something new?"

"It seems you did not reach the wound; the pain has come back worse than ever it was. I tried not to come back and trouble you, but I could not; and I beg you now to perform the operation a second time."

The doctor examined his hand and found it natural: the place of the wound had healed, and there was nothing in it to call for anx-iety or pain — though the man was trembling in every limb of his body. Yet the operation itself was repeated at his insistence. Before going out he said to the doctor:

"Please do not be surprised if I

come back to you after another month has passed."

"I ask you not to think of that."

The man answered: "I am as certain of it as I am of the existence of God!" Then he bade him farewell and left.

The doctor laid this case before a number of his colleagues, and each one found for it an analysis contradicting the other's, but none of them could discover its true cause. A month went by, and the man did not come; but a letter arrived from him. The doctor opened it gladly, supposing the man had been cured; but his hope turned when he read:

Dear doctor, I will not leave you in doubt about my illness, and I will not carry this secret with me to the grave. So I write to you now, after placing a live coal on my hand to lighten the force of the fire that burns in it. Dear doctor, there was no man happier than I among men. For I married a woman who was a model held up among women, and our marriage was

a marriage of love, and of har-mony of temper, and we passed a pleasant, happy life which all our acquaintances and friends envied us. My wife would dance with no one, and she considered thinking of a man other than me, or