They went away, leaving Betsey to watch Michael alone, since David also had betaken himself to the cottage. She sat for hour after long hour until it was beginning to be morning, as she could see from her place by the bed near the tiny window. The birds were singing; perhaps it was that same thrush that had greeted her before, that was swinging from the drooping elm tree and calling its welcome to the dawn. Michael was sleeping peacefully, she felt very weary herself as she sat there watching the gray light turn slowly to bright day. A step fell on the threshold, a heavy step that could be none other than Mrs. Bassett’s. “These are the strangest doings that ever I heard of,” she exclaimed as she came in, taking off her coat and putting on her apron almost with the same motion. “To think that I slept through it all and never knew a thing until that boy, tinkering in the workshop before it was light, happened to wake me. I’ve got the breakfast ready up there at Miss Miranda’s, and set everything to rights and now I am just going to stay here while you go back and get some sleep. What a time you have had, poor dear! They say Mr. Reynolds has got through the night a little better than they hoped, though there is still nothing that will rouse him from that stupor.” The sun was really up and shining as Betsey passed through the garden toward the cottage. The world was very clean and glittering and very still, with only the old cock strutting across the poultry yard and lifting his voice in a loud, full crow that sounded far through the quiet of the dawn. It was a pleasant, homely, familiar sound after the strange adventures and unrealities of the night. Betsey began to wonder if it had not indeed been all a dream and she would not presently discover that she had dropped asleep before the toy-cupboard, the tree of jade or the silver Saint Christopher in her hand. Black Dick, strutting and fluttering before the workshop, seemed to be telling her, before she could run across the grass to the door, that something of great moment was going on inside. David was busy with his back toward her, a very jubilant and excited David, still in the damp, bedraggled clothes of last night’s adventures, but whistling gayly and handling wrench and hammer as though life itself depended on his speed. He looked at her over his shoulder, smiling his widest and happiest smile. “Don’t go,” he said, breathless and eager, “don’t go. Something—something is just going to happen!” There was the snapping of a switch and the slow creak of a lever that had not recently been moved. Then followed a faint and rising hum, a whir of wheels grew louder and deeper, that filled the death-like silence of the room with gay song, that sounded over the garden and through the house, that reached the ears of the invalid upstairs and made him stir and smile and open his eyes.