The little hole in the paper was then repaired by pasting another piece of paper over it, after which Andy was left alone, but with a threat from Mother Peter that if he touched the window again she would beat the life out of him. She had no more trouble with him that day. Every half hour or so she would come up stairs noiselessly, and listen at the door, or break in upon the child suddenly and without warning. But she did not find him again at the window. The restlessness at first exhibited had died out, and he sat or lay upon the floor in a kind of dull, despairing stupor. So that day passed.
On the second day of Andy's imprisonment he distinctly heard the old woman go out at the street door and lock it after her. He listened for a long time, but could hear no sound in the house. A feeling of relief and a sense of safety came over him. He had not been so long in his prison alone without the minutest examination of every part, and it had not escaped his notice that the panes of glass in the upper sash of the window were not covered with paper, as were those below. But for the fear of one of Mother Peter's noiseless pouncings in upon him, he would long since have climbed upon the sill and taken a look through the upper sash. He waited now for full half an hour to be sure that his jailer had left the house, and then, climbing to the window-sill with the agility of a squirrel, held on to the edge of the lower sash and looked out through the clear glass above. Dreary and unsightly as was all that lay under his gaze, it was beautiful in the eyes of the child. His little heart swelled and glowed; he longed, as a prisoner, for freedom. As he stood there he saw that a nail held down the lower sash, which he had so often tried, but in vain, to lift. Putting his finger on this nail, he felt it move. It had been placed loosely in a gimlet-hole, and could be drawn out easily. For a little while he stood there, taking out and putting in the nail. While doing this he thought he heard a sound below, and instantly dropped noiselessly from the window. He had scarcely done so when the door of his room opened and Mother Peter came in. She looked at him sharply, and then retired without speaking.
All the next day Andy listened after Mother Peter, waiting to hear her go out. But she did not leave the house until after he was asleep in the evening.
On the next day, after waiting until almost noon, the child's impatience of confinement grew so strong that he could no longer defer his meditated escape from the window, for ever since he had looked over the sash and discovered how it was fastened down, his mind had been running on this thing. He had noticed that Mother Peter's visits to his room were made after about equal intervals of time, and that after she gave him his dinner she did not come up stairs again for at least an hour. This had been brought, and he was again alone.
For nearly five minutes after the woman went out, he sat by the untasted food, his head bent toward the door, listening. Then he got up quietly, climbed upon the window-sill and pulled the nail out. Dropping back upon the floor noiselessly, he pushed his hands upward against the sash, and it rose easily. Like an animal held in unwilling confinement, he did not stop to think of any danger that might lie in the way of escape when opportunity for escape offered. The fear behind was worse than any imagined fear that could lie beyond. Pushing up the sash, Andy, without looking down from the window, threw himself across the sill and dropped his body over, supporting himself with his hands on the snow-encrusted ledge for a moment, and then letting himself fall to the ground, a distance of nearly ten feet. He felt his breath go as he swept through the air, and lost his senses for an instant or two.
Stunned by the fall, he did not rise for several minutes. Then he got up with a slow, heavy motion and looked about him anxiously. He was in a yard from which there was no egress except by way of the house. It was bitter cold, and he had on nothing but the clothing worn in the room from which he had just escaped. His head was bare.
The dread of being found here by Mother Peter soon lifted him above physical impediment or suffering. Through a hole in the fence he saw an alley-way; and by the aid of an old barrel that stood in the yard, he climbed to the top of the fence and let himself down on the other side, falling a few feet. A sharp pain was felt in one of his ankles as his feet touched the ground. He had sprained it in his leap from the window, and now felt the first pangs attendant on the injury.
Limping along, he followed the narrow alley-way, and in a little while came out upon a street some distance from the one in which Mother Peter lived. There were very few people abroad, and no one noticed or spoke to him as he went creeping along, every step sending a pain from the hurt ankle to his heart. Faint with suffering and chilled to numbness, Andy stumbled and fell as he tried, in crossing a street, to escape from a sleigh that turned a corner suddenly. It was too late for the driver to rein up his horse. One foot struck the child, throwing him out of the track of the sleigh. He was insensible when taken up, bleeding and apparently dead. A few people came out of the small houses in the neighborhood, attracted by the accident, but no one knew the child or offered to take him in.
There were two ladies in the sleigh, and both were greatly pained and troubled. After a hurried consultation, one of them reached out her hands for the child, and as she received and covered him with the buffalo-robe said something to the driver, who turned his horse's head and drove off at a rapid speed.