All her love for the new friends she had made at the asylum, among the doctors and attendants, seemed to fade away before this mighty yearning for the old home and love.
She feared to ask leave to go home lest she meet with a refusal. She supposed she had to stay at the asylum all her life, little dreaming that Doctor St. Clair had said she would soon be well enough to get her discharge.
“I will run away!” she decided, for she knew that some others of the patients had done the same thing since she came there. Some had been detected and brought back, but others had never returned.
“Gran’ther will never let them take me back, for I don’t think I am much crazy now,” she thought meekly, and before daylight she had stealthily made up a bundle of all she wanted to take with her—the books and verses from her unknown lover, that had contributed so largely to the restoration of her reason.
That morning she was missing. She had craftily effected her escape and gotten away on a train before her flight was discovered.
She reached the station just as the train was pulling out, and swung herself up desperately to the platform, reeling forward with the motion into the car, where she stumbled and fell.
The conductor assisted her up and into a seat, saying kindly:
“You should not have jumped on the train after it started. You might have fallen under the wheels and got killed.”
“I—I don’t care!” she sobbed desperately, in the nervous tension of her mind, and huddled down in her seat with great frightened eyes, like a startled fawn’s, dreading the moment when he should come back and demand her ticket.
She had none, nor any money to pay her fare. But she had decided on a way to manage that, though she feared he might be a little vexed at her asking for credit.