I tied the mare to a sapling in the shade, and went up to the house. The front door stood open, and the interior showed the usual living-room of a summer cottage. It was furnished scantily but artistically. There were a few good rugs on the floor, a divan heaped with cushions, a piano, and a set of low bookshelves supporting a great bronze jar filled with wild-flowers. There were few ornaments about, but those few were chiefly of Eastern origin and good of their kind. It looked a room belonging to people of taste rather than wealth. The divan was so placed in one corner, near a window screened by drawn curtains, that it was a full moment before I realized that it was occupied. A man lay there face downward among the tumbled cushions, in what seemed the apathy of complete exhaustion. He was clothed only in a suit of thin woolen pyjamas, that showed the meagreness of his frame. He was so thin and slight that he seemed to fill scarcely any space on the wide couch. He was evidently not asleep, but he had not turned his head at my entrance--I could see only a patch of rumpled dark hair against the pillows--and I crossed the room and paused beside him. "Mr. Lessing...." He moved, looking at me with petulant, questioning eyes from a face that showed every sign of physical and nervous exhaustion. "Who are you? I sent for Doctor Lennox." "My name is Haverill. I am taking Doctor Lennox's place for a few months." "The devil you are!" He lifted his head, regarding me again intently with those queer dark eyes, the eyes of a boy set in a prematurely worn face. "Then Lennox has bolted!" "He has gone to Europe for the summer," I said, looking him full in the face. "He told me he needed a change, and I gathered from his looks he was pretty overworked. So I'm afraid you'll have to put up with me for a while." "That's like old Lennox! I thought he'd do it some day." He slipped back again among the cushions. "Where are you from?" I told him. He repeated the name of the hospital after me mechanically. "I didn't know Lennox had gone when I sent over." The tone was ungracious, but it was more the ungraciousness of a child than a rational being. I could see that the man's nerves were fairly on the raw. Judging roughly, I should say that he had not slept for several nights. I ignored the hint. "As I'm here," I said pleasantly, "I might as well look you over, don't you think? What's the trouble?" For a full minute he did not answer. I fancied he was turning me over very closely in his mind. "The usual thing," he said then. "Overwork--like Lennox's!" A grim smile flashed momentarily on me. "I've been scratched up. That's what I want you to see to." "An accident?" "You may call it a dog!"