charged with some new and potent force.

The pains had come at last! Jimbo had no notion how they could possibly
be connected with escape, but Miss Lake--his kind and faithful friend,
Miss Lake--had said that no escape was possible without them; and had
promised that they should be brief. And this was true, for the entire
episode had not taken a minute of time.

"ESCAPE, ESCAPE!"--the words rushed through him like a flame of fire.
Out of this dreadful Empty House, into the open spaces; beyond the
prison wall; out where the wind and the rain could touch him; where he
could feel the grass beneath his feet, and could see the whole sky at
once, instead of this narrow strip through the window. His thoughts flew
to the stars and the clouds....

But a strange humming of voices interrupted his flight of imagination,
and he saw that the room was suddenly full of moving figures. They were
passing before him with silent footsteps, across the window from door to
door. How they had come in, or how they went out, he never knew; but his
heart stood still for an instant as he recognised the mournful figures
of the Frightened Children filing before him in a slow procession. They
were singing--though it sounded more like a chorus of whispering than
actual singing--and as they moved past with the measured steps of their
sorrowful dance, he caught the words of the song he had heard them sing
when he first came into the house:--

"We hear the little voices in the wind
Singing of freedom we may never find."

Jimbo put his fingers into his ears, but still the sound came through.
He heard the words almost as if they were inside himself--his own
thoughts singing:--

"We hear the little footsteps in the rain
Running to help us, though they run in vain,
Tapping in hundreds on the window-pane."

The horrible procession filed past and melted away near the door. They
were gone as mysteriously as they had come, and almost before he
realised it.

He sprang from the bed and tried the doors; both were locked. How in
the world had the children got in and out? The whispering voices rose
again on the night air, and this time he was sure they came from
outside. He ran to the open window and thrust his head out cautiously.
Sure enough, the procession was moving slowly, still with the steps of
that impish dance across the courtyard stones. He could just make out
the slow waving arms, the thin bodies, and the white little faces as
they