He glided hurriedly away, leaving the child standing in the middle of the floor. Jack heard him go, and heard the door open and shut; and still stood listening, wondering whether it was all a dream, or his brother had really been and was gone. Assured at length that he had had to do with reality, he wondered what course he ought to take himself. He had no mind to go back to his former prison, in comparison with which his hard bed upstairs seemed the height of comfort; and so he presently crept to the closet door, and turned the key, and then felt his way up to his room. Gridley was not there, but this troubled him little. He threw off his clothes in a hurry, and in a moment was in bed, where he lay listening with all his ears. He heard Mistress Gridley come back, and detected the sound of the key as she turned it in the outer door. He trembled lest she should come up to look for him, but nothing of the kind happened; and while he still listened, the fatigues of the day proved too much for him and he fell asleep. It was broad day, and the sun had been up for hours, and the house astir as many, when he awoke in his bed and found three people gazing at him. Instinctively at sight of their faces he began to cry, expecting a blow, or to be roughly plucked up and upbraided for his laziness. But no blow came, nor did either of the three persons who looked at him with eyes of such astonishment and perplexity offer to touch him. "You are sure that the door was really locked?" one of the men was saying when he awoke. "Am I sure that you stand there?" the woman answered tartly. "Am I one to make a mistake of that kind?" Simon Gridley shook his head. "I remember now," he muttered, "that I tried the door myself. It was locked sure enough." "And it was locked this morning," Mistress Gridley added. Luke's eyes, always wild, glittered with excitement. It was difficult to believe that he saw or could see anything except helplessness in the child who quaked and shrank before them: but so it was. "There are those whom locks will not bind, but they shall be bound on the Great Day!" he said in a hollow voice; "of such it is written, 'These sholl ye make to cease from the earth!'" "Tut tut!" Simon answered sternly. "This is folly. What does the lad say himself? Who let him out?" "Ay, who let you out, you imp of Satan?" the woman cried fiercely. But the boy discerned that, with all her fierceness, panic and terror possessed her; and it was this evidence of an evil conscience which inspired him to answer as he did, "A woman came down stairs with a light in a lanthorn," he said. The men stared and waited for more, but the woman recoiled with a pale face. "You little liar!" she cried hoarsely. "What woman? What woman is there here?" The boy shook his head. "I did not see her face," he said, "but she came down with a lanthorn."