“I can guess.  Well, Red, I saw Doctor Van Horn on my way upstairs, and he tells me you’re going to get a good hand out of this.  He’ll be up shortly to dress it, and then I may see for myself.”

“That will be a comfort.  I’ve wished a thousand times you might, though nobody could have given me better care than these bully fellows have.  But I’ve a sort of superstition that one look at trouble from Jack Leaver is enough to make it cut and run.”

By and by Dr. John Leaver came downstairs and joined his wife and Ellen.  His face was grave with its habitual expression, but it lighted as the two looked up.  “He’s had about as rough a time as a man can and weather it,” he said; “but I think the trouble is cornered at last, and there’ll be no further outbreak.  And the hand will come out better than could have been expected.  He will be able to use it perfectly in time.  But it will take him a good while to build up.  He must have a sea voyage—­a long one.  That will do you all kinds of good, too,” he added, his keen eyes on the face of his friend’s wife.

“She looks etherealized,” Charlotte Leaver said, studying Ellen affectionately.  “You’ve had a long, anxious time, haven’t you, Len, darling?” Mrs. Leaver went on.  “And we knew nothing—­we who care more than anybody in the world.  You can’t imagine how glad we are to be here now, even though we can’t help a bit.”

“You can help, you do.  And I know what it means to Red to have his beloved friend come to him.”

“Then I hope you know what it means to me to come,” said John Leaver.

The Leavers stayed for several days, while Burns continued to improve, and before they left they had the pleasure of seeing him up and partially dressed, the bandages on his injured hand reduced in extent, and his eyes showing his release from torture.  His face and figure gave touching evidence of what he had endured, but he promised them that before they saw him again he would be looking like himself.

“I wonder,” Burns said, on the March day when he first came downstairs and dropped into his old favourite place in a corner of the big blue couch, “whether any other fellow was ever so pampered as I. I look like thirty cents, but I feel, in spite of this abominable limpness, as if my stock were worth a hundred cents on the dollar.  And when we get back from the ocean trip I expect to be a regular fighting Fijian.”

“You look better every day, dear,” Ellen assured him.  “And when it’s all over, and you have done your first operation, you’ll come home and say you were never so happy in your life.”

Burns laughed.  He looked over at Jordan King, who had come in on purpose to help celebrate the event of the appearance downstairs.  “She promises me an operation as she would promise the Little-Un a sweetie, eh?  Well, I can’t say she isn’t right.  I was a bit tired when this thing began, but when I get my strength back I know how my little old ‘lab’ and machine shop will call to me.  Just to-day I got an idea in my head that I believe will work out some day.  My word, I know it will!”