In a quarter of an hour her duties were completed and Miss Merriman and Donald had appeared, clad in their spotless white garments of service. Rose, likewise, was in her play uniform, which was now considerably too small for her, and her appearance in it would have caused a smile if it had not been more provocative of tears. Six months earlier the doctor and nurse, assisted by others of the most skilled and highly trained that the metropolis afforded, had prepared to perform the same desperate service in humanity's cause, within the perfectly appointed operating room of a modern city hospital. How different was the setting now! In the rude, but homey room of the mountain cabin, lighted only by old-fashioned lamps and lanterns and the pulsating blaze of the fire in the cavernous fireplace, whose colorful gleam touched with gold the scoured copper of pot and kettle, the three workers, in the immaculate garments of a city sickroom, bent intently over the naked form of the nearly insensible child, to whose alabaster body the leaping flames imparted a simulated glow of warm tones. The general examination was brief, and made in silence. Then Donald drew the covering over the little body as a sculptor might the cloth over his statue, and straightened up with a look in his gray eyes that was new to Rose. He spoke in curt sentences. "Of course the case is far more desperate than our last, Miss Merriman. It's the proverbial 'one chance in a thousand.' On that single thread hangs the child's life." Suddenly he startled Rose by giving a short, mirthless laugh, and, turning away, he began to speak in an undertone, as though unconscious of the presence of the other two, for, despite his previous calm, the thought of what was in prospect had keyed up his nerves to a pitch where they quivered like the E string of a violin. "Good God, what a colossal nerve a man is sometimes called upon to have in this world. Of course she'll die in twenty-four hours if I _don't_ operate; but only a fool--or a genius--would tackle _this_ operation under such impossible conditions. Practically none of the things here that science says are necessary. 'A fool, or a genius.'"--He suddenly smote his hands together, and said, "I hope that I'm a fool for to-night. God takes care of them ... and drunkards. I wish I had a strong slug of Judd's white whiskey, it might steady my nerves. "Where _is_ Judd?" he snapped out, aloud, turning to Rose. CHAPTER XXI A MODERN MIRACLE "I don't know. He was here when you came, but I saw him going up the mountain into the woods. But I'll answer for him; I'll take that chance, doctor. She is nearly as dear to me as she is to him, and I know that she is going to die, unless ... unless ..." "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.