She paused a few moments, making sure, quite sure, that every one in the long dormitory was asleep. As she stood she saw some hundred matches lying by a lamp, of which the light was put out, on a little table near. A cruel joy danced into her eyes: she stretched out her hand and took the matches and slipped them in the bosom of her frock. Then, with the courage of desperation, she climbed to the window-seat, put half her body out of it, and, clinging to the iron pipe with both hands, let herself slide down, down, down, to where she knew not. All was dark beneath her.
But if she slid into the sea that would be better, she said to herself, than to live on imprisoned.
As it happened, the window was twenty feet and more from the earth, but the turf was beneath, and the rain-pipe was so made that she could easily clasp it with feet and hands and glide down it, only grazing all the skin off her palms, and bruising her knees and her chest. No one heard her, there was no alarm given; she reached the ground in safety as a village clock tolled ten.
She dropped all in a heap, and lay still, half stunned, for some moments; soon she got her breath and her wits again, and rose up on her feet and looked about her. She knew all the country-side well, having been here ever since the apple-orchards had been in blossom, and, when they had not been performing, having scampered hither and thither with Bindo, begging honey or eggs at the cottages, or coaxing the boatmen to let them drift down the river.
The moon was now very bright, and she saw that she stood near the Dart water, and she could discover here a steeple, there a gable, yonder a windmill, and so forth, by which she could tell where she was. She had been brought in a covered van to the reformatory, and had only known that it was near Dartmouth.
SHE ONLY RAN ON, STUMBLING OFTEN, AND FEELING FOR THE MATCHES IN THE BOSOM OF HER UGLY GRAY COTTON FROCK
The grass on which she stood grew under a low wall, and beyond the wall was a towing-path, and beyond that the river. The towing-path she knew well; she and Bindo had often ridden on the backs of the towing-horses or got a seat in the big barges by just singing their little songs and twanging their tambourines.
The towing-path served her purpose well. She looked back at the big pile behind her, a white, square, grim-looking place; Bindo was sleeping under its roof; then she hardened her heart, vaulted over the river-wall, and began to run down the river-path.
She did not hesitate, for she had a very wicked resolve in her soul, and her goal was four miles away, she knew, as a water-mill on the other bank among willows was an old friend of hers, and told her her whereabouts. Not a sound came from the house behind her; not a creature had awakened, or the alarm-bell would have been clanging and lights appearing at every window. She was quite safe thus far, and she began to run along the dewy grassy path where the glowworms were twinkling at every step under the ferns and the dock leaves.