For an hour and a half the surgeons worked.  The case, critical enough at best, was greatly complicated by the long delay.  Twice further effort seemed useless, and it was only by the prompt administration of oxygen that the end was averted.  During the nerve-racking suspense Pop not only refused to leave the room, he even refused to stand back from the table.  With keen, suspicious eyes he followed every movement of the surgeons’ hands.  Only once did he speak out, and that was in the beginning, to an interne who was administering the anaesthetic: 

“Lift that funnel, you squash-headed fool!” he thundered; “don’t you see hit’s marking of her cheek?”

When the work was finished and the unconscious patient had been taken down to her ward, Pop still kept his place beside her.  With his hand on her pulse he watched her breathing, watched the first faint quivering of her lids, the restlessness that grew into pain and later into agony.  Hour after hour he sat there and passed with her through that crucifixion that follows some capital operations.

On his refusal at luncheon time to leave the bedside Miss Fletcher ignored the rules and sent him a tray; but when night came and he still refused to go, she became impatient.

“You can’t stay in here to-night, Mr. Hawkins,” she said firmly.  “I have asked one of the orderlies, who lives nearby, to take you home with him.  We can send for you if there is any change.  I must insist that you go now.”

“Ain’t I made it cl’ar from the start,” cried Pop angrily, “thet I ain’t a-goin’ to be druv out?  You-uns kin call me muley-headed or whatever you’ve a mind to.  Sal’s always stood by me, and by golly, I’m a-goin’ to stand by Sal!”

His raised voice roused the patient, and a feeble summons brought Miss Fletcher to the bedside.

“Say,” plead the girl faintly, “don’t rile Pop.  He’s the—­fightenest man—­in—­Breathitt—­when his blood’s—­up.”

“All right, dear,” said Miss Fletcher, with a soothing hand on the hot brow; “he shall do as he likes.”

During that long night the girl passed from one paroxysm of pain to another with brief intervals of drug-induced sleep.  During the quiet moments the nurse snatched what rest she could; but old Jeb Hawkins stuck to his post in the straight-backed chair, never nodding, never relaxing the vigilance of his watch.  For Pop was doing sentry duty, much as he had done it in the old days of the Civil War, when he had answered Lincoln’s first call for volunteers and given his left arm for his country.

But the enemy to-night was mysterious, crafty, one that might come in the twinkling of an eye, and a sentry at seventy is not what he was at twenty-two.  When the doctor arrived in the morning he found the old man haggard with fatigue.

“This won’t do, Mr. Hawkins,” he said kindly; “you must get some rest.”

“Be she goin’ to die?” Pop demanded, steadying himself by a chair.