indeed in luck's way. Only a miracle can save her life. Cumberledge, we
must proceed to perform the miracle."

Sebastian loved such cases. They formed his ideal. He did not greatly
admire the artificial prolongation of diseased and unwholesome lives,
which could never be of much use to their owners or anyone else; but
when a chance occurred for restoring to perfect health a valuable
existence which might otherwise, be extinguished before its time, he
positively revelled in his beneficent calling. "What nobler object can
a man propose to himself," he used to say, "than to raise good men and
true from the dead, as it were, and return them whole and sound to the
family that depends upon them? Why, I had fifty times rather cure an
honest coal-heaver of a wound in his leg than give ten years more lease
of life to a gouty lord, diseased from top to toe, who expects to find
a month of Carlsbad or Homburg once every year make up for eleven months
of over-eating, over-drinking, vulgar debauchery, and under-thinking."
He had no sympathy with men who lived the lives of swine: his heart was
with the workers.

Of course, Hilda Wade soon suggested that, as an operation was
absolutely necessary, Number Fourteen would be a splendid subject on
whom to test once more the effects of lethodyne. Sebastian, with his
head on one side, surveying the patient, promptly coincided. "Nervous
diathesis," he observed. "Very vivid fancy. Twitches her hands the right
way. Quick pulse, rapid perceptions, no meaningless unrest, but deep
vitality. I don't doubt she'll stand it."

We explained to Number Fourteen the gravity of the case, and also the
tentative character of the operation under lethodyne. At first, she
shrank from taking it. "No, no!" she said; "let me die quietly." But