"That man may have hired some girl who looks like me to help him," she thought, "and she may have become afraid, or worried, and left. Then I have to blunder in here, and in the dark he takes her for me. I'm sure that's it."
Then came a change of mood.
"But what is the use of speculating and guessing about it?" Mollie mused. "I had much better see if there is a way out. Oh, joy! A window—two of them!"
She approached the casements, realizing that as she was on the ground floor the sills could not be very high from earth. But though she saw that the catches on the frames were broken, and though she managed to raise one sash, it was with a jolt of disappointment that she saw the windows were heavily barred.
"A regular prison!" gasped Mollie. "This must have been a most peculiar house—barred windows. No wonder people shun it. Ugh! It gives me the creeps."
She flashed her lamp on the wooden sill, into which the iron rods were screwed. Then a wave of hope came into her heart. She saw rotting wood and rusting iron. She pushed on one bar. It gave slightly.
"I can force them out, I'm sure!" she exclaimed aloud. "Oh, for something to use!"
Her light shone around the room—on a pile of broken chairs. She ran and grasped the leg of one. It was heavy and solid.
Mollie placed it between two of the bars, and pried. She was strong, and it did not take all of her muscle to force the ends of the rods from the rotting wood of the sill. A child might have done it. In a moment she had a space sufficiently wide to enable her to get out.
And then she heard a sound out in the road. It was a carriage being driven rapidly.