CHAPTER XX

THE SECOND DEGREE

"My patience, what a world of trouble this is!" sighed Betty to herself, but aloud she said cheerily: "What's the matter with Norma?"

Norma sat up, mopping her eyes.

"Oh, Betty," she choked, "I don't believe Alice and I can come back after Christmas! They've had a fire in Glenside and a house dad owns there burned. He hasn't a cent of insurance, and the mortgagee takes the ground. So that's the rental right out of our income. Besides, grandma has had an operation on her eyes and she has to spend weeks in an expensive Philadelphia hospital. Even with the small fees the surgeons charge because of dad, the board will amount to more than he can afford to pay. Alice and I ought to be learning stenography or something useful."

"Well, now, your father would say," suggested Betty, with determined optimism, "that the Christmas vacation is too far off to make any plans about what you're going to do afterward. You know Bobby Littell has set her heart on you and Alice spending the recess with them in Washington. Anyway, lots of things can turn up before Christmas, Norma—even the treasure!"

Norma tried to smile.

"I dream about that chasm nearly every night," she said. "Sometimes I think the Indians came back and got the stuff, Betty. They're so clever about climbing, and I know they wouldn't easily give up."

"Nonsense!" chided Betty. "The treasure is there, and we've just got to think up a way to get it out. At all costs you mustn't cry yourself sick about the future—you'll spoil all the fun awaiting you in the weeks before Christmas. And you know you can't study as well when you're depressed, and, goodness knows! one has to study at Shadyside."

"I've a headache now," confessed Norma, pushing her tumbled hair out of her eyes. "I can't go down to dinner—I'm a perfect sight. There's the bell!"

"Just lie down and try to rest," advised Betty, smoothing the tangled covers with a deft hand. "I'll bring you up some supper on a tray. Aunt Nancy thinks you're an angel on general principles, and she has a special soft spot in her heart for you because her mother used to cook for your grandmother. Come on, Alice, we'll turn the light out and let her rest her eyes."

"I do wish some one would think up a way to get those pearls and the gold," fretted Betty, turning restlessly on her pillow that night. "If Norma and Alice are ever going to be well-off now is the time. When they're so old they can't walk, money won't do 'em any good!"

Which showed that Betty, for all her sound sense, was still a little girl. Very old ladies, who can not walk, certainly need money to make them comfortable and keep them so.

The next night was Friday, and Betty welcomed the prospect of the second degree necessary to stamp the freshmen as full-fledged members of the Mysterious For. The week had been noticeably tinged with indigo for at least two of Betty's friends, and she hoped the initiation might take their minds from their troubles.

The second degree, it was whispered about among the girls, was bound to be a "hummer."

"They say it's a test of your character," said Bobby, with a shiver. "Somehow, Betty, my character oozes out of my shoes when it knows it should be prancing up to the firing line."

"I guess you imagine that," smiled Betty. "Speak sternly to it, Bobby, and explain that funking is out of the question."

However, more girls than Bobby found it necessary to clutch at their oozing courage when, upon assembling in the large hall, the lights suddenly went out. In the shadows, four white veiled figures were seen slowly to mount the platform.

"To-night," said one of them, stretching out a long arm and pointing toward the fascinated and expectant audience, "we are your fates! You have come to the final tests. We have no choice in these tests, nor have you. You are to come forward, one at a time, and take a slip from this basket here on the table. Go directly to your room after drawing your slip, and there open it and follow the directions explicitly. Come to the platform in the order in which you are seated, please."

The lights did not come on, and one by one the girls stumbled up the steps to the platform, felt around in the basket, and drew a slip. Then they hurried away to their rooms to see what was to happen next.

Bobby and Betty could hardly wait to open their notes, and before they had them fairly digested, Frances and Libbie and Constance and Louise and the Guerin girls were crowding in to compare notes.

"I have to go and ask Miss Prettyman if I may telephone to Salsette Academy and ask for a lost-and-found notice on their bulletin board," wailed Bobby. "I'm supposed to have lost a pair of gloves at the last football game. I always have the worst luck! Can't you imagine how Miss Prettyman will lecture me? She'll say that at my age I ought to have something in my head besides excuses to talk to the boys!"

The girls laughed, recognizing the ring of prophecy in Bobby's speech.

"That's nothing—I'm to row Dora Estabrooke twice around the lake," mourned Louise. "She weighs two hundred, if she weighs a pound. Thank goodness, I don't have to do it to-night."

Norma was instructed to walk three times around the cellar, chanting "Little Boy Blue" before ten o'clock that night. Frances Martin, to her horror, was enjoined to produce six live angle worms the following morning—"and you know I despise the wiggling things," she wailed. Alice Guerin, the silent member of the octette, was condemned to recite "The Children's Hour" in the dining room "between cereal and eggs." And Constance Howard was told she must add up an unbelievably long column of figures and present the correct answer within half an hour. Constance's bete noir was figures, and already these long columns danced dizzily before her eyes.

"You needn't tell me that chance made such canny selections," observed Betty. "One of those girls manipulated the right notes into our hands. Libbie, what does yours say?"

Libbie handed her slip of paper to Betty without a word.

"Go to bed at once," the latter read aloud.

There was a gale of laughter. Libbie, the curious, who dearly loved to hear and see, to be sent off to bed in the middle of the most wildly exciting night they had known in weeks!

"Hurry," admonished Bobby. "You're disobeying by staying up this long. Where's your character, Libbie?"

Libbie scowled, but departed, grumbling that she didn't see why she couldn't stay up and watch Norma walk down in the cellar.

"Mine is the most spooky," said Betty, when the door had closed behind Libbie. "Listen—I'm to climb the water tower at midnight and leave this card there to show I have complied."

She held out a little plain white card in a green envelope.

"Hark! was that somebody at the door?" asked Bobby, and she ran over to it lightly and jerked it open.

The corridor was empty.

"We're all nervous," remarked Betty lightly. "I'll set the alarm for eleven-forty-five and put the clock under my pillow so Miss Lacey won't hear it. I'll lie down all dressed, and then I won't have to use a light. She might see that through the transom."

"Don't you want some of us to go with you?" asked Constance. "We needn't go up into the tower, if you say not. But at least we could go that far with you; you might fall off the roof."

"No, please, I'd rather go alone," said Betty firmly. "It's a test, you see, and the idea isn't to make it easy. I'll be all right, and in the morning the girls will find the card and know I didn't flunk."

After the girls had gone away to their own rooms the clock was set for a quarter of twelve, but Betty and Bobby decided that they might as well stay awake till midnight. They would lie down on their beds—Betty insisted that Bobby should undress and go to bed "right"—and wait for the time to come. Within twenty minutes they were both sound asleep.

The muffled whir of her alarm clock awakened Betty. For a moment she was dazed, then recollection cleared her mind. She slipped to the floor without waking Bobby and softly tiptoed from the room.

A dim light burned in the corridor, and Betty knew the way to the water tower. To reach it, one had to mount to the roof of the dormitory building. Betty experienced a little difficulty with the obstinate catch of the scuttle cover, but she finally mastered it and stepped out on the tarred graveled roof. The water tower, a huge tank on an iron framework, had a little enclosed room built directly under it reached by an iron ladder. Here the engineer kept various plumbing tools. It was in this room that Betty was to leave the card.

The night wind blew damp and keen, and the stars overhead seemed very far away. Betty had no sense of fear as she began to climb, mounting slowly and feeling for each step with her hands. The friendly dark shut in around her and somewhere in the distance a train whistle tooted shrilly.

She knew she had reached the last step when her hands encountered wood, and she felt about till she touched the knob of the door. It opened at her touch and she pulled herself in over the sill.

"Now the card," she whispered, feeling in her pocket.

A gust of wind fanned her cheek and something clicked.

The door had blown shut!



CHAPTER XXI

DRAMATICS

There are pleasanter places to be at midnight than the dark room of a strange water tower, but Betty was not frightened. She tripped over some tool as she felt for the door and discovered that she had lost her sense of direction completely.

"I'm all turned around," was the way she expressed it. "I must start and go around the sides, feeling till I come to the door."

Following this plan, she did come to the door and confidently turned the knob. The door stuck and she rattled the knob sharply. Then the explanation dawned on her.

The door was locked!

Could it have a spring lock? she wondered. Then she remembered a day when, on exploration bent, a group of girls had made the trip to the roof and the kindly Dave McGuire had taken a key from his pocket and unlocked the door of the little room for the more adventurous ones who wanted to climb up and see the inside.

"It was a flat key, like a latch key," Betty reflected. "The girls must have had the door unlocked for me to-night, but I don't think they would follow me and lock it. That would be mean!"

However, the door was locked and she was a prisoner. It was inky black and at every step she seemed to knock over something or stumble against cold iron. Gradually her eyes became accustomed to the lack of light, and she made out the outlines of something against the wall.

"Why, there is a window—I remember!" she said aloud. "I wonder if I can reach it."

Cautiously she felt her way around and stretched up tentative fingers. She could barely touch the lower frame.

Then, for the first time, Betty felt a little shiver of fear and apprehension. It was close in the tower room, and the smell of oil and dead air began to be oppressive. She had no wish to shout, even if she could be heard, a doubtful probability, for she had no mind to be rescued before the curious eyes of the entire school.

"I'll get out of it somehow, if I have to stay here all night," she told herself pluckily. "Oh, my goodness, what was that?"

A tiny sawing noise in one corner of the room sent Betty scurrying to the other side. She would have indignantly denied any fear of mice or rats, but the bravest girl might be excused from a too close acquaintance thrust upon her in the dark. Betty had no wish to put her fingers on a mouse.

"How can I get out?" she cried aloud, a little wildly. "I can't breathe!"

In the uncanny silence that followed the sound of her voice, the sawing noise sounded regularly, rhythmically. In desperation Betty seized an iron crowbar she had backed into on the wall, and hurled it in the direction of the industrious rodents.

"Now I've done it," she admitted, as with a clatter and a bang that, she was sure, could be heard a mile away, an evident avalanche of tools tumbled to the floor. Her crowbar had struck a box of tools.

But the silence shut down again after that. Betty did not realize that the water tower was so isolated that even unusual noises inside it would not carry far, and with the door and the window both closed the room was practically sealed.

The sawing noise was not repeated, there was that much to be grateful for, Betty reflected. She wondered if she could batter down the door.

"I'll try, anyway," she thought wearily.

And then she could not find the crowbar! Around and around she went, feeling on the floor for the tools that had clattered down with such a racket and for the iron bar she had hurled among them. Not one tool could she put her hands on.

"I must be going crazy," she cried in despair. "I couldn't have dreamed those tools fell down, and yet where could they have gone? There's no hole in the floor—"

Now Betty's nerves were sorely tried by the lonely imprisonment, the bad air, the heat, and the darkness, and it is not to be wondered at that her usual sound common sense was tricked by her imagination. Her fancy suggested that the weight of the tools might have torn a hole in the floor, they might have dropped through to the roof, and Betty herself might be in momentary danger of stepping into this hole.

Nonsense? Well, wiser minds have conceived wilder possibilities under similar trying conditions.

"I won't walk another step!" cried poor Betty, as she visioned this yawning hole. "Not another step. I'll wait till it's light."

But she waited, fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes, and the darkness if anything grew blacker. She had no idea how long she had been locked in the room, and she could not calculate how far off the morning might be.

"I'll put my hands out before me and creep," she said finally. "That ought to be safe. Perhaps I can find something to stand on to reach that window. I guess I could drop to the roof from there."

Stiffly and painfully, she began to crawl, holding out her hands before her and starting back time and again as she fancied she felt an opening just ahead. But when she brought up against a step ladder she forgot her fears in the joy of her discovery.

It was a short ladder, but she dragged it over to the window and put it in place and mounted it, all in the twinkling of an eye. By stretching to her full height, she was able to raise the creaky window, but to her dismay the roof offered a very long drop. She had not realized how high she had climbed.

"Dave was fussing with ropes and buckets the other day," she recalled. "Now I wonder—wouldn't it be the best luck in the world if I could find a rope?"

Hope was singing high in her heart now, but she almost despaired of such good fortune after a diligent search. Then something told her to feel about again on the floor. Round and round she went, getting her fingers into spider webs and sticky substances that renewed her inward shudders because she could not identify them. And when she found the rope, a tarry coil, she also solved the mystery of the tools. They had fallen down behind the coil of rope and were effectively fenced off from the circle of floor explored by the bewildered Betty.

It was the work of a moment to tie one end of the rope to a heavy staple driven under the window sill, and then, closing her eyes to the pitch black void beneath her, Betty let herself slide down to the roof. Her hands were cruelly scratched by the rope fibres and she was too tired to care about the evidences of her flight.

"If anybody wants to know about that rope and the locked door, let 'em!" she sighed defiantly.

Bobby woke up as Betty came in the door, and then there were questions galore to be answered. Betty was covered with dust and her clothing was torn and rumpled. Bobby declared she looked as if she had been to war.

"I feel it," admitted Betty. "Let me take a hot bath and get into bed. And, Bobby, promise me on your word of honor that you'll call me in the morning. Whoever locked me in expects me to stay there till I'm missed, and I want to walk into breakfast as usual."

She half regretted her instructions when Bobby called her at seven the next morning, but Betty was nothing if not gritty, and she sleepily struggled into her clothes. Ada Nansen's look of utter astonishment when she saw Betty come into the dining room with the rest for breakfast told those in the secret what they had already suspected.

"Bobby must have heard her listening at our door last night," said Betty. "What am I going to do? Why nothing, of course! That was part of the stunt, or at least I'm going to consider it so. My card is there, so they'll know I fulfilled my part."

Dave McGuire scratched his head when he found the rope and the open window, but he wisely said nothing. He had two keys, and one he had loaned at the request of the senior class president to a fellow student. The other key, for emergency use, hung on a nail in the fourth story hall. That was the key Dave found in the door lock when he made his early morning tour of inspection. "But the young folks must be having their fun," he said indulgently, "and, short of burning down the place, 'tis not Dave McGuire who will be interfering with 'em."

Mid-term tests were approaching. Bobby, who, with all her love of fun, was a hard student, felt prepared and went around serenely. Constance Howard had, most humanly, neglected, so far as the teacher of mathematics permitted, the study that was hardest for her, her algebra. She now spent hours in "cramming" on this, meanwhile complaining to those of her special chums who would listen to her of "the unfairness of being made to study algebra."

"I can add—with the use of my fingers—and subtract and divide and multiply—at least I know the tables up through the twelves. Of what use will a's and b's and x's, y's and z's ever be to me?"

"Constance, you know that's nonsense," Bobby told her. "We're every one of us here because we want to play a bigger part in life than the two-plus-two-is-four people, and we've got to dig in and prepare ourselves. If you'd do your work when you ought to, you wouldn't be in such an upset state now."

"Yes'm," grinned Constance, and went back to her belated work.

Betty had found that her year away from school had made it hard for her to concentrate her mind on her studies, and while she had not deliberately neglected her work, as Constance had in her algebra, she had not always kept up to the highest pitch. She was working furiously now, with the tests to face so soon, and with it went the resolve to be more studious from day to day during the rest of the school year. The concentration was becoming easier, too, as the term advanced, and, the teaching at Shadyside being of the best, she felt sure she would feel that she had accomplished something by the end of the year.

The Dramatic Club of Shadyside woke to ambition as the term progressed. Soon after the mid-term tests, which all the girls, even Constance, passed successfully, by dint of threat and bribery, each student was "tried out" and her ability duly catalogued.

Betty liked to act, and proved to have a natural talent, while Bobby, professing a great love for things theatrical, was hopeless on the stage. Her efforts either moved her coaches to helpless laughter or caused them to retire in indignant tears.

"She is—what you call it?—impossible!" sighed Madame, the French teacher, shaking her head after witnessing one rehearsal in which Bobby, as the villain, had convulsed the actors as well as the student audience.

"Well then, I'll be a stage hand," declared Bobby, whose feelings were impervious to slights. "I'm going to have something to do with this play!"

Ada Nansen was eager to be assigned a part—the players were chosen on merit—and she aspired modestly to the leading role, mainly because, the girls hinted, the heroine wore a red velvet dress with a train and a string of pearls.

But Ada, it developed, was worse than Bobby as an actress. She was self-conscious, impatient of correction, and so arrogant toward the other players that even gentle Alice Guerin was roused to retort.

"I haven't been assigned the maid's part yet!" she flashed, when Ada ordered her to remove several stage properties that were in the way.

"Give it to her, Alice!" encouraged the mischievous Bobby. "That girl would ruffle an angel."

Alice and Norma were both valuable additions to the Dramatic Club ranks. Norma especially proved to be a find, and she was given the hero's part after the first rehearsal while Alice was the heroine's mother. Betty, much to her surprise, was posted on the bulletin board as the "leading lady."

Down toward the end of the list of the cast was Ada Nansen's name as "the maid."

"She'll be furious," whispered Bobby. "Miss Anderson told Miss Sharpe, when she didn't think I could hear, that Ada wasn't really good enough to be the maid, but that they hoped she would sing for them between the acts. Miss Anderson said if they didn't let her have some part she'd be so sulky she wouldn't sing."

A rehearsal was held in the gymnasium after school that afternoon, and as she went through her first act Betty was uncomfortably conscious of Ada's glowering eyes following her. When the cue was given for the maid, Ada did not move.

"That's your cue, Ada," called Miss Anderson patiently.

"I've resigned, Miss Anderson," said Ada clearly. "It's a little too much to ask me to play maid to two charity students."

Norma and Alice shrank back, but Betty sprang forward.

"How dare you!" she flared, white with rage. "How dare you say such a thing! It's untrue, and you know it. Even if it were so, you have no right to say such an outrageous thing."

Betty was angrier than she had ever been in her life. She possessed a lively temper and was no meeker than she should be, but during the past summer she had learned to control herself fairly well. Ada's cruel taunt, directed with such a sneer at the Guerin sisters that every girl knew whom she meant, had sent Betty's temper to the boiling point.

"Easy, easy, Betty," counseled Miss Anderson, putting an arm about the shaking girl. "You're not mending matters, you know."

Then she turned to Ada, who was now rather frightened at what she had done. She had not meant to go so far.

"Ada," said Miss Anderson sharply, "you will apologize immediately before these girls for the injustice you have done to two of them. What you have just said is nothing more nor less than a lie. I will not stoop to put my meaning in gentler phrases. Apologize to Norma and Alice at once."

Ada set her lips obstinately. The teacher waited a moment.

"I will give you just three minutes," she declared. "If at the end of that time you still refuse to obey me, I will send for Mrs. Eustice."

Ada shuffled her feet uneasily. She had no fancy to meet Mrs. Eustice, whose friendship for the Guerins was well known. Mrs. Eustice had a hot white anger of her own that a pupil who once witnessed it could never forget.

"Well, Ada?" came Miss Anderson's voice at the end of the three minutes.

Ada hastily stumbled through a shame-faced apology, painful to listen to, and then, the angry tears running down her face, turned and dashed from the room.



CHAPTER XXII

ANOTHER MYSTERY

"Ready, Betty," said Miss Anderson briskly. "You enter at the left and begin 'I thought I heard voices—' Don't look toward the auditorium. Remember you are supposed to be in a small room."

Betty managed to command her voice, and the rehearsal went on. Miss Anderson herself took the part of the maid and, as she had foreseen, by the time they had finished the hour they were in a normal, happy frame of mind.

No reference was ever made by any one to Ada's speech, but she never appeared at another rehearsal. After two weeks' diligent practice, the players were pronounced perfect and a night was set for the performance of "The Violet Patchwork."

"Why don't we go to the woods and get some leaves to trim the assembly hall?" suggested Betty two days before the time for the play. "Mrs. Eustice's sister is coming to see her, and some other guests, and we want it to look nice. We might get some nuts, too. Aunt Nancy promised us nut cake with ice cream if we'll get her enough."

"All right, I like to go nutting," agreed Bobby. "But, for goodness' sake, if we're going to walk a hundred miles this time, let's have something to eat with us. Sandwiches and a regular spread. How many have boxes from home?"

A canvass showed that a round dozen of the girls had been favored that week, and, at Bobby's suggestion, they donated their goodies to "the common cause."

"Not all the girls will want to go," said Betty. "Some are such poor walkers, they'll decline at the first hint of a hike. Every one in the V.P. will want to go, I think, and that's eleven. Then, counting the girls with boxes and the others who have asked to come, we'll have twenty. Twenty of us ought to manage to bring home enough leaves to trim the hall respectably."

"We might ask for a holiday!" Bobby's face beamed at the thought. "We haven't had a day off in weeks, and Mrs. Eustice said a long time ago she thought we'd earned one. Will you do the asking, Betty?"

Betty was accustomed to "doing the asking," and she said she would once more if Norma Guerin would go with her. Wherever possible, Betty drew Norma into every school activity, and she persistently refused to allow her friend to talk as though the Christmas holidays would end their days at Shadyside. Alice worried less than Norma, but both girls grieved at the thought of the sacrifice those at home were making for them and felt that they could not accept it much longer without vigorous protest.

Betty and Bobby, on the other hand, were determined to see to it that the sisters spent their holidays in Washington, and while Bobby cherished wild plans of filling a trunk with new dresses and hats and forcing it in some manner upon her chums, Betty concentrated her attention on the subject of cash. She intended to consult her uncle, in person if possible, and if that proved impossible, by letter, and Bob as to the feasibility of persuading Norma and Alice to borrow a sum sufficient to see them through to graduation day at Shadyside. Betty was sure her uncle and Bob, in both of whom she had infinite faith, could manage this difficult task satisfactorily, though the Guerin pride was a formidable obstacle.

Acting immediately on the decision to ask for a holiday, Betty and Norma went down to the office and preferred their request, which was cordially granted after an explanation of its purpose.

"All day to-morrow off!" shouted Betty, bursting in upon the six girls assembled to hear the result.

"We may go after breakfast and needn't come back till four o'clock when Miss Anderson has called a dress rehearsal," chimed in Norma.

Libbie and Louise were dispatched to notify the other girls and to give strict instructions to those who had boxes not to eat any more of the contents.

"Elsie Taylor had already eaten six eclairs when I requisitioned her box for the picnic," said Constance Howard. "It's lucky we're going tomorrow, or there wouldn't be much left to eat."

Betty and Bobby each had a box from Mrs. Littell, who sent packages of sensible goodies regularly to her girls in turn.

"I hope the sandwiches will keep fresh enough," worried Betty.

But she might have saved her worry.

Just as she and Bobby were going to bed that night Norma and Alice came in, wrapped in their kimonos, each carrying a large box under her arm.

"What do you suppose?" asked Norma. "Good old Aunt Nancy heard we were going after nuts for her cake and leaves for the hall, and she's made us dozens of sandwiches. She said she did it because Mrs. Eustice reserved one of the best seats for her at the play. Anyway, we'll be glad to have them, shan't we? And, oh yes, Aunt Nancy says she'll make us a cake as big as 'a black walnut tree' and two kinds of ice cream!"

"And she brought the sandwiches up to Norma and Alice because she was determined they should have something for the picnic," thought Betty after the girls had gone. "Talk about tact! Aunt Nancy has the real thing."

The girls were all up early the next morning, and soon after breakfast they were on their way to the woods. Many of those who were not of the nutting party went to Edentown, some took canoes and went paddling, others "puttered" around the school grounds, enjoying the beautiful autumn weather and the luxury of a holiday.

Ada Nansen and her friends had elected to go to Edentown, and passed the nutting party on the way. Betty took one glance into the bus and then looked at Bobby. That young person promptly giggled.

"Did you see what I saw?" she asked.

"Poor Ada!" said Betty. "She does have troubles of her own!"

For of all the teachers, Miss Prettyman alone had been available as chaperone, and to go to town under Miss Prettyman's eagle eye was anything but an exciting experience. She was usually bent on "improving" the minds of her charges, and she improved them with serene disregard of the victims' tastes and interests. Betty and Bobby had seen her sitting bolt upright in the bus, reading a thin volume of essays while Ada scowled at the happy crowd tramping in the road.

The woods reached, they separated, some to gather branches of leaves and others intent on filling their sacks with nuts. The boxes of lunch were neatly piled under a tree, and sweaters were left with them, for it was comfortably warm even in the shadiest spots.

"I don't believe we will have many more days like this," remarked Frances Martin, her nearsighted eyes peering into a hollow tree stump. "Girls, what have I found—a squirrel?"

"Plain owl," laughed Betty. "Isn't he cunning?"

They crowded around to admire the funny little creature, and then, admonished by Bobby, whom Constance declared would make a good drill sergeant, set busily to work again. Nuts were not plentiful, but they filled half a sack, and then, a large pile of flaming branches having been gathered, they decided to drag their spoils back to the tree and to have lunch.

"Girls, girls, girls!" shrieked Libbie, who was in the lead, "our lunch is gone—every crumb of it!"

Sure enough, the sweaters were all tossed about in confusion and the boxes had disappeared.

"Who took it?" demanded Bobby wrathfully. "You needn't tell me that lunch walked off!"

High and clear and shrill, a familiar whistle sounded back of them.

"That's Bob!" Betty's face brightened. "Listen!"

She gave an answering whistle, and Bob's sounded again.

There was a scrambling among the bushes, and a group of cadets burst through. Bob and the Tucker twins were first, and after them came Gilbert Lane and Timothy Derby and Winifred Marion Brown.

"Hello, anything the matter?" was Bob's greeting. "You look rather glum."

"So would you," Betty informed him, "if you were starving after a morning's work and your lunch was stolen."

"Gee, that is tough!" exclaimed Bob sympathetically. "Who stole it?"

"We don't know," volunteered Bobby. "But all those boxes couldn't take wings and fly away."

"You go back and get the fellows," Bob commanded Tommy Tucker. "We were having a potato roast down by the lake, and while the potatoes were baking some of us came up for more wood," he explained to the girls. "We thought we heard voices, and so I whistled."

Tommy Tucker was flying down to the lake before half of this explanation was given.

"Have you a holiday, too?" Betty asked. "We're out to get decorations for the play."

"It's the colonel's birthday," explained Bob, "and the old boy gave us the day off. Here come the fellows."

Half a dozen more cadets joined them, all boys the girls had met at the games. They were loud in their expressions of sympathy for the disappointed picnickers and promptly offered their potatoes as refreshments when they should be done.

"Oh, we're going to get that lunch back," announced Bob Henderson confidently. "Look here!"

He pointed to some footprints in a bit of muddy ground.

"Cadet shoes!" cried Tommy Tucker. "Jimminy Crickets, I'll bet it's that Marshall Morgan and his crowd!"

"But this is a girl's shoe," protested Betty, pointing to another print. "See the narrow toe?"

"Ada Nansen or Ruth Royal!" guessed Bobby quickly. "They're the only ones who won't wear a sensible shoe."



CHAPTER XXIII

JUST DESERTS

"Who," demanded Betty, "is Marshall Morgan?"

"He's a pest," said Tommy, with characteristic frankness. "He has one mission in life, and that is to plague those unfortunates who have to be under the same roof with him. He never does anything on a large scale, but then a mosquito can drive you crazy, you know."

"Dear me, he ought to know Ada," rejoined Bobby. "Perhaps he does. She is a pestess, if there is such a word."

"There isn't," Betty assured her. "Anyway, this won't get our lunch back. What are you going to do, Bob?"

"A little Indian work," was Bob's reply. "We'll send out scouts to locate the thieves and then we'll surround them and let the consequences fall."

"I'll be a consequence," declared Bobby vindictively. "I'll fall on Ada with such force she'll think an avalanche has struck her."

Bob sent some of the boys to trace the steps, and while they were gone outlined his plans to the others. Once they knew where the marauders were, they were to spread out fan-shape and swoop down upon the enemy.

"I figure they'll get a safe distance away and then stop to eat the lunch," said Bob. "It is hardly likely that they will take the stuff back to school with them."

"But Ada went to Edentown," protested Libbie. "We saw her in the bus, didn't we, girls? And Ruth, too."

"They could easily come back in the same bus," said Betty. "Indeed, I'm willing to wager that is just what they did. Miss Prettyman as a chaperone probably killed any desire Ada had to go shopping."

The scouts came back after fifteen or twenty minutes to report that they had discovered the invaders camped under a large oak tree and preparing to open the boxes.

"They were laughing and saying how they'd put one over on you," said Gilbert Lane.

"Well, they won't laugh long," retorted Bob grimly. "How many are there?"

"Marshall Morgan, Jim Cronk, the Royce boys, all three of 'em, Hilbert Mitchell and George Timmins," named Gilbert, using his fingers as an adding machine. "Then there are nine girls."

"Has one of them a brown velvet hat with a pink rose at the front and brown gaiters and mink furs and a perfectly lovely velvet handbag?" asked Betty. "And did you see a girl with black pumps and white silk stockings and a blue tricotine dress embroidered with crystal beads?"

The boys looked bewildered.

"Don't believe we did," admitted Gilbert regretfully. "But one of 'em called a skinny girl 'Ada' and somebody is named 'Gladys.'"

"Never mind the clothes," Bobby told him gratefully. "We knew those two were mixed up in this."

They started cautiously, mindful of Bob's instructions not to make a noise, and succeeded, after ten or fifteen minutes creeping, in getting within hearing distance of the despoilers.

"You girls will have to tend to your friends," grinned Bob. "You can't expect us to discipline them. But we'll give the boys something to remember!"

The party spread out, and at his signal whistle they sprang forward, shouting like wild Indians. Straight for the oak tree they charged and closed in on the group beneath it. Those seated there rose to their feet in genuine alarm.

"Rush 'em!" shouted Bob.

Pushing and scrambling, those in the attacking party began to force the others down the narrow path. The boys were struggling desperately and the girls were resisting as best they could and some were crying.

"Let us out!" wept Ada. "Ow! You're stepping on me! Let us out!"

She kicked blindly, and fought with her hands. The first person she grasped was Ruth, who was nearly choked before she could jerk her fur collar free.

"I will get out!" panted Ada. "Push, girls!"

The circle opened for them, and following Ada they dashed through straight into a tangle of blackberry bushes. Half mad with rage and blind from excitement they ploughed their way through, fighting the bushes as though they were flesh and blood arms held out to stop them. When they were clear of the thicket their clothes were in tatters and their faces and hands scratched and bleeding cruelly.

There was nothing for them to do but to go back to the school and try to invent a plausible story for their condition. All the cold cream in the handsome glass jars on Ada's dressing table could not heal her smarting face and thoughts that night.

Bob and his friends continued on their resolute way, pushing the luckless cadets before them. Once out of the woods, they seized them by the jacket collars and rushed them down to the lake and into the icy waters. They generously allowed them to come out after a few minutes immersion, and the sorry, dripping crew began the long run that would bring them to dry clothes and, it is to be hoped, mended ways.

"Now the potatoes are done," Bob reported, after examining the oven hollowed out and lined with stones. "Why not combine forces and eat?"

Every one was famished, and they found plenty of good things left in the boxes. The uninvited guests could not have had those packages open long before they were overtaken.

After a hearty picnic meal the boys helped the girls gather up their branches and walked with them to the point where their boats were tied. They had rowed over because of the attraction of the woods—Salsette being located on the flat side of the lake—and now they must go back for the afternoon drill that was never omitted even for such an important occasion as the colonel's birthday.

Ada and her chums did not come down to dinner that night, and so did not help with the decorating of the hall. That was pronounced an unqualified success, as was the performance of "The Violet Patchwork" the following night and the nut cake and the chocolate and the pistache ice-cream that was served at the close.

Both audience and players were treated to two surprises in the course of the evening. Bobby was responsible for one and, much to the astonishment of the school, Ada Nansen and Constance Howard for the other.

True to her promise, the dauntless Bobby had accepted the humble role of stage hand rather than have no part in the play, and she trundled scenery with right good will and acted as Miss Anderson's right hand in a mood of unfailing good humor. There was not an atom of envy in Bobby's character, and she thought Betty the most wonderful actress she had ever seen.

"You look lovely in that dress," she said, as Betty stood awaiting her cue at the opening of the second act.

Betty smiled, took her cue and walked on the stage.

A ripple of laughter that grew to hilarity greeted her after the first puzzled moment.

"Oh, oh!" cried Madame hysterically, in the wings. "See, that Bobby! Some one call her! She is walking with the tree!"

The rather primitive arrangements of the background provided for the play called for a girl to stand behind each tree in the formal garden scene as support. In her admiration of Betty, Bobby had unconsciously edged after her to keep her in sight, and the startled audience saw the heroine being persistently pursued by a pretty boxwood tree. Bobby was recalled to herself, the tree became rooted in its place, and "The Violet Patchwork" proceeded smoothly.

Between the third and fourth acts, the lights went out at a signal and to the general surprise—for the players had known nothing of what was to come—a velvety voice rolled out in the darkness singing the words of "A Maid in a Garden Green," a song a great singer had made popular that season.

"It's Ada," whispered the school with a rustle of delight. "No one else can sing like that."

They encored her heartily, and she responded. Then the lights flared up and died down again for the last act.

"Constance got her to do it," whispered Betty to Bobby. "I heard Miss Anderson telling Miss Sharpe. Ada's face is so scratched she couldn't, or rather wouldn't, show herself, and Constance said why not sing in the dark the way they do at the movies? That tickled Ada—who'd like to be a movie actress, Connie says—and she said she would."

"Constance Howard has a way with her," remarked Bobby sagely. "Any one that can persuade Ada Nansen to do anything nice is qualified to take a diplomatic post in Thibet."

Soon after the play the weather turned colder and skating and coasting became popular topics of conversation. There was not much ice-skating, as a rule, in that section of the country, but snow was to be expected, and more than one girl had secret aspirations to go from the top of the hill back of the school as far as good fortune would take her.

"Coasting?" Ada Nansen had sniffed when the subject was mentioned to her. "Why, that's for children! Girls of our ages don't go coasting. Now at home, my brother has an ice-boat—that's real sport."

"Well, Ada, I suppose you think I'm old enough to be your grandmother," said Miss Anderson, laughing. "I wonder what you'll say when I tell you that I still enjoy a good coast? If you girls who think you are too old to play in the snow would only get outdoors more you wouldn't complain of so many headaches."

But Ada refused to be mollified, and she remained indifferent to the shrieks of delight that greeted the first powdering of snow. Thanksgiving morning saw the first flakes.

The holiday was happily celebrated at Shadyside, very few of the girls going home. Mrs. Eustice preferred to add the time to the Christmas vacation, and the girls had found that this plan added to their enjoyment. Aunt Nancy and her assistants fairly outdid themselves on the dinner, and that alone would have made the day memorable for those with good appetites, and where is the school girl who does not like to eat?

The Dramatic Club gave another play to which the Salsette boys were invited as a special treat, and a little dance followed the play.

"You're a great little actress, Betty," Bob told her when he came to claim the first dance. "I'm almost willing to let you steer the new bobsled the first time it snows."

The bobsled, built by Bob and his chums, was an object of admiration to half of Salsette Academy. It was large and roomy and promised plenty of speed. The boys, of course, were wild to try it, and Betty and Bobby, who had been promised one of the first rides, joined them in earnestly wishing for snow. Betty had a sled of her own, too, a graceful, light affair her uncle had sent her.

The desired snow did not come for several days. Instead the weather grew still and cold and the girls were glad to stay indoors and work on their lessons or on things they were making for Christmas gifts.

"You may not have much money to spend, Norma," remarked Bobby one afternoon, "but then you don't need it. Just look at the things you can do with a crochet hook and a knitting needle."

Norma, bent over a pretty lace pattern, flushed a little.

"I'd like to be able to give grandma the things she needs far more than a lace collar," she said quietly.

Betty knew that Mrs. Macklin was still in the Philadelphia hospital. Every letter from Glenside now meant "a spell of the blues" for Norma, who was beginning to have dark circles under her eyes. She looked as though she might lie awake at night and plan.

When the girls put away their books and their sewing to go down to dinner, a few uncertain feathery flakes were softly sifting down and late that night it began to snow in earnest, promising perfect coasting.



CHAPTER XXIV

BETTY GOES COASTING

It did seem a shame that lessons should be as exacting as ever when outside the trees bent beneath their white burden and eager eyes were fixed longingly on the hill back of the school.

"You can't coast through the woods, anyway, Betty," Libbie whispered in the French period. "You may be a wonder, but how can you go through the tree stumps?"

"Don't intend to," whispered back Betty. "There's a cleared space in there—I'll show you."

"Young ladies, if you please—" suggested Madame politely, and the girls jerked their thoughts back to translation.

The moment lessons were over that afternoon, they dashed for their sleds. The eight who chummed together had four sleds between them which was enough for the enjoyment of all. Constance Howard had seen so little snow in her life spent in California that she was very much excited about it and had bought her sled in August to be ready for the first fall. Bobby had been to Edentown and bought a little toy affair, the best she could get there, and Frances Martin had sent home for her big, comfortable Vermont-made sled that made up in dependability what it lacked in varnish and polish. Counting Betty's, this gave them four sleds.

There was a conventional hill half a mile away from the school, toward which most of the girls turned their steps. On the first afternoon it was crowded. The Salsette cadets had come coasting, too, for on their side of the lake there was not so much as a mound of earth, and whoever would coast must perforce cross the lake.

"We'll go up to the woods," announced Betty. "There will be more room, and it's much more exciting to go down a steep hill."

So it proved. The cleared space to which Betty had referred demanded careful steering, and Frances Martin at the first glance relinquished the control of her sled.

"I can't judge distances," she explained, touching her glasses, "and I'd be sure to steer straight for a tree. Libbie, you'll have to be the skipper."

So Libbie took Frances, Betty took Bobby, Constance took Norma on her sled, and Alice steered for Louise, using Bobby's sled.

Such shrieks of laughter, such wild spills! If Ada Nansen had been there to see she would certainly have been confirmed in her statement that coasting was "for children." They were coming down for the sixth time when Bob Henderson, the Tucker twins and Timothy Derby appeared.

"We thought we'd find you here!" was Bob's greeting. "Trust Betty to pick out a mystic maze for her coasting. It's a wonder some of you girls haven't shot down into Indian Chasm!"

"Well, I like a steep coast," said Betty defensively. "I wouldn't give a cent a hundred for a little short coast down a gentle slope. Want me to take you down on my sled, Bob?"

"I don't believe I do, thank you just the same," returned Bob politely. "Six of you can pile on the bob, though, and I'll give you a thrilling ride, safety guaranteed. Who wants to come?"

It ended by all taking turns, and by that time it was half-past four and they must start back to school.

"I'm coming to-morrow," declared Betty. "I think winter is the nicest time of the whole year."

"You say that of every season," criticised Bobby. "Besides, I think it will rain to-morrow; it is much warmer than when we came out."

Bobby proved a good weather prophet for the next day was warmer and cloudy, and when lessons for the day were over at half-past two, a fine drizzle had begun to fall.

"Just the same I'm going," persisted Betty, pulling on her rubbers and struggling into a heavier sweater. "The snow hasn't all melted, and there will be enough for a good coast. I think you're a lazy bunch to want to stay cooped up in here and knit. A little fresh air would be good for you, Norma."

"I've a cold," said Norma, in explanation of her red eyes. "Anyway, I don't feel like playing around outdoors. And Alice has gone to bed with a headache and I'd rather not leave her."

Some had studying to do and others refused to be moved from their fancy work, so Betty and her sled finally set off alone. She knew, of course, that Norma's red eyes were the result of crying, as was Alice's headache. They had definitely decided the night before that they would not return to Shadyside after the Christmas holidays.

"I think this is a funny world," scolded Betty to herself, as she reached her favorite hill and put her sled in position. "Here are Norma and Alice, the kind of girls Mrs. Eustice is proud to have represent the school, and they can't afford to take a full course and graduate. And Ada Nansen, who is everything the ideals of Shadyside try to combat, has oceans of money and every prospect of staying. She'll probably take a P.G. course!"

A wild ride through the slushy snow made Betty feel better, and when, as she dragged the sled up again, Bob's whistle sounded, the last trace of her resentment vanished.

"Something told me you'd be out hunting a sore throat to-day," declared Bob, in mock-disapproval. "The fellows all said there wouldn't be enough snow to hold up a sparrow."

"Silly things!" dimpled Betty. "There's plenty of snow for a good coast. Take me, Bob?"

"Well, if you'll come on over where there's a decent hill," Bob assented. "With only two on the bob, we want to get some grade. Here, I'll stick your sled in between these two trees and you can get it when we come back."

Together they pulled the heavy bobsled up the hill and crossed over the hollow, taking a wagon trail that led up over another hill.

"It's a long walk," admitted Bob, panting. "But wait till you see the ride we're going to get."

They reached the top of Pudding Hill presently, and Betty looked down over a rolling expanse of white country covered closely by a lowering gray sky that looked, she said to herself, like the lid of a soup kettle.

"Bully coast!" exclaimed Bob with satisfaction, swinging the bodsled into position. "All ready, Betsey?"

"Just a minute," begged Betty, with a delightful little shiver of excitement as she tucked in her skirts and pulled her soft hat further over her eyes. "Ye-s, now I guess I'm fixed."

They started. The wind sang in their ears and sharp particles of snow flew up to sting their faces. Zip! they had taken one hill, and the gallant bobsled gathered momentum. Betty clung tightly to Bob.

"All right?" he shouted, without turning his head.

"It's fine!" shrieked Betty. "It takes my breath away, but I love it!"

The bobsled seemed fairly to leap the series of gentle slopes that lay at the foot of the long hill, and for every rise Betty and Bob received a bump that would have jarred the bones of less enthusiastic sportsmen. Then, suddenly, they were in the hollow, and the next thing they knew Betty lay breathless in a soft snow bank and Bob found himself flat on his back a few feet away. The sled had overturned with them.

"Betty! are you hurt?" cried Bob, scrambling to his feet. "Here, don't struggle! I'll have you out in a jiffy."

He pulled her from the bank of snow and helped her shake her garments free from the white flakes.

"I'm not hurt a bit, not even scratched," she assured him. "Wasn't that a spill, though? The first thing I knew I was sailing through space, and I'm thankful I landed in soft snow. Where's the sled? Oh, over there!"

"Want to quit?" asked Bob, as she began to help him right the overturned sled. "We can walk over to where we left your sled, you know, Betty."

"And miss the coast?" said Betty scornfully. "Well, not much, Bob Henderson. It takes more than one upset to make me give up coasting."

She seated herself behind Bob again, and with a touch of his foot they began the descent of the second hill. The snow had melted more here, and in some spots the covering was very thin. Bob found the task of steering really difficult.

"I don't think much of this," he began to say, but at the second word the bobsled struck a huge root, the riders were pitched forward, and for one desperate moment they clung to the scrubby undergrowth that bordered what they supposed was the side of the road.

Then their hold loosened and they fell.

Slipping, sliding, tumbling, rolling, a confused sound of Bob's shouts in her ears, Betty closed her eyes and only opened them when she found that she was stationary again. She had no idea of where she was, nor of how far she had fallen.

"Bob?" she called timidly at first, and then in terror. "Bob!"

"Look behind you," said Bob's familiar voice.

Betty turned her head, and there was Bob, grinning at her placidly. His cap was gone and several buttons were ripped bodily from his mackinaw, but he did not seem to be injured and when he pulled Betty to her feet, that young person found that she, too, was unhurt.

"What happened?" she asked. "Where are we?"

"The bobsled balked," explained Bob cheerfully. "Guess it knew where we were heading for better than I did. Anyway, you and I took a double header that was a beauty. If you want to see where we came down, just look up there."

Betty followed the direction of his finger and saw a trail gashed in the snow, a trail that twisted and turned down the steep, forbidding sides of a frowning gorge. Was it possible that they had fallen so far and escaped injury?

"Know where you are?" asked Bob, watching her.

Betty shook her head.

"I must have been away off the road," explained Bob. "Betsey, you and I are standing at the bottom of Indian Chasm."



CHAPTER XXV

THE TREASURE

Indian Chasm!

Betty stared at Bob in dismay. Afterward she confessed that her first thought was of Indians who might capture them.

"Indian Chasm," repeated Bob firmly. "Come on, Betty, we mustn't stand here. If you once get cold, there's no way to warm you up. We must walk, and try to find a way out."

Betty stumbled after him, her mind a bewildered maze. She could not yet grasp the explanation that Bob, turned about by their spill in the hollow, had followed an old trail instead of the hill road. The trail had led straight to the border of the chasm.

Bob ploughed along, head bent, a heavy sense of responsibility keeping him silent. He knew better than Betty the difficulties that in all probability lay before them.

He glanced back at Betty, wearily toiling after him.

"Want to rest a moment?" he suggested. "Sit on that rock till you begin to feel chilly."

Betty accepted the suggestion gratefully. She was very tired and she was hungry. Her rubbers had been torn on the stones she had encountered in her fall and her shoes were damp.

"What a funny rock," she said idly.

It was a huge slab that had once been a part of another huge rock which still stood upright. Some force of nature had slit the two like a piece of paper—from the looks of it, the break was a recent one—and had forced a section outward, making it look like a wall about to topple over.

Rested a little, Betty rose and walked around to the other side of the rock on which she sat, moved by an impulse of curiosity. She went close to the rock that stood upright like a sentinel.

"What's the matter?" called Bob as she started back.

"I—I thought I kicked against something," answered Betty. "There, did you hear that?"

"Something clinked," admitted Bob. "Wait, I'll help you look."

He ran around to her and together they began to dig in the snow and dead leaves.

"Bob! Bob!" Betty's voice rose in delight. "Look!"

She held up a small rusty iron box that, as she tilted it, yawned to disgorge a shower of gold coins.

"The Macklin treasure! We've found it!" cried Betty, beginning to dig like an excited terrier. "Help me hunt, Bob! It must be Mrs. Macklin's treasure, mustn't it?"

"Looks that way," admitted Bob.

As he spoke he drew something from under the shadow of the rock that settled the question immediately. Something that sparkled and glittered and slipped through his cold red fingers like glass.

"The emeralds!" breathed Betty. "Oh, Bob, aren't they beautiful!"

"Look, Betty! That slab was forced outward not long ago. Before that this treasure was concealed in a narrow crack between the two rocks. That's why no one was able to find it when the search was made soon after the loss! Isn't it great that we have found it?"

In a frenzy now, they dug, and when there seemed to be nothing more hidden under the accumulation of dirt and leaves, the two stared at each other in delighted amazement. At their feet lay little jewel bags containing the pearls of which Norma had talked, the rose topazes, the dozen cameos. Magnificent diamonds sparkled in a rusty case, ear-rings and rings lay in a little heap, and a handful of uncut stones was wrapped in a bit of chamois skin. Solid silver pitchers and goblets and trays, sadly battered by being flung against the rocks, lay just as they had fallen until Bob and Betty had uncovered the leaves which, had so long covered them.

"How are we going to get it out of here?" asked Betty, when they had satisfied themselves there was nothing left undiscovered.

"That's the pressing question," confessed Bob. "Incidentally, we have to get ourselves out, too. I think we'd better walk on a bit, and look for some trail out. One lucky thing, no one will take the treasure while we're scouting."

"Where do you suppose that goes to?" said Betty, when they had been tramping about five minutes.

She pointed to a rocky formation that led off into the side of the chasm. It was evidently the mouth of a cave.

"I don't know, of course," admitted Bob. "But I think we had better take a chance and follow it. It will be dark, but so will the chasm in another half hour. I'll go first and you come after me."

It was inky black in the cave, and there was no assurance that it would lead them anywhere and every prospect that they would have to retrace their steps. He was careful to hint nothing of this to Betty, however, and she, on her part, determinedly stifled any complaint of weariness that rose to her lips.

It was an experience they both remembered all their lives—that slow, halting groping through the winding cavern, where the rocky walls narrowed or widened without warning and the roof rose to great heights or dropped so low they must crawl on hands and knees. The thought of the found treasure sustained them and gave them courage to keep on.

"I see a light!" cried Bob after what seemed to Betty hours of this. "Betty, I do believe we've come to an opening!"

The pin-spot of light grew and broadened, and, as they approached it, they saw it was the winter sky. The sun was setting, for the clouds had cleared, and never was a sight half so beautiful to the anxious eyes that rested on it. What did it matter that they were miles from the school, or that both were wet and cold and tired to the point of collapse? Just to get out of that awful chasm was enough.

"I'll go get your sled and pack the stuff on that," proposed Bob, "I don't suppose it would hurt to leave it there all night, but somehow I can't. Will you go on ahead, Betty? You're so tired."

"I'm going back with you," said Betty firmly. "I couldn't rest one minute, knowing you were crawling through that awful cave again. Oh, yes, I'm coming with you, Bob—you needn't shake your head like that."

Bob realized that it was useless to try to persuade her to go on to the school alone. His common sense told him that it would be wiser to leave the treasure where it was and come after it the next day, but common sense does not always win out. It was actually impossible for Bob or Betty to abandon the Macklin fortune now that they had found it.

Bob found Betty's sled, after some search, where they had left it between two trees, and together they began to thread the tortuous maze of the cave again, Bob going ahead and dragging the sled after him. Betty thought despairingly that she had never known what it meant to be tired before.

"I'll wrap the little things in my middy tie," she said when they came out in the chasm at last and found the heap of treasure where they had piled it, "and we can fasten down the rest of the stuff with the belt from my coat."

Their fingers were stiff with cold, but they managed to get everything on the sled and lash it securely with a rope and the leather belt from Betty's coat. Then, once more, they started back through the cave.

The sled was heavy and the way seemed twice as long as the first time they had followed it, but they kept doggedly on. It was dark when they emerged on the familiar hillside.

"Sit on the sled, and I'll pull you, Betty," offered Bob, looking a little anxiously at his companion's white face.

But Betty resolutely refused, and she trotted beside him all the way, helping to pull the sled, till the gray buildings of Shadyside loomed up before them.

She insisted that Bob must come in with her, and they told their story to Mrs. Eustice, breathlessly and disconnectedly, to be sure, but the rope of emeralds and the gleaming diamonds filled in all gaps in the narrative. Before she went to sleep Betty had the satisfaction of knowing that Norma and Alice had been told the good news and that a telegram was speeding off to the home folks.

The discovery and recovery of the missing treasure created a wave of excitement when it became generally known. A few girls, who valued worldly possessions above everything else, made overtures of friendship to the sisters whom previously they had ignored. Their old friends heartily rejoiced with them and Norma and Alice went about in a dream of bliss compounded of joy for their grandmother and parents, plans for new frocks and the proposed holiday trip to Washington.

"It's the nicest thing that ever happened," Betty wrote her uncle. "Now Norma and Alice can graduate from Shadyside, and Grandma Macklin can spend the rest of the winter in Florida and dear Doctor and Mrs. Guerin can doctor and nurse half the county for nothing, if they please."

* * * * *

Doctor Guerin and his wife wrote that Norma and Alice should go happily with the Littell girls for a visit and forget the "no longer depressing question of finances." Both Doctor and Mrs. Guerin were enthusiastic in their praise of Betty and Bob, who began to feel that too much was made of their lucky discovery, especially when, at the direction of Mrs. Macklin, the Macklin family's old lawyer (who had taken charge of the recovered treasure and appraised it at nearly twice its value when lost) sent Betty a pair of the diamond earrings and Bob one of the priceless old silver platters.

"But you not only found it, you went through a lot to bring it to us," said Norma affectionately. "No, Betty, you and Bob can't wriggle out of being thanked."

The finding of the treasure was not the last of Betty's adventures. What happened to her and her chums the following summer will be related in the next volume of this series.

The remaining days of the term fairly flew, and almost before they realized it, school closed for the Christmas holidays. A merry party boarded the train for the Junction, where they could make connections for Washington, one crisp, sunny December morning.

"Every one here?" demanded Bobby Littell. "I don't want to run the risk of arriving home short a guest or two."

"I'm willing to be kidnapped," suggested Tommy Tucker, who knew the story of Betty's first meeting with Bobby.

Both girls laughed, and Betty was still smiling as she held out her ticket to the conductor.

"Have a good time, young 'uns," chirped the grizzled little man cheerily. "Only one thing's more fun than goin' to school, and that's goin' home from school for a spell of play."

And with this happy prospect before her, let us leave Betty Gordon.

THE END