Garde went out and walked slowly toward Grandther Donner’s. She had an hour to wear away, for she would not dare to be searching about the jail before the jailer at least retired to his couch.
The time was one of dread and chills. Her teeth chattered, not from any suggestion of cold in the night air, but from the nervous strain of this time of suspense. She had never been so frightened of any action in her life, as she was when at length she crept back to the prison, through the dark, deserted streets, and began to search about to find the tiny window of which Mrs. Weaver had spoken.
There were two dark sides to the building. One was constantly in the shadow of a tavern, which almost abutted against it, while the other was on the northern face of the building, in a narrow street. Garde went first to the northern exposure, for in order to get at the other shaded side, she would have been obliged to climb a low, brick wall.
Scarcely had she more than come to her destination, and begun her feverish search, before she heard the sound of distant footsteps, which rapidly approached. She crouched in a black little niche, in fear, with a violent commotion in her breast which threatened to drop her down in a swoon. Almost stepping on her toes, some pedestrian passed, leaving the girl so horribly weak that she shut her eyes and leaned against the wall, laboring to get her breath.
Nerved again by the things Mrs. Weaver had told her, she came out of her hiding-place, after several minutes, and feeling the cold rock-wall she passed eagerly along, shaking with her chill and fearing to breathe too loud, in the silence.
She was doomed here to bitter disappointment. The window was not to be found. She searched again and again, unwilling to give it up, but it was not there. She realized that she must climb the brick barrier, and try on the other side of the building.
She found the wall not difficult to surmount, but when she jumped down, on the further side, she struck on a heap of broken crockery, thrown out from the tavern.
She crouched down instantly, for the noise she had made attracted the notice of some one in the public house. A door at the rear of the hostelry was thrown open and a man looked out. He appeared to be looking straight at her and listening.
“Must have been a cat,” he said, to somebody back in the house, and he disappeared and closed the door.
Garde could not have been any more wrought upon than the whole affair had made her already. She could not become calm. She could merely wait for moments of partial relief from overwhelming emotions.