"If you'd just brace up, you know," she said encouragingly. "If you would get hold of yourself." She had prepared many a patient for the operating table, and had seen few so exercised as this one. "You must be courageous," she said. "The operation may not be serious. And it will be over soon." Roderick looked at her uncomprehendingly. He cared not at all for the operation itself, but it was the trap that had caught him, and he was writhing to be free. Her next words put a new face on it. "If you have any message to send to your friends," she said gently, "I should be glad to have it attended to. Have you any--property or anything that should be settled. We hope this operation will be simple; but if not--you should be prepared, Mr. McRae." "There's nothing," said Roderick. "Nothing." Everything in the world was slipping from him. The props of life had given way one by one, and now perhaps life itself was going. He lay there on the small cot-bed, watching the nurse and orderly hurry to and fro, and looked squarely at the situation. It was desperate. Always he had taken hold of difficulties and wrenched them out of his path and gone proudly on his way. But here he was helpless. For the first time in his strong, successful youth he realised that which his father had striven all his years to teach him, man's utter impotence before God. He was bound hand and foot, helpless, just as the door of success had flung open at his touch. He had paddled out bravely into the open sea of life after the rainbow gold, only to find it vanish and leave him lost in a world of mists and shadows. He remembered Dr. Leslie's words: "If His love cannot draw us into the way, it meets us on the Damascus road and blinds us with its light." He lay there for what seemed an interminable time. He was clinging to one faint hope. Lawyer Ed would surely answer his telegram. But the nurse returned with the word that there had been no message, and that the doctors were preparing. He was to go down to the operating room in ten minutes. It seemed as if with that word the last feeble support gave way, and then Roderick McRae's soul went down to the black brink of despair. He was utterly alone, without help or friend. Everything, his success, his health, his father, his love, had been snatched from him in one moment.