In the first agony of pain and rage wrought by a conviction so horrible, I could think only of her treachery and my loss; and head to knees on the bare floor of the room, I wept as if my heart would break, or choked with the sobs that seemed to rend my breast. And little wonder, seeing that I had given her a boy's first devotion, and that of all sins ingratitude has the sharpest tooth! But to this paroxysm, when I had nearly exhausted myself, came an end and an antidote in the shape of urgent fear; which suddenly flooding my soul, roused me from my apathy of grief, and set me to pacing the room in a dreadful panic, trying now the door and now the window. But on both my attacks were in vain, the former being locked and resisting the chisel, while the latter hung thirty feet above the paved yard. Thus caught and snared, as neatly as any bird in a springe, I had no resource but in my wits; and for a time, as I had nothing of which I could form a rope, I busied myself with the expedient of throwing out the featherbed and leaping upon it. But when I had dragged it to the window, and came to measure the depth, I recoiled, as the most desperate might, from the leap; and softly returning the bed to its place, I fell to biting my nails, or fitfully roamed from place to place, according as despair or some new hope possessed me. In one or other of these moods the dawn found me; and then in a surprisingly short time I heard the dreaded sounds of life awaken round me, and creeping to the window I closed it, and crouched down on the floor. Presently Mrs. Harris began to stir, and a boy walked whistling shrilly across the adjacent yard; and then--strangest of all things, and not to be invented--in the crisis of my fate, with the feet of those who must detect me almost on the stairs, I fell asleep; and awoke only when a key grated in the lock of the room, and I started up to find Mr. D---- in the doorway staring at me, and behind him a crowd of piled-up faces. "Why, Price?" he cried, with a look of stupefaction, as he came slowly into the room, "what is the meaning of this?" Then I suppose my shame and guilty silence told him, for with a sudden scowl and an oath he strode to the bureau and dragged out the drawer. A glance showed him that the money was gone, and shouting frantically to those at the door to keep it--to keep it, though they were half-a-dozen to one!--he clutched me by the breast of my coat, and shook me until my teeth chattered. "Give it up," he cried, spluttering with rage. "Give it up, you beggar's brat! Or, by heaven, you shall hang for it."