"I'll break a window and talk to you," she wrote. "I'm locked in
when he's out. My window is on the north side. Don't lose any time.
There's something terrible going to happen."
But several days went by and the postman did not appear. Herman
had put a padlock on the outside of her bedroom door, and her hope
of finding a second key to fit the door-lock died then.
It had become a silent, bitter contest between the two of them, with
two advantages in favor of the girl. She was more intelligent than
Herman, and she knew the thing he was planning to do. She made a
careful survey of her room, and she saw that with a screw-driver
she could unfasten the hinge of her bedroom door. Herman, however,
always kept his tools locked up. She managed, apparently by
accident, to break the point off a knife, and when she went up to
her room one afternoon to be locked in while Herman went to Gus's
saloon, she carried the knife in her stocking.
It was a sorry tool, however. Driven by her shaking hand, there
was a time when she almost despaired.
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