At length a nearby steeple called the hour of ten. Presently a carriage began to turn in towards the opposite sidewalk. David, all a-tremble, his great suspense now at its climax, stepped forth from his shadow. The carriage stopped before the Chambers home. He hurried across the street, and a dozen paces away from the carriage he stooped and made pretense of tying his shoe-lace; but all the while his eyes were on the carriage door, which the footman had thrown open. First a man stepped forth, back to David, and raised an umbrella. Who? The next instant David caught the profile. It was Mr. Chambers. After him came an ample, middle-aged woman, brilliantly attired--Mrs. Bosworth, Mr. Chambers's widowed sister, who had been living with him since his wife's death. A moment later Mr. Chambers was helping a second woman from the carriage. The umbrella cut her face from David's gaze, but there was no mistaking her. So she still lived in the house of her father! She paused an instant to speak to the footman. For a second a new fear lived in David: might she not come with her father to her father's house, and still be married? But at the second's end the fear was destroyed by the conventional three-word response of the footman. David watched her go up the steps, her face hidden by the umbrella, watched her enter and the door close behind her. Then, collapsed by the vast relief which followed upon his vast suspense, he sank down upon the stoop, and the three words of the footman maintained a thrilling iteration in his ears. The three words were: "Thank you, _Miss_." CHAPTER II A CALL FROM A NEIGHBOUR The next morning David was awakened by the ringing of a gong. He tumbled out of bed in order to be ready for the march to breakfast at half past six; and he had begun to dress before it dawned upon him that he was a free man, and that the ringing was a prank a four-year habit had played upon him--a prank that, by the way, was to be repeated every morning for many a week to come. He slipped back into bed, and lay there considering what he should first do. He had to find work quickly, but he felt his four walled years had earned him a holiday--one day in which to re-acquaint himself with freedom. So, after he had eaten, he felt his way down the dark, heavy-aired stairways, stepped through the doorway, and then paused in wonderment.