with her intention.

But though in a state of high expectation, and listening, as I supposed,
with every faculty alert, the sounds I apprehended delayed so long that
I began after an hour or two unaccountably to nod in my chair, and
before I knew it I was asleep, with the whistle in my hand and my feet
pressed against the panels of the door I had set myself to guard. How
deep that sleep was or how long I indulged in it, I can only judge from
the state of emotion in which I found myself when I suddenly woke. I was
sitting there still, but my usually calm frame was in a violent tremble,
and I found it difficult to stir, much more to speak. Some one or
something was at my door.

An instant and my powerful nature would have asserted itself, but before
this could happen the stealthy step drew nearer, and I heard the quiet,
almost noiseless, insertion of a key into the lock, and the quick turn
which made me a prisoner.

This, with the indignation it caused, brought me quickly to myself. So
the door had a key after all, and this was the use it was reserved for.
Rising quickly to my feet, I shouted out the names of Loreen, Lucetta,
and William, but received no other response than the rapid withdrawal of
feet down the corridor. Then I felt for the whistle, which had somehow
slipped from my hand, but failed to find it in the darkness, nor when I
went to search for the matches to relight the candle I had left standing
on a table near by, could I by any means succeed in igniting one, so
that I presently had the pleasure of finding myself shut up in my room,
with no means of communicating with the world outside and with no light
to render the situation tolerable. This was having the tables turned
upon me with a vengeance and in a way for which I could not account. I
could understand why they had locked me in the room and why they had not
heeded my cry of indignant appeal, but I could not comprehend how my
whistle came to be gone, nor why the matches, which were sufficiently
plentiful in the safe, refused one and all to perform their office.

On these points I felt it necessary to come to some sort of conclusion
before I proceeded to invent some way out of my difficulties. So,
dropping on my knees by the chair in which I had been sitting, I began a
quiet search for the petty object upon which, nevertheless, hung not my
safety perhaps, but all chances of success in an undertaking which was
every moment growing more serious. I did n