“Hush!” I whispered. “I am in great despair. You know perfectly well I am sane; I shall die if I am detained here longer.” “O! will you?” he responded. “Listen,” I said, flushing and hanging my head. “I offer you no money, which I have not got. But there are things--other things--sold here, which”-- I tore my hands away, and, putting them to my face, fell back from him. “Hey!” he said, in a thick whisper, and pursued me. “Why do you pick _me_ out for your favours, you little beauty?” I did not answer. “Why?” he insisted. “If it has to be,” I muttered from my refuge, “you--O, don’t ask me!” “Why?” he said. “Well, of twenty evils, choose the best-looking.” He gave a low chuckle. “Come along, where we can be private,” said he, and put a hand on me; but I started back, affecting an agony of shame. “O! what have I said--what promised? Let me go. Don’t think any more of it.” “Won’t I?” he said; and added threateningly: “You’ve given your promise, remember.” I looked about me, and again upon my twined fingers. “To-night, then, at--at ten o’clock.” “Where?” “In the workshop.” “You can get out?” “Yes; I have a way.” “That you have,” he said, coveting me with his eyes; “and a pretty one, my darling.” I entreated him once more, in a passion of emotion-- “If--if I consent, you’ll hold to your part of the bargain?” “Eh?” he questioned. “Help me to escape?” “No fear o’ my forgetting,” he answered. “You may lay to that.” I knew he meant to betray me in the double sense, and would have given more than I feigned to barter at that moment for the leave to beguile him to me, and slip a knife into his lying throat. But I tasted part of my revenge in the thought of his freezing alone there by and by, in the rendezvous to which my wits had decoyed him, while I went to my other undisturbed. He was jealous of me, and suspicious still of so light a surrender. But the prize was worth the risking; and in the end he let me go, gloating over my stealthy retreat, as a cruel schoolmaster might watch the slinking away of a delinquent whom he had ordered up for punishment later. That night fell a harder frost, with glittering stars but no moon. Early secured in my sanctum, I awaited the great moment in such an indescribable agony of mind as I have never felt before or since. Every step near my door was a tread upon a nerve. The stable clock, when it rang out, clear and sonorous, the last quarter after nine, seemed to brain me with its every stroke. I stole to the open window, took intent stock of the quiet, seated myself, poised to spring, on the sill, and passed my duck-stone at a little distance under my nostrils. The next instant I had alighted safely on my feet, and reeling against the wall beneath, stood a minute to recover. The next, I was round the angle of the house, and sped into the dark shrubberies, where were safety and concealment.