"It was even more difficult than I had imagined.

I never saw a case in which the sheathings of the internal jugular vein and carotid artery were so completely involved.

The tumor had made its ugly adhesion all around them.

I almost held my breath when the blood from a severed artery spurted over your scalpel and hid from sight the keen edge that was cutting around the internal jugular.
A false movement of the hand at that instant might have been fatal." "Yes; and but for the clearness of that inner sight which, in great exigencies, so often supplements the failing natural vision, all might have been lost," replied Doctor Hillhouse, betraying in his unsteady voice the great reaction from which he was suffering.

"If I had known," he added, "that the tumor was so large and its adhesion so extensive, I would not have operated to-day.