“No, give me the key of the school-house, and I will spare you the trouble. It is on my homeward way.”
“I must go myself,” he replied, cloaking himself with wonderful celerity, and taking a lantern from the shelf. “You can wait here, till I return.”
“No such thing,” said Arthur. “Why should I wait here, when I might be so far on my way home?”
The master saw that it was in vain to conceal from him the incarceration of little Helen, an act for which he felt sorry and ashamed; but thinking she might still be asleep, and that he might abstract the book without the young doctor being aware of her presence, he strode on in silence, with a speed almost superhuman.
“You forget what tremendous long limbs you have,” exclaimed the young doctor, breathless, and laughing, “or you would have more mercy on your less gifted brethren.”
“Yes—yes—I do forget,” cried his excited companion, unconsciously betraying his secret, “as that poor little creature knows, to her cost.”
“I may as well tell you all about it,” he added, answering Arthur’s look of surprise and curiosity, seen by the lantern’s gleam—“since I couldn’t keep it to myself.”
He then related the punishment he had inflicted on Helen, and how he had left her, forgotten and alone.
The benevolent heart of the young doctor was not only pained, but alarmed by the recital. He feared for the effects of this long imprisonment on a child so exquisitely sensitive and timid.
“You don’t know the child,” said he, hastening his pace, till even the master’s long strides did not sweep more rapidly over the snowy ground. “You have made a fatal experiment. I should not be surprised if you made her a maniac or an idiot.”