr. Carmon's hands were busy. They thumped the liver and sounded the heart and pounded the back of Herman Medfield with quick, absorbed movements that left no depth unsounded. "Um-m!" he said at last. And then--"Ah!" He straightened his back and beamed down on Herman Medfield from behind the spectacles. "All right--am I?" asked Medfield. "You'll be all right--in three or four days," responded Dr. Carmon, with his round, successful diagnosis smile. "You won't have to operate?" Medfield's face lighted. "Operate--? Oh--! Yes--I shall operate." The doctor spoke absently. It was the tone of one to whom it could never occur not to operate. "I shall operate. It's fine!" "Better than you thought?" asked Medfield hopefully.