He looked up at the big clock.  “If it was right—­it wouldn’t be here,” he replied with a laugh.  “But don’t get lost.  You are on duty at seven,” he went on, “but I guess a sniff of air won’t do you any harm.  We all take what we can get in that line.”

“Yes,” and Dorothy tried to smile.  He had not discovered her!  But when Miss Bell reached the room——­

Oh, if she could only fly—­over those big stone walls.  But the outside was even more closely guarded than was the inside, especially since two patients had so lately escaped.

Down the steps went the trembling girl.  How splendid it was in the fresh morning air!

“And if I can only get a message back to camp,” she was thinking.  “What will happen to dear father if I am not soon discovered?”

Over the stone walk she sped.  She glanced down the path.  The front gate was impossible.  Back of the institution she saw a great barn—­then water!  Oh, if she could but pass the stablemen.  They would not be as keen to suspect as would be the guards.

Every one seemed busy.  They were cleaning the horses, and fixing up the big stables.  Merry morning words floated through the air, and it seemed to Dorothy that her presence, that of a nurse, as they supposed, was always the signal for some joke, or some frivolous remark.  But there was no harm in this, she thought.  Inside of stone walls everybody must be akin.

“Hello, there!” called a rather young man, who in shirt sleeves, was rubbing down a horse.  “Where are you going so early?”

Dorothy scarcely dared answer.  But fate saved her, for at that moment the horse took fright at something and broke away from its post.

Instantly there was confusion, and Dorothy was forgotten.  Up on the terrace were patients out in the air with guards, and in that direction dashed the horse, while every man from the stable ran after it.

This left Dorothy almost free.

She saw a summer-house on the edge of a lake.  Yes, and there was a canoe!

What a chance!

She shoved that canoe over the smooth grass, straight for the water.  The paddles were inside, and Dorothy knew that once she was upon the water she could escape.

Shouts from the terrace almost stunned her.  She pushed the canoe into the stream, slid into the frail bark, and started off, just as the stablemen came back over the grounds with the fractious horse!

CHAPTER XXIV

A LONELY RIDE

No sooner had Dorothy paddled around the bend in the stream that led into the river, than she heard the alarm bell of the sanitarium ring.

“That’s the alarm for me!” she told herself, “but they can never see me in this narrow pass.  How fortunate that no one saw me take the boat.  And I suppose they think I escaped from the front gate during the excitement about the horse.”