had not
carried out the suit-case. He had looked, indeed, much as usual as he
walked out the garden path and closed the gate behind him. He had walked
rather slowly, but then he always walked slowly. She seemed to see,
however, a new caution in his gait, as of one who dreaded to stumble.

She dressed herself, with shaking fingers, and pinned on her hat.
The voices still went on below, monotonous, endless; the rasping of
Rudolph's throat, irritated by cheap cigarets, the sound of glasses on
the table, once a laugh, guttural and mirthless. It was ten o'clock when
she knew, by the pushing back of their chairs, that they were preparing
to depart. Ten o'clock!

She was about to commence again the feverish unscrewing of the door
hinges, when she heard Rudolph's step on the stairs. She had only time
to get to the back of her room, beside the bed, when she heard him try
the knob.

"Anna?"

She let him call her again.

"Anna!"

"What is it?"

"You in bed?"

"Yes. Go away and let me alone. I've got a right to sleep, anyhow."

"I'm going out, but I'll be back in ten minutes. You try any tricks and
I'll get you. See?"

"You make me sick," she retorted.

She heard him turn and run lightly down the stairs. Only when she heard
the click of the gate did she dare to begin again at the door. She got
down-stairs easily, but she was still a prisoner. However, she found the
high little window into the coal-shed open, and crawled through it, to
stand listening. The street was quiet.

Once outside the yard she started to run. They would let her telephone
from the drug-store, even without money. She had no money. But the
drug-store was closed and dark, and the threat of Rudolph's return
terrified her. She must get off the hill, somehow.

There were still paths down the steep hill-side, dangerous things that
hugged the edge of small, rocky precipices, or sloped steeply to sudden
turns. But she had played over the hill all her young life. She plunged
down, slipping and falling a dozen times, and muttering, some times an
oath, some times a prayer,

"Oh, God, let me be in time. Oh, God, hold him up a while until I--"
then a slip. "If I fall now--"

Only when she was down in the mill district did she try to make any
plan. It was almost eleven then, and her ears were tense with listening
for the sound she dreaded. She faced her situation, then. She could not
telephone from a private house, either to the mill or to the Spencer