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Page 23
"But what can we dig with, Madge? We haven't a knife."
"With our fingers and hairpins, if we must, Phil. Sh-sh, Nellie is
waking. I want her to sleep on till daylight."
Toward morning, however, the two girls' eyes closed wearily. In spite
of their resolve to keep awake, the gray dawn creeping in at the
windows found them fast asleep. It was Phil who first opened her eyes.
She touched Madge, who sat up with a start, then springing to her feet
exclaimed, "I'm so glad it's morning. Now for my great circus stunt."
"You can't possibly climb up there without hurting yourself, Madge.
You will surely fall," expostulated Eleanor. "Please, please don't try
it."
"Please don't discourage me, Nellie. It is the only way I know to get
out of this dreadful place. Phil, if you will try to brace me, I can
climb up and dig in the mud farther up."
Eleanor was feeling down in her pocket. Suddenly she gave a little cry
of surprise. "O, girls! I have something that may help. Here is a
little pair of scissors. You can dig with them, Madge."
The girls hailed the scissors with exclamations of joy. They were very
small embroidery scissors, but they were better than nothing.
Lillian, who was bent on a foraging expedition around the room, came
back a moment later with a few big, rusty nails and an old brick she
had picked up out of the tumbled down fireplace. "If you can hammer
these nails in the wall, Madge, you will have something to hold on to
as you climb."
For two hours Madge alternately dug and climbed. In each hole that she
made between the big logs she would set her foot, then hammer a nail
above her head and dig a new opening. At last she actually did climb
up the side of the wall, but her hands were scratched and bleeding, and
her hair and face were covered with mud. She had taken off her dress
skirt, too, as she could climb better in her petticoat.
The three girls below held their breath when she came to the final
stretch, and let go the last rickety nail to fling herself on to the
window sill.
"Eureka, girls!" she called down cheerfully, when she got her breath.
She was holding tightly to the window frame with both hands and
endeavoring to make her voice sound gay, though she was nearly worn out
with the fatigue of her dangerous climb. "Now I shall surely find a
way out for us. Please don't be frightened, Nellie, darling, if I have
to jump. It is not so bad." She gave a little inward shudder as she
looked through the tiny window frame. She could easily wrench the
broken bars away. That was not the trouble. But the window was so
small and the sill so narrow that Madge realized she could not get into
the proper position for a forward spring. However, she had made up her
mind; she might break her leg, or her arm, but she would open that
barred door if she died in doing it.
With determined hands she wrenched at one of the window bars. It gave
way. She seized hold of another, clinging to the sill with her other
hand, her feet in their insecure resting places.
"It's all right, chilluns," she smiled, as she swung herself up to the
window, "I'm going to jump."
Eleanor had closed her eyes. Phil and Lillian watched their friend,
sick with apprehension.
Madge gave one look down at the ground, at least fourteen feet below
her. Then she uttered a quick, sharp cry, and dropped back to her
resting place, her feet, almost by instinct, finding the open spaces in
the wall.
"Come down, Madge," called Phil sharply. "I was afraid you'd find the
distance too great. Don't try it again."
"No, no, it is not that," replied Madge, gazing through the window. "I
don't believe I shall have to jump. I am sure some one is near."
Sniffing the ground, near the side of the cabin, she had spied a dog
with a soft brown nose, a shaggy, red brown body and a tail standing
out tense and straight. It was a brown setter, and Madge knew he was
probably hunting for woodchucks. Surely the presence of the dog meant
a master somewhere near.
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