another instant they would be over, and then---- Of what might happen then she dared not think. That instant came. The slip came quickly at the last; the sill seemed suddenly to be jerked away. She tried to catch at something, and could not. She closed her eyes; convulsively rather than of intention; as if she would shut out the sight of what was about to happen; she held her breath, and fell. As she fell strange noises were in her ears, which seemed to come from the room from which, at last, she had escaped. CHAPTER VII THE CARAVAN How long she had been there she did not know. She looked about her, wondering where she was; how she had come there. She was in the open air; above her were the stars in the sky. She seemed to be lying on some rubbish; but something hard was underneath. How her head ached; it made her feel so stupid. Putting up her hand to soothe it, she found that it hurt her almost as much as her head. Staring at it, in the dim light she could just make out that it was covered with something wet. All at once she remembered, hazily; and sat up straighter. She had dropped from the window--it must be somewhere above her; she could not see it from where she was. This rough surface which she touched when she put out her poor, hurt hand must be the outer wall of the hotel. One thing was plain: she was not dead; and so it behoved her not to stay where she was a moment longer than she could help; she had not dropped from the window to spend the night on the ground immediately beneath. She raised herself to her feet; the process occasioning her more pain than she had expected. It was all she could do to stand. One ankle showed a disposition to double up; her left leg smarted so that the pain of it brought the tears into her eyes. Indeed, there were smarts and aches all over her; her arms seemed limp and her hands nerveless; her whole body felt hurt, and bruised, and shaken. Her first impulse, when she learnt the plight she was in, was to sink back on to the ground, from which she had with such difficulty raised herself, and cry. But, even in the half-dazed condition in which she was, she recognised that such a mode of procedure would be worse than futile. Since she had risked so much to get so far she might at least try to get a little farther. Now, in all probability, only a little courage was needed to enable her to get at least clear away from that immediate neighbourhood.