“What are you doing?” asked Em, who heard the falling fragments.

Her companion made her no reply; but leaned on every little cross-bar, which cracked and gave way beneath her. Then she pressed with all her strength against the shutter. She had thought the wooden buttons would give way, but by the clinking sound she knew that the iron bar had been put across. She was quite quiet for a time. Clambering down, she took from the table a small one-bladed pen-knife, with which she began to peck at the hard wood of the shutter.

“What are you doing now?” asked Em, who had ceased crying in her wonder, and had drawn near.

“Trying to make a hole,” was the short reply.

“Do you think you will be able to?”

“No; but I am trying.”

In an agony of suspense Em waited. For ten minutes Lyndall pecked. The hole was three-eights of an inch deep — then the blade sprang into ten pieces.

“What has happened now?” asked Em, blubbering afresh.

“Nothing,” said Lyndall. “Bring me my night-gown, a piece of paper, and the matches.”

Wondering, Em fumbled about till she found them.

“What are you going to do with them?” she whispered.

“Burn down the window.”

“But won’t the whole house take fire, and burn too?”

“Yes.”

“But will it not be very wicked?”

“Yes, very. And I do not care.”

She arranged the night-gown carefully in the corner of the window, with the chips of the frame about it. There was only one match in the box. She drew it carefully along the wall. For a moment it burnt up blue, and showed the tiny face with its glistening eyes. She held it carefully to the paper. For an instant it burnt up brightly, then flickered and went out. She blew the spark but it died also. Then she threw the paper on to the ground, trod on it, and went to her bed, and began to undress.

Em rushed to the door, knocking against it wildly.

“Oh, Tant’ Sannie! Tant’ Sannie! Oh, let us out!” she cried. “Oh, Lyndall, what are we to do?”

Lyndall wiped a drop of blood off the lip she had bitten.

“I am going to sleep,” she said. “If you like to sit there and howl till the morning, do. Perhaps you will find that it helps; I never heard that howling helped any one.”

Long after, when Em herself had gone to bed and was almost asleep, Lyndall came and stood at her bedside.

“Here,” she said, slipping a little pot of powder into her hand; “rub some on to your face. Does it not burn where she struck you?”

Then she crept back to her own bed. Long, long after, when Em was really asleep, she lay still awake, and folded her hands on her little breast, and muttered, —

“When that day comes, and I am strong, I will hate everything that has power, and help everything that is weak.” And she bit her lip again.