“But I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth and cut it off with great slashes, close to my head.  Then I stood with all that mass of hair shining in my hand and a queer, light feeling in my head.

“But I felt that I was free.  I clamped on my cousin’s hat—­how queer it felt with all that hair cut off!  I bundled the hair into my pocket, because they mustn’t dream what I had done.  Then someone beat on the door.

“‘Coming!’ I called to them.

“I ran to the window.  The house was built on a slope, and it was not a very long drop to the ground, I suppose.  But to me it seemed neck-breaking, that distance.  It was dark, and I climbed out and hung by my hands, but I couldn’t find courage to let go.  Then I tried to climb back, but there wasn’t any strength in my arms.

“I cried out for help, but the singing downstairs must have muffled the sound.  My fingers grew numb—­they slipped on the sill—­and then I fell.

“The fall stunned me, I guess, for a moment.  When I opened my eyes, I saw the stars and knew that I was free.  I started up then and struck straight across country.  At first I didn’t care where I went, so long as it was away, but when I got over the first hill I made up a plan.  That was to go for the railroad and take a train.  I did it.

“There was a long walk ahead of me before I reached the station, and with my cousin’s big boots wobbling on my feet I was very tired when I reached it.  There were some freight cars on the siding, and there was hay on the floor of one of them.  I crawled into the open door and went to sleep.

“After a while I woke up with a great jarring and jolting and noise.  I found the car pitch dark.  The door was closed, and pretty soon, by the roar of the wheels under me and the swing of the floor of the car, I knew that an engine had picked up the empty cars.

“It was a terrible time for me.  I had heard stories of tramps locked into cars and starving there before the door was opened.  Before the morning shone through the cracks of the boards, I went through all the pain of a death from thirst.  But before noon the train stopped, and the car was dropped at a siding.  I climbed out when they opened the door.

“The man who saw me only laughed.  I suppose he could have arrested me.

“‘All right, kid, but you’re hitting the road early in life, eh!’

“Those were the first words that were spoken to me as a man.

“I didn’t know where I should go, but the train had taken me south, and that made me remember a town where my father had lived for a long time—­Sour Creek.  I started to get to this place.

“The hardest thing I had to do was the very first thing, and that was to take my ragged head of hair into a barber shop and get it trimmed.  I was sure that the barber would know I was a girl, but he didn’t suspect.

“‘Been a long time in the wilds, youngster, eh?’ was all he said.