There was a great craning of necks as the spectators looked in vain for the missing Grace.
Hippy dropped his chin upon his breast disconsolately.
"I feel limp as a rag," he groaned. "Where, oh, where, is our gallant captain? I'll never believe Grace deserted her post."
In the meantime poor Grace, locked in the upper classroom, had concentrated all her thoughts and mental energies on a means of making her escape in time. She sat down quietly, and, folding her hands, began to consider the situation. In looking back long afterwards upon this tragic hour, it seemed to her that it was the blackest moment of her life. The walls were thick. The doors heavy and massive. The ceilings high. There was no possibility of her cries being heard below. It is true she might break a window, but what good would that do? She couldn't jump down three stories into a stone court below. She went to the window and looked out.
"If I hung by this window sill," Grace said aloud, "I believe my feet would just reach the cornice of the second-story window."
Seizing a heavy ruler from one of the desks, she ran to the window and deliberately smashed out all the plate glass in the lower sash. Then, hoisting herself onto the sill, she looked down from what seemed to be rather a dizzy height. But nerve and determination will accomplish anything, and Grace turned her eyes upward.
"I shall do it," she kept saying to herself over and over.
Clinging to the window sill, she gradually let herself down until her feet touched the top of the cornice underneath. Then, steadying herself she looked down. The cornice ledge was quite broad; broad enough to kneel on, in fact. She was glad of this, for she had intended to kneel on it, whatever its width.
With infinite caution, she gradually slipped along the ledge until she was kneeling. Resting her elbows on the stone shelf, she lowered herself to the next window sill. There she stood for a moment, looking in at the empty classroom.
The door into the corridor stood open, and as she clung to the narrow ledge, her face pressed against the window, she wondered how she was going to get in.