ked for weeks, drew
him back from the door and flung him upon the bed.

"Stay there till I tell you to get up," she added, with a cruel threat
in her voice. "And mind you, there's to be no fooling with me."

The frightened child crept under the bed-clothes, and hid his face
beneath them. Mother Peter did not lie down again, but commenced
dressing herself, muttering and grumbling as she did so.

"Keep where you are till I come back," she said to Andy, with the same
cruel threat in her voice. Going out, she bolted the door on the other
side. It was nearly half an hour before the woman returned, bringing a
plate containing two or three slices of bread and butter and a cup of
milk.

"Now get up and dress yourself," was her sharply-spoken salutation to
Andy as she came into the room. "And you're to be just as still as a
mouse, mind. There's your breakfast." She set the plate on a table and
went out, bolting, as before, the door on the other side. Andy did not
see her again for over an hour. Left entirely alone in his prison,
his restless spirit chafed for freedom. He moved about the apartment,
examining everything it contained with the closest scrutiny, yet without
making any noise, for the woman's threat, accompanied as it had been
with such a wicked look, was not forgotten. He had seen in that look a
cruel spirit of which he was afraid. Two or three times he thought he
heard a step and a movement in the adjoining chamber, and waited, almost
holding his breath, with his eyes upon the door, expecting every moment
to see the scowling face of his jailer. But no hand touched the door.

Tired at last with everything in the room, he went to the window and
sought to look out, as he had already done many times. He could not
understand why this window, was so different from any he had ever seen,
and puzzled over it in his weak, childish way. As he moved from pane to
pane, trying to see through, he caught a glimpse of something outside,
but it was gone in a moment. He stepped back, then came up quickly to
the glass, all the dull quietude of manner leaving him. As he did so a
glimpse of the outside world came again, and now he saw a little hole in
the paper not larger than a pin's head. To scrape at this was a simple
instinct. In a moment he saw it enlarging, as the paper peeled off
from the glass. Scraping away with his finger-nail, the glass was soon
cleared of paper for the space of an inch in diameter, and through this
openin