The thought was electric. It shocked into full life the resolve already half formed in her mind. Hastening up to Miss Mason she whispered a request, which was smilingly granted. With a bright face Sidney hurried from the room just as the next number was called. She meant to go home, find the poem, then come back and redeem herself. She had but three blocks to go, and that distance was covered with flying feet. To her dismay she found the door locked. Of course, her mother meant to attend the exercises. No doubt she was in the room all the time, and had witnessed her failure. But--she must get in. She looked for the key in its customary hiding-place when all the family were expected to be absent at once; it was not there. Recent petty thieving in the neighborhood had probably induced Mrs. Dallas to take the key with her. Sidney was dismayed. She rushed from door to door, and from window to window. All were securely fastened. She sat down on the porch to think a moment. Perhaps she could get in through an upper window; she had left her own window, which, fortunately, was over the kitchen, lowered slightly and the screen unlatched. She could reach the spring through the opening, lower it still more, then crawl through. Desperation lent her strength to drag the long, heavy ladder from the barn and to raise it to the low kitchen roof. A moment later she pattered over the flat tin roof to the window--only to find further evidence of her mother’s caution. It was closed and latched. Then, in spite of her courageous soul and her fifteen years, Sidney gave up to a tearful despair for a few minutes. Down upon the tin roof she sat, huddled close up in the corner, and, bowing her head upon her knees, wept silent tears of mortification. The thought that she would have to leave the Dandy Fifth unhonored brought forth the bitterest drops of all. But--they did not give up. Neither would she. Something must be done. She would go back to the school-house and get the key, come back and get the book, then return and save the day for the Dandy Fifth if possible. It was a very tired, hot-faced girl that labored up the second flight of stairs at the school-house. As she paused for breath a moment in the upper hall she heard Rob Ellison stentoriously depicting “Sheridan’s Ride.” In the room across the hall the “Fifth Graders” were singing “Sherman’s March to the Sea,” and farther on the “Sixths” were sending out a vigorous chorus of the “Star-Spangled Banner.” Passing into the library, a small room just across the hall, she sat down to cool off, and at the same time to work up sufficient courage to face the crowded room in search of her mother. She didn’t want to disconcert another speaker by knocking on the door in order to call her mother out. She glanced around the room. Right there in that corner was where she stood when she rehearsed the “Dandy Fifth” to the elocution teacher.