ent to pay for both the
steamer journey and her railway ticket to Ballycroghan.

The first thing, therefore, to be done was to leave the College as
early and as secretly as she could. She did not dare to go to sleep,
but lay tossing uneasily until the first hint of dawn. Sunrise was at
about four o'clock, so soon after half-past three it was just light
enough to enable her to get up and dress. Miss Maitland had sent a
glass of milk and a plate of sandwiches and biscuits for her supper the
night before, but she had left them untouched on her dressing-table.
Now, however, she had the forethought to drink the milk and put the
biscuits and sandwiches in her pocket. The face which confronted her
when she looked in the glass hardly seemed her own, it was so
unwontedly pale, and had such dark rings round the eyes. She moved very
quietly, for she was anxious not to waken her room-mate.

"Janie mustn't know what I intend, or she'll get into trouble for not
stopping me," she thought. "It's a comfort that she, at any rate,
doesn't believe I've done this horrible thing, and that she'll stand up
for me when I'm gone."

She listened for a minute, till the sound of her friend's even and
regular breathing reassured her; then, drawing aside the curtain, she
crept into the next cubicle. Janie was lying fast asleep, her head
cradled on her arm. With her fair hair falling round her cheeks, she
looked almost pretty. Honor bent down and kissed the end of one of the
flaxen locks, but too gently to disturb its owner; then, with a
scarcely breathed good-bye, she left the room. She had laid her plans
carefully, and did not mean to be discovered and brought back to
school; so, instead of going downstairs, and thus passing both Vivian
Holmes's and Miss Maitland's doors, she went to the other end of the
passage, where the landing window stood wide open, and, managing to
climb down by the thick ivy, reached the ground without mishap. She
crept through the garden under the laurel bushes, and, avoiding the
cricket field, scaled the wall close to the potting shed, helped very
much by a large heap of logs that had been left there ready to be
chopped. Once successfully over, she set off running in the direction
of the moors, and never stopped until she was quite out of sight of
even the chimneys of St. Chad's. Then, hot and utterly breathless, she
sat down on the grass to rest.

It was still very early, for the sun had only just risen. The air was
f