“Suppose I told you I didn’t believe in any such Being.”

“I should tell you you knew better—­and knew it with every fibre of you.”

The two pairs of eyes steadily regarded each other.  In Burns’s flamed sincerity and conviction.  In Van Horn’s grew a curious sort of suffering.  He moved restlessly on his pillow.

“If I had known you were a fanatic as well as a fighter I might have hesitated to call you, even though I believe in you as a surgeon,” he said somewhat huskily.

“It’s surgery you’re getting from me to-night, but I cut to cure.  A mind at rest will help you through to-morrow.”

“Why should you think my mind isn’t at rest?  You commended me for my quiet mind when you came in.”

“For your cool control.  But your unhappy spirit looked out of your eyes at me, and I’ve spoken to that.  I couldn’t keep silence.  Forgive me, Doctor; I’m a blunt fellow, as you have reason to know.  I haven’t liked you, and you haven’t liked me.  We’ve fought each other all along the line.  But your calling me now has touched me very much, and I find myself caring tremendously to give you the best I have.  And not only the best my hands have to give you, but the best of my brain and heart.  And that belief in the Almighty and His power to rule this world and other worlds is the best I have.  I’d like to give it to you.”

He rose, his big figure towering like a mountain of strength above the slender form in the bed.

Van Horn stretched up his hand to say good-night.  “I know you thought it right to say this to me, Burns,” he said, “and I have reason to know that when you think a thing is right you don’t hesitate to do it.  I like your frankness—­better than I seem to.  I trust you none the less for this talk; perhaps more.  Do your best by me in the morning, and whatever happens, your conscience will be free.”

Burns’s two sinewy hands clasped the thin but still firm one of Van Horn.  “As I said just now, I’ve never wanted more to do my best than for you,” came very gently from his lips.  “And I can tell you for your comfort that the more anxious I am to do good work the surer I am to do it.  I don’t know why it should be so; I’ve heard plenty of men say it worked just the other way with them.  Yes, I do know why.  I think I’ll tell you the explanation.  The more anxious I am the harder I pray to my God to make me fit.  And when I go from my knees to the operating-room I feel armed to the teeth.”

He smiled, a brilliant, heart-warming smile, and suddenly he looked, to the man on the bed who gazed at him, more like a conqueror than any one he had ever seen.  And all at once James Van Horn understood why, with all his faults of temper and speech, his patients loved and clung to Red Pepper Burns; and why he, Van Horn himself, had not been able to defeat Burns as a rival.  There was something about the man which spoke of power, and at this moment it seemed clear, even to the skeptic, that it was not wholly human power.