“Keep where you are till I come back,” she said to Andy, with the same cruel threat in her voice.  Going out, she bolted the door on the other side.  It was nearly half an hour before the woman returned, bringing a plate containing two or three slices of bread and butter and a cup of milk.

“Now get up and dress yourself,” was her sharply-spoken salutation to Andy as she came into the room.  “And you’re to be just as still as a mouse, mind.  There’s your breakfast.”  She set the plate on a table and went out, bolting, as before, the door on the other side.  Andy did not see her again for over an hour.  Left entirely alone in his prison, his restless spirit chafed for freedom.  He moved about the apartment, examining everything it contained with the closest scrutiny, yet without making any noise, for the woman’s threat, accompanied as it had been with such a wicked look, was not forgotten.  He had seen in that look a cruel spirit of which he was afraid.  Two or three times he thought he heard a step and a movement in the adjoining chamber, and waited, almost holding his breath, with his eyes upon the door, expecting every moment to see the scowling face of his jailer.  But no hand touched the door.

Tired at last with everything in the room, he went to the window and sought to look out, as he had already done many times.  He could not understand why this window, was so different from any he had ever seen, and puzzled over it in his weak, childish way.  As he moved from pane to pane, trying to see through, he caught a glimpse of something outside, but it was gone in a moment.  He stepped back, then came up quickly to the glass, all the dull quietude of manner leaving him.  As he did so a glimpse of the outside world came again, and now he saw a little hole in the paper not larger than a pin’s head.  To scrape at this was a simple instinct.  In a moment he saw it enlarging, as the paper peeled off from the glass.  Scraping away with his finger-nail, the glass was soon cleared of paper for the space of an inch in diameter, and through this opening he stood gazing out upon the yards, below, and the houses that came up to them from a neighboring street.  There was a woman in one of these yards, and she looked up toward the window where Andy stood, curiously.

“You imp of Satan!” were the terrible words that fell upon his ears at this juncture, and he felt himself caught up as by a vulture.  He knew the cruel voice and the grip of the cruel hands that had already left their marks in his tender flesh.  Mother Peter, her face red with passion and her eyes slowing like coals of fire, held him high in the air, and shook him with savage violence.  She did not strike, but continued shaking him until the sudden heat of her passion had a little cooled.

“Didn’t I tell you not to meddle with anything in this room?” and with another bruising grip of Andy’s arms, she threw him roughly upon the floor.