midnight
That night it fell to Robert to sit up after midnight with John Allwood , the youth of twenty whose case had been a severer tax on the powers of the little nursing staff than perhaps any other . Mother and neighbors were worn out , and it was difficult to spare a hospital nurse for long together from the diphtheria cases . Robert , therefore , had insisted during the preceding week on taking alternate nights with one of the nurses . During the first hours before midnight he slept soundly on a bed made up in the ground-floor room of the little sanatorium . Then at twelve the nurse called him , and he went out , his eyes still heavy with sleep , into a still , frosty winter 's night . After so much rain , so much restlessness of wind and cloud , the silence and the starry calm of it were infinitely welcome . The sharp cold air cleared his brain and braced his nerves , and by the time he reached the cottage whither he was bound , he was broad awake .