“So I shivered and huddled myself up in a heap and tried to comfort myself and amuse myself as best I could.  I said all the Bible verses I could think, and then I went back to my apples and brought the basket with me to the stairs.  I would not eat one potato or turnip until the apples had given out.  You think I can laugh now; so could you, after you had got out.  But the clock didn’t strike, and nobody came, and I was sure it must be nearly morning I was so faint with hunger and so dizzy from want of sleep.  And then it occurred to me to stumble up the stairs and try to burst the door open!  That lock was loose, it turned very easily!  In an instant I was up the stairs and trying the door.  And, lo, and behold, it opened easily, it was not locked at all!  I had only imagined I heard the click of the lock.  And I was free, and the sun was shining, and I was neither hungry nor dizzy.

“I don’t know whether I laughed or cried or mingled both in a state of ecstasy.  But I was too much shaken to go on with my letter, I had to find a story book and a piece of apple pie to quiet my nerves.  The fires were not out and the clock had only struck ten.  But when you ask me how long I stayed in that cellar I shall tell you one hundred years!  Now, isn’t that adventure enough for the first volume?

“Vol.  II.  Evening.  I waited and waited downstairs for somebody to come, but nobody came except Josie Grey’s brother, to say that her mother was taken ill suddenly and Josie could not come.  I suppose Mr. Holmes expected her to come and so he has gone to Middlefield, and Morris thought so, too; and so I am left out in the cold, or rather in by the fire.  Mr. Holmes’ chamber is the snuggest room in the house, so full of books that you can’t be lonely in it, and then the fire on the hearth is company.  It began to snow before sun down and now the wind howls and the snow seems to rush about as if it were in a fury.  You ask what I have read this winter.  Books that you will not like:  Thomson’s ‘Seasons,’ Cowper’s ‘Task,’ Pollok’s ‘Course of Time,’ Milton’s ‘Paradise Regained,’ Strickland’s ‘Queens of England,’ ‘Nelson on Infidelity,’ ’Lady Huntington and her Friends,’ ‘Lady of the Lake,’ several of the ‘Bridgewater Treatises,’ Paley’s ‘Natural Theology,’ ’Trench on Miracles,’ several dozens of the best story books I could find to make sandwiches with the others, somebody’s ‘Travels in Iceland,’ and somebody’s ‘Winter in Russia,’ and ‘Rasselas,’ and ‘Boswell’s Johnson,’ and I cannot remember others at this moment.  Morris says I do not think anything dry, but go right through everything.  Because I have the master to help me, and I did give ‘Paradise Lost’ up in despair.  Mother says I shall never make three quilts for you if I read so much, but I do get on with the patch work and she already has one quilt joined, and Mrs. Rheid is coming to help her quilt it next week.  There is a pile of blocks on the master’s desk now and I intend to sit here in his arm chair and sew until I am sleepy.