m a minute to get relief. When she opened them again there was a
broad streak of light coming in through the window. The lights were out
in the room and the tray had disappeared from the floor. Gladys lay
sound asleep, her head pillowed on her arm. Nyoda started up and was on
the point of rousing Gladys. "No, I'll let her sleep," she thought;
"it's a good thing she can."

She went to the window and looked out through the bars at the sun rising
over the water. There was the same old lake with which she had been
familiar all her life, with the cliffs jutting out in points, one always
a little farther out than the other, to form the great curve of the
shore line. She must have passed this place dozens of times while riding
in the lake boats. Here was a scene she had admired many times from the
open shore, and now she was looking at it from behind bars, a prisoner.
It was too grotesque to be true. She turned pensively toward the bed and
noticed with a start that a tray containing breakfast for two stood on
the shelf beside the elevator. And yet she had not heard a sound! Gladys
was still asleep on the bed. As Nyoda stood looking down at her she woke
up and stared around the room uncomprehendingly. She could not place
herself at first. Then at the sight of the violet room the events of
yesterday came back to her.

They ate breakfast with what appetite they could and then sat down close
beside the elevator shaft to be sure and see the deaf-mute when she
came, for it seemed impossible to detect her visit when they had their
backs turned. While they waited they examined the iron grating for the
door opening, but found none. There was apparently no break in the
scroll-work anywhere, no hinge, no slide arrangement. "Did we come into
the room through there, or did we only imagine it?" asked Nyoda,
completely baffled. "Surely we didn't come through that little grating
that opens on top, did we? I declare, I'm getting so bewildered that if
any one told us we did come in that way I wouldn't dispute them."

Almost while she was speaking the elevator cage shot rapidly and
noiselessly into view and the deaf-mute opened the slide to take the
tray. Instead of giving it to her, however, they gave her the note
first. She took it and read it and then looked at the two girls in
silence. "Maybe she would write something if you gave her a pencil,"
suggested Gladys.

Nyoda handed the woman a pencil through the iron scroll-work. She wrote
som