As Lloyd entered the room she saw Bennett sitting bolt upright in his bed, staring straight before him, his small eyes, with their deforming cast, open to their fullest extent, the fingers of his shrunken, bony hands dancing nervously on the coverlet.  A week’s growth of stubble blackened the lower part of his face.  Without a moment’s pause he mumbled and muttered with astonishing rapidity, but for the most part the words were undistinguishable.  It was, indeed, not the same Bennett, Lloyd had last seen.  The great body was collapsed upon itself; the skin of the face was like dry, brown parchment, and behind it the big, massive bones stood out in great knobs and ridges.  It needed but a glance to know that here was a man dangerously near to his death.  While Lloyd was removing her hat and preparing herself for her work the doctor got Bennett upon his back again and replenished the ice-pack about his head.

“Not much strength left in our friend now,” he murmured.

“How long has he been like this?” asked Lloyd as she arranged the contents of her nurse’s bag on a table near the window.

“Pretty close to eight hours now.  He was conscious yesterday morning, however, for a little while, and wanted to know what his chances were.”

They were neither good nor many; the strength once so formidable was ebbing away like a refluent tide, and that with ominous swiftness.  Stimulate the life as the doctor would, strive against the enemy’s advance as Lloyd might, Bennett continued to sink.

“The devil of it is,” muttered the doctor, “that he don’t seem to care.  He had as soon give up as not.  It’s hard to save a patient that don’t want to save himself.  If he’d fight for his life as he did in the arctic, we could pull him through yet.  Otherwise—­” he shrugged his shoulders almost helplessly.

The next night toward nine o’clock Lloyd took the doctor’s place at their patient’s bedside, and Pitts, without taking off his clothes, stretched himself out upon the sofa in one of the rooms on the lower floor of the house, with the understanding that the nurse was to call him in case of any change.

But as the doctor was groping his way down the darkened stairway he stumbled against Adler and Kamiska.  Adler was sitting on one of the steps, and the dog was on her haunches close at his side; the two were huddled together there in the dark, broad awake, shoulder to shoulder, waiting, watching, and listening for the faint sounds that came at long intervals from the direction of the room where Bennett lay.

As the physician passed him Adler stood up and saluted: 

“Is he doing any better now, sir?” he whispered.

“Nothing new,” returned the other brusquely.  “He may get well in three weeks’ time or he may die before midnight; so there you are.  You know as much about it as I do.  Damn that dog!”

He trod upon Kamiska, who forbore heroically to yelp, and went on his way.  Adler resumed his place on the stairs, sitting down gingerly, so that the boards should not creak under his weight.  He took Kamiska’s head between his hands and rocked himself gently to and fro.