Burns bent over the bed.  “Good-night, Doctor,” he said softly, almost as he might have spoken to a child.  Then, quite as he might have spoken to a child, he added:  “Say a bit of a prayer before you go to sleep.  It won’t hurt you, and—­who knows?—­even unbelieving, you may get an answer.”

Van Horn smiled up at him wanly.  “Good-night, Doctor,” he replied.  “Thank you for coming in—­whether I sleep the better or the worse for it.”

* * * * *

If there were anything of the fanatic about Redfield Pepper Burns—­and the term was one which no human being but Van Horn had ever applied to him—­it was the fighting, not the fasting, side of his character which showed uppermost at ten next morning.  He came out of his hospital dressing-room with that look of dogged determination written upon brow and mouth which his associates knew well, and they had never seen it written larger.  From Doctor Buller, who usually gave the anesthetics in Burns’s cases, and from Miss Mathewson, who almost invariably worked upon the opposite side of the operating table, to the newest nurse whose only mission was to be at hand for observation, the staff more or less acutely sensed the situation.  Not one of those who had been for any length of time in the service but understood that it was an unusual situation.

That James Van Horn and R.P.  Burns had long been conscious or unconscious rivals was known to everybody.  Van Horn was not popular with the hospital staff, while Burns might have ordered them all to almost any deed of valour and have been loyally obeyed.  But Van Horn’s standing in the city was well understood; he was admired and respected as the most imposing and influential figure in the medical profession there represented.  He held many posts of distinction, not only in the city, but in the state, and his name at the head of an article in any professional magazine carried weight and authority.  And that he should have chosen Burns, rather than have sent abroad for any more famous surgeon, was to be considered an extraordinary honour indicative of a confidence not to have been expected.

Altogether, there was more than ordinary tension observable in the operating-room just before the appointed hour.  A number of the city’s surgeons were present—­Grayson, Fields, Lenhart, Stevenson—­men accustomed to see Burns at work and to recognize his ability as uncommon.  Not that they often admitted this to themselves or to one another, but the fact remains that they understood precisely why Van Horn, if he chose a local man at all—­which of itself had surprised them very much—­had selected Burns.  Not one of them, no matter how personally he felt antagonistic to this most constantly employed member of the profession, but would have felt safer in his hands in such a crisis than in those of any of his associates.