Stumbling over low underbrush in their rubber soled tennis shoes was not like walking out in the open, and just as Dozia breathed a sigh of relief that the landscape gardening went no further, a wild scream, shrill and piercing, cut the night like an arrow!
Speechless, the girls stood terrified, while the wail seemed to linger suspended somewhere!
"Oh, what was it?" gasped Dozia, but Jane clung to her arm in silence.
The next instant a clanging of chains and rattling of metals broke out from Lenox Hall.
"Quick," exclaimed Jane, almost dragging her companion forward, "we must locate it, we must reach the dormitory!" But before they could even gain the pathway, the big fire bell pealed out its alarm and; suddenly every window in Lenox Hall blazed with light at a single flash—the answer of that electric button pressed by the matron, who now swung open the big oaken door and stood summoning her frightened charges to "come out" in the order of fire drill.
"Don't hurry, be calm!" she called out in the voice of authority, and by now the freshmen who lined the halls and stairways, had recovered their composure and even courage in the face of rescue.
Jane and Dozia rushed up to Miss Gifford, the matron, and asked about the outside alarm. At her word Jane jumped to the fire box, smashed the glass with her golf club and then turned the key.
By this time the students were outside the building, and in their night robes the seventy-five freshmen shivered from fear and exposure, while Miss Gifford, Jane and Dozia tried to reassure them.
"Where's the fire?" asked Jane, as the local brigade of volunteer citizens dashed in the grounds through the main gateway.
"Where is it?" demanded Miss Gifford of the students. There was no smoke, no blaze, not even an odor of things burning could be distinguished.