As I listened, he related a gruesome account of some poor wretch, whose only hope of living was by the amputation of a leg. But at the last moment the man's courage failed and he burst the straps of the operating table, rushed from the room, up the stairs, and into an attic, where he locked himself in, screaming maledictions and threats at the astounded staff who were swarming in pursuit. This terror-stricken flight was surely horrible enough, but it was still more ghastly to hear of how the huge six-foot surgeon hurled himself at the door, burst it open and sprang on the frightened, shivering wretch. Fighting like a maniac, the victim was eventually bound and carried downstairs--again to face the horrors of that life-saving operation in all its cold-blooded and brutal reality. "Try and picture such a scene to-day, George," continued the old man. "How many people would face one-tenth of the ordeals of my young days? And yet how many bother to say as much as 'Thank you!' All the wonderful discoveries which have been made, even in my little lifetime, are taken for granted now. The electric light, the telegraph, the telephone, wireless . . . I could mention a thousand other things." He paused, and, in the breathing space which followed, I again saw him in a new light. He was no longer the poor, doddering old man, mumbling incoherent nothings and drowsing his life away by the fireside, but a fellow-creature whose brain was afire with vivid thoughts and memories--a living soul, even though it was caged in a dying and encumbering body. If only he could have shaken off the dulness of physical infirmity and regained possession of himself once more! It was a stupendous thought. . . . "You think I'm talking like a foolish old man," he said, suddenly breaking into my reverie. "But if you'd seen only a quarter of what I have, you wouldn't doubt for a moment. . . ." Once again that extraordinary suggestion of sceptical youth and credulous age! Had I been mistaken in the old man, and judged him only by his physical inertia, never guessing that many of those long silent days of his by the fireside or in the shaded garden were periods of intense mental activity? Here was Gran'pa, talking as he had never done before--at any rate, never since I had known him. Here was I, suddenly realizing his immense potentialities at ninety-five--merely because he had dropped his customary reticence and loosened his tongue. "Gran'pa," I said. "Don't you think you are taking this a little too seriously . . . ?" He glared at me from beneath his great, projecting eyebrows.