Here is a middle-aged woman, evidently having but a short time to live, yet this afternoon Dr. Wilson says his chief proposes to perform upon her a capital operation. He has not the least hope it can save her life, but the chance of performing such an operation arises but seldom; and it is but just and kind to the house surgeon, who wants all the practical work he can get, to let him assist. So the woman and her friends are duly pressed to consent that this—“the only means of saving her life”—shall forthwith be done. To this end all the nurses are instructed to urge her. At last she submits. She will be carried to the operating theatre, and this chance of instruction will fall to Dr. Wilson’s hands; for, as soon as the chloroform has effected its work, _he_ will take the place of the chief, and “do his first strangulated hernia.” Dr. Wilson is jubilant—slightly nervous, for it is very grave work. It is utterly unjustifiable work, Elsworth thinks, but dare hardly express his thoughts except by a timid question or two. He knows he must steel himself to plenty of such matters, that his turn will come and that he would not like to leave St. Bernard’s without doing just as much himself. But his heart, for all that, misgives him. “Might he warn the patient of her imminent danger?” “On no account! It might cause her to revoke her consent; might, at any rate, depress her, and hasten the catastrophe.” In the next bed is an elderly woman with a contused side. That is a slight matter. It was not for that she was taken in, but in her examination in the out-patients’ department it was discovered that she had a peculiarly interesting bony growth on her leg that would make a very neat and pretty operation. So a bed was found for her, and daily and increasing pressure put upon her to have this queer growth removed. It was no inconvenience or annoyance to her at all. She was past middle life, and she had been told by her family doctor there was not the slightest occasion for operative interference; but everybody at St. Bernard’s wanted just such a case to try a new method of treatment recently invented in Vienna, and the chief surgeon was eager to do the operation, and all concerned were charged, as they loved him, not to let it slip. That also was to come off this afternoon.