She struggled to her feet, but her knees wavered so that she sat down
again quite suddenly.

“What’s the matter with you all?” she asked, then as the memory of what
had happened came back to her in a flood she shuddered and instinctively
she looked down at her hands to see if they still held that piece of
linen with the stains upon it.

“Oh, I remember,” she murmured, as though talking to herself. The girls
were watching her anxiously. “I threw it away.”

“What, honey?” asked Laura gently.

“The blood-stained handkerchief!”

CHAPTER XV—A DISCOVERY

It took the other girls some time to get the whole story from Billie,
but when she had stammered it out to them they broke into a babel of
excited exclamations that threatened to bring one of the teachers to
their hiding place.

It was Billie herself who thought of this danger and who finally managed
to calm them down a little.

“Not so loud,” she entreated, still feeling faint and shaky from her
experience. “You know what will happen if somebody finds us here.”

“But Billie,” protested Laura, though her voice sank to a more cautious
whisper, “we’ve got to do something about it, you know. There may have
been a murder or something up there.”

“Perhaps we’d better all go back with Billie and try to get into that
little room at the head of the ladder,” suggested one of the girls, but
the mere idea made Billie shudder.

“You can go,” she said decidedly. “But I’m through for to-night.”

“Oh, well, if you won’t go,” said the girl dejectedly, “it’s all off, of
course. We need a guide——”

“I don’t see why,” protested Billie. “Nobody gave me a guide.”

“No. And it was a shame to send you away up there all alone,” said Vi,
putting a protecting arm about her. “It’s a wonder you didn’t die of
fright.”

“I suppose,” said Ann Fleming, thoughtfully, “we might tell one of the
teachers about it—or Miss Walters, perhaps—and she could go with us up
to the tower——”

“Say,” interrupted Rose Belser with her most pronounced drawl, as she
looked contemptuously upon the freshman who had proposed so foolish a
thing, “it’s easy to see you haven’t been at Three Towers long, Ann. Now
just what do you suppose would happen if we told Miss Walters that we
were up after hours initiating and doing stunts?”

“I—I didn’t think of that,” stammered Ann, completely crushed.

“I thought you didn’t,” answered Rose dryly.

For some time afterward the girls discussed in awed whispers the
startling thing that had happened, and then somebody suddenly conceived
the idea that it would not be a bad thing to go to bed.

Billie was looking very white and shaky after her ordeal. Then, too, it
was getting late, and there was always the chance of discovery by some
“over-curious teacher.”

“But I’ll never, never, sleep a wink,” said Vi, as they filed ghost-like
out of the gymnasium. “I know I’ll be dreaming of blood-stained
handkerchiefs all night long.”

“And I don’t think it’s fair,” pouted Connie, “for Billie to have all
the adventures. First she gets lost with Teddy and discovers a perfectly
good cave, and then she unearths a thrilling mystery, like this. Too
much good luck for one person.”

“Good luck!” repeated Billie ruefully. “Well, if you call _that_ good
luck, I certainly would hate to be the one to find out what bad luck
is.”

“Hush,” ordered Rose, once more assuming the deep voice of the head of
the ghosts. “Some one may hear you and we’ll all be shot at sunrise.”

“I never get up that early,” giggled Laura.

Many and varied were the plans the girls made for a storming of tower
number three in the hope of solving the mystery of that little locked
door and the blood-stained handkerchief. However, there seemed to be so
many obstacles in the way of carrying out these plans that they
reluctantly decided to give up the idea, at least for the time being.

“And, anyway,” Laura had said in one of their discussions, “the blood
stains on that handkerchief might not have meant anything mysterious at
all. Maybe somebody had a nose-bleed.”

“How romantic!” drawled Rose while the other girls giggled at the idea.

Their studies and the race for prizes absorbed the classmates in the
days that followed and gradually the mystery, if indeed it was a
mystery, faded from their minds.

Billie worked hard, and thought she was getting along finely. She
commenced to grow a trifle pale, and at this Vi and Laura shook their
heads.

“Don’t overdo it, Billie,” said Vi.

“No kind of prize is worth one’s health,” added Laura.

“Don’t worry about me,” declared Billie, with a smile. “I know what you
want to do—make me let up so you can pass me.”

“Oh, you know better than that!” cried Laura.

“Of course she does,” came from Vi. “Now remember, don’t study so hard
that you get sick.”

“No danger,” retorted Billie airily.

It was nearly a week later when Billie suddenly realized that there was
another thing they had almost forgotten, and that was Polly Haddon and
her unhappy little family.

“And poor little Peter!” said Vi penitently, when Billie spoke to her
about it. “He must be either better or dead by this time.”

“Suppose we go over to-morrow”—the next day being Saturday—Laura
suggested. “We can walk to town first. Or maybe we can get Tim Budd to
drive us over in the wagon. We can get some good canned stuff, soups and
things, and take them over to the Haddons when we go.”

The next day the girls sought out Tim Budd, who was the gardener at the
Hall and who was also, alas! the father of poor, simple Nick Budd with
whom Teddy and Billie had had so queer an experience. After a great deal
of coaxing, they succeeded in getting the gardener to take them to town
in the carryall. From this it may be seen that Tim acted as chauffeur
also upon occasion.

They were in hilarious spirits all the way to the town and back again,
and it was not until they had almost reached Three Towers that Vi made a
suggestion that somehow clouded their faces.

“Suppose she won’t accept these things?” she said, giving the
well-stocked basket at her feet a little shove. “You said yourself she
was awfully proud, Billie.”

Billie looked sober for a moment, but Laura, as ever, found something to
laugh at.

“Why worry about that?” said the incorrigible one, gaily. “If she
doesn’t want ’em we’ll have a midnight feast and use them ourselves.”

Tim Budd let them out at the Hall and they walked the rest of the way to
the little cottage. Mrs. Haddon herself opened the door, but she looked
so pale and wan that they hardly recognized her.

The woman welcomed the girls absently, as if her mind were a great way
off, but when her eyes fell on the basket a resigned little smile played
about her lips.

“More charity,” she muttered, as though to herself. “Well, I will take
it because I must. But I’ll pay it back.” She turned proudly upon the
girls and her fine eyes flashed. “No one can say of Polly Haddon that
she left her debts unpaid.”

Taken aback by this unexpected declaration, the girls said nothing, but
shifted their feet uneasily, wishing fervently that Polly Haddon would
turn the fire of her black eyes on something else.

But almost instantly the woman’s mood became softer, and, seeing the
girls’ embarrassment, she tried to put them at their ease.

“Thank you so much,” she said. “Won’t you sit down? The basket is heavy
and you have come a long way.”

The girls, not knowing what else to do, sat down on the three spindly
chairs awkwardly enough, and Laura and Vi sent distress signals
Billie-wards. For Billie was always their spokesman.

So Billie, who had been as much abashed as any of them at their rather
queer reception, found her tongue with difficulty and asked Mrs. Haddon
how Peter was.

“He is dreadfully low,” Mrs. Haddon answered softly. Her head drooped
wearily and her hands were crossed listlessly in front of her. “The
doctor says it is not even an even chance whether he lives or dies.”

The girls murmured their very real sympathy, and Billie started to ask
another question when the door at the other end of the room opened and
the two little girls, Mary and Isabel, entered.

At sight of the visitors they looked startled and started to retreat,
but their mother called to them.

“Come here,” she said, and the children sidled slowly up to her where
they stood, their large eyes fixed shyly on the girls. “Don’t you know
these young ladies?” asked the mother, putting an arm about each of the
poor little thin things caressingly and drawing them up close to her.
“They are the ones who brought you home that day that you were naughty
and ran away, and they have been very kind to us since.”

There was a slight sound from the room beyond where poor little Peter
lay so desperately ill, and Mrs. Haddon rose suddenly, leaving the two
little girls and the three big girls together.

It would have been hard to tell at first who was the most embarrassed.
But as no children had ever known to resist Billie for very long, the
two little Haddons were soon won over and chatted to the three big girls
in careless, innocent child fashion.

“We get good things to eat now,” said Isabel, confidentially, speaking
of the thing that loomed biggest and most important in her starved
little life. “A man comes almost every night with a basket—just like
this,” and she eyed the basket which the girls had brought with hungry
eyes.

“Yes, an’ he’s a funny little man, too,” added Mary, her big eyes round
with eagerness. “He has whiskers and he stoops—dreadful.”

A glance of understanding passed between the chums.

“That description——” Vi began.

“Suits Tim Budd——” added Laura.

“To a T,” finished Billie.

CHAPTER XVI—CHRISTMAS CHEER

So Miss Walters was seeing to it that Polly Haddon received food
regularly—“almost every night!” Of course Miss Walters had promised to
look out for the family, but the girls had hardly expected her to be so
generous.

And while they were still turning the revelation over wonderingly in
their minds, Polly Haddon called to them softly from the other room.

It was a bare little room into which they stepped—barer and poorer than
even they had imagined. And in the midst of a little iron bed lay Peter,
so pathetically white and emaciated that it tore their hearts to look at
him.

“Is he very bad?” asked Billie, turning to weary-eyed Polly Haddon.

“The doctor says he almost surely will die,” answered the latter in a
toneless voice. “He has just one chance out of a hundred.”

And as though speaking the doctor’s name had brought him there, the big
man himself entered at that moment and the girls took that opportunity
to say good-bye.

“Poor little Peter,” sighed Billie, as they walked slowly homeward. “I
suppose if he dies poor Mrs. Haddon will nearly die too.”

“I wish there was something we could do,” said Vi, frowning.

“I don’t know what more we could do than we have done,” said Laura
gloomily.

“Except,” said Billie thoughtfully, her eyes fixed on the far horizon,
“find that invention of hers. I imagine that would make her so happy
that she might even persuade poor little Peter to live.”

“Good gracious!” cried Laura, throwing up her hands in a despairing
gesture. “She’s raving again, girls, she’s raving again!”

Billie laughed, but her eyes were still very thoughtful.

But the holiday season was upon them and it was impossible for the girls
to be gloomy or unhappy for very long. They wished with all their hearts
that Polly Haddon and her pathetic little brood might be made happy and
prosperous once more, but even while they were wishing they could not
shake off the exultant thought that Christmas was coming. And Christmas
to most of them meant home and family and turkeys and cranberry sauce
and presents—oh, oodles of presents!

“No holiday quite as good as good old Christmas,” observed Laura, gaily,
as she danced around with a package she had just been doing up in a red
ribbon.

“I’m with you on that,” declared Billie. “Oh, do you know, sometimes I
can hardly wait until Christmas comes!”

“But you’ll wait just the same,” drawled Vi. “We all will.”

“It’s waiting that makes it worth while,” declared Billie. “It’s like
the small boy and the circus. Tell him in the morning that you will take
him in the afternoon and it doesn’t amount to much. But tell him a month
ahead and he’ll get a whole month’s fun out of it before it comes off.”

“All right, Billie, I’ll tell you a secret,” whispered Vi, with a
twinkle in her eyes. “About a year from now we’ll have another
Christmas. Now is your time to start thinking about it.” And then there
were giggles all around.

“I’ll wait for one Christmas to be over before I think of the next,”
declared Billie.

Billie had asked Connie Danvers to come home with her for over the
holidays, but Connie, after, writing eagerly home for permission, had
had to refuse the invitation. Mrs. Danvers thanked Mrs. Bradley and
Billie, but there was to be a big reunion of the Danvers family that
Christmas and they had all counted on having Connie with them. If Billie
could come home with Connie for Christmas—but here Billie shook her head
decidedly, though the invitation was an enticing one. She knew that her
mother would certainly want her at home for the most wonderful day in
all the year.

And so when the time came, the classmates went their several ways after
many fond embraces had been exchanged—to say nothing of various
mysterious little green- and red-ribboned parcels.

The Christmas spirit is a wonderful thing, intangible, yet so real that
even the most hardened old reprobate will thrill to the magic of it. And
as these girls were neither hardened nor reprobates, they were kept in a
continual state of excitement and joyful anticipation for two whole
weeks before the great day arrived.

Ever since the opening of Three Towers Hall in the fall, the girls had
used their spare moments to sew on little mysterious things which were
immediately hidden upon the arrival of any of their fellow students, and
now these same pieces of needlework began to blossom forth in gay
be-ribboned boxes that passed between the girls in a continual stream.

Sometimes one would be found between the sheets of a girl’s bed when she
jumped in at night and the touch of it would elicit a muffled shriek, to
be followed by hysterical giggles when the gift was pulled from its
hiding place and disclosed in all its glory to be admired and exclaimed
over by the girls who had not been lucky enough to bark their shins on
gifts of their own.

And sometimes another be-ribboned parcel would find its way into the
stocking of a lucky maiden while she slept or be discovered in an
out-of-the-way corner of her desk, nearly covered by books and papers.

And as the time drew still nearer, even interest in their studies
flagged, and the teachers, wisely forbearing to force them, entered into
the fun themselves, knowing that one could not study much while the
Christmas cheer was in the air.

The girls had fondly hoped that Teddy and Chet and Ferd would be able to
make the return trip with them, but as Boxton Academy did not close for
the holidays until the day after the official closing of Three Towers,
the girls were forced to give up the idea.

“Oh, well,” Billie said resignedly, “as long as they get there for
Christmas it will be time enough.”

The day of release came at last and found the three North Bend girls
doing a two-step of impatience on the station platform, waiting for the
train, which was already half an hour late.

“Goodness, but your bag looks stuffed, Billie,” remarked Laura, stopping
before Billie’s big suitcase whose bulging sides did look as though they
might burst at any moment and disgorge the contents.

“It has twenty presents in it,” confided Billie, surveying her fat
property with a loving eye. “I only hope it holds out till we get home,
that’s all!”

Then the train puffed around the bend and slowed up to the station. And
several hours later three very much flushed, very much excited, and very
pretty young girls popped off the train at North Bend and straight into
the arms of their doting families.

“Merry Christmas!” they cried to every one in general and no one in
particular. “Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! Oh,
isn’t it glorious to be at home!”

The boys arrived the next day, and they all had a great reunion at
Billie’s home, where they exchanged presents and talked in hushed tones
of what they hoped that Santa Claus would bring them—to-morrow! For this
was Christmas Eve!

But the party broke up soon, and they all went to bed early so that they
could get up at six o’clock the next morning—at the very latest.

Oh, the fun of anticipating and the joy of Christmas Day. First of all,
the bulging stocking with its lumps of coal and pieces of carefully
wrapped sugar with really pretty things stuck in between.

Then the mad rush for the Christmas tree and the admiring exclamations
over its glittering beauty. And then—the opening of the gay, be-ribboned
boxes. The laughter, the joy, the tears, as each little parcel disclosed
something prettier or funnier or dearer than the last. It was all so
wonderful that it was a pity it could not have lasted forever.

Then, after Christmas, one glorious, ecstatic week of fun that passed
like a day. There were dances and parties and sleighrides and so many
other festivities that there was hardly a minute of the day that was not
accounted for.

It was not till the week was almost over that the girls thought
penitently of the Haddons.

“I wonder,” said Billie, as she turned over and over in her fingers a
ten dollar gold piece that had been a gift from an aunt, “what kind of
Christmas poor little Peter has had.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Billie!” Laura replied a little impatiently,
“what is the use of spoiling all our fun by bringing up the unhappiness
of some one else? We can’t help it if the Haddons haven’t had as nice a
Christmas as we have. We certainly have done all we could.”

But Vi had been eyeing Billie’s gold piece, and suddenly she had a
bright idea all her own.

“Listen,” she said, pulling out her pocket book and fumbling in it
eagerly. She brought out a glistening five dollar gold piece. “We all
got a little money in gold this Christmas. Suppose we do it up in a box
and leave it at the Haddons’ door when we get back. We have enough money
to get along with for the rest of the term, anyway.”

For a moment Laura looked a little undecided, but Billie jumped up, ran
over to Vi and hugged her.

“You’re a perfect angel!” she cried. “That’s just exactly what I was
thinking myself. Only I wasn’t going to ask you girls. I was just going
to leave mine and say nothing about it.”

“Oh, well,” grumbled Laura, taking her own bright coin from its hiding
place and handing it over reluctantly. “If you girls are going to be
foolish I suppose I’ve got to be too. Only it’s no joke,” she added, in
a plaintive tone that made the girls giggle, “when you think of all the
sodas and candy it would buy!”

At last the long anticipated holidays were at an end and after a few
days of readjustment at the school, the classmates settled down to work
in earnest. For the rest of the semester was crowded with work and the
prizes were held out as a glittering bait to spur them on to fresh
endeavor.

Only once, after their return to the Hall, the girls found time to run
over to see the Haddons, hoping to be able to hide the generous gift
they had decided to make in some inconspicuous place where it would not
be discovered until they had had time to make their escape.

Polly Haddon seemed very glad indeed to see them, but she had no good
news to report of Peter. He was still very low, but the doctor, great
man that he was, was bending every energy to bring him through.

“But he will die,” said the mother, despairingly. “There is so little
left of him now that I wonder that every breath he draws is not his
last. Oh, my little boy! My poor little boy! I’ll not let him be taken
from me!”

They comforted her as best they could, and then Billie, to the
astonishment of her chums, began asking questions about the knitting
machinery model, the disappearance of which had so changed life for this
distracted woman.

“Was the model large or was it small, so that it could easily be stolen
and hidden away?” she asked, while Polly Haddon looked up at her with
something like surprise in her black eyes.

“It was large,” she answered. “And rather heavy. It could not be easily
stolen, and neither could it have been hidden away in any small place.
That is why we wondered. But why do you ask?”

“I don’t know,” answered Billie honestly. “Perhaps it is just because I
would like to help you so much.”

The woman reached over and patted her hand gently, but her eyes had
become listless again.

“You—everybody—have been so good to me,” she said, tonelessly. “I don’t
know why you have been so good—no one ever was before. But there is one
thing you can not do for me. You can not restore my poor husband’s
invention, the loss of which caused his death. That would be a miracle.
And in these days no one is working miracles.”

Mrs. Haddon left the room for a moment, and in that moment Billie
slipped the little box containing their three precious gold pieces
behind the alarm clock that stood on a shelf over the sink.

The woman returned before Billie had quite finished, but she was too
worried and anxious and unhappy to notice anything unusual. And the
little box was still safe in its hiding place when the girls took their
leave a few minutes later.

“Won’t she be surprised when she finds it?” crowed Vi delightedly. “I
feel like Santa Claus.”

“Well, you don’t look like it,” returned Laura, “Your face isn’t red
enough.”

CHAPTER XVII—BILLIE ON GUARD

From this remark of Laura’s it may be easily seen that she was still a
little grouchy about having to give up five dollars’ worth of sodas and
candy. But away down in her heart she derived more real pleasure from
the thought of what her gold piece would buy for the Haddons than she
would out of a great deal more than five dollars’ worth of pleasure for
herself.

“Billie,” spoke up Vi suddenly after they had walked some little way in
silence, “what did you ask Mrs. Haddon about that lost invention for?”

“Yes, it sounded as if you really knew something about it,” Laura took
her up eagerly. “You don’t, do you?”

“Not a thing in the world,” Billie replied quickly. “Only,” she added
slowly, the same thoughtful look in her eyes that had been there before,
“so many queer things have happened to me lately that I’m getting sort
of queer myself, I guess. I can’t help thinking about that cave Teddy
and I found.”

“Well, I don’t blame you for thinking of it,” said Laura, looking
curiously at her chum. “I think of it myself—quite often. But what has
that to do with the stolen machinery models?”

“Nothing, of course,” said Billie, adding as the three towers of the
grand old Hall loomed into view. “But I would like to have a look at the
inside of that cave again. Maybe the models were taken there and broken
up. The cave was full of junk.”

Laura, really curious by this time, was about to put a question when she
saw Amanda and the “Shadow” approaching, and the question died in her
throat.

The three classmates, who never deliberately “cut” anybody, nodded to
the two girls in a friendly enough manner, but the latter looked
straight at them and never so much as winked an eye.

“Whew!” whistled Laura, softly, as the chums stopped and looked back
after the unmannerly girls. “Cut, by jinks!”

“And by Amanda, of all people!” added Vi, in the same tone.

“Well, come on,” said Billie, and she turned and led the way up the
steps. “There’s no use standing there and looking after them like a lot
of wooden Indians. I’d like—” she added, her temper getting the better
of her for the moment, “I would like to wring that girl’s neck.”

“Do you know,” said Vi a few minutes later when they were washing
themselves in the dormitory, “that Amanda has entered for the
composition prize?”

The girls looked at her unbelievingly.

“Amanda!” cried Billie, laughing at the absurdity of the thing. “Why,
Amanda can hardly write her own name. You know that.”

“Of course I know it,” agreed Vi, scrubbing her face vigorously. “That’s
why it seems so silly. Unless she has something up her sleeve,” she
added meaningly.

“How did you find out?” asked Laura, curling up on the bed and regarding
her chum severely. “Did she tell you?”

“Tell me!” repeated Vi with a chuckle. “That _is_ a good one. No, I just
happened to overhear her telling Eliza that she had entered for the
composition prize and that she was going to give Billie Bradley the
surprise of her life.”

“She surely does love me,” sighed Billie, as she pulled her pretty curls
into place. “I don’t see why she doesn’t pick on somebody else for a
change.”

“Well, you’d better look out, that’s all,” said Vi, wrinkling her
forehead seriously. “I’m almost sure she is planning some crooked work,
and it’s up to us to double cross her.”

“Hear, hear!” cried Laura delightedly. “And Vi is the one who is always
calling me down for using slang. Fine for a beginner, Vi darling. Keep
it up.”

The result of this revelation of Vi’s was to make the girls watch Amanda
and the “Shadow” more carefully than ever before. And if it had not been
for just this watchfulness there is no telling what might have happened
to Billie Bradley, and through her, to her classmates.

And this was the way it happened.

Luckily for the three North Bend chums, Amanda and her “Shadow” shared
the dormitory with them and Rose Belser. And so it was that Billie,
coming in unexpectedly one day heard the very end of a sentence spoken
in a loud whisper by Amanda. And though it was only the end of the
sentence, it told a great deal to Billie, whose suspicions had already
been aroused.

“—at ten to-night, in Miss Race’s room,” were the words she caught. The
fact that Amanda stopped speaking at sight of her and grew an unsightly
brick red, gave Billie further proof that the girl was plotting
mischief. Very probably the scapegoat was to be—herself.

She gave no sign that she had heard anything out of the ordinary, but
when she had found the book she had come for and was out in the hall
once more, her heart was pounding heavily and her face was hot.

Ever since they had come to Three Towers Amanda had done her best to
discredit Billie. She had not succeeded so far, but some time she might.
Was this the time? thought Billie, a dull rage taking possession of her.

No! She would not let Amanda get the better of her. She would outwit
her, now that she had been warned. Then a dreadful thought came to her.

Suppose Amanda, thinking she had given her secret away, postponed her
miserable plot, whatever it was, until another time? No wonder Billie
answered questions queerly that afternoon, so queerly, in fact, that one
teacher asked her if she were ill and would like to be excused!

But Billie did not want to be excused—that would mean more time to
herself to think. And so she blundered through the miserable afternoon
and her heart jumped with relief when the last gong sounded that meant
liberty.

Connie and Laura overtook her in the hall on the way to the dormitory
and Laura looked actually anxious.

“What was the matter with you this afternoon?” she asked. “Why, you
answered ‘no’ three times when it should have been ‘yes,’ and it sounded
so silly I’d have had to laugh if I hadn’t been scared to death!”

“What is it, Billie?” added Connie, putting an arm about her friend.
“You look dreadfully white. Aren’t you feeling well?”

Then, pulling them into a secluded corner of the dormitory, Billie told
them what she had heard, and as Vi came in just as she had finished, she
had to tell it all over again, just for her benefit.

Of course the girls were all angry, and Laura wanted to go and have it
out with Amanda at once, but Billie, who had had all the afternoon to
think out the best thing to do, commanded her to say nothing about it to
any one.

“Listen,” she said, tensely. “Somebody’s apt to come in at any minute,
and then I can’t say it. This is what we will do to-night.

“We’ll pull our nighties on over our clothes, get into bed and pretend
to go to sleep. Then we’ll wait till Amanda starts whatever she’s going
to do, and we’ll follow her and see what she’s up to.”

“And then,” said Laura, driven to more forceful slang by the necessity
for emphasis, “we’ll just about _settle_ her!”

True to their plans, they retired to the dormitory that night before
Amanda or the “Shadow” or Rose Belser arrived there, and they hurriedly
slipped their nightgowns over their clothes and got into bed.

“Poor Connie’s wailing her heart out,” chuckled Laura, “because she’s in
another dorm and can’t be in at the death. I say, Vi, push the collar of
your dress down. It shows outside your nightie.”

“Sh-h,” warned Billie. “I hear somebody coming——”

The somebody proved to be no other than Amanda and Eliza, and when they
entered they found Billie and Laura and Vi sleeping peacefully with a
cherubic expression of utter innocence on their faces.

It seemed to the girls that they had never lived through an hour so long
as that between nine o’clock and ten that night. And it was with more
than relief that they heard a slight stir at last and saw a shadowy
figure slip out of bed and make noiselessly for the door. And while they
held their breath for fear their breathing might betray them, they saw a
second shadow flit after the first one. “The Shadow,” in fact!

They waited till the conspirators had had time to get well down the
hall, then they too slipped quietly out of bed, pulled their nightgowns
off, and started in pursuit.

“Sh,” whispered Billie. “Take your time. We want to let them do it
before we catch them at it.”

When they reached Miss Race’s door they were surprised to see a light in
the room. Was it possible Amanda had been brazen enough to turn on the
light herself?

Cautiously Billie peeped into the room and saw that Amanda and Eliza
were busily at work doing something to the teacher’s desk at the other
end of the room. They were alone, so it must have been Amanda who had
switched on the light. The girl was bold with the courage of stupidity.

Laura uttered a stifled exclamation, and would have pushed past Billie
but the latter held her back. For still another minute she hesitated,
then called to the girls softly.

“Now,” she said, and ran swiftly into the room, Laura and Vi beside her.
So quickly and silently did they come that they were almost upon the two
girls before either of them looked up. Then——

“Amanda Peabody!” cried Billie, her voice choked with anger. “We’ve
caught you this time! Now let’s see what you were doing!”

CHAPTER XVIII—AMANDA’S REVENGE

Amanda’s jaw dropped and she sprang back while Eliza cowered behind her.
The former held an ink bottle which she had been about to turn upside
down in Miss Race’s desk.

With a quick movement Laura snatched it from the girl’s hand and held it
aloft triumphantly.

“Look, Billie,” she said in a loud whisper. “Amanda was going to spill
this in the desk and then blame it on you.”

Amanda made a quick dart for the door, but Billie ran after her and
pulled her back.

“Not yet,” she said, grimly. “You’ll wait till we’re through with you or
I’ll go to Miss Walters and report the whole thing. You had better not
try to get funny.”

Amanda started to bluster, but on second thoughts decided not to. Billie
and her chums had the argument all on their side this time, and the
thought made her fume inwardly.

As for the “Shadow,” her homely face was pale with fright, and she stood
motionless and scared on the spot where the girls had first discovered
her.

The plan of the two conspirators had evidently been to upset the
teacher’s desk and then blame the whole thing on Billie. But how could
Amanda hope to prove that Billie had done it all?

Thus thought the girls as they rummaged through the desk in search of
some further trick. And then, they found it.

“Look at this!” cried Billie, holding aloft a little square of linen at
sight of which Amanda grew more sullen and Eliza quaked. “It’s my
handkerchief with my initials and my laundry mark on it.
Those—those—girls—were going to leave it here after spilling the ink,
and when Miss Race found it she would of course think that I was the
guilty one. Oh—what shall we do to them?”

She glared at the tricksters while Amanda tossed her head defiantly and
Eliza shrank still farther back into the corner.

“But that would have been so silly,” cried Laura, who had snatched the
handkerchief from Billie and was examining it eagerly. Vi, in her turn
was trying to pull it from her. “Miss Race would know that you would
have sense enough not to give yourself away by leaving your
handkerchief. Their heads sure are made of bone,” and she favored the
girls with a contemptuous glance that was harder to bear than Billie’s
anger.

“I wouldn’t leave my handkerchief on purpose of course,” Billie pointed
out. “I might have dropped it by accident, though.”

“But how did they get the hanky,” wondered Vi, wide-eyed at this example
of depravity.

“Probably stole it out of my pocket when I wasn’t looking,” said Billie
contemptuously, and at that Amanda made a show of defense.

“You needn’t call me a thief, Billie Bradley!” she exclaimed, but Laura
cut her short with a flippant observation.

“Would you rather she would call Miss Walters?” she asked, which
effectively closed the girl’s mouth.

“Let’s make ’em clean up,” suggested Billie. “I’d call Miss Walters,
only they’re not worth spoiling her sleep for. Come on over here, you
two, and get busy.”

“We won’t do it,” said Amanda, but as Billie started toward her she
quite suddenly changed her mind.

“Oh, all right,” she said angrily, as she flounced over to the desk,
pulling the limp “Shadow” after her. “We’ll do it this time. But you
just look out, Billie Bradley. I’ll make you pay for this.”

Laura struck a dramatic attitude.

“Look out,” she cried. “The worm is turning. Let us nip it in the bud!”

It was all right for them to laugh at Amanda’s discomfiture then and
treat the whole thing as a joke, but in the morning they were not quite
sure that they had done the right thing.

“I think we ought to have reported her to Miss Walters,” worried Vi.
“Then she and the Shadow would have been expelled, or suspended at
least, and we would have had no more trouble with them. As it is——”

“Oh, don’t be an old gloom hound,” commanded Billie, seizing her chum
round the waist and whirling her about the room in a fantastic dance.
“They’ve never been able to do anything to us yet, so what’s the use of
worrying?”

“Sure,” agreed Laura, busy marking passages in her “Life of Washington.”
“That’s what I say. We’re too many for ’em.”

But in spite of their optimism, in their hearts the girls decided to
watch Amanda and her cowardly “Shadow” more closely than ever in the
future.

And the girls would have been put even more on their guard if they could
have peeped into the library one afternoon and overheard the curious
conversation that took place between two girls seated in a far corner of
the big room.

“I’ve got it at last!” gloated one of the girls, who was no other than
the plotting Amanda herself. Eliza, of course, was her inevitable
companion.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said the latter rather
snappishly. For, since the fiasco in Miss Race’s room, she had not
entered into Amanda’s schemes quite so whole-heartedly as she had
before. “I don’t see why you should be so pleased about finding a musty
old book.”

“Of course you don’t see,” said Amanda, patronizingly. “That’s what I’m
going to explain to you.”

She paused a moment, regarding the “musty old book” in her hand
lovingly. Eliza moved impatiently in the seat beside her and Amanda
grinned at her.

“You remember I told you I was going to try for the composition prize?”

“Yes,” said Eliza crossly, adding with a frankness that might have been
disconcerting to anybody but Amanda: “And I thought you were crazy even
to think of it. You haven’t a chance in the world beside Billie Bradley
or Rose Belser or any of those girls.”

“I know I wouldn’t as a rule,” admitted Amanda, her small eyes gleaming
with triumph. “But with this book,” she caressed the little volume
fondly, “_they_ won’t have a chance against _me_!”

“And still I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about,”
snapped Eliza. “I wish you’d stop grinning to yourself and get to the
point—if there is one,” she added under her breath.

“All right,” said Amanda, too delighted with her own cleverness to
notice her shadow’s bad temper. “Listen then, and I’ll tell you just how
I came to think about it.

“I was rummaging through some books on the top shelf one day, trying to
find one I needed, when down behind the rest of them I happened to come
across this little old book of biographies of the great generals of the
world. It was covered with dust, and so old and shabby-looking that I
was sure it hadn’t been touched in an age.”

“Yes,” said Eliza impatiently, as Amanda paused for breath.

“Of course that was before the composition prize was offered, so I put
the book back where I found it and forgot all about it. But now——” she
paused and the “Shadow” saw a gleam of light.

“And now,” Eliza finished, “you think you are going to get material
enough out of this musty little old book to take the prize away from
Billie Bradley. I see.”

“Oh no, you don’t see.” It was Amanda’s turn to be impatient. “I’m not
going to try to write an original composition at all. Listen,” she
lowered her voice to a whisper although they two were the only ones in
the large room. “I’m going to copy it from this book—word for word!”

For a moment Eliza stared at the grinning girl, pop-eyed. Then as the
daring of the thing sank into her muddled brain she sank back in her
chair and shook her head slowly.

“Don’t do it,” she said. “If they should find out——”

“But nobody’s going to find out,” cried Amanda, as gleeful as though the
coveted prize were already in her hands. “This is an old book, and
probably nobody in this place has even heard of it. Say, won’t that
Bradley girl’s eyes stick out when she sees me walking off with the
prize? Oh my, oh my! This is the time I’m going to settle _her_!”

It was just about this time that a furor was caused in the school by the
disappearance of articles belonging to the students.

The articles were small and seldom valuable—so insignificant were some
of them, in fact, that the owners never missed them until the report of
numerous other losses spread through the school and woke them to the
realization that they, too, were victims of the petty thief—whoever she
was.

For that the guilty one was one of their schoolmates there seemed to be
little doubt. For what outsider would care for such things as pencils
and erasers and old jackknives?

It was true that one or two of the losses were valuable. A gold-mounted
fountain pen for instance, which had been a Christmas present to one of
the girls, who lamented her loss with “loud wailings and gnashings of
teeth,” as Laura described it.

It was when the excitement over this strange series of events was at its
height that Billie drew Laura and Vi aside one day and whispered a
startling decision in their ears.

“Girls,” she said, “I’ve dreamed of that locked room in tower three two
nights in succession, and I’ve found an old bunch of keys and one of
them may fit. Are you willing to come with me? Or have I got to go
alone?”

CHAPTER XIX—THE TOWER ROOM

For a moment the girls looked as though they thought Billie had gone
mad. The proposal had been made to them so suddenly that it took their
breath away.

“But, Billie, aren’t you afraid—after finding that blood-stained
handkerchief and everything?” demanded Vi, round-eyed.

“Of course I’m afraid! But I’m going just the same,” said Billie
stoutly. “I’ve wondered and wondered about what might be in that locked
room till I’m nearly crazy. And if you won’t go with me, I’m going
alone,” she repeated.

“Don’t be foolish,” commanded Laura. “If you go, of course we’ll go. But
suppose none of your keys will fit?” she added, glancing at a half dozen
rusty keys on a still more rusty key ring which Billie was jingling
nervously. Billie had found the key ring on a nail in a dark corner of
her locker the day before. She had been about to deliver it to the lost
and found office when the inspiration had come to her. She would try the
keys first to see if by any chance one of them could be used to unlock
the little door in tower three. It would be time enough afterward to
report her discovery.

Now at Laura’s question she looked somewhat provoked.

“Don’t you s’pose I’ve thought of that?” she said, adding, with a
twinkling smile: “Somebody is always taking the joy out of life!”

“We can try ’em, anyway,” said Laura doubtfully, still speaking of the
keys. “But they don’t look very promising.”

“But, girls,” Vi protested weakly, “suppose we should find something
horrible up there—a skeleton or something?”

“Well, the poor old skeleton couldn’t hurt us,” returned Laura, adding
with a giggle: “Probably it would be glad to see us after being up there
alone so long.”

“But the blood-stained handkerchief”—Vi whispered.

“Oh, that!” said Laura, with a lofty wave of her hand. “That’s nothing.
I told you before that probably somebody had a nose-bleed.”

Which made even Vi giggle and had the effect of stilling her fears for
the time being, at least.

They had hard work getting away from their classmates without arousing
their suspicion, but they succeeded at last. The three girls ran lightly
up the three flights of stairs that led to the musty old attic.

Now that the moment was at hand they were more excited than nervous, and
their hearts beat high with the hope that they might really find a
mystery hidden behind that locked door. But what could it be?

The queer sounds and heavy musty smell of the attic that had seemed so
dreadful to Billie on that never-to-be-forgotten night seemed natural
and even funny in the revealing daylight.

The shadowy corners that had seemed so sinister when lighted only by one
tiny flickering candle were only corners now, cobwebbed and dusty, to be
sure, but harmless.

Mice scuttled across the floor squeaking angrily at being disturbed, but
although Vi screamed and Laura side-stepped nervously, Billie only
laughed. To-day they were only little mice more afraid of her than she
was of them. That night they had been monsters waiting to devour her.

But just the same, some measure of her nervousness returned when they
reached the stairway down which she had nearly tumbled in her wild
flight.

Laura and Vi seemed to share her uneasiness, for they stopped at the
foot of the stairs and held back a little.

“Who goes up first to meet the skeleton?” asked Laura, with an attempt
at a laugh that sounded strained even to herself.

“You do,” said Vi, adding maliciously: “You were the one who said he
wouldn’t hurt us.”

Seeing that Laura was about to argue the point, Billie pushed
impatiently past them both and ran defiantly up the stairs. Laura, thus
challenged, took the stairs two at a time after her and Vi followed
reluctantly.

“Look! There’s the handkerchief,” said Billie, kicking the tiny square
of blood-stained linen over toward Laura, who jumped nervously out of
the way.

“Well, you needn’t wish it on me,” she said resentfully, picking up the
handkerchief by the very tip of a corner and presenting it to Billie
with a low bow. “Here, take back your gold——”

“What are you two whispering about?” demanded Vi, petulantly, for by
this time she was beginning to wish she had not come.

At her question Laura whirled suddenly about and poked the blood-stained
handkerchief directly beneath Vi’s startled nose.

“There,” she said. “Want it?”

Vi gave one look, screamed, and fled down the stairs. She had gone only
halfway, however, when Laura overtook her and dragged her back.

“None of that,” she cried. “You can’t back out now. Besides, we’re only
beginning to have some fun.”

“Fun!” groaned Vi, keeping a wary eye on the handkerchief that Laura
still held. “Well, I’m glad I know what to call it.”

“Come on,” said Billie, jingling her rusty keys and starting up the
ladder. “Now we’ll see whether one of these keys will fit.”

“I hope it doesn’t,” said Vi, under her breath, but Laura caught her up
sharply.

“What did you say?” she demanded.

“Oh—nothing,” said Vi.

By this time Billie was on the top rung of the ladder and her fingers
trembled as she tried to fit the first of the keys into the lock. She
had more courage than Vi, yet almost she echoed the other girl’s
wish—that she would not be able to find a key to fit.

She wanted to see what was on the other side of that locked door, yet
for some reason—perhaps the blood-stained handkerchief—she was afraid to
find out.

She had tried every key till she came to the next to the last, while
Laura and Vi fidgeted at the foot of the ladder.

“Won’t they fit?” asked Laura, impatiently and in a high-strung tone.

“Yes,” said Billie unexpectedly, as the key slipped into the lock and
turned easily under the pressure of her fingers. She hesitated and
looked down at the two girls before swinging the door wide.

“Aren’t you coming?” she asked, and she could not, for the life of her,
keep a little scared quality out of her voice.

“Of course,” cried Laura, recovering from her surprise—for she had
really not expected that any of Billie’s keys would fit—and ascending
the ladder hand over hand. “‘Lead on, Macduff, to victory or to death!’”

Vi groaned again and gingerly put a foot on the ladder. She did not know
which was worse, to remain there by herself or to follow the girls
to—goodness-knew-what. But the squeak of a mouse behind her made her
decide in favor of company, and she scurried in a panic up the ladder.

Meanwhile Billie and Laura were experiencing rather severe pangs of
something—they could not have told whether it was disappointment or
relief.

They had braced themselves to find something horrible—or at least
interesting—in the tower room, and they were rather taken aback at
finding themselves confronted with a large amount of nothing at all.

There seemed to be a great deal of junk scattered about, but in the
gloom of the place they could not even make that out very clearly.

There were windows all about the tiny room, but they were so encrusted
with ancient dirt and cobwebs that the bright sunlight of the
out-of-doors was reduced to a weird and spooky twilight, which seemed
somehow to correspond to the forlorn aspect of the place.

“Well,” said Laura, drawing a deep breath, “we come up here expecting to
find something interesting and we get—stung!”

“It does look that way,” admitted Billie ruefully. “Seems as if we might
at least have met a good live ghost or two.”

“Live ghost!” sniffed Laura crossly, for she was really feeling very
much injured. “All the ghosts that I ever heard about were as dead as a
doornail.”

“For goodness’ sake, stop talking about dead people,” said Vi
querulously from the doorway. “If there isn’t anything in here—and thank
goodness there isn’t—let’s go back.”

“Not yet,” said Billie. Her eyes, become more accustomed to the dim
light, had lighted upon something interesting among the junk. What had
caught her attention was a large, clumsy-looking thing like a queerly
shaped wooden box. The girls watched her curiously as she bent over to
examine it.

“You haven’t found your ghost, have you?” asked Vi, in a voice that was
meant to be sarcastic.

“No,” said Billie, a thrill of wonder and excitement creeping into her
voice. “But I may have found something! Girls, come here and have a look
at this!”

The girls picked their way over the rubbish that littered the floor.
What had seemed like a peculiarly shaped box proved on closer inspection
to be some cunningly fashioned wooden machinery.

The girls looked at each other in awed silence. To them all in an
instant had come the same thrilling thought.

“The lost invention!” murmured Billie. “And we thought there was nothing
here!”

CHAPTER XX—STOLEN

“Oh, but how do we know?” protested Laura. “It looks like machinery of
some kind, but we have no way of proving that it is the stolen
invention.” “No,” said Billie, still in a kind of daze. “It may be just
some old worthless thing that has been put up here because it is of no
use to anybody. But then again——”

“Oh, I think Laura’s right,” put in Vi, to whom this new find of
Billie’s was not very interesting. It seemed absurd to put any value on
that queer-looking thing. And besides, she was anxious to get out of
that musty, ill-smelling place. “I thought of Mrs. Haddon at first too,
but——”

“Hello! I wonder what this is,” Laura interrupted her. There had been
some blue prints lying on the floor near the wooden machinery. In the
poor light they had remained unnoticed until Laura had stumbled upon
them quite by accident.

In her eagerness, Billie forgot to be polite. She snatched the papers
from her chum and made her way to the nearest dust-begrimed window.

She scanned the prints eagerly and finally came to the thing she had so
wildly hoped to find. It was only a name, but it told a great deal.

The blue prints were evidently the design of some sort of machinery, and
down at the foot of one page the designer had put his name—Henry Haddon.

“Girls, girls, look!” cried Billie, almost beside herself with
excitement at her discovery. “Now maybe you’ll dare to say I’m crazy and
I don’t know what I’m talking about. I dreamed of it two nights in
succession, and now my dream has come true——”

“Well, for goodness’ sake, stop waving that thing around and tell us
what you’re raving about,” commanded Laura, snatching the blue print
from Billie in her turn, while Vi crowded close, looking curiously over
her shoulder.

“Here! At the bottom of this page!” crowed Billie, pointing out the
name. “See it? Henry Haddon!”

“Henry Haddon!” repeated Laura excitedly. “Then it looks as if that
really were his invention.”

“It is the knitting machinery model!” cried Vi, forgetting that a moment
ago she had scoffed at the idea.

“Of course it is, you gooses—I mean you geese,” cried Billie, incoherent
in her happiness. “I told you so right along, didn’t I? Next time maybe
you’ll believe your Uncle Billie.”

“I—guess—yes!” said Laura, still staring at the blue prints as though
she could not believe they were real. “You surely did have the right
idea that time, Billie.”

“Of course I did!” cried Billie impishly, bubbling over with excitement.
“And now I’ve got an idea that’s righter yet. Let’s go to Mrs. Haddon
and tell her about it.”

“Agreed!” cried Laura. Then she glanced uncertainly at the blue prints.
“Shall we take these along?” she asked.

Billie hesitated, then shook her head.

“No,” she said, “I think we had better leave everything just as we found
it.”

So Laura put the important papers back on the spot where she had found
them, or as near to it as she could remember.

She then backed out of the room and felt her way down the ladder. Vi
followed, treading on her fingers, so that she let go and very nearly
tumbled to the floor.

Billie came last, for she was to lock the door.

But a strange thing happened. Either excitement had made Billie’s
fingers clumsy or something had really happened to the rusty lock. At
any rate, she could not get the door locked again and after a few
minutes of nervous fumbling, interspersed with remarks from the girls
that were anything but encouraging, she gave up the attempt.

“Oh, well, we’ll be back in a little while, anyway,” she said, as she
came down swiftly hand over hand and dropped to the floor beside the
girls. “Come on now, let’s hurry and find Mrs. Haddon.”

They scurried down the stairs and were hurrying to their dormitory to
get on coats and hats when a voice hailed them and they stopped
impatiently to find Rose Belser hurrying toward them.

“Have you heard the latest, girls?” asked the dark-haired girl
excitedly, for once forgetting her sleepy drawl.

“No,” said Billie, trying not to sound as impatient as she felt, while
Laura and Vi frowned openly.

“It’s up on the bulletin board,” Rose told them, too full of her own
news to notice their annoyance. “Connie Danvers has lost a gold wrist
watch and Miss Walters is very much upset about it. She says that the
thief, whoever it is, must be found. And she has ordered that no girl
leave the Hall until to-morrow morning.”

The girls looked at each other and groaned.

“Till to-morrow morning!” said Billie, her face as long as though a
death sentence had just been pronounced upon her. “Oh, why couldn’t
Connie have held on to her old watch!”

Rose’s look of surprise was so genuine that it put Billie instantly on
her guard. The chums were not ready yet to take anybody into their
confidence about the new discovery.

And so she covered her slip as well as she could, and they went on
together to the dormitory, exclaiming sympathetically over Connie’s
loss.

The next morning came at last, however, and as it was Sunday, the girls
were free to go as soon as the morning chapel hour was over. But as Miss
Walters would not allow any girl to leave the building without special
permission from her, the classmates were forced to go to her and tell
her about their invasion of the tower room and their discovery.

She was displeased that they had not asked her consent before taking
such a step. But she was also very much interested in their story, and
readily gave them her permission to go to Polly Haddon.

“Bring her back with you, if you can,” she said, “and we will all go
together to the tower room.”

“Now for the fun!” cried Laura, as a few minutes later they stepped out
into the crisp air. “Whew! I think we got off lots better than we
expected. I thought Miss Walters would be awfully mad.”

“Probably she would have been if she hadn’t had so many other things to
worry about,” said Vi.

“Poor Connie!” said Billie. “It surely is too bad about her watch. It
was a beauty, and she was so proud of it.”

“I hope Miss Walters finds the thief pretty soon,” said Laura, frowning.
“Everybody thinks it is one of the girls, and I’m even beginning to feel
guilty myself.”

“Do you think——” Vi began, then flushed as the girls looked at her and
stopped.

“What?” asked Laura adding, as Vi still hesitated. “Come on—we won’t eat
you.”

“Nothing—only—I was wondering if the thief might not be Amanda.”

“Oh, no,” cried Billie quickly. “I’m sure it couldn’t be, Vi.”

The suggestion from Vi startled her, and it troubled her too, for the
very reason that the same idea had been in her own mind.

And suddenly Laura spoke up in support of Vi.

“I shouldn’t wonder if Vi is right,” she said. “Amanda is mean enough
for anything.”

Billie had no answer for that, and so she said nothing. But she was more
than ever troubled.

As they neared the little white cottage that had seen so much trouble,
they forgot Amanda in anticipation of Polly Haddon’s joy at the good
news they were bringing her.

They knocked on the door, and the moment it was opened pushed eagerly
inside and turned to face the astonished widow.

Billie started to speak, but Laura, with her usual impulsiveness, was
before her.

“We’ve got good news, Mrs. Haddon,” she blurted out. “We’ve found your
lost invention.”

Billie gasped with dismay as Mrs. Haddon turned deathly white and
grasped the back of a chair for support.

“Oh, Laura, you shouldn’t!” cried Billie, as she put an arm about the
woman and helped her into a chair. “Get some water, quick! There’s a
glass in the sink.”

But Mrs. Haddon brushed her impatiently aside.

“I’m not going to faint,” she said brusquely. “Tell me why you said
that. Hurry!”

But Laura thought she had done enough speechmaking for one day, and it
was Billie who answered the woman’s questions.

“It must be ours,” said the latter, at last. “I will go with you and
make sure. Peter? Yes, he will be all right till I get back. He is much
better. I will be ready in a moment.”

She returned in less than a minute, a hat perched carelessly on her head
and a shawl around her shoulders. Her eyes burned bright in her thin
face.

No one spoke on the way back. Mrs. Haddon, her lips set and her eyes
fixed straight ahead, said not a word, and the girls were too awed by
her emotion to break the silence.

Miss Walters met them in the hall, said a few words to Mrs. Haddon,
then, seeing that the woman was keyed to the breaking point, led the way
straight to the tower room.

The girls ran up the ladder ahead of the two older women. The latter
followed more slowly. Billie pushed open the little door and entered the
room.

Then she started, gasped, rubbed her hand across her eyes to make sure
she was not dreaming. For the spot where the queer wooden machinery had
stood was empty. The invention was gone; and the blue prints were gone,
too!

CHAPTER XXI—MORE MYSTERY

Billie Bradley turned cold all over. To have brought Polly Haddon
here—to have practically promised her a fortune—and then to
find—nothing!

“Billie! They’re gone!” said a voice at her elbow, and she turned
sharply to find Laura and Vi peering inquisitively over her shoulder.

“I know they’re gone,” she cried, almost sobbing in her rage and
disappointment “Oh, girls, what, can we do? We can’t tell Mrs. Haddon——”

“What’s this you can’t tell me?” asked Polly Haddon herself, and Billie
looked at the woman miserably.

“The model,” she said, her voice almost inaudible. “It was here
yesterday, and now it’s gone.”

“_Gone!_” cried Miss Walters sharply. “How can that be? Is it possible
that somebody else is in the habit of visiting this tower?”

But Mrs. Haddon pushed her aside.

“Do you mean that the model is gone—again—after bringing me here?” she
cried wildly. “Oh, you could not be so cruel, you could not!” The last
word caught in a sob, and Miss Walters put an arm about her
compassionately.

“Listen to me a moment,” she said, in a gentle voice of authority. “If
the girls are certain that the machinery and the blueprints were here as
late as yesterday——”

“Oh, we are, we are!” cried Billie eagerly.

“Then whoever has taken them since could not have got very far away with
them in this short time,” she went on reassuringly. “Your husband’s
invention—if indeed it was his model the girls found here—must still be
in this neighborhood, perhaps in this very building. Though who,” she
added thoughtfully, “in this place could wish to steal such a thing is
indeed a mystery.”

“Oh, Miss Walters!” cried Billie eagerly, “I’m sure nobody here in the
Hall has stolen the invention. Nobody would have any use for it, and
besides, it isn’t a thing that could be hidden very easily.”

Suddenly Laura had what she thought was a bright idea.

“Maybe somebody stole it who had a grudge against Mrs. Haddon,” she
suggested.

Miss Walters looked inquiringly at the woman who had drawn away from her
embrace and was wiping her eyes resignedly.

“Is there any one you know of who might hold a grudge against your
family?” Miss Walters asked.

Mrs. Haddon went over to one of the dust-begrimed windows and stood
there for a moment looking out, her fingers tapping a restless tattoo on
the windowpane. Then she slowly shook her head.

“No, I can’t think of any one,” she said, adding bitterly: “We were too
poor and unimportant to make enemies of any one. But what does it
matter?” She turned quickly from the window with one of her fierce
changes of mood. “The invention is gone. I was a fool to think that any
good fortune would ever come to me. Let me go home.”

She brushed fiercely past Miss Walters, but the latter put out a gentle
hand and detained her.

“Wait a little,” she begged. Her heart ached for the other woman’s
suffering. “Come into my office with me while I make inquiries and find
out if any suspicious person has been seen about here lately. I am
confident,” she added with an assurance that reached the other woman,
“that before long we shall be able to recover your property. Will you
trust me and believe that I want to help you?”

“Yes,” said Polly Haddon, faint hope once more stirring in her heart.
“You are more than kind to me.”

With what different emotions the classmates left the tower room from
those with which they had entered it so hopefully only a few minutes
before.

The girls supposed that now that Miss Walters had taken charge of Mrs.
Haddon’s affairs, they would have no further interest in the matter.
But, to their surprise and gratification, Miss Walters motioned them
into her office also.

Then she summoned the teachers to her one after another and questioned
them carefully as to whom, if anybody, had been seen around Three Towers
since the afternoon before.

Through it all Mrs. Haddon sat with an expression of utter hopelessness
on her face. Evidently the faint hope that Miss Walters had for the
moment revived had died away again.

It seemed that none of the teachers had seen anything that might arouse
suspicion, and even the girls were beginning to despair when they were
at last given a clue to work on.

It was Miss Arbuckle who gave it to them.

She showed considerable surprise at first at being questioned. But after
wrinkling her forehead thoughtfully for a few minutes she remembered
having seen somebody loitering about the building late on the preceding
afternoon.

“Could you identify the person?” asked Miss Walters quickly, alert at
once.

“No,” said Miss Arbuckle, hesitantly, “I couldn’t be at all certain
because it was dusk and I saw him only from the window. But it looked
like that simple son of Tim Budd, the gardener.”

“Nick Budd!” cried the three girls together, and at the name Polly
Haddon also roused from her reverie.

“You could not say certainly that it was Nick Budd?” said Miss Walters,
questioningly.

“No, I couldn’t,” returned Miss Arbuckle. “But I remember thinking at
the time that the fellow was acting in a rather peculiar manner, and I
even thought of reporting him. I was called away by some duties then,
however, and when I looked from the window again he was gone.”

“Nick Budd!” cried Polly Haddon, in an agitated tone, her hands clasping
and unclasping in her lap. “You asked a while ago if there was anybody
who might bear a grudge against my family, and I said there was no one.
But I had forgotten poor foolish Nick Budd!”

“Yes, Mrs. Haddon?” prompted Miss Walters, while the girls exchanged
excited glances.

“At one time my husband employed him as a handy man about the place,”
the woman hurried on. “But after a while we noticed that things began to
disappear—things that were worthless to any one else, but dear to us
because of their associations.”

The girls and Miss Walters were intensely interested now. They were
thinking of the numerous petty thefts that had taken place in the Hall
during the past few weeks. Could there be any connection between that
and Polly Haddon’s story?

“My husband charged the simpleton with taking the things,” the woman
went on. “He did it gently enough, too, for he was sorry for the poor
fellow, but Nick fell into one of his rages and slammed out of the
house, muttering to himself. He never came back, and we never saw him
again.”

“Then this boy did have some reason for wishing to get even with your
husband,” said Miss Walters, all interest. “It begins to look as if he
were the one who stole your invention in the first place. And if this
was really Nick Budd whom Miss Arbuckle saw loitering about the school
yesterday, it is probable he had something to do with its second
disappearance——” she broke off suddenly, for Polly Haddon had risen to
her feet.

The girls thought they had never seen such a picture of concentrated
fury. She stood clutching the back of a chair fiercely and her eyes
flashed fire.

“If it is proved that Nick Budd did this thing,” she said in a low,
tense voice, “I think I shall—shall——”

“But you must remember that he is a simpleton and not accountable as
sane people are,” put in Miss Walters hastily; but apparently the woman
did not hear her.

“We must catch Nick Budd and make him confess,” she said impatiently:
“Then perhaps we shall find out where he has hidden my property.”

“Miss Walters!” cried Billie excitedly, jumping up, and walking over to
the principal, “I think I know where we can find everything that Nick
Budd has ever stolen.”

“What do you mean?” asked Miss Walters. “Speak quickly, Billie.”

“In Nick Budd’s cave!” cried Billie, triumphantly.

CHAPTER XXII—FIRST PRIZE

“Billie, you’re a wonder! Come on, let’s go!” cried Laura, then clapped
her hand over her mouth and turned a panicky red as she caught Miss
Walters’ eye upon her.

But Miss Walters was looking through and beyond Laura, and her gaze came
quickly back to Billie. Polly Haddon’s eyes were fixed on the girl, too,
with passionate intensity.

“Tell us what you mean, Billie,” commanded Miss Walters. “Quickly!”

Billie, remembering suddenly that Miss Arbuckle was the only one of the
faculty who knew of her adventure with Teddy, was embarrassed for a
moment. But she plunged bravely in and told them the whole story from
beginning to end, sparing no details.

Miss Walters was intensely interested, and when she had finished even
Polly Haddon looked encouraged. The latter wished to set forth at once
in search of the cave, but Miss Walters proposed a plan that appealed to
everybody, especially the hungry girls.

“Wait and have lunch with me in my rooms,” she said to Mrs. Haddon. “For
it is almost lunch time now. Then we can start to hunt for the cave as
soon as we have finished.”

Mrs. Haddon looked tempted, but she shook her head.

“There are the children,” she said. “And little Peter. There is no one
with them.”

But Miss Arbuckle settled this objection by offering to go over and stay
with the children and see that they were well taken care of during their
mother’s absence.

“I was a governess and sort of children’s nurse combined, at one time,
you know,” and she smiled graciously upon the mother. “And I assure you
that I know how to care for children.”

Almost upon her words the lunch gong rang, and Miss Walters thereupon
dismissed the girls to the dining-hall.

“Remember, we will start directly after lunch,” she said to them as they
fled.

“Billy, it’s just like a story book or a movie!” cried Vi joyfully, as
they took their places at the table among the noisy, chattering girls.

“Are you certain you can find the cave again, Billie?” asked Laura, as
she attacked her heaped-up plate of good things ravenously.

Before Billie could answer Rose Belser leaned across the table and asked
with a drawl where they had been keeping themselves all morning.

“We’ve made a snowman,” she chuckled. “But we needed Billie’s artistic
touch to make the face. I can’t get the nose to look right.”

Instinctively the girls glanced out the window and saw that it was
snowing. And they had never noticed it!

“Why, it’s snowing, girls!” remarked Vi brilliantly. “It looks almost
like a blizzard.”

“Are you just waking up?” asked Connie Danvers, a little crossly. Connie
was cross because it was the first time in her intimate friendship with
the girls that they had had a secret from her. “Now I know you’re
crazy.”

Billie guessed at Connie’s grievance and, reaching over, she pressed the
hand of her classmate under the table.

“We’ll tell you all about everything to-night,” she promised, and
Connie’s face brightened miraculously.

The snowstorm did indeed look like the beginning of a blizzard, and as
the girls went to get their wraps they worried not a little for fear
this new development might put an end to their adventure.

However, Miss Walters decided that they would try it, at least, and Mrs.
Haddon was eagerly anxious to be off.

“We’ll try anything once,” whispered Laura to Billie, as they went out
into the already ankle-deep snow, the wind lashing bitingly against
their faces. “Thank goodness, we can die but once!”

“Die but once is right,” said Billie grumpily. She was worried for fear
she would not be able to find the path leading to the cave.

It would have been hard enough if the ground had been clear, but with
the snow rapidly obliterating every landmark, it was well-nigh
impossible.

“I wish Teddy were here,” she said, half to herself, and her voice was
very wistful.

“Don’t you though!” echoed Laura, heartily. “It seems an age since we’ve
seen any of the boys.”

“Say, Billie,” broke in Vi, who was shivering in the bitter cold despite
her warm furs, “are you sure you are going right? It wouldn’t be any fun
to be lost in these lonely woods with maybe a blizzard coming on.”

At this observation Billie stopped and turned to Miss Walters and Polly
Haddon, who were following close behind.

“I’m sorry,” she said, looking up at Miss Walters appealingly. “If it
weren’t snowing I might be able to find the way, but as it is I’m afraid
I would only get you all lost. I’m lost myself now.”

“All right, honey. Don’t look so distressed about it,” said Miss
Walters, patting her kindly on the shoulder. “You would have to know the
way pretty well to be able to find it in this storm. We shall have to
give it up to-day, and try again as soon as we can.”

“Yes, that will be best,” said Polly Haddon, through chattering teeth.
Her thin shawl formed scarcely any protection against the freezing
weather. “Thank you all so much for bothering with my affairs. Now I
must get back to the children. Good-bye.”

Before they had fairly realized she was going, she was gone, and the
girls and Miss Walters turned back to the Hall.

“Bother the old snow,” said Laura crossly. “I always liked it before,
but now I hate it.”

They were all glad when the warmth of Three Towers Hall closed in about
them again. Miss Walters said a few words to them about saying nothing
of this affair to any one. Then she dismissed them to the dormitory
while she herself hurried off to do a little work that she had neglected
all day. For around examination time, Miss Walters was not always free,
even on Sunday.

Some of the girls had seen Billie and Laura and Vi come in with Miss
Walters, and they demanded to know what “all the excitement was about.”
And the fact that the girls would not talk made their classmates all the
more curious.

Connie was the only one to whom they would tell the story, for they knew
that they could trust her as they trusted themselves.

“And it’s still snowing,” mourned Billie, as she cleared a space on the
misted window and looked out at the snow-covered world. “It looks as if
we shouldn’t get out of here for weeks!”

Billie’s gloomy prophecy was fulfilled. The storm developed into one of
the worst blizzards that part of the country had ever known, and for
almost two weeks the occupants of Three Towers were practically
house-bound.

It was good that the school boasted a well-stocked larder. Otherwise the
girls might actually have gone hungry. And they wondered a great deal
about Polly Haddon and her little brood.

“Suppose she hasn’t enough in the house to eat?” worried Vi. “Why, they
may starve!”

“Maybe she used the gold pieces we left her to stock up when she saw the
blizzard coming on,” suggested Billie, and the suggestion comforted them
a great deal.

The day was approaching when those competing for the composition prize
were to hand in their essays. Billie and Laura and Connie and Rose
Belser and the half dozen other girls who had entered the lists were
writing like mad—and biting their pens to bits—in an effort to get their
essays in on time.

And in the heart of each was the fervent hope that she would be the
winner. Only Amanda had no need to hope. She was sure! The prize was
hers!

She had carried out her intention of copying her essay straight from the
little musty book. So sure was she that her ruse would not be detected
that she had not bothered to alter a word. And while the others worked,
she smiled.

At last came the day when the finished essays were to be handed in, and
all day long Miss Walters was closeted in her office with Miss Race and
one or two of the other teachers, reading and tabulating the manuscripts
as they came to her.

So busy had Billie been in rewriting a phrase here, changing a word
there, that she handed in her essay the very last of all—just a scant
half hour before the time was up. But she was happy, because she knew
that she had given her best effort.

“I imagine we shall enjoy reading this,” Miss Walters remarked to her
associates, tapping Billie’s manuscript with a thoughtful finger.
“Billie Bradley has real literary talent.”

The result of the contest was to be announced the next morning in the
auditorium and the prizes to be awarded to the winners.

When the longed-for, yet dreaded, moment arrived, the girls filed into
the auditorium, the contestants near the front, and almost the entire
school occupying the seats behind them.

Billie’s heart was hammering so loudly that she glanced about her to see
if anybody else seemed to notice it. But the majority of the girls were
babbling away too excitedly to hear anything but themselves.

Billie was surprised to see that even the girls who were expecting to
hear their fate within the next few moments were talking—chattering away
excitedly, to be sure—but still talking. As for herself, she was sure
she could not have uttered a word just then if her life had depended
upon it. She did want that prize so dreadfully!

“Cheer up, Billie,” whispered Vi, slipping a loyal hand into hers.
“You’re not afraid of missing the prize, are you? Why, you couldn’t miss
it if you tried.”

Billie did not say anything, but she gripped Vi’s hand hard. And she was
still holding on to it when Miss Walters ascended the platform and a
deep hush spread over the room.

“As you all know,” came the clear, sweet voice of the head of Three
Towers Hall, “I have come here this morning to announce the winners of
the composition prize.

“I and my associates have had difficulty in choosing the winning essays,
for the reason that they are all so excellent. We are only sorry that we
have not a prize to attach to each.”

A buzz broke out in the audience, but when Miss Walters raised her hand
it instantly died down again.

“And now,” she said, “not to keep you any longer in suspense, we will
announce the winners.”

Billie’s grip on Vi’s hand tightened till it hurt.

Then into the tense silence Miss Walters threw the bomb of her
announcement.

“The first prize goes to Amanda Peabody,” she said. “Will she please
step up upon the platform?”

CHAPTER XXIII—DISGRACED

For a moment there was intense silence while Amanda rose triumphantly
and flounced up to the platform.

Then an amazed, angry buzz rose from the audience of indignant girls.
Amanda, who was proverbially stupid, to have taken the prize from some
of the brightest girls in the school! It was impossible—incredible! And
yet it was only too true!

Miss Walters, with a few words of congratulation, handed the prize—a
fine set of books—to Amanda, and the latter swept haughtily back to her
seat, triumph in every line of her figure as she passed the other
pupils.

She had beaten Billie Bradley at last! And her revenge was sweeter than
even she had dreamed it would be.

But Billie, tears of anger and disappointment stinging her eyes, felt
sure that she had not been beaten fairly. Amanda had played a trick on
her, on the rest of the contestants for the prize, on Miss Walters
herself. But, in Teddy’s vocabulary, Amanda had “gotten away with it.”
The prize was in her possession.

“It’s a shame,” she heard in angry protest all about her.

“She never did it honestly.”

“Somebody ought to tell Miss Walters. She doesn’t know Amanda as well as
we do.”

But Miss Walters had raised her hand for silence, and in a few seconds
the angry murmurs died down again.

“I have the pleasure of awarding the second prize,” the principal
announced, “to Beatrice Bradley. Will you step up on the platform,
Billie?”

The second prize! She didn’t want the second prize, Billie told herself,
when Amanda had come in first. To march up there on the platform with
that girl’s gloating eyes upon her——

But Vi and Laura were pulling her out of her seat, pushing her out into
the aisle—and while Billie hesitated Miss Walters had impatiently
repeated her summons.

Someway Billie found her way to the platform, thanked Miss Walters
incoherently for the fine volume of poetry which was the second prize,
and stumbled back to happy oblivion among her schoolmates.

“It’s a shame, honey,” Laura whispered in her ear, generously forgetting
her own disappointment in Billie’s. “But never mind, you got the second
prize anyway—which was more than the rest of us did,” she added, with a
little stab of regret at her own failure.

“And you would have won the first prize if it hadn’t been for that cat,”
added Vi fiercely.

Billie pressed their hands gratefully and glanced for the first time at
her prize.

“I’d like to throw it away!” she cried fiercely.

“Sh-h,” whispered Vi, for Miss Walters was making an interesting
announcement.

“The winning compositions will now be read,” she said. “Miss Arbuckle
has volunteered to give us that pleasure.”

There was a great clapping of hands as Miss Arbuckle stepped on the
platform and smiled down at them. For the little teacher was a great
favorite with the girls.

“We will read Amanda’s composition first,” she said, “as it has had the
distinction of winning the first prize.”

Again there was tense silence in the Hall. The girls were agog with
curiosity to hear this wonderful composition which had been written by
one of the notoriously stupid girls of the school.

As for Amanda, she had not foreseen this event. She had not expected to
hear her stolen composition read aloud, and before all this assembly of
stern young critics. The prospect made her a trifle nervous, but her
smile was as proudly triumphant as ever.

Her chief concern was with Eliza. For the girl was so white and scared
that she threatened to give the deception away.

Amanda gave her a sharp nudge with her elbow.

“Cheer up, will you?” she muttered fiercely. “You’re not at a funeral.”

Miss Arbuckle began to read, and as she read the well-rounded phrases,
the telling metaphors, the girls became more than ever stupefied with
astonishment.

“Could it be,” they asked themselves incredulously, “that Amanda had
remarkable literary ability that they had never suspected? Could she
really have written a thing like that?”

The same thought seemed to be in Miss Arbuckle’s mind, for as she read
on her brow became clouded and she paused now and then as though she
were trying to recollect something.

Finally she stopped altogether, looked across at Amanda for a thoughtful
moment, then laid the manuscript down and turned to Miss Walters. She
said something that the girls could not catch, then hurried from the
room.

This was something no one had counted upon. Amanda, her triumphant smile
gone at last, quaked as she heard again the excited buzz of the girls
about her.

Miss Walters’ voice rose over the murmur, clear and very grave.

“Miss Arbuckle thinks she has made a discovery,” she said. “She will be
back in a moment, and until then I must ask that there be absolute
silence in the room.”

Miss Sara Walters possessed that rare gift of authority that needed no
raising of the voice or undue emphasis to command obedience.

Instantly the murmuring stopped and the girls waited in breathless
silence for Miss Arbuckle’s return.

They did not have to wait long. A moment later the teacher reëntered the
room, holding a book in her hand, the sight of which made Amanda’s
craven heart sink in consternation.

The book looked like an exact copy of the one from which she had copied
her “original” prize composition!

“Miss Walters,” said Miss Arbuckle in a voice which indignation made
vibrant, “I am sorry to have to admit that one of the students of Three
Towers Hall has been guilty of so disgraceful an act. But the
composition that I have just read, the essay that was handed in as
original by Amanda Peabody, has been copied word for word from this
book.

“It is an old book that has been in my possession for years—was my
father’s before it was mine—and doubtless the girl thought herself
perfectly safe in copying from it. Here is the passage.” She had been
marking a place with her finger, and now she opened the book at the
place and handed it to Miss Walters to read.

What a hideous minute for Amanda! If she had been awaiting a death
sentence she could hardly have felt more terrified.

To be publicly disgraced, to have all the girls laughing at her,
gloating over her——

With intense gravity Miss Walters closed the book and laid it on the
table. Amanda knew that her moment had come.

“Amanda,” said Miss Walters sternly, “will you please stand up in your
place?”

Amanda stood up, conscious of a score of curious and contemptuous
glances focused upon her. Her heart was beating suffocatingly, her hands
were clenched tight at her side.

“You have been guilty to-day,” Miss Walters’ clear voice pronounced
sentence, “of blackening the good name of Three Towers Hall by a most
disgraceful act. But by your wretched duplicity you have injured
yourself far more than you have injured any one else. You will go to my
office. I will see you there.”

There was intense silence while Amanda, her head hanging, walked from
the room. Then the eager murmur rose once more, but again Miss Walters
lifted her hand for silence.

“I am sorry,” she said. “More sorry than I can express that such a thing
could have happened here. Of course the first prize will now go to
Beatrice Bradley and I will decide later to whom the second prize
belongs. That is all.” With a little gesture she dismissed them and she
herself walked quickly from the room.

Then the riot that had been suppressed so long broke loose and the girls
formed into little groups talking excitedly and all at once about the
dramatic turn events had taken.

Billie, the center of a little group of her own, was fairly overwhelmed
with congratulations.

“We knew all along that you should have been the winner!”

“To think that Amanda should try to get away with a thing like that!”
said Laura, disgustedly.

“She might have, just the same,” Connie reminded her. “It was just luck
that Miss Arbuckle happened to have that book.”

“My, but I bet you’re happy, Billie Bradley!” sighed Vi. “I shouldn’t
let anybody speak to me if I were in your place.”

“What’s the matter, honey?” asked Laura, regarding Billie’s sober face
curiously. “I say, cheer up, old dear. What have _you_ got to gloom
about?”

“I was just thinking about Amanda,” said Billie, with all her sweet
sympathy for the unfortunate. “I was wondering how it would feel to be
in her shoes now.”

“Out, out upon such doleful thoughts,” Laura sang out airily. But
Billie, who had turned toward the window, suddenly clutched her by the
arm.

“Look!” she said, excitedly. “There’s Nick Budd!”

CHAPTER XXIV—TRIUMPH

Before her classmates knew what she was about or had fairly taken in
what she had said, Billie had darted from the room and was flying toward
the dormitory.

“She’s crazy again,” cried Vi. “Come on,” and she and Laura and Connie
flew after her, overtaking her as she reached the stairs.

“What’s the big idea?” gasped Laura, as they ran together down the hall
toward the dormitory. “What do you expect to do to poor Nick—sandbag
him?”

“Something like that,” returned Billie, slipping hurriedly into her coat
and hat and motioning impatiently for the girls to do the same. “If we
can only get hold of him we may be able to frighten him into telling us
where the machinery is.”

“Oh, and maybe I’ll be able to get my watch back!” added Connie, pulling
a dark cap down over her fluffy hair and carefully adjusting it at the
right angle.

“We won’t get anything if you don’t hurry,” said Billie, regarding her
impatiently. “What do you think you’re going to, anyway? A party?”

“You had better put on your leggings,” suggested Vi, looking doubtfully
at the rubbers Billie had pulled on over her shoes. “The snow’s awfully
deep.”

“Haven’t time,” cried Billie, adding distractedly: “For mercy sake,
hurry! While you girls are dolling up for a party, Nick Budd will be
gone.”

At this dreadful thought the girls stopped fussing and followed Billie
hurriedly down the stairs. They slowed down in the lower hall, however,
for there they were apt to meet a teacher, and undue haste might be
thought suspicious by one of these “unreasonable beings.”

At sight of Nick Budd, a plan had come to Billie. She remembered how
terrified he had seemed when he had found Teddy and her in the cave that
day and thought in his crazy mind that they had come to arrest him.

So she was going to take a chance of so frightening him with a threat of
arrest that he would confess, and perhaps even be prevailed upon to lead
them to the cave.

In case this plan should fail, she had not an idea in the world what she
would do next. But the plan did not fail. It worked more perfectly than
she had dared to hope.

They caught up to the simpleton just as he was sneaking around to the
janitor’s entrance of the school, and the fellow shrank from them like a
frightened animal.

“Wh-what do you want?” he stammered, his hands out as though to ward
them off. “I haven’t done nothin’. Ye can’t arrest me. I haven’t done
nothin’, I tell you.” His terror was pitiful, but Billie followed up her
advantage ruthlessly while the girls stood by in admiring silence.

“You _have_ done something,” she told him sternly, while he cowered
still further back from her. “You’ve stolen things—lots of things. And
we _will_ have you arrested——”

“Oh no—oh no,” he cried out, fairly gibbering in his terror and slinking
further back against the wall. “Ye’re tryin’ to scare me. I haven’t done
nothin’, I tell ye.”

But Billie took him by the sleeve and shook him as she would a bad
child.

“I tell you I _know_,” she cried, conviction in her tone that carried
even to the poor muddled brain of the simpleton. “And I know where they
are, too. They are in your cave, hidden away. Every-last-one-of-them!”

Of course Billie was taking a big chance, but the shot went home.

The simpleton stared at her for a moment out of his blood-shot eyes
while his big mouth dropped open. Then he began to cry, great tears that
ran down his grimy face and made crooked streaks upon it.

It was an indescribably terrible and pitiful sight, the poor silly
fellow in his abject terror, and ordinarily Billie would have felt sorry
for him. But she thought of Polly Haddon, and the thought gave her
courage. Polly Haddon had suffered, and now if it was this poor
simpleton’s turn, it was no more than he deserved, after all.

“Listen to me carefully,” she said, pulling at his sleeve again and
speaking very distinctly. “If you will take us to the cave and promise
to give back everything you have stolen to the people you have stolen
from, we will try to keep you from being arrested.”

“You won’t put me in jail?” jabbered the simpleton. “You won’t let the
policemen get me?”

Billie shook her head, adding quickly: “But you must take us to the cave
right away and help us bring back the things you have stolen. Otherwise
we will have you arrested to-night.”

They were hardly prepared for his sudden acceptance of the ultimatum. He
turned, with the swiftness that had surprised Billie and Teddy before,
and strode off through the heavy snow, the girls, after a minute of
indecision, following.

“What do you suppose Miss Walters will say?” Laura whispered in Billie’s
ear. “Do you suppose she will mind our running away like this?”

“I don’t know,” answered Billie, adding with a hint of premature triumph
in her voice: “I don’t imagine she will say anything though if we come
home with the knitting machinery models, the blue prints, and an armful
of stolen things besides.”

“Oh, if I can only get back my watch, I’ll be happy,” sighed Connie, as
she plodded along beside Vi.

“‘If’ is right,” said Laura, ruefully. “We haven’t got anything yet, you
know.”

“Now who’s the wet blanket?” cried Billie gayly. She was feeling
amazingly happy and confident all of a sudden. For had not she just won
the first prize for the best composition? After that she felt that she
could accomplish anything.

It was no easy task to make their way through the woods. Nick Budd
trudged along sturdily, hardly looking at the girls.

“He may be simple-minded, but he is as strong as a horse—at least, when
it comes to walking,” remarked Laura in a whisper.

“Many simple-minded folks are strong,” answered Billie. “Why, some
lunatics are noted for their strength—I once heard my father say so.”

They had to pass over an exceedingly rough rise of ground and then down
through a hollow where the bushes grew close together. Here the walking
was very uneven and Connie gave a sudden cry of pain.

“What’s the matter?” demanded Billie quickly, and came to a halt beside
her classmate.

“I slipped into a hole and I—I guess I wrenched my ankle,” and Connie
made a wry face.

“Can’t you go on?” questioned Vi.

“I—I guess so, but I’ll do a little limping,” was Connie’s reply.

“We’ll have to be careful,” warned Billie. “We don’t want to hurt
ourselves if we can help it.”

After an hour of trudging through the snow they came at last to the
twig-entwined entrance to Nick’s cave. Luckily the simpleton had beaten
a sort of path through the snow from Three Towers to the cave—a fact
which showed that he had made frequent visits to the school—or the girls
almost surely could not have made the trip.

Nick pulled aside the twigs that concealed the entrance and dived
inside, leaving the girls to follow as best they could.

But the girls did not follow—immediately. They were no cowards, but the
sight of that yawning dark mouth was enough to make them hesitate. And
besides, there was a simpleton at the other end of that dark passage, a
simpleton who might be mad enough by this time to do any desperate
thing.

“You go first, Billie,” Vi urged nervously. “He is afraid of you——”

But at that moment a dancing light flickered down the dark passage and
immediately Nick Budd himself appeared, carrying a lighted candle which
he carefully shielded from the wind.

The terror had not left his face, and he looked at Billie abjectly, like
a beaten dog.

“Will ye come in?” he asked in a barely audible voice. “Or shall I bring
the things out here?”

But as the latter course would give the simpleton an excellent chance to
retain some of his loot, Billie replied firmly that they would come in
and see for themselves.

Vi made a noise that sounded something like a groan, and Connie echoed
it pathetically. But they joined the queer little procession just the
same, following Nick Budd down the dark passage to the still darker
cave, guided only by the flaring light of his one candle.

It was a dangerous thing for the girls to do. The simpleton, with the
cunning of the mentally-deficient, might have decided to attack them all
there in the darkness of the cave. And he would have had a good chance
of doing it, too.

But the gods that favor the daring watched over the girls that day and
brought them safely through their adventure.

Billie had evidently thoroughly cowed the simpleton, and his one thought
was to get rid of his stolen goods as quickly as possible and thus evade
the dreadful prison that loomed more horrible to him than death.

There in a corner of the cave the girls found the knitting machinery
model and the precious blue prints, besides a great pile of small
trinkets that comprised pretty nearly everything that had been stolen
from the girls during the last few weeks.

They were no more eager to linger in the cave than Nick Budd was to have
them. So they eagerly pocketed as many of the trinkets as they
could—Connie snapping the precious recovered wrist watch about her wrist
with as much joy as though it had been three times as valuable as it
really was—and Billie, taking the candle from Nick Budd’s fingers,
ordered him to carry the wooden machinery. She herself took charge of
the blue prints.

When they had reached the outside world once more, Billie blew out the
candle, threw it into the cave, and readjusted the twigs at the entrance
as best she could.

Then she ordered Nick Budd to lead the way back to the Hall. This the
simpleton did, although he sometimes staggered under the weight he
carried and several times had to put his burden down.

But in spite of the delays and the cold, the return journey seemed short
to the girls, for they were triumphantly happy and chattered like
magpies all the way back.

“I’ve got my wrist watch! I’ve got my wrist watch!” crowed Connie over
and over again till the girls got tired of hearing her and Laura asked
her if she would mind changing her tune.

“And won’t the girls be surprised when we tell them what sleuths we
are,” added Vi.

“Humph,” sniffed Laura. “Billie is the real detective. We’re only—what
do you call ’em?—‘also rans.’ We come in at the end and clap noisily.”

“Nonsense,” laughed Billie. “I couldn’t have done a thing without you
girls. Look out,” she cried sharply, as Nick Budd stumbled and almost
dropped his load. “If you should break that thing, Nick Budd, I’d murder
you.” But this last was delivered in an undertone. The poor simpleton
had troubles enough without being threatened.

“Oh,” giggled Laura, incorrigibly, “ain’t she the vicious thing?”

One would have thought that the girls had had about enough excitement
that day, but it seemed that fate still held a little more in store for
them.

They were coming up the winding path that led to the Hall when they saw
a black-clad figure that looked strangely familiar hurrying on before
them.

“Isn’t that Polly Haddon?” asked Vi, eagerly. “Yes, it is. Oh, what
luck!”

She was about to call out, but Billie stopped her.

“We’ll want to break it to her gently,” she warned, but her warning came
too late. Polly Haddon had heard their voices and had glanced back
indifferently.

Then, recognizing the girls, she turned and came hurrying toward them.
At sight of her, Nick Budd dropped his burden in the snow and ran for
all he was worth back the way he had come.

Billie tried to put herself between Polly Haddon and that bulky object
in the snow, but once more she was too late. For the woman had seen.

With a little cry, Polly Haddon crumpled suddenly and lay out in the
snow, as inert as a bundle of old clothes.

“Good gracious!” cried Laura frantically. “Now just when everything is
beautiful and lovely, she’s gone and died!”

CHAPTER XXV—PRETTY FROCKS

But Polly Haddon had not died. One very seldom does—of happiness. Some
way the girls managed to get her inside the Hall and administer hot
drinks and hot food and in a surprisingly short time she was herself
again.

Not quite herself, for she was beautified and transfigured with
happiness into a very different Polly Haddon from the one the girls had
known.

Miss Walters was summoned and made her come into her own private rooms.
Of course the girls went also, and while Mrs. Haddon was stretched
luxuriously on a couch in Miss Walters’ sitting-room, Billie told how
she had frightened the simpleton into confessing his guilt and restoring
the stolen goods.

Billie was so modest about her leading part in the affair that Laura was
forced to interrupt occasionally, and, disregarding Billie’s frowns, add
a bit of explanation here and there that enabled her audience to
visualize the thing just as it had happened.

The machinery model had been brought inside and deposited in one of the
study halls, and now Miss Walters asked Mrs. Haddon what she wished done
with it.

“We can keep it here for you, in the big school safe,” she suggested,
“or we can have it carried over to your house, just as you wish.”

“Oh no, leave it here,” said Polly Haddon quickly. “I will notify that
Philadelphia knitting company that the invention has been recovered, and
if they still wish to buy it, it probably will not remain here long. Oh,
how can I thank you all——” her voice broke, and for a little while all
of them felt a bit uncomfortable while Polly Haddon sobbed out her
happiness and gratitude.

It was over at last, however, and the girls were free to go back to
their dormitory and the curiosity of their friends.

Here, perched on the bed with Connie and Vi, Laura gave a graphic
account of everything just as it had happened to a sympathetic audience
of some twenty girls.

She rang Billie’s praises to such an extent that the poor girl tried to
hide herself in an inconspicuous corner, only to be dragged forth into
the limelight again by a couple of laughing and heartless maidens.

“You get up there where you belong,” cried one of them, shoving Billie
up into the center of the bed which was already over-crowded with
giggling girls. “Don’t you know that you’re a real, honest-to-goodness
heroine?”

“And for the second time to-day,” drawled Rose Belser, her eyes fixed a
little enviously upon Billie’s pretty, flushed face. “Wasn’t it enough
to win the prize, without going and getting yourself in the limelight
_again_?”

Laura and Vi flushed angrily, for there was a little malice under the
question. But Billie took it all good-naturedly.

“Well, I didn’t do it on purpose—not the last part, anyway,” she said.

“We know you didn’t, honey,” said Connie, ruffling Billie’s dark curls
fondly. “You’re just naturally talented.”

“By the way,” asked Laura, after an interval of skylarking, “does
anybody know what happened to Amanda?”

“She was suspended,” replied one of the girls.

“And I thought it was a pity she wasn’t expelled,” spoke up another.

“Poor Eliza!” drawled Rose. “I wonder what she will do without her
master.”

“Does anybody know who won the second prize?” asked Laura carelessly.

“What a queer question to ask,” said Caroline Brant, who had been
dreaming about the thesis she was going to write and had hardly heard a
word of the conversation. “_You_ did, of course!”

It took a little time for this to sink in, for Laura had long ago given
up hope of winning a prize for herself. But when it did finally beat its
way into her mind she straightway proceeded to turn the place upside
down in her hilarity.

She found Billie’s sewing basket, dumped out its contents, and turned it
upside down on her head for a crown.

Then she draped a bedspread about her shoulders, queen fashion, and two
of her classmates caught up the dangling ends that formed a train.

Then they marched through the halls crying, “Way for the queen!” and
gathering a crowd of giggling girls as they went.

“What’s it all about?”

“Queen indeed! Just look at her with that workbasket on her head!”

“They are having the sport because Laura took the second prize in that
composition contest.”

“Oh, that’s it, is it? Well, I’m glad they showed up Amanda—and Billie
Bradley certainly deserved the first prize.”

The merriment grew louder, and presently the crowd made Laura mount a
stand and deliver what they called “an oration.”

“Tell us about making linen dusters for the Laplanders,” suggested one
girl.

“Or overcoats for the heathens in Africa,” suggested another.

“Or how to make sponge cake from live sponges.”

“Or why Washington didn’t use submarines when his army crossed the
Delaware.”

“I can talk but I can’t make a speech,” declared Laura. “In other words,
I could say something if I could only frame my speech, properly—that
is——”

“If she could only get her tongue to working,” broke in Vi, and at this
the assembled girls roared.

It was only when rumor said that Miss Walters was coming their way that
the hilarious party broke up and scurried for home and safety.

“Take off that ridiculous thing,” cried Billie, jerking at the
bedspread, herself weak from laughing. “And give me back my work basket,
woman, before Miss Walters catches you and sends you after Amanda.”

“Goodness,” said Laura, meekly handing Billie her property, “do you
think she would? It may suit Amanda fine to be suspended, but I’m more
comfortable the way I am.”

And so the time wore on with studies and lessons and fun until the girls
woke up one day to find that the summer holidays were almost upon them.

Mrs. Haddon had sold the knitting machinery model to the Philadelphia
concern at a price that was a fortune to her.

The little white cottage had been remodeled and furnished prettily, and
Polly Haddon had grown prosperous and handsome and oh, so happy.

But the most remarkable thing to the girls was the change in Mary and
Isabel and Peter Haddon. The children, who had been such sorry little
waifs in their poverty, had grown almost beautiful in the days of their
prosperity. Polly Haddon’s pride in them and their pretty clothes was
almost pathetic.

The North Bend girls and Connie were often visitors at the little
cottage, and sometimes the boys went with them on their visits and were
treated to a dinner of waffles and maple syrup that, to quote Chet,
“would make an Indian’s hair curl.”

And now, as the girls realized how fast the time was flying, they
conceived the idea of giving a party. Not a small party, but a real one
with cake and ice-cream and snappers and everything.

“I wonder,” breathed Vi daringly, “if Miss Walters would mind if we
should ask a few of the boys—just a very few, you know.”

“There would have to be enough to go around,” interposed Billie.

“I should say so!” said Connie with emphasis. “Especially as Billie is
sure to have at least two of them. I want to dance with Teddy and Paul
Martinson once or twice myself, my dear,” she said, eyeing the laughing
Billie sternly.

“And I’m quite sure dear Rose will, too—especially Teddy,” murmured
Laura, maliciously.

They found that Miss Walters was quite willing to let them have the
party and the boys, too—provided the latter did not stay too late—and
then the plans began in earnest.

They sent invitations to about twenty of the boys at the Academy and the
invitations were accepted promptly and eagerly.

About two days before the great event, the girls decorated the two big
sitting-rooms on the ground floor which Miss Walters had said they could
use, and when they had finished no ballroom ever looked prettier—even
the girls said so.

Then at last came the morning of the great day, then the afternoon and
then—the evening—and time for the girls to dress.

They had brought out their best party frocks for the occasion and the
closest chums had compared colors carefully so that they would be sure
not to “clash.” Billie was to wear pale green net with a touch of pink,
Laura light blue, Connie had chosen a lovely rose pink that went well
with her fluffy fairness, and Vi had decided on golden yellow that made
her look like a queen. Rose Belser was dressed in an expensive black
frock that was far too old for her but that set off her dark prettiness
admirably.

There was Nellie Bane in white, and a number of other girls were in
pretty frocks of varied hues. All were flushed and laughing and excited,
and their happiness made every one of them pretty.

“Oh, aren’t I beautiful?” cried Laura with engaging frankness as she
pirouetted before the mirror. Then she turned to Billie and hugged her
rapturously. “And you’re gorgeous, honey,” she cried. “I see where we
don’t get even a boy apiece to-night.”

The boys arrived early. It was lucky that Billie could dance with only
one boy at a time—or there might not have been “enough to go around.”

“I say, Billie,” Teddy cried once, waltzing her over into a corner and
gazing at her wonderingly, “I never knew you could look like that. What
is it, anyway? This green and pink thing?” lifting a piece of filmy net
gingerly between his thumb and finger.

Billie looked up impishly in his face while one foot kept time with the
music.

“Don’t ask _me_,” she said. “It’s because I’m so happy, I guess. Oh,
come on, Teddy, let’s dance!”

It was some time later that the three classmates happened to find
themselves together and alone.

“Desoited!” cried Laura dramatically. “Where’s yours, Billie?”

“Gone to get me some ice-cream,” said Billie.

“Wonderful,” cried Laura. “So has mine!”

“And mine!” added Vi.

They giggled happily for a minute and then Billie reached out and put an
arm about each of her chums. She hugged them close, regardless of pretty
frocks.

“Girls,” she said contentedly, “I think I’m the very happiest girl in
the world.”

“Except me,” said Laura.

“And me!” echoed Vi. “And to think——” she added, after they had
contentedly watched the happy crowd for a few moments. “To think that in
a few short weeks vacation will be here.”

“Well,” said Laura decidedly, “if we have any more fun this summer than
we’ve had this winter, we’ll have to go _some_!”

“We shall indeed,” said Billie, happily.

                                THE END.

                         BILLIE BRADLEY SERIES

                          By JANET D. WHEELER

           _12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Jacket in full colors_
                 _Price per volume, 65 cents, postpaid_

1. BILLIE BRADLEY AND HER INHERITANCE, _or The Queer Homestead at Cherry
Corners_

    Billie Bradley fell heir to an old homestead that was unoccupied
    and located far away in a lonely section of the country. How
    Billie went there, accompanied by some of her chums, and what
    queer things happened, go to make up a story no girl will want
    to miss.

2. BILLIE BRADLEY AT THREE-TOWERS HALL, _or Leading a Needed Rebellion_

    Three-Towers Hall was a boarding school for girls. For a short
    time after Billie arrived there all went well. But then the head
    of the school had to go on a long journey and she left the girls
    in charge of two teachers, sisters, who believed in severe
    discipline and in very, very plain food and little of it—and
    then there was a row! The girls wired for the head to come
    back—and all ended happily.

3. BILLIE BRADLEY ON LIGHTHOUSE ISLAND, _or The Mystery of the Wreck_

    One of Billie’s friends owned a summer bungalow on Lighthouse
    Island, near the coast. The school girls made up a party and
    visited the Island. There was a storm and a wreck, and three
    little children were washed ashore. They could tell nothing of
    themselves, and Billie and her chums set to work to solve the
    mystery of their identity.

4. BILLIE BRADLEY AND HER CLASSMATES, _or The Secret of the Locked
Tower_

    Billie and her chums come to the rescue of several little
    children who have broken through the ice. There is the mystery
    of a lost invention, and also the dreaded mystery of the locked
    school tower.

5. BILLIE BRADLEY AT TWIN LAKES, _or Jolly Schoolgirls Afloat and
Ashore_

    A tale of outdoor adventure in which Billie and her chums have a
    great variety of adventures. They visit an artists’ colony and
    there fall in with a strange girl living with an old boatman who
    abuses her constantly. Billie befriended Hulda and the mystery
    surrounding the girl was finally cleared up.

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                       THE BARTON BOOKS FOR GIRLS
                          By MAY HOLLIS BARTON

            _12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. With colored jacket_
                 _Price per volume, 65 cents, postpaid_

May Hollis Barton is a new writer for girls who is bound to win instant
popularity. Her style is somewhat of a mixture of that of Louise M.
Alcott and Mrs. L. T. Meade, but thoroughly up-to-date in plot and
action. Clean tales that all girls will enjoy reading.

1. THE GIRL FROM THE COUNTRY, _or Laura Mayford’s City Experiences_

    Laura was the oldest of five children and when daddy got sick
    she felt she must do something. She had a chance to try her luck
    in New York, and there the country girl fell in with many
    unusual experiences.

2. THREE GIRL CHUMS AT LAUREL HALL, _or The Mystery of the School by the
Lake_

    When the three chums arrived at the boarding school they found
    the other students in the grip of a most perplexing mystery. How
    this mystery was solved, and what good times the girls had, both
    in school and on the lake, go to make a story no girl would care
    to miss.

3. NELL GRAYSON’S RANCHING DAYS, _or A City Girl in the Great West_

    Showing how Nell, when she had a ranch girl visit her in Boston,
    thought her chum very green, but when Nell visited the ranch in
    the great West she found herself confronting many conditions of
    which she was totally ignorant. A stirring outdoor story.

4. FOUR LITTLE WOMEN OF ROXBY, _or The Queer Old Lady Who Lost Her Way_

    Four sisters are keeping house and having trouble to make both
    ends meet. One day there wanders in from a stalled express train
    an old lady who cannot remember her identity. The girls take the
    old lady in, and, later, are much astonished to learn who she
    really is.

5. PLAIN JANE AND PRETTY BETTY, _or The Girl Who Won Out_

    The tale of two girls, one plain but sensible, the other pretty
    but vain. Unexpectedly both find they have to make their way in
    the world. Both have many trials and tribulations. A story of a
    country town and then a city.

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                        THE RUTH FIELDING SERIES

                          By ALICE B. EMERSON

               _12mo. Illustrated. Jacket in full colors_
                 _Price per volume, 65 cents, postpaid_

Ruth Fielding was an orphan and came to live with her miserly uncle. Her
adventures and travels make stories that will hold the interest of every
reader.

Ruth Fielding is a character that will live in juvenile fiction.

   1. RUTH FIELDING OF THE RED MILL
   2. RUTH FIELDING AT BRIARWOODHALL
   3. RUTH FIELDING AT SNOW CAMP
   4. RUTH FIELDING AT LIGHTHOUSE POINT
   5. RUTH FIELDING AT SILVER RANCH
   6. RUTH FIELDING ON CLIFF ISLAND
   7. RUTH FIELDING AT SUNRISE FARM
   8. RUTH FIELDING AND THE GYPSIES
   9. RUTH FIELDING IN MOVING PICTURES
  10. RUTH FIELDING DOWN IN DIXIE
  11. RUTH FIELDING AT COLLEGE
  12. RUTH FIELDING IN THE SADDLE
  13. RUTH FIELDING IN THE RED CROSS
  14. RUTH FIELDING AT THE WAR FRONT
  15. RUTH FIELDING HOMEWARD BOUND
  16. RUTH FIELDING DOWN EAST
  17. RUTH FIELDING IN THE GREAT NORTHWEST
  18. RUTH FIELDING ON THE ST. LAWRENCE
  19. RUTH FIELDING TREASURE HUNTING
  20. RUTH FIELDING IN THE FAR NORTH
  21. RUTH FIELDING AT GOLDEN PASS
  22. RUTH FIELDING IN ALASKA

                        THE BETTY GORDON SERIES

                          By ALICE B. EMERSON

           _12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Jacket in full colors_
                 _Price per volume, 65 cents, postpaid_

A series of stories by Alice B. Emerson which are bound to make this
writer more popular than ever with her host of girl readers.

1. BETTY GORDON AT BRAMBLE FARM, _or The Mystery of a Nobody_

    At twelve Betty is left an orphan.

2. BETTY GORDON IN WASHINGTON, _or Strange Adventures in a Great City_

    Betty goes to the National Capitol to find her uncle and has
    several unusual adventures.

3. BETTY GORDON IN THE LAND OF OIL, _or The Farm That Was Worth a
Fortune_

    From Washington the scene is shifted to the great oil fields of
    our country. A splendid picture of the oil field operations of
    today.

4. BETTY GORDON AT BOARDING SCHOOL, _or The Treasure of Indian Chasm_

    Seeking treasures of Indian Chasm makes interesting reading.

5. BETTY GORDON AT MOUNTAIN CAMP, _or The Mystery of Ida Bellethorne_

    At Mountain Camp Betty found herself in the midst of a mystery
    involving a girl whom she had previously met in Washington.

6. BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK, _or School Chums on the Boardwalk_

    A glorious outing that Betty and her chums never forgot.

7. BETTY GORDON AND HER SCHOOL CHUMS, _or Bringing the Rebels to Terms_

    Rebellious students, disliked teachers and mysterious robberies
    make a fascinating story.

8. BETTY GORDON AT RAINBOW RANCH, _or Cowboy Joe’s Secret_

    Betty and her chums have a grand time in the saddle.

9. BETTY GORDON IN MEXICAN WILDS, _or The Secret of the Mountains_

    Betty receives a fake telegram and finds both Bob and herself
    held for ransom in a mountain cave.

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                         THE RADIO GIRLS SERIES

                          BY MARGARET PENROSE

           _12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Jacket in full colors_
                 _Price per volume, 65 cents, postpaid_

A new and up-to-date series taking in the activities of several bright
girls who become interested in radio. The stories tell of thrilling
exploits, out-door life and the great part the Radio plays in the
adventures of the girls and in solving their mysteries. Fascinating
books that girls of all ages will want to read.

1. THE RADIO GIRLS OF ROSELAWN, _or A Strange Message from the Air_

    Showing how Jessie Norwood and her chums became interested in
    radiophoning, how they gave a concert for a worthy local
    charity, and how they received a sudden and unexpected call for
    help out of the air. A girl wanted as witness in a celebrated
    law case disappears, and the radio girls go to the rescue.

2. THE RADIO GIRLS ON THE PROGRAM, _or Singing and Reciting at the
Sending Station_

    When listening in on a thrilling recitation or a superb concert
    number who of us has not longed to “look behind the scenes” to
    see how it was done? The girls had made the acquaintance of a
    sending station manager and in this volume are permitted to get
    on the program, much to their delight. A tale full of action and
    fun.

3. THE RADIO GIRLS ON STATION ISLAND, _or The Wireless from the Steam
Yacht_

    In this volume the girls travel to the seashore and put in a
    vacation on an island where is located a big radio sending
    station. The big brother of one of the girls owns a steam yacht
    and while out with a pleasure party those on the island receive
    word by radio that the yacht is on fire. A tale thrilling to the
    last page.

4. THE RADIO GIRLS AT FOREST LODGE, _or The Strange Hut in the Swamp_

    The Radio Girls spend several weeks on the shores of a beautiful
    lake and with their radio get news of a great forest fire. It
    also aids them in rounding up some undesirable folks who occupy
    the strange hut in the swamp.

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                         THE GIRL SCOUT SERIES

                            By LILIAN GARIS

           _12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Jacket in full colors_
                 _Price per volume, 65 cents, postpaid_

The highest ideals of girlhood as advocated by the foremost
organisations of America form the background for these stories and while
unobtrusive there is a message in every volume.

1. THE GIRL SCOUT PIONEERS, _or Winning the First B. C._

    A story of the True Tred Troop in a Pennsylvania town. Two
    runaway girls, who want to see the city, are reclaimed through
    troop influence. The story is correct in scout detail.

2. THE GIRL SCOUTS AT BELLAIRE, _or Maid Mary’s Awakening_

    The story of a timid little maid who is afraid to take part in
    other girls’ activities, while working nobly alone for high
    ideals. How she was discovered by the Bellaire Troop and came
    into her own as “Maid Mary” makes a fascinating story.

3. THE GIRL SCOUTS AT SEA CREST, _or The Wig Wag Rescue_

    Luna Land, a little island by the sea, is wrapt in a mysterious
    seclusion, and Kitty Scuttle, a grotesque figure, succeeds in
    keeping all others at bay until the Girl Scouts come.

4. THE GIRL SCOUTS AT CAMP COMALONG, _or Peg of Tamarack Hills_

    The girls of Bobolink Troop spend their summer on the shores of
    Lake Hocomo. Their discovery of Peg, the mysterious rider, and
    the clearing up of her remarkable adventures afford a vigorous
    plot.

5. THE GIRL SCOUTS AT ROCKY LEDGE, _or Nora’s Real Vacation_

    Nora Blair is the pampered daughter of a frivolous mother. Her
    dislike for the rugged life of Girl Scouts is eventually changed
    to appreciation, when the rescue of little Lucia, a woodland
    waif, becomes a problem for the girls to solve.

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                         THE LINGER-NOT SERIES

                            By AGNES MILLER

           _12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Jacket in full colors_
                 _Price per volume, 65 cents, postpaid_

This new series of girls’ books is in a new style of story writing. The
interest is in knowing the girls and seeing them solve the problems that
develop their character. Incidentally, a great deal of historical
information is imparted.

1. THE LINGER-NOTS AND THE MYSTERY HOUSE, _or The Story of Nine
Adventurous Girls_

    How the Linger-Not girls met and formed their club seems
    commonplace, but this writer makes it fascinating, and how they
    made their club serve a great purpose continues the interest to
    the end, and introduces a new type of girlhood.

2. THE LINGER-NOTS AND THE VALLEY FEUD, _or The Great West Point Chain_

    The Linger-Not girls had no thought of becoming mixed up with
    feuds or mysteries, but their habit of being useful soon
    entangled them in some surprising adventures that turned out
    happily for all, and made the valley better because of their
    visit.

3. THE LINGER-NOTS AND THEIR GOLDEN QUEST, _or The Log of the Ocean
Monarch_

    For a club of girls to become involved in a mystery leading back
    into the times of the California gold-rush, seems unnatural
    until the reader sees how it happened, and how the girls helped
    one of their friends to come into her rightful name and
    inheritance, forms a fine story.

4. THE LINGER-NOTS AND THE WHISPERING CHARMS, _or The Secret from Old
Alaska_

    Whether engrossed in thrilling adventures in the Far North or
    occupied with quiet home duties, the Linger-Not girls could work
    unitedly to solve a colorful mystery in a way that interpreted
    American freedom to a sad young stranger, and brought happiness
    to her and to themselves.

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                          THE CURLYTOPS SERIES

                           By HOWARD R. GARIS
            _Author of the famous “Bedtime Animal Stories”_

           _12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Jacket in full colors_
                 _Price per volume, 65 cents, postpaid_

1. THE CURLYTOPS AT CHERRY FARM, _or Vacation Days in the Country_

    A tale of happy vacation days on a farm.

2. THE CURLYTOPS ON STAR ISLAND, _or Camping out with Grandpa_

    The Curlytops were delighted when grandpa took them to camp on
    Star Island.

3. THE CURLYTOPS SNOWED IN, _or Grand Fun with Skates and Sleds_

    The Curlytops, with their skates and sleds, on lakes and hills.

4. THE CURLYTOPS AT UNCLE FRANK’S RANCH, _or Little Folks on Ponyback_

    Out West on their uncle’s ranch they have a wonderful time.

5. THE CURLYTOPS AT SILVER LAKE, _or On the Water with Uncle Ben_

    The Curlytops camp out on the shores of a beautiful lake.

6. THE CURLYTOPS AND THEIR PETS, _or Uncle Toby’s Strange Collection_

    An old uncle leaves them to care for his collection of pets.

7. THE CURLYTOPS AND THEIR PLAYMATES, _or Jolly Times Through the
Holidays_

    They have great times with their uncle’s collection of animals.

8. THE CURLYTOPS IN THE WOODS, _or Fun at the Lumber Camp_

    Exciting times in the forest for Curlytops.

9. THE CURLYTOPS AT SUNSET BEACH, _or What Was Found in the Sand_

    The Curlytops have a fine time at the seashore, bathing, digging
    in the sand and pony-back riding.

10. THE CURLYTOPS TOURING AROUND, _or The Missing Photograph Albums_

    The Curlytops fall in with a moving picture company and get in
    some of the pictures.

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