Neither bonnet, nor gloves, nor boots, did I possess—­Mrs. Raymond’s loan having long since been condoned on behalf of some one else, and my clothing, in my captivity, had been contrived to suit my circumstances.

Wheeling the bedstead very gently on its noiseless castors a few inches from the wall, I insinuated myself between them, and, sheltered by the head-board, loosened again the slightly-adhering covering of paper that concealed the door, and fitted into the key-hole the well-oiled wooden key, which once before had proved its efficiency.  It did not fail me now, in my hour of extremity, for a moment later I had turned and removed it from its socket, stepped forth upon the landing, and relocked without the door of my prison; but, perhaps, with too much of nervous haste, too little caution, for, to my inexpressible confusion, the handle of the instrument of my emancipation remained in my hand, broken off at the lock, and useless forever more.

In delaying probable pursuit from within, I had cut off all possibility of my own retreat in case of failure.  My bridges were literally burned behind me, and I had no alternative left between flight and detection.  And yet there was something in the situation that, inconsistently enough, made me smile, albeit with a trembling heart.

I shook my head drearily, as a couplet from Collins’s “Camel-Driver,” with its strange appropriateness, irresistibly crossed my brain.

Why is it that, in times like these, such conceits beset us, such comparisons arise?  Does the quality called presence of mind find root in the same source that impels us to apt quotation?—­

    “What if the lion in his rage I meet? 
    Oft in the dust I see his printed feet.”

I gained fresh heart from that trivial diversion of thought, and stood quietly contemplating alternately the hall below and that above (both of which were visible from my place on the intermediate platform; all was still in both of these wide corridors), to make sure of the safety of my enterprise; and now, once more my foot was on the brink of those mysterious stairs which led, I felt, to doom or to liberty.  I commenced, very cautiously, to descend them.  The study-door at their foot was closed, and all seemed silent within.  The murmur of voices, and the remote rattling of china proceeding from the ell behind the hall, encouraged me to believe that on this bitter night the family was concentrated, for greater comfort, in the supper-room.

With my hand on the baluster, pausing at every step, I crept quietly down the stairway; then, as if my feet were suddenly winged with terror, I darted by the study-door, flew lightly over the carpeted hall, and found myself, in another moment, secure within the small enclosed vestibule into which the door of entrance gave.  My worst misgivings had never compassed the terrific truth.  At this early hour of the evening, not only was the front door locked, but the key had been withdrawn.  This was despair.