hoo!"

"I wish you would be quiet," said Lyndall without moving. "Does it give
you such felicity to let Bonaparte know he is hurting you? We will ask
no one. It will be suppertime soon. Listen--and when you hear the clink
of the knives and forks we will go out and see him."

Em suppressed her sobs and listened intently, kneeling at the door.
Suddenly some one came to the window and put the shutter up.

"Who was that?" said Lyndall, starting.

"The girl, I suppose," said Em. "How early she is this evening!"

But Lyndall sprang from the bed and seized the handle of the door,
shaking it fiercely. The door was locked on the outside. She ground her
teeth.

"What is the matter?" asked Em.

The room was in perfect darkness now.

"Nothing," said Lyndall quietly; "only they have locked us in."

She turned, and went back to bed again. But ere long Em heard a sound of
movement. Lyndall had climbed up into the window, and with her fingers
felt the woodwork that surrounded the panes. Slipping down, the girl
loosened the iron knob from the foot of the bedstead, and climbing up
again she broke with it every pane of glass in the window, beginning at
the top and ending at the bottom.

"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 penknife, 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-eighths of an inch deep--then the blade sprung into ten
pieces.

"What has happened now?" Em asked, blubbering afresh.

"Nothing," said Lyndall. "Bring me my nightgown, 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 down too?"

"Yes."

"But will it not be very wic