And Jeremy ran on! How he ran! He stumbled, nearly fell, recovered himself, felt no pain in his legs or side, only fear, fear, fear! As he ran he was saying:

“I must get back! Oh, I must get back! I must be home.... I must get back!” and did not know that he was saying anything at all.

Then suddenly in the middle of Grass Lane he recovered himself and stood. How still and quiet everything was! A few stars were breaking through the clouds. The rustling of the trees now was friendly and reassuring, and there was a soft undertone in the air as though a thousand streams were running beneath his feet.

He stood, panting, loving to feel the stroke of the little wind against his hot cheek. What was that that had frightened him? Whom could it have been?

But gradually the centre of interest was shifting. The past was the past. He had done what he had said he would do. Now for the future. He shivered as it came to him in its full force, then squared his shoulders and marched on. He would meet whatever it might be, and anyway he was going to school the day after to-morrow....

Time moved quickly then. He was soon passing the High School, the world completely dead now on every side of him; then there was his old friend the monument; then the row of houses in which his own home stood. He closed the garden gate very carefully behind him, stole up the path, found the ledge stone below the pantry window, then felt for the ledge.

His heart ceased to beat: the catch was fastened. Someone, then, had discovered his absence! The house seemed to be dark and silent enough, but they were lying in wait for him inside!

Well, he was going on with it now. All that he wanted was the quiet and comfort of his room and to be warm and cosy again in bed. He was suddenly quite horribly tired. He pushed with his fingers between the ledges and found then that the catch was not securely fastened after all. The upper part of the window suddenly jerked upwards, moving awkwardly and with a creaking noise that he had not known before. He pulled himself on to the window-ledge, then very carefully let himself down on the other side. The first thing that he knew was that his feet touched a chair, and there had been no chair there before; then, that his fingers were rubbing against the corner of a table!

He was not in their own pantry, he was not in their own house! He had climbed in through the wrong window! And even as he realized this and moved in an agony of alarm back to climb out of the window again, his arm brushed the table again, he pushed something, and with the noise of the Niagara Falls a thousand times emphasized echoing in his ears, the china of all the pantries of heaven fell clattering to the ground.