He escaped whilst they were all in chapel. He lit his bicycle-lamp, wrapped a long, thin coat about him, and escaped. It had been a cold, fine day. The sun was just setting over the sea as he spun down the hard, white road. As he flew between the dark, sweet-scented hedges, as he felt the wind in his ears and about his face, as the smell, salt and sharp, of the sea came to him, it was strange to find how the cares and troubles of those brown buildings on the hill fled away from him. He was already his old self; he sang to himself. A faint red glow hovered over the dark, heaving water; the trees stood black on the horizon, and the long, low lines of shadow, white and gray, stole about the road as the evening sky slowly settled, with a little sighing of the wind, into the colors that it would bear during the night. The lights of the little village behind him made a red cluster against the dark shoulder of the Brown Hill. He sang aloud. It was a most enjoyable dance; he had never enjoyed a dance so much before. He realized that he, was looking on the past six weeks as imprisonment; he also noticed that when he told his partners that he was a schoolmaster they stared at him a little apprehensively. It was delightful to see Robin Trojan again. They walked into the garden and strolled about the paths together; he was much improved since the Cambridge days, Traill thought—less self-assured and with wider interests. And then Sir Henry Trojan always gave Traill a broader feeling of life—sanity and health and strength—and lie had an admirable sense of humor. And then it was over, and Traill was speeding back over the hill again. He thought of Isabel all the way back. He fancied that she was with him in the dark. The night was so black that he could only see the little round white circle that his lamp flung on the road in front of him. The hedges, like black, bulging pillows, closed him in. He seemed to be back in no time. He heard the school clock strike one. He took the Yale key and fitted it into the door; it would not move; he tugged, pulled it out, forced it in again, and pushed it. With a click it broke in half. He looked at the big, black, silent buildings in despair—supposing he had to stay out all night. He would die rather than ring. He went round to the other side of the building and looked up. Then he saw that the dining-room windows were not very high and that he might climb. He caught on to a buttress and pulled himself up; then another hand on the window-sill drew him level. He found to his delight that the window was not latched. He pushed it up, and then, with one hasty look into the dark cavern beneath him, jumped. He was saluted on his descent with a noise as though all the crockery in the world had fallen about his ears. The sharp collapse of it seemed to go rushing through the silent house for hours; he knew that he had cut his hand and had bruised his knee.