Lloyd could not but commend the wisdom of bringing Ferriss to Dr. Pitts’s own house in so quiet a place as Medford.  The doctor risked nothing.  He was without a family, the only other occupants of the house being the housekeeper and cook.  On more than one occasion, when an interesting case needed constant watching, Pitts had used his house as a sanatorium.  Quiet as the little village itself was, the house was removed some little distance from its outskirts.  The air was fine and pure.  The stillness, the calm, the unbroken repose, was almost Sabbath-like.  In the early watches of the night, just at the turn of the dawn, Lloyd heard the faint rumble of a passing train at the station nearly five miles away.  For hours that and the prolonged stridulating of the crickets were the only sounds.  Then at last, while it was yet dark, a faint chittering of waking birds began from under the eaves and from the apple-trees in the yard about the house.  Lloyd went to the window, and, drawing aside the curtains, stood there for a moment looking out.  She could see part of the road leading to the town, and, in the distance, the edge of the town itself, a few well-kept country residences of suburban dwellers of the City, and, farther on, a large, rectangular, brick building with cupola and flagstaff, perhaps the public school or the bank or the Odd Fellows’ Hall.  Nearer by were fields and corners of pasture land, with here and there the formless shapes of drowsing cows.  One of these, as Lloyd watched, changed position, and she could almost hear the long, deep breath that accompanied the motion.  Far off, miles upon miles, so it seemed, a rooster was crowing at exact intervals.  All at once, and close at hand, another answered—­a gay, brisk carillon that woke the echoes in an instant.  For the first time Lloyd noticed a pale, dim belt of light low in the east.

Toward eight o’clock in the morning the doctor came to relieve her, and while he was examining the charts and she was making her report for the night the housekeeper announced breakfast.

“Go down to your breakfast, Miss Searight,” said the doctor.  “I’ll stay here the while.  The housekeeper will show you to your room.”

But before breakfasting Lloyd went to the room the housekeeper had set apart for her—­a different one than had been occupied by either of the previous nurses—­changed her dress, and bathed her face and hands in a disinfecting solution.  When she came out of her room the doctor met her in the hall; his hat and stick were in his hand.  “He has gone to sleep,” he informed her, “and is resting quietly.  I am going to get a mouthful of fresh air along the road.  The housekeeper is with him.  If he wakes she’ll call you.  I will not be gone fifteen minutes.  I’ve not been out of the house for five days, and there’s no danger.”

Breakfast had been laid in what the doctor spoke of as the glass-room.  This was an enclosed veranda, one side being of glass and opening by French windows directly upon a little lawn that sloped away under the apple-trees to the road.  It was a charming apartment, an idea of a sister of Dr. Pitts, who at one time had spent two years at Medford.  Lloyd breakfasted here alone, and it was here that Bennett found her.