AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR
One more excitement was to quicken the pulses of the sophomores before
they settled down to that long last period of study between Easter
holidays and vacation.
The great, decisive basketball game with the juniors was now to take
place.
Grace, in conclave with her team, had gone over her instructions for the
hundredth time. They had discussed the strong points of the juniors and
what were their own weak ones.
Miriam Nesbit was sullen at these meetings; but in the practice game she
had played with her usual agility and skill, so the girls felt that she
was far too valuable a member of the team for them to mind her humors.
"Everybody is coming to-morrow to see us play," exclaimed Nora in the
locker-room, at the recess on Friday. "I don't believe the President's
visit would create more excitement, really," she added with a touch of
pride.
"Did you know," interposed Anne, "that the upperclass girls are calling
Grace and Julia Crosby 'David and Jonathan'?"
This was also an amusing piece of news at which the other girls laughed
joyously. In fact, there was no such feeling of depression before this
game as had affected the class when the first game was played. The
sophomores were cheerful and confident, awaiting the great battle with
courage in their hearts.
"Be here early, girls," cautioned Grace, as they parted after school that
day. "Perhaps we may get in a little practice before the people begin to
come."
Grace hurried through her own dinner as fast as she could, on the eventful
Saturday.
"I shall be glad when this final game is over, child," exclaimed Mrs.
Harlowe anxiously, "I really think you have had more athletics this winter
than has been good for you, what with your walking, and skating, dancing,
and now basketball."
"You'll come, won't you, mother?" cried Grace, seizing her hat and rushing
off without listening to Mrs. Harlowe's comments. "We are sure to win,"
she called as she waved her a good-bye kiss.
There was no one in the school building when Grace got back; that is, no
one except the old janitress, who was sweeping down the corridor, as
usual. The other girls had not been so expeditious and Grace found the
locker-room deserted.
With trembling eagerness she was slipping on her gymnasium suit and
rubber-soled shoes, when she suddenly remembered that she had left her tie
in the geometry classroom. She had bought a new one the day before, placed
it in the back of her geometry and walked out of the classroom, leaving
book, tie and all behind.
"I'll run up and get it right away, before the others come," she said to
herself.
Running nimbly up the broad stairway, she entered the deserted classroom
and hurried down the aisle to the end of the room where she usually sat
during recitation.
"Here it is," she murmured, taking it out of the book and tying it on.
Then, sitting down at the desk, she rested her chin in her hands. The
quiet of the place was soothing to her excited nerves, and since it was so
early she would rest there for a moment and think.
Grace might have dreamed away five minutes when she heard the distant
sound of voices below.
"Dear me," she exclaimed, laughing, "they'll scold me for not being on
time. I must hurry." So she hastened up the aisle to the door, which was
shut, although she had not remembered closing it after her.
She turned the knob, still smiling to herself, but the door stuck fast. It
was locked!
Grace was so stunned that for a moment she hardly comprehended what had
happened. She sat down and tried to collect her thoughts. Locked up in an
upper classroom on the afternoon of the great game!
She tried the one other door in the room. It also was locked. As for the
great windows, they were too large for her to push up without a pole.
"I'll try calling," she said. "They may hear me."
But her calls were fruitless, and beating and knocking on the door panels
seemed nothing but muffled sounds in the stillness.
"Oh! Oh!" she cried, rushing wildly from doors to windows and back again.
"What shall I do! What shall I do?"
In the meantime, it was growing late. The sophomores had assembled and
were confidently waiting for their captain.
"She's late for the first time," observed one of the girls, "but we'll
forgive her under the circumstances."
"Maybe she's in the gymnasium," suggested Anne, hurrying off to look for
her friend. In spite of herself she felt some misgivings and she meant to
lose no time in finding her beloved Grace.
The gallery was already half full of people. Anne moved about looking for
David, or some one who could help her. Just then Mrs. Harlowe appeared at
the door.
"Where is Grace, Mrs. Harlowe?" Anne demanded eagerly.
"I don't know, dear," answered Mrs. Harlowe "She ate her dinner and went
off in such a hurry that I hardly had time to speak to her. She told me
she wanted to get back to meet the girls."
Anne ran back to the locker-room.
"Grace left home hours ago," she cried. "I just felt that something had
happened."
Jessica opened Grace's locker.
"Grace must be in the building," she exclaimed "Here are her clothes."
The girls began to rush about wildly, looking for their captain in the
various rooms on the basement floor.
In a few moments a junior came to the door.
"The game will be called in ten minutes," she said. "Are you ready?"
"Yes," answered Nora calmly. "Be careful," she whispered. "Don't let them
know yet."
Anne ran again to the gymnasium.
"I'll get David this time," she said to herself. "Something will have to
be done if Grace is to be found in time."
David was sitting at one side of the gallery with Reddy and Hippy.
He looked very grave when Anne whispered the news to him. The place was
packed with impatient spectators. The junior team was already standing on
the floor talking in low voices as they waited impatiently for their
opponents to appear at the opposite end.
"She must be somewhere in the building," David ejaculated. "That is if she
has on her gymnasium suit. Have you looked upstairs yet?"
"No," replied Anne, "but we have been all through the downstairs' rooms."
As they ran up the steps they heard the shrill whistle that summoned the
players to their positions.
"Come on," cried Nora. "Miriam, you will have to take Grace's place, and
Eva Allen will substitute for you."
It still lacked a few moments of the toss up; the whistle having been
blown sooner to hurry the dilatory sophomores, who seemed determined to
linger, unaccountably, in the little side room.
But in that brief time a remarkable change had taken place in the demeanor
of Miriam Nesbit. Two brilliant spots burned on her cheeks, and her black
eyes flashed and glowed with happiness. The other girls were too downcast
and wretched to notice the transformation. They walked slowly into the
gymnasium and stood, ill at ease and downcast, at their end of the hall.
A wave of gossip had spread quickly over the audience, that sat waiting
with breathless interest for the appearance of the tardy sophomore.
What had happened? Had there been an accident?
No; it was all a mistake. There they were. And tremendous applause burst
forth, which died down almost as soon as it had begun. Where was Grace
Harlowe, the daring captain of the sophomore team, who had boasted that
her team would win the game if it took their last breath to do it?
There was a great craning of necks as the spectators looked in vain for
the missing Grace.
Hippy dropped his chin upon his breast disconsolately.
"I feel limp as a rag," he groaned. "Where, oh, where, is our gallant
captain? I'll never believe Grace deserted her post."
In the meantime poor Grace, locked in the upper classroom, had
concentrated all her thoughts and mental energies on a means of making her
escape in time. She sat down quietly, and, folding her hands, began to
consider the situation. In looking back long afterwards upon this tragic
hour, it seemed to her that it was the blackest moment of her life. The
walls were thick. The doors heavy and massive. The ceilings high. There
was no possibility of her cries being heard below. It is true she might
break a window, but what good would that do? She couldn't jump down three
stories into a stone court below. She went to the window and looked out.
"If I hung by this window sill," Grace said aloud, "I believe my feet
would just reach the cornice of the second-story window."
Seizing a heavy ruler from one of the desks, she ran to the window and
deliberately smashed out all the plate glass in the lower sash. Then,
hoisting herself onto the sill, she looked down from what seemed to be
rather a dizzy height. But nerve and determination will accomplish
anything, and Grace turned her eyes upward.
"I shall do it," she kept saying to herself over and over.
Clinging to the window sill, she gradually let herself down until her feet
touched the top of the cornice underneath. Then, steadying herself she
looked down. The cornice ledge was quite broad; broad enough to kneel on,
in fact. She was glad of this, for she had intended to kneel on it,
whatever its width.
With infinite caution, she gradually slipped along the ledge until she was
kneeling. Resting her elbows on the stone shelf, she lowered herself to
the next window sill. There she stood for a moment, looking in at the
empty classroom.
The door into the corridor stood open, and as she clung to the narrow
ledge, her face pressed against the window, she wondered how she was going
to get in.
"Unless I butt my head against this plate glass," she exclaimed, "I really
don't think I can make it. I can't kick in the glass, for fear of losing
my balance."
Suddenly she heard her name called.
"Grace! Grace! Where are you?"
First it was David's voice, and then Anne's, and then the two together,
echoing through the empty corridors and classrooms.
"I'm here," she answered. "Help! Help!"
Fortunately, they were passing the door at that instant and heard her
muffled cries.
"Here," she cried again, and they saw her at last, clinging desperately to
the window ledge.
"I don't dare open the window," exclaimed David, thinking aloud. "The
slightest jar might make her lose her balance. Grace," he cried, "I'll
have to break out the upper sash. Lower your head as much as possible and
close your eyes."
Another instant, and Grace was crouching in a shower of broken glass,
which fell harmlessly on her back and the top of her head. David knocked
off the jagged pieces at the lower end, and Grace climbed nimbly over the
sash.
"There's no time for explanations now," she cried. "I was mysteriously
locked in. Has the game been called?"
David looked hurriedly at his watch.
"You have just a minute and a half," he exclaimed, and the three ran madly
down the steps and into the gymnasium just as the whistle blew and the
girls took their places.
When Grace, covered with dust, a long, red scratch across one cheek,
rushed into the gymnasium, wild applause shook the walls of the building,
for the honor of the sophomore class was saved.