CHAPTER XVII--EVE TAKES A RISK

"Now, Nell!" declared Mother Wit, emphatically, "there isn't the least use in your crying. Tears will not get us down from this tower."

"You--you can be just as--as brave as you want to be," sobbed Nellie Agnew. "I--want--to--go--home!"

"For goodness-gracious sake! Who doesn't?" snapped Bobby. "But, just as Laura says, weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth won't help us the tiniest bit!"

"What will help us, I'd like to know?" grumbled Jess Morse.

"Put on your thinking cap, Mother Wit," cried Bobby.

"Dear me!" said Eve, drawing in her head. "It _is_ a long way from the ground--and that's a fact."

"It's a good, long jump," chuckled Bobby.

"Let's write calls for help on pieces of paper and drop them down," suggested Laura.

"With the wind blowing the way it is, the papers would fly up, instead of down," scoffed her chum.

"We'll weight 'em," said Laura.

"It would be like throwing over a bottle into the sea, telling how we are cast away on a desert island," said Bobby. "And this is worse than any desert island I ever heard about. Say, girls! how do you suppose our boots will taste?"

"What nonsense!" said Nellie, wiping her eyes. "We sha'n't be hungry enough to begin on our shoes for a long time yet. But how scared our folks will be when we don't come home to supper."

"And the sun's going down," mourned Jess.

"Why, girls," said Laura, thoughtfully, "it will be after dark before our folks begin to miss us much. And then they won't see us up here, that's sure!"

"I'm going to climb out of one of these windows and wave something," cried her chum. "Surely somebody will see me."

"And think you're just playing up here," commented Nellie, who was fast losing all hope.

"My goodness!" exclaimed Jess. "They must think, then, that I have selected a crazy place to play in," and she removed her jacket and began to crawl out through one of the windows of the tower.

"Be careful, dear!" warned Laura.

"Yes, do look out where you step," said Bobby, grabbing Jess's skirt with a firm grip. "It's a long way down to the street."

"If we only had some means of making a light up here," said Laura, in a worried tone. "Then, after dark, people _would_ be attracted by our plight."

"I haven't a match--have you?" demanded Bobby.

"Of course not. Girls never do carry useful things in their pockets. Unless _you_ do, Bobby."

"I've got about everything in my pocket but a match," declared the smaller girl.

"I have a good mind to drop this old coat," called Jess, from outside.

"And it would catch on something half-way down the tower, perhaps, and then you'd never see it again," Bobby said.

"Well, what _shall_ we do?" demanded Jess, wriggling back into the tower room and dragging her jacket after her. "Nobody will even look up. I expect we'd look like pigeons up here to them."

"Oh, dear!" gasped Bobby. "I do wish some pigeons _would_ fly up here. They do sometimes, you know."

"What good would they do us?" demanded Nellie.

"Couldn't we kill and eat them?" replied Bobby. "Nothing like having bright ideas when you are cast away on a desert tower."

"Your ideas may be bright enough," laughed Laura; "but I wouldn't care to eat pigeons raw."

"You may be glad to before we get down from here," returned Bobby, gloomily.

"Now that's ridiculous," said Mother Wit, briskly. "Don't _you_ begin to lose heart, Miss Hargrew."

"I've as good a right as the next one," growled Bobby.

"Speaking of pigeons," observed Jess, ruminatively, "Chet's carriers sometimes come up here when he lets them out. I've seen them."

"My goodness me!" ejaculated Mother Wit. "Wouldn't that be fine?"

"Wouldn't what be fine?" queried Nellie, wiping her eyes.

"If some of Chet's carriers would just fly up here. They know me. I've handled them lots of times. And we might send a note back telling Chet where we are."

"And he'd find it tied under the pigeon's wing in about a week," scoffed Bobby.

"What _are_ we going to do, girls?" demanded Nellie. "And it's chilly up here, too."

Jess pulled on her jacket again. "We can go down on the stairway, where it is warmer," she said.

"It is very annoying," wailed the doctor's daughter, "to have you girls take the matter so calmly. Why, the whole town will be searching for us by midnight."

"I hope so!" ejaculated Bobby.

"Let's all shout together. Somebody ought to hear us," Eve said.

"That is impossible," objected Jess. "Sound doesn't travel downward--much. Not when there is a sharp wind blowing, as it is now. It's a good deal farther to the ground than it appears."

"That's like what our old girl, Nora, said about the distance to Liverpool. When she came to us, she came direct from the immigrant ship," laughed Bobby. "And she was telling about the weary way across the 'say.' 'How far is it, Nora?' one of the children asked her.

"'It's fower thousan' mile,' declared Nora, 'to Liverpool.'

"But the kiddies wouldn't have that. They looked it up in the geography, and told her she was wrong--it was only three thousand.

"'Sure, that's flatways,' says Nora. 'But I been over it, an' wid the ups an' the downs, sure I _know_ 'tis another thousand!"

"Dear me, Bobby," complained Nellie. "I believe you'd joke if you were going to be hanged!"

"Do you think so?" asked Bobby, seriously. "Much obliged. That's a good reputation to have, whether I deserve it or not."

"Good for you, Bobs!" laughed Jess. "You keep still, old croaker!" she added, shaking Nellie Agnew. "Let's look on the cheerful side of it. Every cloud has a silver lining."

"If you can see any silver lining to _this_ cloud, I'd like you to show it to me, Miss!" exclaimed Nellie, with some warmth.

Eve was going from window to window, thrusting her head and shoulders out of each, and examining the sides of the tower carefully. Laura asked what she was doing.

"Why, dear, on this side is the roof of the school building," said Eve, thoughtfully. "It isn't so far below us."

"It's much too far for us to jump," returned Mother Wit.

"True," said Eve, smiling. "But see here."

"I can't climb out of the same window you are at," complained Laura.

"Go to the next one, then, and I'll point it out to you."

Laura did so. Sitting sideways on the sills the girls could thrust the upper part of their bodies out and obtain an unobstructed view of this entire wall of the tower.

"See that wire?" exclaimed Eve, eagerly.

Just below the level of the windows which pierced the upper story of the tower a heavy stay-wire was fastened to a staple set in the masonry. At some time the school building had been dressed with flags and bunting and this heavy wire had never been removed. It was fastened at the other end to a ring in the roof of the main building.

"I see it, Evangeline," admitted Mother Wit, with something like fear in her voice. "You wouldn't do it!"

"I believe I can," declared the country girl.

"Why--why--it would take a trapeze performer!"

"Well, Mrs. Case has had us working on the ladders and the parallel bars until we ought to be pretty fair on a trapeze," said Eve, laughing a little.

"Oh, Eve! I wouldn't try it," cried Laura.

"You see," said the other, steadily, "if I can get out of the window here, and two of you can steady me, I can drop down upon that wire----"

"But suppose you should fall to the roof!"

"I won't fall. That is not what I am aiming to do, at least."

"It is too reckless a thing to try," cried Laura.

"Now, wait. Nobody will see us up here. If we have to stay all night some of the girls will be sick. You know that. Now, if I can once get to that wire, I know I can work my way down it to the roof."

"You'll slide--and cut your hands all to pieces."

"No, I won't. I've a pair of thick gloves in my pocket," declared Eve. "I am going to try it, Mother Wit."

"Oh, I don't believe you had better!"

Eve slid back into the tower-room, Laura following her. The bigger girl slipped out of her coat and took off her hat immediately.

"Hullo!" said Bobby. "Don't you want your slippers, too? You're in for the night, are you?"

But Eve was finding her gloves and these she drew on. Even Nellie began to get interested then.

"What _are_ you going to do now?" she cried.

Laura explained quickly. Nellie began to cry again, and even Bobby looked troubled.

"It isn't worth the risk, is it?" she asked. "Somebody will find us some time."

"That's just it," Eve returned. "We don't know when that _some time_ will be. I can slide down that wire, get in by the roof opening, and unlock this door that shuts us up here. Of course, the key will be in the lock. If it isn't, and there is nobody in the building, I can telephone for help."

"Say, that's great!" spoke Jess. "If you can only do it safely, Eve."

"Oh, I'll do it," declared the country girl, confidently, and the next moment she began climbing out through the window nearest to the wire.

Laura and Jess held her around the waist; then, as she slid out, farther and farther, they clung to her shoulders. But Eve had to leave her arms free and suddenly she panted:

"Let me go! I've got to drop and grab the wire. That's the only way."

Laura and her chum looked at each other in doubt and fear. It did seem as though, if they let go of the girl, she must fall to the foot of the tower!