When old Dr Mortimer received Jim’s Christmas card, his face hardened into stone, and his first impulse was to throw the little photograph into the fire. After Jim’s final and crowning sin, the Doctor had decided that he would have nothing more to do with his grandson, whose hospital career had been one long escapade, punctuated, at rare intervals, with fits of steady reading. Jim owed his qualification to his natural genius rather than to these bursts of study. A certain amount of book-work he had been obliged to do, and he did it. Practical work he had revelled in, for action suited his mercurial, restless disposition, and his practical work had saved him. He was by head and shoulders the finest operator Matt’s had turned out for many a year, and the examining board knew it. Throughout his student’s career he had been by turns the pride and despair of his grandfather. Dr Mortimer had sent him angry letters when he was in town, and delivered stern reproofs when he came down to Threeways. Jim had promised reformation, only to fall away from the narrow path of rectitude at the first opportunity that presented itself. At last came the paragraph in the local paper anent Jim’s doings at the Exhibition, and this had used up the last scrap of his grandfather’s patience. Everybody read the paragraph, and everybody laughed at it. Overcome with rage, the Doctor had sat down at his desk and penned the letter which changed the whole course of Jim’s existence. So the old doctor put Jim out of his life--thrust him forth to get his bread--or starve. But he could not put his grandson out of his heart, and, as he sat by his lonely fireside during the following weeks and months, his thoughts had often wandered to the wayward lad, and he had often wondered how Jim was faring--had wondered even, indeed, whether he were alive or dead. The photograph of his surgery which Jim sent to his grandfather served to allay the old man’s misgivings. He had fancied at one time that Jim had gone clean to the bad, and that Sir Savile and other old friends who knew both grandfather and grandson were loth to inform him of the lad’s downfall. But it appeared from the photograph--and the particulars on the back of it--that Jim was earning his living. His practice did not appear to embrace an aristocratic quarter, but that did not matter very much. Jim was working, and probably amassing much useful experience. The old doctor felt relieved. His first impulse--to tear up the little picture--soon departed. He turned Jim’s card over several times, and finally, wondering somewhat at his unusual weakness propped it up against one of the massive bronze candlesticks which stood upon his dining-room mantelpiece. It was the only card Dr Mortimer received, and it looked curiously small and forlorn stuck up on that spacious, dignified mantelpiece all by itself.