Capìtolo 5

his cherished bicycle. The open-air athletic days of stress and effort
were gone, never to return. But there might be compensations; who
could tell? Happiness, all said and done, need not depend upon a
shin-bone more or less. He might lose a leg, but legs were, after all,
a mere concomitant to life--life did not consist in legs. There would
still be something left to live for, and who could tell whether that
something might not be infinitely grander and nobler and more
satisfying than even the rapture of flying ten miles an hour on his
wheel, or chevying a flock of agitated sheep from one pasture to
another?

Where this sudden inspiration came from, he then had no idea; but come
it did, in the very nick of time, and helped him to dry his tears. The
day of destiny also came, and his courage was put to the test. He knew
well enough, of course, that of the operation he would feel nothing.
But the sight of the hard, white, narrow pallet on which he had to
lie, the cold glint of the remorseless instruments, the neatly folded