"Oh!" shrieked somebody, "there is a fire!"

"Quite true, young ladies!" exclaimed Miss Brokaw, tartly. "And it is not the first fire since the world began. Ruth has just come from it. She will tell you what it is all about."

"Oh, Ruth!" cried Helen. "Is it the dormitory?"

"Give her time to speak," commanded the teacher.

"Which dormitory?" cried Heavy Stone.

"Now, be quiet—do," begged Ruth, stepping upon the platform, and controlling herself admirably. "Don't scream. None of us can do a thing. The firemen will do all that can be done"

"They'll about save the cellar. They always do," groaned the irrepressible Heavy.

"It is our own old West Dormitory," said Ruth, her voice shaking. "Nothing can be taken from the rooms upstairs. Only some of Miss Scrimp's and Miss Picolet's things were saved."

"Oh, dear me!" cried Helen. "We're orphans then. I'm glad I had my violin over here!"

"Is everything going to be really burned up?" demanded Heavy. "You don't mean that, Ruth Fielding?"

"I hope not. But the fire has made great head-way."

"Oh! oh! oh!" were the murmured exclamations.

"Won't our dormitory burn, too?" demanded one of the East Dormitory girls.

But there was no danger of that. The wisdom of erecting the two dormitories so far apart, and so far separated from the other buildings, was now apparent. Despite the high wind that prevailed upon this evening, there was no danger of any other building around the campus being ignited.

Miss Brokaw had some difficulty in restoring order. Several of the girls were in tears; their most valued possessions were even then, as Heavy said, "going up in smoke."

Very soon practical arrangements for the night were under way. Unable to do anything to help save the burning structure, Mrs. Tellingham had returned to the main building, and the maids from the kitchen were soon bringing in cots and spare mattresses and arranging them about the big hall for the use of the girls.

The East Dormitory girls were asked to sit forward. ("The goats were divided from the sheep," Helen said.) Then the houseless girls were allowed to "pitch camp," as it were.

"It is just like camping out," cried Belle Tingley.

"Only there's no scratchy and smelly balsam for beds, and our clothes won't get all stuck up with chewing gum," said Lluella Fairfax.

"Chewing gum! Hear the girl," scoffed Ann Hicks. "You mean spruce gum."

"Isn't that about the same?" demanded Lluella, with some spirit. "You chew it, don't you?"

"I don't know. I wouldn't chew spruce gum unless it was first properly prepared. I tried it once," replied Ann, "and got my jaws so gummed up that I might as well have had the lockjaw."

"It is according to what season you get the gum," explained Helen. "Now, see here, girls: We ought to have a name for this camp."

"Oh, oh!"

"Quite so!"

"'Why not?" were some of the responses to this suggestion.

"Let's call it 'Sweet Dreams,'" said one girl. "That's an awfully pretty name for a camp, I think. We called ours that, last summer on the banks of the Vingie River."

"Ya-as," drawled Heavy. "Over across from the soap factory. I know the place. 'Sweet Dreams,' indeed! Ought to have called it 'Sweet Smells,'"

"I think 'Camp Loquacity' will fit this camp better," Ruth said bluntly. "We all talk at once. Goodness! how does one person ever get a sheet smooth on a bed?"

Helen came to help her, and just then Mrs. Tellingham herself appeared in the hall.

"I am glad to announce, girls," she said, with some cheerfulness, "that the fire is under control."

"Oh, goody!" cried Heavy. "Can we go over there to sleep to-night?"

"No. Nor for many other nights, if at all," the preceptress said firmly. "The West Dormitory is badly damaged. Of course, no girl need expect to find much that belongs to her intact. I am sorry. What I can replace, I will. We must be cheerful and thankful that no life was lost."

"What did I tell you?" muttered the fleshy girl. "Those firemen from Lumberton always save the cellar."

"Now," said Mrs. Tellingham, "the girls belonging in the East Dormitory will form and march to their rooms. It is late enough. We must all get quiet for the night. The ruins will wait until morning to be looked at, so I must request you to go directly to bed."

Somebody started singing—and of course it was their favorite, "One Wide River," that they sang, beginning with the very first verse. The words of the last stanza floated back to the West Dormitory girls as the others marched across the campus:

"'Sweetbriars enter, ten by ten—— That River of Knowledge to cross! They never know what happens then, With one wide river to cross! One wide river! One wide River of Knowledge! One wide river! One wide river to cross.'"

"But just the same it's no singing matter for us," grumbled Belle. "Turned out of our beds to sleep this way! And all we've lost!" She began to weep. It was difficult for even Heavy to coax up a smile or to bring forth a new joke.

Ruth and her chums secured a corner of the great room, and they insisted that Mercy Curtis have the single cot that had been secured.

"I don't mind it much," Ann Hicks declared. "I've camped out so many times on the plains without half the comforts of this camp. Oh! I could tell you a lot about camping out that you Easterners have no idea of."

"Postpone it till to-morrow, please, Miss Hicks," said Miss Brokaw, dryly. "It is time for you all to undress."

After they were between the sheets Helen crept over to Ruth and hid her face upon her chum's shoulder, where she cried a few tears.

"All my pretty frocks that Mrs. Murchiston allowed me to pick out! And my books! And—and——"

The tragic voice of Jennie Stone reached their ears: "Oh, girls! I've lost in the dreadful fire the only belt I could wear. It's a forty-two."

There was little laughter in the morning, however, when the girls went out-of-doors and saw the gaunt ruins of the dear old West Dormitory.

The roof had fallen in. Almost every pane of glass was broken. The walls had crumbled in places, and over all was a sheet of ice where the cascades from the firemen's hose had blanketed the ruins.

It needed only a glance to show that to repair the building was out of the question. The West Dormitory must be constructed as an entirely new edifice.



CHAPTER XI

ONE THING THE OLD DOCTOR DID

Every girl in Briarwood Hall was much troubled by the result of the fire. The old rivalry between the East and the West Dormitories, that had been quite fierce at times and in years before, had died out under Ruth Fielding's influence.

Indeed, since the inception of the Sweetbriars a better spirit had come over the entire school. Mrs. Tellingham in secret spoke of this as the direct result of Ruth's character and influence; for although Ruth Fielding was not namby-pamby, she was opposed to every form of rude behavior, or to the breaking of rules which everyone knew to be important.

The old forms of hazing—even the "Masque of the Marble Harp," as it was called—were now no longer honored, save in the breach. The initiations of the Sweetbriars were novel inventions—usually of Ruth's active brain; but they never put the candidate to unpleasant or risky tasks.

There certainly were rivalries and individual quarrels and sometimes clique was arrayed against clique in the school. This was a school of upwards of two hundred girls—not angels.

Nevertheless, Mrs. Tellingham and the instructors noted with satisfaction how few disturbances they had to settle and quarrels to take under advisement. This class of girls whom they hoped to graduate in June were the most helpful girls that had ever attended Briarwood Hall.

"The influence of Ruth and some of her friends has extended to our next class as well," Mrs. Tellingham had said. "Nettie Parsons and Ann Hicks will be of assistance, too, for another year. I wish, however, that Ruth Fielding's example and influence might continue through my time——I certainly do."

The girls of the East Dormitory held a meeting before breakfast and passed resolutions requesting Mrs. Tellingham to rearrange their duo and quartette rooms so that as many as possible of the West Dormitory girls could be housed with them.

"We're all willing to double up," said Sarah Fish, who had become leader of the East Dormitory. "I'm perfectly willing to divide my bureau drawers, book-shelves, table and bed with any of you orphans. Poor things! It must be awful to be burned out."

"Some of us haven't much to put in bureau drawers or on bookshelves," said Helen, inclined to be lugubrious. "I—I haven't a decent thing to wear but what I have on right now. I unpacked my trunk clear to the very bottom layer."

However, as a rule, selfish considerations did not enter into the girls' discussion of the fire. When they looked at the ruined building, they saw mainly the loss to the school. A loyalty is bred in the pupils of such an institution as Briarwood Hall, which is only less strong than love of home and country.

A new structure to house a hundred girls would cost a deal of money.

There was no studying done before breakfast the morning after the fire; and at the tables the girls' tongues ran until Miss Brokaw declared the room sounded like a great rookery she had once disturbed near an old English rectory.

"I positively cannot stand it, young ladies," declared the nervous teacher, who had been up most of the night. "Such continuous chatter is enough to crack one's eardrums."

The girls really were too excited to be very considerate, although they did not mean to offend Miss Brokaw. If the window or an outer door was opened, the very tang of sour smoke on the air set their tongues off again about the fire.

Once in chapel, however, a rather solemn feeling fell upon them. The teacher whose turn it was to read, selected a psalm of gratitude that seemed to breathe just what was in all their hearts. It gave thanks for deliverance from the terrors of the night and those of the noonday, for the Power that encircles poor humanity and shelters it from harm.

"We, too, have been sheltered," thought Ruth and her friends. "We have been guarded from the evil that flyeth by night and from the terror that stalketh at noonday. Surely God is our Keeper and Strength. We will not be afraid."

When Helen played one of the old, old hymns of the Church she brought such sweet tones from the strings of the violin that Miss Picolet hushed her accompaniment, surprised and delighted. And when they sang, Ruth Fielding's rich and mellow voice carried the air in perfect harmony.

When the hymn was finished the girls turned glowing faces upon Mrs. Tellingham who, despite a sleepless night, looked fresh and sweet.

"For the first time in the history of Briarwood Hall as a school," she said, speaking so that all could hear her, "a really serious calamity has fallen."

"We are all determined upon one thing, I am sure," pursued Mrs. Tellingham. "We will not worry about what is already done. Water that has run by the mill will never drive the wheel, you know. We will look forward to the rebuilding of the West Dormitory, and that as soon as it can possibly be done."

"Hoo-ray!" cried Jennie Stone, leading a hearty cheer.

"We will have the ruin of the old structure torn away at once."

The murmur of appreciation rose again from the girls assembled.

"I do not recall at this moment just how much insurance was on the West Dormitory; I leave those details to Doctor Tellingham, and he is now looking up the papers in the office. But I am sure there is ample to rebuild, and if all goes well, a new West Dormitory will rise in the place of these smoking ruins before our patrons and our friends come to our graduation exercises in June."

"Oh, bully!" cried Ann Hicks, under her breath. "I want Uncle Bill to see Briarwood at its very best."

"But the dear old ivy never can be replaced," Mercy Curtis murmured to Ruth.

"We shall endeavor," went on Mrs. Tellingham, smiling, "to repeat in the new building all the advantages of the old. We shall have everything replaced, if possible, exactly as it was before the fire."

"There was a big inkspot on my rug," muttered Jennie Stone. "Bet they can't get that just in the same place again."

"You homeless girls must, in the meanwhile, possess your souls with patience. The younger girls who had quarters in the West Dormitory will be made comfortable in the East. But you older girls must be cared for in a different way.

"Some few I shall take into my own apartments, or otherwise find room for in the main building here. Some, however, will have to occupy quarters outside the school premises until the new building is constructed and ready for occupancy. Arrangements for these quarters I have already made. And now we can separate for our usual classes and work, with the feeling that all will come out right and that the new dormitory will be built within reasonable time."

She ceased speaking. The door near the platform suddenly opened and "the old doctor" as the girls called the absent-minded husband of their preceptress, hastily entered.

He stumbled up to the platform, waving a number of papers in his hand. He stammered so that he could hardly speak at first, and he gave no attention to the amazed girls in the audience.

"Mrs. Tellingham! Mrs. Tellingham!" he ejaculated. "I have made a great mistake—an unpardonable error! In renewing the insurance for the various buildings I overlooked that for the West Dormitory and its contents. The insurance on that ran out a week ago. There was not a dollar on it when it burned last night!"



CHAPTER XII

"GREAT OAKS FROM LITTLE ACORNS GROW"

Mercy Curtis was one of the older girls quartered in Mrs. Tellingham's suite. She told her close friends how Doctor Tellingham walked the floor of the inner office and bemoaned his absent-mindedness that had brought disaster upon Mrs. Tellingham and the whole school.

"I know that Mrs. Tellingham is becoming more worried about the doctor than about the lapsed insurance," said Mercy. "Of course, he's a foolish old man without any more head than a pin! But why did she leave the business of renewing the insurance in his charge, in the first place?"

"Oh, Mercy!" protested Ruth.

"No more head than a pin!" repeated Nettie Parsons, in horror. "Why! who ever heard the like? He writes histories! He must be a very brainy man."

"Who ever reads them?" grumbled Mercy.

"They look awfully solid," confessed Lluella Fairfax. "Did you ever look at the whole row of them in the office bookcase?"

Jennie Stone began to giggle. "I don't care," she said, "the doctor may be a great historian; but his memory is just as short as it can be. Do you know what happened only last half when he and Mrs. Tellingham were invited to the Lumberton Association Ball?"

"What was it?" asked Helen.

"I suppose it is something perfectly ridiculous, or Heavy wouldn't have remembered it," Ruth suggested.

"Thank you!" returned the plump girl, making a face. "I have a better memory than Dr. Tellingham, I should hope."

"Come on! tell the joke, Heavy," urged Mary Cox.

"Why, when he came into the office ready to escort Mrs. Tellingham to the ball, Mrs. T. criticised his tie. 'Do go back, Doctor, and put on a black tie,' she said. You know, he's the best natured old dear in the world," Jennie pursued, "and he went right back into his bedroom to make the change. They waited, and they waited, and then they waited some more," chuckled Jennie. "The doctor did not reappear. So Mrs. Tellingham finally went to his bedroom and opened the door. She saw that the old doctor, having removed the tie she didn't like, had continued the process of undressing, and just as Mrs. Tellingham looked in, he climbed placidly into bed."

"I can believe that," said Ann Hicks, when the laughter had subsided.

"And I can believe that both he and Mrs. Tellingham are just as worried about the destruction of the dormitory as they can be," Nettie added. "All their money is invested in the school, is it not?"

"Except that invested in the doctor's useless histories," said Mercy, who was inclined to be most unmerciful of speech on occasion.

"Is there nobody to help them rebuild?" asked Ann, tentatively.

"Not a soul," declared Ruth.

"I believe I'll write to Uncle Bill Hicks. He'll help, I know," said Ann. "Next to Heavy's Aunt Kate, Uncle Bill thinks that the finest woman on this footstool is Mrs. Tellingham."

"And I'll ask papa for some money," Nettie said quickly. "I had that in mind from the first."

"My father will give some," Helen said.

"We'll write to Madge Steele," said Belle. "Her father might help, too."

"I guess all our folks will be willing to help," Lluella Fairfax added.

"And," said Jennie, "here's Ruth, with a fortune in her own right."

But Ruth did not make any rejoinder to Jennie's remark and that surprised them all; for they knew Ruth Fielding was not stingy.

"We are going about this thing in the wrong way, girls," she said quietly. "At least, I think we are."

"How are we?" demanded Helen. "Surely, we all want to help Mrs. Tellingham."

"And Old Briarwood," cried Belle Tingley.

"And all the students of our Alma Mater will want to join in," maintained Lluella.

"Now you've said it!" cried Ruth, with a sudden smile. "Every girl who is now attending the dear old Hall will want to help rebuild the West Dormitory."

"All can give their mites, can't they?" demanded Jennie. "And the rich can give of their plenty."

"That is just it," Ruth went on, still seriously. "Nettie's father will give a good sum; so will Helen's; so will Mr. William Hicks, who is one of the most liberal men in the world. Therefore, the little gifts of the other girls' parents will look terribly small."

"Oh, Ruth! don't say that our folks can't give," cried Jennie, whose father likewise was rich.

"It is not in my province to say who shall, or who shall not give," declared Ruth, hastily. "I only want to point out to you girls that if the rich give a great deal the poorer will almost be ashamed to give what they can."

"That's right," said Mary Cox, suddenly. "We haven't much; so we couldn't give much."

The girls looked rather troubled; but Ruth had not finished. "There is another thing," she said. "If all your fathers give to the dormitory fund, what will you girls personally give?"

"Oh! how's that, Ruth?" cried Helen.

"Say," drawled Jennie Stone, the plump girl, "we're not all fixed like you, Ruth—with a bank account to draw on."

Ruth blushed; but she did not lose her temper. "You don't understand what I mean yet," she said. "Either I am particularly muddy in my suggestions, or you girls are awfully dense to-day."

"How polite! how polite!" murmured Jennie.

"What I am trying to get at," Ruth continued earnestly, "is the fact that the rebuilding of the West Dormitory should interest us girls more than anybody else in the world, save Mrs. Tellingham."

"Well—doesn't it?" demanded Mary Cox, rather sharply.

"Does it interest us all enough for each girl to be willing to do something personally, or sacrifice something, toward the new building?" asked Ruth.

"I getcha, Steve!" exclaimed the slangy Jennie.

"Oh, dear me, Ruthie! we are dense," said Nettie. "Of course! every girl should be able to do as much as the next one. Otherwise there may be hard feelings."

"Secret heartburnings," added Helen.

"Of course," Mercy said, "Ruth would see that side of it. I don't expect my folks could give ten dollars toward the fund; but I should want to do as much as any girl here. Nobody loves Briarwood Hall more than I do," added the lame girl, fiercely.

"I believe you, dear," Ruth said. "And what we want to do is to invent some way of earning money in which every girl will have her part, and do her part, and feel that she has done her full share in rebuilding the West Dormitory."

"Hurrah!" cried Jennie. "That's the talk! I tell you, Ruth, you are the only bright girl in this school!"

"Thank you," said Ruth. "You cannot flatter me into believing that."

"But what's the idea, dear?" demanded Helen, eagerly. "You have some nice invention, I am sure. You always do have."

"Another base flatterer!" cried Ruth, laughing gaily. "I believe you girls say such things just to jolly me along, and so that you will not have to exercise any gray matter yourselves."

"Oh! oh!" groaned Jennie. "How ungrateful."

"Of course you have something to suggest?" Nettie said.

"No, not a thing. My idea is, merely, that we start something that every girl in the school can have her share in. Of course, that does not cut out contributions from those who have money to spare; but the new building must be erected by the efforts of the girls of Briarwood Hall as——"

"As a bunch of briars," chuckled Jennie. "Isn't that a sharp one?"

"Just as sharp as you are, my dear," said Helen.

"You know what that means, Heavy," said Mary Cox. "You're all curves."

"Oh! ouch! I know that hurt me," declared the plump girl, altogether too good-natured to be offended by anything her mates said to her.

"So that's how it is," Ruth finished "Call the girls together. Put the idea before them. Let's hear from everybody, and see which girl has the best thought along this line. We want a way of making money in which everyone can join."

"I—don't—see," complained Nettie, "how you are going to do it."

"Never mind. Don't worry," said Mercy. "'Great oaks from little acorns grow,' and a fine idea will sprout from the germ of Ruth's suggestion, I have no doubt."

It did; but not at all in the way any of them expected. The whole school was called together after recitations on this afternoon, which was several days following the fire. The teachers had no part in the assembly, least of all Mrs. Tellingham.

But the older girls—all of them S.B.'s—were very much in earnest; and from them the younger pupils, of course, took their cue. The West Dormitory must be built—and within the time originally specified by Mrs. Tellingham when she had thought the insurance would fully pay for the work of reconstruction.

Many girls, it seemed, had already written home begging contributions to the fund which they expected would be raised for the new building. Some even were ready to offer money of their very own toward the amount necessary to start the work.

Even Ruth agreed to this first effort to get money. She pledged a hundred dollars herself and Nettie Parsons quietly put down the same sum as her own personal offering.

"Oh, gracious, goodness, me, girls!" gasped Jennie Stone, who had been figuring desperately upon a sheet of paper. "Wait till I get this sum done; then I can tell you what I will give. There! Can it be possible?"

"What is it, Jennie?" asked Belle Tingley, looking over her shoulder. "Why! look at all those figures. Are you weighing the sun or counting the hairs of the sun-dogs?"

"Don't laugh," begged the plump girl. "This is a serious matter. I've been figuring up what I should probably have spent for candy from now till June if I'd been left to my own will."

"What is it, Heavy?" asked somebody. "I wager it would pay for erecting the new dormitory without the rest of us putting up a cent."

"No," said the plump girl, gravely. "But it figures up to a good round sum. I never would have believed it! Girls, I'll give fifty dollars."

"Oh, Heavy! you never could eat so much sweets before graduation," gasped one.

"I could; but I sha'n't," declared Miss Stone, with continued gravity. "I'll practise self-denial."

With all the fun and joking, the girls of Briarwood Hall were very much in earnest. They elected a committee of five—Ruth, Nettie, Lluella, Sarah Fish and Mary Cox—to have charge of the collection of the fund, and to go immediately to Mrs. Tellingham and show her what money was already promised and how much more could be expected within ten days.

There was enough, they knew, to warrant the preceptress in having the work of tearing away the ruins begun. Meanwhile, the girls were each urged to think up some new way of earning money, and as a committee of the whole to try to invent a novel scheme of including the whole school in a plan whereby much money might be raised.

"How we're to do it, nobody knows," said Helen gloomily, walking along beside Ruth after the meeting. "I expected you would have just the thing to suggest."

"I wish I had," her chum returned thoughtfully.

"Mercy says, 'Great oaks from little acorns grow'——"

They turned into the hall and saw that the mail had been distributed. Ruth was handed a letter with Mr. Hammond's name upon it. She had almost forgotten the moving picture man and her own scenario, in these three or four very busy days.

Ruth eagerly tore the envelope open. A green slip of paper fluttered out. It was a check for twenty-five dollars from the Alectrion Film Corporation. With it was a note highly praising Ruth's first effort at scenario writing for moving pictures.

"What is it?" demanded Helen. "You look so funny. There's no—nobody dead?"

"Do I look like that?" asked Ruth. "Far from it! Just look at these, dear," and she thrust both the note and the check into Helen's hands. "I believe I've struck it!"

"Struck what?" demanded her puzzled chum.

"'Great oaks from little acorns grow' sure enough! Eureka! I have it," Ruth cried. "I believe I know how we all—every girl in Briarwood—can help earn the money to rebuild the West Dormitory."



CHAPTER XIII

THE IDEA IS BORN

"What? What? What?" Helen cried, as she gazed, wide-eyed, at the check and at Mr. Hammond's letter.

The check for twenty-five dollars there could be no mistake about; and she scanned the moving picture man's enthusiastic letter shortly, for it was brief. But Helen quite misunderstood the well-spring of Ruth's sudden joy.

"Oh, Ruthie Fielding!" she gasped. "What have you done now?" and she hugged her chum delightedly. "How wonderful! That was the secret between you and that Mr. Hammond, was it?"

"Yes," admitted Ruth.

"And you've written a real moving picture?"

"That is it—exactly. A one reel picture," and Ruth laughed.

"And he says he will produce it at once," sighed Helen.

"So Mr. Hammond says. It's very nice of him."

"Oh, Ruth!" cried Helen, hugging her again.

"Oh, Helen!" responded Ruth, in sheer delight.

"You're famous—really famous!" said Ruth's chum, with sudden solemnity.

Ruth's clear laughter rang out spontaneously.

"Well, you are!"

"Not yet."

"But you've earned twenty-five dollars writing that play. Only think of that! And you can give it to the dormitory fund. Is that what you are so pleased about? Mercy, Ruth! you don't expect us all to set about writing picture plays and selling them to Mr. Hammond?"

"No," said Ruth, more seriously. "I guess that wouldn't do."

"Then what do you mean about every girl at Briarwood helping in this way toward the fund?" Helen asked, puzzled. "At any rate, twenty-five dollars will help."

"But I sha'n't do that!" cried Ruth.

"Sha'n't do what?"

"I shall not give this precious twenty-five dollars to any dormitory fund—no, indeed!" and Ruth clasped the check to her bosom. "The first money I ever earned with my pen? I guess not! That twenty-five dollars goes into the bank, my dear."

"Goodness! You needn't be so emphatic about it," protested Helen.

"I am going to open a special account," said Ruth, proudly. "This will be credited to the fact that R.F. can actually make something with her brains, my lady. What do you think?"

"But how is it going to help the dormitory fund, then?" demanded her chum.

"Not by adding my poor little twenty-five dollars to it. We want hundreds—thousands! Don't you understand, Helen, that my check would only be a drop in the bucket? And, anyway, I would come near to starving before I would use this check."

"We—ell! I don't know that I blame you," sighed her friend. "I'd be as pleased as Punch if it were mine. Just think of your writing a real moving picture!" she repeated. "Won't the girls be surprised? And suppose it comes to Lumberton and we can all go and see it? You will be famous, Ruth."

"I don't know about that, dear," Ruth returned happily. "There is something about it all that you don't see yet."

"What's that?"

"This success of mine, I tell you, has given me a great, big idea."

"About what?"

"For the dormitory fund," Ruth said. "Mercy is right. Great oaks do grow from little acorns."

"Who's denying it?" demanded Helen. "Go on."

"Out of this little idea of mine which I have sold to Mr. Hammond, comes a thought, dear," said Ruth, solemnly, "that may get us all the money we need to rebuild the West Dormitory."

"I—don't—just—see——"

"But you will," cried Ruth. "Let me explain. If I can write a one-reel picture play, why not a long one—a real play—a five-reel drama? I have just the idea for it—oh, a grand idea!"

"Oh, Ruth!" murmured Helen, clasping her hands.

"I will write the play, we will all act in it, and Mr. Hammond shall produce it. It can be shown around in every city and town from which we girls come—our home towns, you know. Folks will want to see us Briarwood girls acting for the movies—won't they?"

"I should say they would! Fancy our doing that?"

"We can do it. Of course we can! And we'll get a royalty from the film and that will all go into the dormitory fund," went on the enthusiastic Ruth.

"Oh, my dear!" gasped Helen. "Would Mr. Hammond take such a play if you wrote it?"

"Of course I don't know. If not he, then some other producer. I know I have a novel idea," asserted Ruth.

"What is it?" asked the curious Helen.

"A schoolgirl picture, just as I say. Of course, there will have to be some real actors in it; we girls couldn't be funny enough, or serious enough, perhaps, to take the most important parts. We could act out some real scenes of boarding school life, just the same."

"I should say we could!" cried Helen. "Who better? Stage one of our old midnight sprees, and show Heavy gobbling everything in sight. That would make 'em laugh."

"But we want more than a comedy," Ruth said seriously. "I have the germ of an idea in my mind. I'll write Mr. Hammond about it first of all. And we must have Miss Gray in it."

"He says here," said Helen, glancing through the moving picture man's letter again, "that he wants you to try another. Oh! and he says that in a few days he is coming to Lumberton with a company to take some films."

"So he does! Oh, goody!" cried Ruth. "I'll see him, then, and talk right to him. He is an awfully rich man—so Hazel Gray told me. We'll get him interested in the dormitory fund, anyway, and then, whether I can write a five-reel drama well enough or not, maybe he can find somebody who will put it into shape," Ruth added.

"Why, my dear!" exclaimed her chum, with scorn. "If you have written one moving picture, of course you can another."

Which did not follow at all, Ruth was sure.

"We'll have to ask Mrs. Tellingham," said Helen, with sudden doubt. "Maybe she will not approve."

"Oh! I hope she will," cried Ruth. "But we must put it up to the girls themselves, first of all. They must all be in it. All must have an interest—all must take part. Otherwise it will not accomplish the end we are after."

"Oh, oh, oh!" cried Helen, finally waking up. "Of course! this is the very thing you wanted, Ruthie—to give every girl something to do that is important toward earning the money for the building of the new dormitory."

"That's it, my dear. We all must appear, and do our part. School scenes, recreation scenes, athletic scenes in the gym; marching in our graduation procession; initiating candidates into the S.B. sorority; Old Noah's Ark with the infants arriving at the beginning of the year; the dance we always have in the big hall at holiday time—just a great, big picture of what boarding school girls do, and how they live, breathe and have their being!"

"Oh, jolly!" gasped Helen, taking fire from her friend's enthusiasm. "Say! the girls are going to be just about crazy over this, Ruth. You will be the most popular girl in the school."

"I hope not!" gasped Ruth, in real panic. "I'm not doing this for any such purpose. Don't be singing my praises all the time, Helen. The girls will get sick and tired to death of hearing about 'wonderful me.' We all want to do something to help Mrs. Tellingham and the school. That's all there is to it. Now, do be sensible."

They were not long in taking the girls at large into their confidence. When it was known that Ruth Fielding had actually written one scenario for a film, which had been accepted, paid for, and would be produced, naturally the enthusiasm over the idea of having a reproduction of school life at Briarwood filmed, became much greater than it might otherwise have been. As a whole, the girls of Briarwood Hall were in a mood to work together for the fund.

"No misunderstandings," said Jennie Stone, firmly. "We don't want to make the sort of mistake the rural constable did when he came along by the riverside and saw a face floating on the water. 'Come out o' that!' he says. 'You know there ain't no bathing allowed around here.' And the face in the water answered: 'Excuse me, officer; I'm not bathing—I'm only drowning!'

"We've all got to pull together," the plump girl continued, very much in earnest. "No hanging back—no squabbling over little things. If Ruth Fielding can write a picture play we must all do our prettiest in acting in it. Why! I'd play understudy to a baby elephant in a circus for the sake of helping build the new dormitory."

Already Mrs. Tellingham and the doctor had been informed by the girls' executive committee of the sums both actually raised by the girls, and promised, toward the dormitory fund. It had warranted the good lady's signing contracts for the removal of the wreckage of the burned building, at least. The way would soon be cleared for beginning work on a new structure.

Offers of money came pouring in from the parents interested in the success of Briarwood Hall; and some of the checks already received by Mrs. Tellingham were for substantial sums. But this proposal of Ruth's for all the girls to help in the increase of the fund, pleased Mrs. Tellingham more than anything else.

She read Ruth's brief sketch of the plot she had originated for the school play, and approved it. "The Heart of a Schoolgirl" was forthwith put into shape to show Mr. Hammond when he came to Lumberton, that event being expected daily.

About this time the girls of Briarwood Hall were so excited and interested over the moving picture idea that they scarcely had time for their studies and usual work.



CHAPTER XIV

AT MRS. SADOC SMITH'S

Mrs Tellingham, wise in the ways of girls, had foreseen the excitement and disturbance in the placid current of Briarwood life, and made plans following the fire to counteract the evil influences of just this disturbance. The girls who hoped to graduate from the school in the coming June must have more quiet—must have time to study and to think.

The younger girls, if they fell behind in their work, could make it up in the coming terms. Not so Ruth Fielding and her friends, so the wise school principal had distributed them, after the destruction of the West Dormitory, in such manner that they would be free from the hurly-burly of the general school life.

A few, like Mercy Curtis (who could not easily walk back and forth from any outside lodging), Mrs. Tellingham kept in her own apartment. But the greater number of the graduating class was distributed among neighbors who—in most cases—were not averse to accepting good pay for rooms which could only be let to summer boarders and were, at this time of year, never occupied.

The Briarwood Hall preceptress allowed her girls to go only where she could trust the land-ladies to have some oversight over their lodgers. And the girls themselves were bound in honor to obey the rules of the school, whether on the Briarwood premises or not.

Visiting among the outside scholars was forbidden, and the girls studying for graduation had their hours more to themselves than they would have had in the school.

Special chums were able to keep together in most instances. Ruth, Helen and Ann Hicks went to live at Mrs. Sadoc Smith's; and there was room in the huge front room on the second floor of her rambling old house, for Mercy, too, had it been wise for the lame girl to lodge so far from the school.

Mrs. Smith got the girls up in season in the morning to reach the dining hall at Briarwood by breakfast-time; and she saw to it, likewise, that their light went out at ten o'clock in the evening. These were her instructions from Mrs. Tellingham, and Mrs. Sadoc Smith was rather a grim person, who did her duty and obeyed the law.

There being an extra couch, Ruth persuaded her friends to agree to the coming of a fourth girl into the lodging. And this fourth girl, oddly enough, was not one of the graduating class, or even one of the girls whom they had chummed with before.

It was the new girl, Amy Gregg! Amy Gregg, whom nobody seemed to want, and who seemed to be the loneliest figure and the most sullen girl who had ever come to Briarwood Hall!

"Of course, you'd pick up some sore-eyed kitten," complained Ann Hicks. "That child has a fully-developed grouch against the whole world, I verily believe. What do you want her for, Ruthie?"

"I don't want her," said Ruth promptly.

"Well! of all the girls!" gasped Helen. "Then why ask Mrs. Tellingham to let her come here?"

"Because she ought to be with somebody who will look out for her," Ruth said.

She did not tell her mates about it, but Ruth had heard some whispers regarding the origin of the fire that had burned down the West Dormitory, and she was afraid Amy would be suspected.

The older girl had reason to know that Mrs. Tellingham had questioned Amy regarding the candle she had obtained from Miss Scrimp's store. The girl had emphatically denied having left the candle burning on leaving her room to go to supper on the fatal evening.

The girls had begun, after a time, to ask questions about the origin of the fire. They knew it had started on the side of the corridor where Amy Gregg had roomed. They might soon suspect the truth.

"If they do, good-bye to all little Gregg's peace of mind!" Ruth thought, for she knew just how cruel girls can be, and Amy did not readily make friends.

Although Ruth and her room-mates tried to make the flaxen-haired girl feel at home at Mrs. Sadoc Smith's, Amy remained sullen, and seemed afraid of the older girls. She was particularly unpopular, too, because she was the only girl who had refused to write home to tell of the fire and ask for a contribution to the dormitory fund.

Amy Gregg seemed to be afraid to talk of the fire and refused to give even a dollar toward the rebuilding of the dormitory. "It isn't my fault that the old thing burned down. I lost all my clothes and books," she announced. "I think the school ought to pay me some money, instead."

After saying this before her room-mates at Mrs. Smith's, all but Ruth dropped her.

"Sullen little thing," said Helen, with disgust.

"Not worth bothering with," rejoined Ann.

The only person to whom Amy Gregg seemed to take a fancy was Mrs. Smith's scapegrace grandson, Henry. Henry was the wildest boy there was anywhere about Briarwood Hall. He was always getting into trouble, and his grandmother was forever chastising him in one way or another.

Nobody in the neighborhood knew him as "Henry." He was called "that Smith boy" by the grown folk; by his mates he was known as "Curly."

Ruth felt that Curly never would have developed into such a mischievous and wayward youth had it not been for his grandmother.

When a little boy Henry had come to live with Mrs. Sadoc Smith. Mrs. Smith did not like boys and she kept Henry in kilts until he was of an age when most lads are looking forward to long trousers. She made him wear Fauntleroy suits and kept his hair in curls down his back—molasses colored curls that disgusted the boy mightily. Finally he hired another boy for ten cents and a glass agate to cut the curls off close to his head, and he stole a pair of long trousers, a world too wide for him, from a neighbor's line. He then set out on his travels, going in an empty freight car from the Lumberton railroad yards.

But he was caught and brought back, literally "by the scruff of his neck;" and his grandmother was never ending in her talk about the escapade. The curls remained short, however. If she refused to give Curly twenty cents occasionally to have his hair cut, he would stick burrs or molasses taffy in the hair so that it had to be kept short.

There seemed an affinity between this scapegrace lad and Amy Gregg. Not that she possessed any abundance of spirit; but she would listen to Curly romance about his adventures by the hour, and he could safely confide all his secrets to Amy Gregg. Wild horses would not have drawn a word from her as to his intentions, or what mischief he had already done.

Curly was a tall, thin boy of fifteen, wiry and strong, and with a face as smooth and pink-and-white as a girl's. That he was so girlish looking was a sore subject with the boy, and whenever any unwise boy called him "Girly" instead of "Curly" it started a fight, there and then.

Henry was forbidden by his grandmother to bother the girls from Briarwood Hall in any way, and to make sure that he played no tricks upon them, when Ruth and her mates came to the house to lodge, Mrs. Smith housed Curly in a little, steep-roofed room over the summer kitchen.

It was a cold and uncomfortable place, he told Amy Gregg. Ruth heard him tell her so, but judged that it would not be wise to beg Mrs. Smith for other quarters for her grandson. She was not a woman to whom one could easily give advice—especially one of Ruth's age and inexperience.

Mrs. Smith was a very grim looking woman with a false front of little, corkscrew curls, the color of which did not at all match the iron-gray of her hair. That the curls were made of Mrs. Smith's own hair, cropped from her head many years before, there could be no doubt. It Nature had erred in turning her actual hair to iron-gray in these, her later years, that was Nature's fault, not Mrs. Smith's!

She grimly ignored the parti-colored hair as she did the natural exuberance of her grandson's spirit. If Nature had given him an unquenchable amount of mirth and jollity, that, too, was Nature's fault. Still, Mrs. Sadoc Smith proposed to quell that mirth and suppress the joy of Curly's nature if possible.

The only question was: In the process of making Curly over to fit her ideas of what a boy should be, was not Mrs. Smith running a grave chance of ruining the boy entirely?

And what boy, living in a house with four girls, could keep from trying to play tricks upon them? If the shed-chamber had been a mile away over the roofs of the Smith house, Curly would have been tempted to creep over the shingles to one of the windows of the big front room, and——

Nine o'clock at night. All four of the girls quartered with Mrs. Smith were busy with their books—even flaxen-haired Amy Gregg. The rustle of turning leaves and a sigh of weariness now and then was all that had broken the silence for half an hour.

Outside, the wind moaned in the trees. It was cold and the sky was overcast with the promise of a stormy morrow. Suddenly Helen started and glanced hastily at the window behind her, where the shade was drawn.

"What's that?" she whispered.

"Huh?" said Ann.

"I didn't hear anything," Ruth added.

Not a word from Amy Gregg, who likewise appeared to be deeply immersed in her book.

Another silence; then both Ruth and Helen jumped. "I declare! Is that a bird or a beast?" Helen demanded.

"What is it?" cried Ann, starting up.

"Somebody rapping on that window," Ruth declared.

"This far up from the ground? Nonsense!" exclaimed the bold Ann, and marched to the casement and ran up the shade.

They could see nothing. There was no light in the roadway before the house. Ann opened the window and leaned out.

"Nobody down there throwing up gravel, that's sure," she declared, drawing in her head again, and shutting the window.

Just as they returned to their books the scratching, squeaking noise broke out again. This time Ruth ran to see.

"Nothing!" she confessed.

"What do you suppose it can be?" asked Helen nervously. "I declare, I can't study any more. That gets on my nerves."

Mrs. Smith put in her head at that moment. "Of course you haven't seen that boy, any of you?" she asked sharply.

The three older girls looked at each other; Amy Gregg continued to pore over her book. No; Ruth, Helen and Ann could honestly tell Mrs. Smith that they had not seen Curly.

"Well, the young rascal has slipped out. I went up to his door to take him some clothes I had mended, and he didn't answer. So I opened the door, and his bed hasn't been touched, and he went up an hour ago. He's slipped out over the shed roof, for his window's open; though I don't see how he dared drop to the ground. It's twenty feet if it's an inch," Mrs. Smith said sternly.

"I shall wait up for him and catch him when he comes back. I'll learn him to go out nights without me knowin' of it."

She went away, stepping wrathfully. "Goodness! I'm sorry for that boy," said Ann, beginning leisurely to prepare for bed.

But Ruth watched Amy Gregg curiously. She saw the smaller girl flush and pale and glance now and then toward the window. Ruth jumped to a sudden conclusion. Curly was somewhere outside that window on the roof!



CHAPTER XV

A DAWNING POSSIBILITY

"Well, the evening's spoiled anyway," yawned Helen, seeing Ann braiding her hair. "I might as well stop, too," and she closed her books with relief.

"It's time small girls were on their way to the Land of Nod," said the Western girl, taking the book from the resisting hand of Amy Gregg. "Hullo! it's time you were in bed, girlie, sure enough. Holding the book upside down, no less! What do you know about that, ladies?"

"Certainly she should go to bed," Helen said sharply. "We're all sleepy. Do hurry, child."

"Speak for yourself, Helen," snapped Amy. "I don't have to mind you, I hope."

"You do if you want to get anywhere in this school—and mind every other senior who is kind enough to notice you," said Ann. "You've not learned that lesson yet."

"And I don't believe you can teach me," responded the younger girl, ready to quarrel with anybody. "Give me back my book!"

Ruth went to her and put her arm around Amy's neck. "Don't, dear, be so fractious," she begged. "We had all to go through a process of 'fagging' when we first came to Briarwood. It is good for us—part of the discipline. I asked Mrs. Tellingham to let you come over here with us so that you really would not be put upon——"

"I don't thank you!" snapped Amy, ungratefully. "I can look out for myself, I guess. I always have."

"You're like the self-made man," drawled Ann. "You've made an awfully poor job of it! You need a little discipline, my dear."

"Not from you!" cried the other girl, her eyes flashing.

It took Ruth several minutes to quiet this sea of trouble. It was half an hour before Amy cried herself to sleep on her couch. The other girls had both crept into bed and called to Ruth sleepily to put out the light. Ruth was not undressed; but she did as they requested.

Then she went to the window and opened it. Nothing had been heard from above since Mrs. Smith had looked in at the chamber door. But Ruth was sure the grim old woman was waiting at her grandson's window, in the cold shed bedroom, ready for Curly when he came in.

And Ruth was sure, too, that the boy had not dropped to the ground. He was still on the roof.

"That was a tictac," Ruth told herself. She had heard Tom Cameron's too many times to mistake the sound. "And Amy was expecting it. Curly had told her what he was going to do. And now what will that reckless boy do, with his grandmother waiting for him and every other window in the house locked?"

"What are you doing there, Ruthie?" grumbled Ann. "O-o-oh! it's cold," and she drew her comforter up around her shoulders and the next moment she was asleep.

Helen never lay awake after her head touched the pillow, so Ruth did not look for any questioning on her chum's part. And Amy had already wept herself unhappily into dreamland.

"Poor kiddie!" thought Ruth, casting a commiserating glance again at Amy. "And now for this silly boy. If the girls knew what I was going to do they'd have a spasm, I expect," and she chuckled.

She leaned far out of the open window again, and, sitting on the window-sill, turned her body so as to look up the slant of the steep roof.

"Curly!" she called softly. No answer. "Curly Smith!" she raised her voice decisively. "If you don't come here I'll call your grandmother."

A figure appeared slowly from behind a chimney. Even at that distance Ruth could see the figure shiver.

"Wha—what do you want?" asked the boy, shakingly.

"Come here, you silly boy!" commanded Ruth. "Do you want to get your death of cold?"

"I—I——"

"Come down here at once! And don't fall, for pity's sake," was Ruth's warning, as the boy's foot slipped. "My goodness! you haven't any shoes on—and no cap—and just that thin coat. Curly Smith! you'll be down sick after this."

"I'll be sick if Gran' catches me," admitted the boy. "She's layin' for me at my window."

"I know," said Ruth, as the boy crept closer.

"You telltale girls told her, of course," growled the boy.

"We did not. Ann and Helen don't know. Amy is scared, but she's gone to sleep. She wouldn't tell."

"How did Gran' know, then?" demanded Curly, coming closer.

Ruth told him. The boy was both ashamed of his predicament and frightened.

"How can I get in, Ruth? I'd like to sneak downstairs into the sitting room and lie down by the sitting room fire and get warm."

"You shall. Come in this way," commanded Ruth. "But, for pity's sake, don't fall!"

"She'll find it out and lick me worse," said Curly, doubtfully.

"She won't. The girls are asleep, I tell you."

"Well, you know it, don't you?" demanded Curly, with desperation.

"Curly Smith! If you think I'd tell on you, you deserve to stay out here on this roof and freeze," declared Ruth, in anger.

"Oh, say! don't get mad," said Curly, fearing that she would leave him as she intimated.

"Come on, then—and whisper. Not a sound when you get in the room. And for pity's sake, Curly Smith—don't fall!"

"Not going to," growled the boy. "Look out and let me swing down to that window-sill. Ugh! I 'most slipped then. Look out!"

Ruth wriggled back into the room and almost immediately Curly's unshod feet appeared on the sill. She grasped his ankles firmly.

"Come in!" she whispered. "That's the boy! Quick, now!"

All this in low whispers. The girls did not stir, and Ruth had no light. She could barely see the figure of the boy between her and the gray light out-of-doors.

Curly dropped softly into the room. Ruth led him by the hand to the door, which she opened softly. The hall was pitch dark, too.

"You're all right, Ruthie Fielding!" he muttered, as he passed her and stepped into the hall. "I won't forget this."

Ruth thought it might be a warning to him. In the morning his grandmother admitted having found the boy curled up in a rug and asleep before the sitting-room fire.

"An' I thought he was out o' doors all the time," she said. "I ought to punish him, anyway, I s'pose, for scaring me so."

Ruth Fielding spent all her spare time (and that was not much, for her studies were just then very engrossing) in planning and sketching out the five-reel drama in which she hoped to interest Mr. Hammond, head of the Alectrion Film Corporation. She called up the Lumberton Hotel every day to learn if the film company had arrived.

At length the clerk told her Mr. Hammond himself had come, and expected his company the next day. Mr. Hammond was near and was soon speaking to the girl of the Red Mill over the telephone.

"Is this the famous authoress of 'Curiosity?'" asked Mr. Hammond, laughing. "I have received your signed contract and acceptance, and the scenario is already in rehearsal. I hope everything is perfectly satisfactory, Miss Fielding?"

"Oh, Mr. Hammond! I'm not joking. I want to see you very, very much."

"About 'Curiosity?'"

"Oh, no, sir! I'm very grateful to you for taking that and paying me for it, as I told you," Ruth said. "But this is something different—and much more important. When can I see you?"

"Any time after breakfast and before bedtime, my dear," Mr. Hammond assured her. "Do you want to come to town, or shall I come to Briarwood Hall?"

"If you would come here you could see Mrs. Tellingham, too, and that would be lots better," Ruth assured him.

"The principal of your school?" he asked, in surprise.

"Yes, Mr. Hammond. One of our buildings has burned down——"

"Oh! I saw that in the paper," interposed the gentleman. "It is too bad."

"It is tragic!" declared Ruth, earnestly. "There was no insurance, and all us girls want to help build a new dormitory. I have a plan—and you can help——"

"We—ell," said Mr. Hammond, doubtfully. "How much does this mean?"

"I don't know. If the idea is as good as I think it is, Mr. Hammond," Ruth told him, placidly, "you will make a lot of money, and so will Briarwood Hall."

"Hullo!" ejaculated the gentleman. "You expect to show me how to make some money? I thought you wanted a contribution."

"No. It is a bona fide scheme for making money," laughed Ruth. "Do run out sometime to-day and let me talk you into it. You shall meet Mrs. Tellingham, too."

The gentleman promised, and kept the promise promptly. He heard Ruth's idea, approved of it with enthusiasm, and went over with her the briefly outlined sketch for "The Heart of a Schoolgirl." He was able to suggest a number of important changes in Ruth's plan, and his ideas were all helpful and put with tact. Mr. Hammond and Mrs. Tellingham came to an understanding and made a written agreement, too.

Many of the pictures were to be taken at Briarwood Hall. Mrs. Tellingham, on behalf of the dormitory fund, was to have a certain interest in the profits of the production. These legal and technical matters Ruth had nothing to do with. She was able, with an untrammeled mind, to go on with the actual work of writing the scenario.



CHAPTER XVI

THE CAT OUT OF THE BAG

Those were really strenuous days indeed for Ruth Fielding and her friends at Briarwood Hall. The class that looked forward to graduating in June was exceedingly busy.

Had Mrs. Tellingham not made an equitable arrangement in regard to Ruth's English studies, allowing her credits on her writing, the girl of the Red Mill would never have found time for the writing of the scenario which all hoped would ultimately bring a large sum into the dormitory fund.

With faith in her pupil's ability as a writer for the screen, Mrs. Tellingham had gone on with the work of clearing away the ruins of the burned building, and had given out contracts for the construction of the new dormitory on the site of the old one.

The sums already gathered from voluntary contributions paid the bills as the work went along; but in "The Heart of a Schoolgirl" must lie the earning power to carry the work to completion.

As each girl of the senior class had special work in English of an original nature, Mrs. Tellingham announced that Ruth's scenario should count as her special thesis.

"We will let Mr. Hammond judge it, my dear," the principal said to Ruth. She was already proud of the girl's achievement in writing "Curiosity," for she had now read that first scenario. "If Mr. Hammond declares that your drama is worthy of production, you shall be marked 'perfect' in your original English work. That, I am sure, is fair."

In spite of all the studying she had to do, and her work on the scenario of the five-reel drama, Ruth found time to look after Amy Gregg. Not that the latter thanked her—far from it! Ruth, however, did what she thought to be her duty toward the younger girl.

Once Jennie Stone hinted that she suspected Amy of starting the dormitory fire, but Ruth stopped her with:

"Be careful what you say, Jennie Stone. I am sure you would not want to set the other girls against little Gregg. She's apt to have a hard time enough here at Briarwood, at best."

"Her own fault," declared the plump girl.

"Her unfortunate nature, I grant you," said Ruth, shaking her head. "But don't say anything to make it worse. You'd be sorry, you know."

"Huh! If she deserves to have it known that the fire started in her room——"

"But you don't know that!" again interrupted Ruth. "And if it chanced to be so, that's all the more reason why you should not suggest it to the other girls."

"Goodness, Ruth! you are so funny."

"Then laugh at me," responded Ruth, smiling. "I don't mind."

"Pshaw!" said Jennie. "There's no getting ahead of you. You're just like the little kid I heard of who was entertaining some other little girls at a nursery tea. 'My little sister is only five months old,' says one little girl, 'and she has two teeth.'

"'My little sister is only six months old,' spoke up another guest, 'and she's got three teeth.'

"The other kiddie was silent for a moment; she wanted to be polite, but she couldn't let the others put it over her like that! So finally she bursts out with:

"'Well, my little sister hasn't any teef yet; but when she does have some, they're goin' to be gold ones!' Couldn't get ahead of her—and nobody can get the best of you, Ruthie Fielding! You've always an answer ready."

At Mrs. Sadoc Smith's, Amy Gregg had just as little to do with the three older girls as she possibly could; but she remained friends with Curly. She was his confidant, and although Curly considered Ruth about the finest girl "who ever walked down the pike," as he expressed it, he felt in no awe of Amy Gregg and treated her more as he would another boy.

All was not plain sailing for Ruth in either her studies or in the writing of the scenario for "The Heart of a Schoolgirl." The coming examinations in all branches would be difficult, and unless she obtained a certain average in all, Ruth could not expect a diploma.

A diploma from Briarwood Hall was an entrance certificate to the college in which she and Helen hoped to continue their education the following autumn. And Ruth did not want to spend her summer in making up conditions. She wished to graduate in her class with a high grade.

It was a foregone conclusion in her mind that Mercy Curtis was to bear off the highest honor. Nor had she forgotten that she must invent (if nobody else could) a way for Mercy to speak the principal oration on graduation day.

Her powers of invention, however, were taxed to their utmost just now as she wrote the scenario of the picture drama. Before Mr. Hammond and the Alectrion Company left Lumberton, Ruth was able to get into town with the draft of the first part of the play, and read it to Mr. Hammond.

Miss Hazel Gray was present at the reading, and Ruth had given that pretty young girl a very good part indeed in the new film.

"You dear!" whispered Hazel, her arms around Ruth, and speaking to her softly, "I believe I have you to thank for much further consideration from Mr. Hammond. And you have given me a delightful part in this play you are writing. What a really wonderful child you are Ruth Fielding!"

Ruth thought that she was scarcely a child. But she only said: "I am glad you like the part. I meant it for you."

"I know. Mr. Hammond told me that you insisted on my playing the part of Eve Adair. And, oh! what about that nice boy, Thomas Cameron? Are he and his sister well? I received a lovely box of sweets from Thomas after I went back to the city that time."

"He is well, I believe," said Ruth, gravely. "He is not far from here, you know; he attends the Seven Oaks Military Academy."

"Oh! so he does. Maybe we shall go that way," said Hazel Gray, carelessly. "It would be lots of fun to see him again. Give my love to his sister."

"Yes, Miss Gray," Ruth returned seriously. "I will tell Helen."

She really liked Hazel Gray, and wished to see her get ahead. And it was through her acquaintanceship with Hazel that Ruth had made a friend of Mr. Hammond. But it annoyed Ruth that the actress should continue to be so friendly with Tom Cameron.

She thought no good could come of it Tom Cameron had always seemed such a seriously inclined boy, in spite of his ready fun and cheerfulness. To have him show such partiality for a girl so much older than himself, really a grown woman, as Hazel Gray was, disturbed Ruth.

She said nothing to her chum about it. If Helen was not worried about her twin's predilection for the moving picture actress, it did not become Ruth to worry.

Ruth went back to Briarwood, encouraged to go on with the writing of the drama. From Mr. Hammond's fertile mind had come several helpful suggestions. The plot of the play was very intimately connected with the history of Briarwood. There was included in its scenes a "Masque of the Marble Harp," in which the whole school was to be grouped about the fountain in the sunken garden.

The marble figure of Harmony, or Poesy, or whatever it was supposed to represent, was to come to life in the picture and strum the strings of the lyre which it held. This was a trick picture and Mr. Hammond had explained to Ruth just how it was to be made.

The legend of the marble harp, which had been kept alive by succeeding classes of Briarwood girls for the purpose of hazing "infants," came in very nicely now in Ruth's story. And the arrangement of this trick picture suggested another thing to Ruth Fielding, something which she had been racking her brains about for some time.

This idea had nothing to do with the present play; it had to do, instead, with Mercy Curtis and the graduation exercises. One idea bred another in Ruth Fielding's teeming brain. Her dramatic faculties, were being sharpened.

With all their regular studies and recitations, the seniors had to take their usual turns as monitors, and Ruth could not escape this duty. Besides, it was an honor not to be scorned, to be chosen to preside over the "primes," or to take the head of a table at dinner.

A teacher was ill on one day and Miss Brokaw asked Ruth to take certain classes of the primary grade. The recitations were on subjects quite familiar to Ruth and she felt no hesitancy in accepting the responsibility; but there was more ahead of her than she supposed when she entered on the task.

As it chanced, the flaxen-haired Amy Gregg was in the class of which Ruth was sent to take charge. Amy scowled at the senior when the latter took the desk; but most of the other girls were glad to see Ruth Fielding.

A little wrangle seemed to have begun before Ruth arrived, and the senior thought to settle the difficulty and start the day with "clear decks," by getting at the seat of the trouble.

"What is the matter, Mary Pease?" she asked a flushed and indignant girl who was angrily glaring at another. "Calm down, honey. Don't let your anger rise."

"If Amy Gregg says again that I took her gold pen, I'll tell something about her she won't like, now I warn her!" threatened Mary.

"Well, it's gone!" stormed Amy, "and you're the nearest. I'd like to know who took it if you didn't?"

"Well! of all the nerve! I want you to understand that I don't have to steal pens."

"Hold on, girls," put in Ruth. "This must not go on. You know, I shall be obliged to report you both."

"Of course!" snarled Amy. "You big girls are always telling on us."

"Oh!" and "Shame!" was the general murmur about the classroom; for most of the girls loved Ruth.

"Why, you nasty thing!" cried Mary Pease, glaring at Amy. "You ought to be ashamed. I'll tell what I know about you!"

"Mary!" exclaimed Ruth, with sudden fright. "Be still."

"I guess you don't know what I know about Gregg, Ruth Fielding," cried the excited Mary.

"We do not want to know," Ruth said hastily. "Let us stop this wrangling and turn to our work. Suppose Miss Brokaw should come in?"

"And I guess Miss Brokaw or anybody would want to know what I saw that night of the fire," declared Mary Pease, wildly. "I know whose room the fire started in, and how it started."

"Mary!" cried Ruth, rising from her seat, while the girls of the class uttered wondering exclamations.

But Mary was hysterical now.

"I saw a light in her room!" she cried, pointing an accusing finger at the white-faced and shaking Amy. "I peeped through the keyhole, and it was a candle burning on her table. She said she didn't have a candle. Bah!"

"Be still, Mary!" commanded Ruth again.

Amy Gregg was terror-stricken and shrank away from her accuser; but the latter was too excited to heed Ruth.

"I know all about it. So does Miss Scrimp. I told her. That Amy Gregg left the candle burning when she went to supper and it fell off her table into the waste basket.

"And that," concluded Mary Pease, "was how the fire started that burned down the West Dormitory, and I don't care who knows it, so there!"



CHAPTER XVII

ANOTHER OF CURLY'S TRICKS

Miss Scrimp, the matron of the old West Dormitory, had bound Mary Pease to secrecy. But, as Jennie put it, "the binding did not hold and Pease spilled the beans."

The story flew over the school like wildfire. Miss Scrimp, actually in tears, was inclined to blame Ruth Fielding for the outbreak of the story.

"You ought to have taken Mary Pease and run her right into a closet!" declared the matron. "Such behavior!"

Ruth was a good deal chagrined that the story should have come out while she was monitor; but she really did not see how she could have helped it. The quarrel between Amy Gregg and Mary Pease had commenced before Ruth had gone into the classroom.

"And how could you help it?" cried the faithful Jennie. "I expect little Pease has been aching to tell all these weeks. She should have been quarantined, in the first place."

But there was nothing to do about it now, save "to pick up the pieces." And that was no light task. Feeling ran high in Briarwood Hall against Amy Gregg.

Some of the girls of her own age would not speak to her. Many of the older girls made her feel by every glance and word they gave her that she was taboo. And it was whispered on the campus that Amy would be sent home by Mrs. Tellingham, if she could not be made to pay, or her folks be made to pay, something toward the damage her carelessness had brought about.

Ruth sheltered the unfortunate Amy all she could. She even influenced her closest friends to be kind to the child. At Mrs. Sadoc Smith's Helen and Ann did not speak of the discovery of the origin of the fire, and, of course, good-natured Jennie Stone did just as Ruth asked, while even Mercy Curtis kept her lips closed.

Amy, however, not being an utterly callous girl, felt the condemnation of the whole school. There was no escaping that.

Amy had denied having a candle on the night of the fire, and it shocked and grieved Mrs. Tellingham very much to learn that one of her girls was not to be trusted to speak the truth at all times.

Not because of the fire did the preceptress consider sending Amy Gregg home, for the origin of the fire was plainly an accident, though bred in carelessness. For prevarication, however, Mrs. Tellingham was tempted to expel Amy Gregg.

The girl had denied the fact that she had left a candle burning in her room when she went to supper. Mary Pease had seen it, and both Miss Scrimp and Ruth Fielding knew that the fire started in that particular room.

Why the girl had left the candle burning was another mystery. Recklessly denying the main fact, of course Amy would not explain the secondary mystery. Nagged and heckled by some of the sophomores and juniors, Amy declared she wished the whole school had burned down and then she would not have had to stay at Briarwood another day!

Ruth and Helen one day rescued the girl from the midst of a mob of larger girls who were driving Amy Gregg almost mad by taunting her with being a "fire bug."

"What are you wild animals doing?" demanded Helen, who was much sharper with the evil doers among the under classes than was Ruth. "So she's a 'fire-bug?' Oh, girls! what better are you than poor little Gregg, I'd like to know? Every soul of you has done worse things than she has done—only your acts did not have such appalling results. Behave yourselves!"

Ruth could not have talked that way to the girls; but many of them slunk away under Helen's reprimand. Ruth took the crying Amy away—but neither she nor Helen was thanked.

"I wish you girls would mind your own business and let me alone," sobbed the foolish child, hysterically. "I can fight my own battles, I'll tear their hair out! I'll scratch their faces for them!"

"Oh, dear me, Amy!" sighed Ruth. "Do you think that would be any real satisfaction to you? Would it change things for the better, or in the least?"

What made the girls so unfeeling toward Amy was the fact that from the beginning she had expressed no sorrow over the destruction of the dormitory, and that she had refused to write home to ask for a contribution to the fund being raised for the new building.

When every other girl at Briarwood Hall was doing her best to get money to help Mrs. Tellingham, Amy Gregg's callousness regarding the fire and its results showed up, said Jennie, "just like a stubbed toe on a bare-footed boy!"

Really, Ruth began to think she would have to act as guard for Amy Gregg to and from the school. The girl was not allowed to play with the other girls of her age. Wherever she went a small riot started.

It had become general knowledge that Amy Gregg's father was a wealthy man, and that the family lived very sumptuously. Amy had a stepmother and several half brothers and sisters; but she did not get along well with them and, therefore, her father had sent her to Briarwood Hall.

"I guess she was too mean at home for them to stand her," said Mary Pease, who was the most vindictive of Amy's class, "and they sent her here to trouble us. And see what she's done!"

There was no stopping the younger girls from nagging. The fact that so much was being done by others to help the dormitory fund kept the feud against Amy Gregg alive. Her one partisan at this time (for Ruth could not be called that, no matter how sorry she was for her) was Curly Smith.

Once or twice Amy slipped away before Ruth was ready to go back to Mrs. Smith's house for the evening, and started alone for the lodgings. The Cedar Walk was the nearest way, and there were many hiding places along the Cedar Walk.

Mary Pease and her chums lay in wait for the unfortunate Amy on two occasions, and chased her all the way to Mrs. Sadoc Smith's. What they intended doing to the much disliked girl if they had caught her, nobody seemed to know. They just seemed determined to plague her.

Ruth did not want to report the culprits; but warning them did not seem to do any good. On a third occasion Amy started home ahead, and Ruth and Helen hurried after her to make sure that none of the other girls troubled the victim. Half way down the walk, Helen exclaimed:

"See there, Ruth! Amy isn't alone, after all."

"Who's with her?" asked Ruth. "I can't see—Why! it can't be Ann?"

"No. But she's tall like Ann."

"And that girl walks queerly. Did you ever see the like? Strides along just like a boy—Oh!"

Out of a cedar clump appeared a crowd of shrieking girls, who began to dance around Amy and her companion, shouting scornful phrases which were bound to make Amy Gregg angry. But Mary and her friends this time received a surprise. Amy ran. Not so the "girl" with her.

This strange individual ran among Amy's tormentors, tripped two or three of them up, tore down the hair of several, taking the ribbons as trophies, and sent the whole crowd shrieking away, much alarmed and not a little punished.

"It isn't a girl!" gasped Helen. "It's Curly Smith. And as sure as you live he's got on some of Ann's clothes. Won't our Western friend be furious at that?"

But Ann Hicks was not troubled at all. She had lent Curly the frock and hat, and when he behaved himself and walked properly he certainly made a very pretty girl.

He gave Amy's enemies a good fright, and they let her alone after that.

"But, goodness me! what is Briarwood Hall coming to?" demanded Ruth, in discussing this incident with her room-mates. "We are leaving a tribe of young Indians here for Mrs. Tellingham to control. Helen! you know we never acted this way when we were in the lower grades."

"Well, we were pretty bad sometimes," Helen said slowly. "We did not engage in free fights, however."

"They all ought to have a good spanking," declared Ann, with conviction.

"And I suppose you seniors ought to do it?" sneered Amy, who could not be gentle even with her own friends.

"I'm not convinced that I sha'n't begin with you, my lady," said the Western girl, sharply. "I lent those old duds of mine to Curly to help you out, and you are about as grateful as a poison snake! I never saw such a girl in my life before."



CHAPTER XVIII

THE FIVE-REEL DRAMA

There was a spark of romance in old Mrs. Sadoc Smith, after all. Ruth read to her the first part of "The Heart of a Schoolgirl" and to further the continuation and ultimate successful completion of that scenario, the old lady would have done much.

Curly looked upon Ruth with awe. He was a devotee of the moving pictures, and every nickel he could spare went into the coffers of one or the other of the "picture palaces" in Lumberton. Lumberton was a thriving city, with both water-freight and railroad facilities besides its mills and lumber interests; so it could well support several of the modern houses of entertainment that have sprung up in such mushroom growth all over the land.

Mr. Hammond's films taken at Lumberton were of an educational nature and the Board of Trade of the city expected much advertising of the industries of the place when the films were released.

However, to get back to Mrs. Sadoc Smith—Her instructions from Mrs. Tellingham included the putting out of the lamp in the big room the four Briarwood girls occupied by ten o'clock every night; but Mrs. Smith allowed Ruth to come downstairs after the other girls were in bed and write under the radiance of the reading lamp on her sitting-room table. It was quiet there, for Mrs. Sadoc Smith either sent Curly to bed, or made him keep as still as a mouse. And there was nobody else to disturb the young author as she wrote, save the cat that delighted to jump up into her lap and lie there purring, while the scenario was being written.

Ruth did not avail herself of this privilege often; but she was desirous for the scenario to be finished and in Mr. Hammond's hands. So sure had that gentleman been of her success, and so pleased was he with the plan of the entire play, that he had taken a copy of the first part with him when he left Lumberton and now wrote that Mr. Grimes was already making a few of the studio scenes.

The young author rather shrank from letting the pugnacious Mr. Grimes have anything to do with her story; but she knew that both Mr. Hammond and Hazel Gray thought highly of the man's ability. Nor was she in a position to insist upon any other director. She was working for Briarwood, not for her own advantage.

"If Grimes takes hold of it with his usual vigor, it will be a success," Mr. Hammond assured Ruth in his letter. "Hurry along the rest of the play. Spring is upon us, and we shall have some good open weather soon in which to take the pictures at Briarwood Hall."

Ruth hurried. Indeed, the story was finished so rapidly that the girl scarcely realized what she had done. There was no time for her to go over the scenario carefully for revision and polishing. The last scenes she read to nobody; she scarcely knew herself how they sounded.

Ruth Fielding had written an ingenious and very original scenario. Its crudities were many and manifest; nevertheless, the true gold was there. Mr. Hammond had recognized the originality of the girl's ideas in the first part of the play. He was not going into the scheme, and risking his money and reputation as a film producer, from any feeling of sentiment. It was a business proposition, pure and simple, with him.

In the first place, nobody had ever thought of just this kind of moving picture. The producer would be in the field with a new idea. In addition, the drama would be looked for all over the country by the friends of the pupils, past and present, of Briarwood Hall. The girls themselves appearing in some of the scenes would add to the interest their parents, friends, and the graduates of the Hall, were bound to take in the production.

To Ruth, nervous and overworked after the finishing of the scenario, the days of waiting until Mr. Hammond read and pronounced judgment on the play, were hard indeed to endure. No matter how much confidence her friends—even Mrs. Tellingham—had in her ability to succeed, Ruth was not at all sure she had written up to the mark.

Try as she might she began to fall behind in her recitation marks during these days of waiting. Her nervousness was enhanced by the doubts she felt regarding her general standing in her classes.

Mrs. Tellingham talked cheerfully in chapel about "our graduating class;" but some of the girls who were working with a view to receiving their diplomas in June would never be able to reach the high mark necessary for Mrs. Tellingham to allow them those certificates.

There would be a fringe of girls standing at the back of the class who, although never appearing at Briarwood Hall another term, could not win the roll of parchment which would enter them in good standing in any of the women's colleges. Ruth did not want to be among those who failed.

She worried about this a good deal; she could not sleep at night; and her cheeks grew pale. She worked hard, and yet sometimes when she reached the classroom she felt as though her head were a hollow drum in which the thoughts beat to and fro without either rhyme or reason.

Ruth Fielding was a perfectly healthy girl, as well as an athletic one. But in a time of stress like this the very healthiest person can easily and quickly break down. "I feel as though I should fly!" is an expression often heard from nervous and overwrought schoolgirls. Ruth wished that she might fly—away from school and study and scenarios and sullen girls like Amy Gregg.

One evening when she came back to Mrs. Sadoc Smith's with a strapful of books to study before bedtime, Ruth saw Curly Smith by the shed door busy with some fishing tackle. Ruth's pulses leaped. Fishing! She had not thrown a hook into the water for months and months!

"Going fishing, Curly?" she said wistfully.

"Yep."

"Where are they biting now?"

"There's carp and bream under the old mill-dam up in Norman's Woods. I saw 'em jumping there to-day."

"Oh! when are you going?" gasped the girl, hungry for outdoor sport and adventure.

"In the morning—before you're up," said the boy, rather sullenly.

"I wager I'll be awake," said Ruth, sitting down beside him. "I wake up—oh, just awfully early! and lie and think."

Curly looked at her. "That don't get you nothin'," he said.

"But I can't help it."

"Gran says you're overworked," Curly said. "Why don't you run away from school if they make you work so hard? I would. Our teacher's sick so there isn't any session at the district school to-morrow."

"Oh, Curly! Play hooky?" gasped Ruth, clasping her hands.

"Yep. Only you girls haven't any pluck."

"If I played hooky would you let me go fishing with you to-morrow?" asked Ruth, her eyes dancing.

"You haven't the sand," scoffed Curly.

"But can I go if I dare run away?" urged Ruth.

"Yep," said the boy, but with rather a sour grin.

"What time are you going to start?"

"Four."

"If I'm not down in the kitchen by that time, throw some gravel up to the window," commanded Ruth. "But don't break the window."

"Oh, shucks! you won't go when you see how dark and damp it is," declared Curly.

When, just after four o'clock in the morning, Curly crept downstairs from his shed chamber, knuckling his eyes to get the sleep out, there was a light in the kitchen and Ruth was just pouring out two fragrant cups of coffee which flanked a heaping plate of doughnuts.

"Old Scratch!" gasped Curly. "Gran will have our hides and hair! You're not going, Ruth Fielding?"

"If you will let me," said Ruth, meekly.

"Well—if you want. But you'll get wet and dirty and mussy——"

Then he stopped. He saw that Ruth had on an old gymnasium suit, her rubber boots lay on the chair, and a warm polo coat was at hand. She already wore her tam-o-shanter.

"Huh! I see you're ready," Curly said. "You might as well go. But remember, if you want to come home before afternoon, you'll have to find your way back alone. I'm not going to be bothered by a girl's fantods."

"All right, Curly," said Ruth, cheerfully.

Curly put his face under the spigot, brushed his hair before the little mirror in the corner, and was ready to sample Ruth's coffee.

"We want to hurry," he said, filling his pockets with the doughnuts, "it'll be broad daylight before we know it, and then everybody we see will want to come along. The other fellows aren't on to the old dam yet this season. The fish are running early."

He brought forth a basket with tackle and bait, dug over night. Ruth burdened herself with a big, square box, neatly wrapped and tied. Curly eyed this askance.

"I s'pose you expect to tear your clo'es and want something to wear back to town that's decent," he growled.

"Well, I want to look half way respectable," laughed Ruth, as they set forth.

The damp smell of thawing earth greeted their nostrils as they left the house. No plowing had been done, save in very warm corners; but the lush buds on the trees and bushes, and the crocuses by the corner of the old house, promised spring.

A clape called at them raucously as he rapped out his warning on a dead limb beside the road. A rabbit rose from its form and shot away into the dripping woods. The sun poked a jolly red face above the wooded ridge before the two runaways left the beaten track and took a narrow woodpath that would cut off about a mile of their walk.

It was a rough way and the pace Curly set was made to force Ruth to beg for time. But the girl gritted her teeth, minded not the pain in her side, and sturdily followed him. By and by the pain stopped, she got her second wind, and then she began to tread close on Curly's heels.

"Huh!" he grunted at last, "you needn't be in such a hurry. The dam will stay there—and so will the fish."

"All right," responded Ruth, still meekly, but with dancing eyes.

The fishing place was reached and while yet the early rays of the sun fell aslant the dimpling pools under the dam, the two threw in their baited hooks. Curly evidently expected to see the girl balk at the bait, but Ruth seized firmly the fat, squirmy worm and impaled it scientifically upon her hook.

She caught the first fish, too! In fact, as the morning drew leisurely along, Ruth's string splashing in the cool water grew much faster than Curly's.

"I never saw the beat of your luck!" declared the boy. "You must have been fishing before, Ruth Fielding."

"Lots of times."

"Where?"

Ruth told him of the Red Mill on the bank of the Lumano, of her fishing trips with Tom Cameron, and of all the fun that they had about Cheslow, and up the river above the mill.

Mid-forenoon came and Curly produced some crackers and a piece of bologna. The doughnuts he had pocketed were gone long ago.

"Have a bite, Ruth?" he said generously. "I wish it was better, but I didn't have much money, and Gran won't ever let me carry any lunch. She says the proper place for a boy to eat is at his own table. It's there for me, and if I don't get home to get it, then I can do without."

Ruth accepted a piece of the bologna and the crackers gravely. She baited her hook with a piece of the bologna and caught a big, struggling carp.

"What do you know about that?" cried Curly, in disgust. "You could bait your hook with a marble and catch a whopper, I believe!"

Meanwhile, Ruth was having a most delightful time. The roses had come back into her cheeks at the first. Her eyes sparkled, and she "wriggled all over," as she expressed it, "with just the feel of spring."

She did not spend all her time fishing, but ran about and examined the early plants and sprouting bushes, and woke up the first violets and searched for May flowers, which, of course, she did not find. Squirrels chattered at them, and a blue jay hung about, squalling, evidently hoping for crumbs from their lunch. Only there were no crumbs of Curly's frugal bologna and crackers left.

When the sun was in mid-heaven the boy confessed to being as hungry as ever, and tightened his belt. "Crackers don't stick to your ribs much," he grumbled.

Ruth calmly began opening her box. Curly looked at her askance.

"You aren't figgering on going home now, are you?" he asked.

"Oh, no. I sha'n't go home till you do."

Then she produced from the box sandwiches, deviled eggs, a jelly roll, a jar of peanut butter, crackers, olives, and some more of Mrs. Smith's good doughnuts.

"Old Scratch!" Curly ejaculated. "You're the best fellow to go fishing with, Ruth Fielding, that I ever saw. You can come to my parties any time you like."

They spent the whole day delightfully and, tired, scratched, and not a little wind-burned, Ruth tramped home behind Curly in good season for supper at Mrs. Sadoc Smith's.

She did not tell the boy that the whole outing had been arranged the night before with his grandmother before Ruth herself went to bed. Curly expected to be "called down," as he expressed it, by his grandmother when they arrived home. To his amazement they were met cheerfully and ushered in to a bounteous supper on which Mrs. Smith had expended no little thought and time.

Curly was stricken almost dumb by his grandmother's generosity and good-nature. After supper he whispered to Ruth: