“He seems to have a lot of conversation in him—­for you,” observed Chester to King as the two outside laughed at this explosion from within.

“Such as it is,” replied King with an audacious wink.  “I thought I’d got about through taking orders.”

“I’ll give you both two minutes to clear out,” came from inside the window as Burns caught up a piece of steel and began narrowly to examine it.  Over it he looked at Jordan King, and the two exchanged a glance which spoke of complete understanding.

“Come again, boy,” Burns said with a sudden flashing smile at his friend.

“I will—­day after to-morrow in the afternoon,” King returned, and his eyes held Burns’s.

“What?  Do you know?”

King nodded, with a look of pride.  “You bet I do.”

“Who told you?”

“Himself.”

“Didn’t know you knew him well enough for that.”

“Oh, yes, through mother; they’re old friends.  She sent me to see him for her.”

“I see.  Well, wish me luck!”

“I wish you—­your own skill at its highest power,” said Jordan King fervently.

“Thanks, youngster,” was Burns’s answer, and this time there was no smile on the face which he lifted again for an instant from above the tiny piece of steel which held in it such potentialities—­in his hands.

“You seem to have got farther in under his skin than the rest of us,” observed Chester to King as they walked slowly away.  There was a touch of unconscious jealousy in his tone.  He had known R.P.  Burns a long while before Jordan King had reached man’s estate.  “I never knew him to say a word about a coming operation before.”

“He didn’t say it now; I happened to know.  Come out and see the rigging we’ve put on the car so Aleck can work everything with one hand and two feet.”

“And a few brains, I should say,” Chester supplemented.

* * * * *

Though Burns had plenty of other work to keep him busy during the interval before he should lay hands upon Doctor Van Horn, his mind was seldom off his coming task.  In spite of all that Ellen knew of the past antagonism between the two men she was in possession of but comparatively few of the facts.  Except where his fiery temper had entirely overcome him Burns had been silent concerning the many causes he had had to dislike and distrust the older man.

As what is called “a fashionable physician,” having for his patients few outside of the wealthy class, Dr. James Van Horn had occupied a field of practice entirely different from that of R.P.  Burns.  Though Burns numbered on his list many of the city’s best known and most prosperous citizens, he held them by virtue of a manner of address and a system of treatment differing in no wise from that which he employed upon the poorest and humblest who came to him.  If people liked him it was for no blandishments of his, only for his sturdy manliness, his absolute honesty, and a certain not unattractive bluntness of speech whose humour often atoned for its thrust.