So one of Eleanor Mowbray’s devices was to set Aline to clean down some old furniture with lye. Naturally this greatly injured the skin, and as the cold weather set in, she contrived that the child should always be washing something, till in a very short time the little hands were chapped and cut and in a shocking condition round the nails. When they were in this state she was set to clean brass and iron, until it was a continual torture, and yet Aline did not complain. How she longed for Audry when she went lonely to her bed at night. If only there had been some one in whom to confide it would not have been so terrible; but day after day it was the same thing. At last the hands became so sore that one morning in handling a pitcher, she let it fall and it was broken to atoms. This was the kind of opportunity for which Mistress Mowbray had been looking, but Aline was such a careful, thoughtful child that the chance had been long in coming. She told Aline that her punishment was that she should be confined to the house for a fortnight and in this way she knew that she would deprive her of her principal pleasure, which was to visit the people in the hamlet, particularly those who were sick. It was no use, when Aline offered to pay for the pitcher. Mistress Mowbray would not hear of it. So the little girl would sit by the window when she was not actually being made to work and watch the oncoming winter, with the first snow on the high ground and the brown withered grasses blown by the wind. All the purple of the heather had long since gone and the moor looked sere and joyless. “But, oh, for a breath of the fresh hill-airs.” Aline gradually began to long wildly and pine for a run in the open breeze. The longing grew to an uncontrollable desire and at last Aline, the law-abiding innocent child, could bear the injustice no longer. After all, Mistress Mowbray was not her mother and there was no absolute reason why she should obey her. Master Mowbray, she knew, would disapprove of her being kept in, and so at length she decided one afternoon to make her way into the open along the secret passage. No sooner thought than the thought became a deed, and she found herself swinging the stone and letting herself down into the cool open fresh air of heaven. It seemed at once to make her better; she filled her lungs, she laughed and stepped quickly down the stream, and then broke into a run. Oh, the joy of it after being cooped up for so long. It was so delightful that she was tempted to make her way down to the river and look at the waterfall. She stood watching it and her mind turned to what she had been doing. Was she right? After all Mistress Mowbray was her guardian and responsible for her, no matter how cruel she might be. Aline was filled with doubt.