“The poor child must have got up early this morning and gone down to the village for them,” she said to Nance. “And she does hate getting up early, too.”

Thus the coldness between the two girls came to a temporary end. Molly did not go to the Beta Phi House to dinner on Sunday. Millicent sent word that she was ill with a headache and would like to postpone the visit. Some of the Shakespeareans came to the apartment of the three girls to call one evening, but they were Judy’s friends, invited by her to drop in and have fudge, and Molly and Nance kept quiet and remained in the background. If Judy was working to get into the Shakespeareans, she should have the field to herself. The three visitors, seniors all of them, left early, but in some mysterious way the news of their call spread through the Quadrangle.

“Which of you is boning for the ‘Shakespeareans’?” Minerva Higgins demanded of Nance next day.

This irrepressible young person had already acquired a smattering of college slang and college gossip. But still she had not learned the difference between a freshman and a junior.

Nance drew herself up haughtily.

“Miss Higgins,” she said, “there are some things at Wellington that are never discussed.”

“Excuse me,” said Minerva, making an elaborate bow.

But Nance did not even notice the bow. She had gone on her way like an injured dignitary.

The air was certainly full of rumors, however. Everybody, even the faculty, wondered upon whose shoulders the Shakespeareans’ highly coveted honors would fall. The new members of this distinguished body were always chosen after the junior play, preparations for which were now under way. There had been first a stormy meeting of the class. It was quite natural for President Wakefield to want all her particular friends to form the committee to choose a play and select the actors, and it was equally human of the Caroline Brinton forces to resent the old clique rule. But Margaret was a mighty leader and would brook no interference. So the Queen’s girls were the ruling spirits of the entertainment. Judy was chairman of the committee, and was to have the principal part in the play, it being tacitly understood that she wanted to show the Shakespeareans what she could do.

It was like the scholarly group to give a wide berth to the modern comedies and melodramas usually selected by juniors for this performance, and to settle on “Twelfth Night.”

“We can never do it,” Caroline Brinton had announced in great vexation. “We haven’t time and we have no coach.”

But she had been calmly overruled and “Twelfth Night” it was to be, with daily rehearsals except on Saturdays, when there were two.

Molly was cast for the part of Maria, the maid. And she was glad, chiefly because the costume was easy. Judy was to play Viola, Edith Williams, Malvolio, and the other parts were variously distributed, Margaret being Sir Toby Belch.

When a college girl reaches her junior year her mind is well trained to concentrate and memorize. Two years before, perhaps only Edith Williams, whose memory was abnormal, would have trusted herself to memorize a Shakespearean part. But the girls were amazed now at their own powers. Miss Pryor, teacher of elocution, was present at many of the rehearsals, criticizing and suggesting, and hers was the only outside assistance the juniors had in their ambitious production.

It was probably through her that the accounts of their ability were noised abroad, and on the night of the play there was a great rush for seats. The president herself was there and many of the faculty. Professor Green had a front balcony seat looking straight down on the stage.

“Goodness, but I’m scared!” exclaimed Molly, peeping through the hole in the curtain at the large assembly.

“Heaven help us all,” groaned Nance, dressed as an attendant of the Duke.

“Don’t talk like that,” Judy admonished them. “We must make it go off all right. Molly, don’t you forget and be too solemn. Your part calls for much merriment, as the notes in the book said.”

“Don’t you be so dictatorial,” said Nance, under her breath, hoping instantly that Judy, in a high state of nerves and excitement, had not heard her.

When the seniors began thumping on the floor with their heels and the sophomores commenced clapping, Molly’s mind became a vacuum. Not even the first line of her part could she recall.

At last the curtain went up and the play began. She had no idea how Judy had conducted herself. A girl near her said:

“She certainly had an awful case of stage fright, but she’ll be all right in the next act.”

The words had no meaning to Molly, and she sat like a frozen image in the wings until Nance touched her on the shoulder and whispered:

“Hurry up.”

Then she stepped into the glare of the footlights. Her blood ceased entirely to circulate. Her hands became numb. Icy fingers seemed to clutch her throat, and when she opened her mouth to speak, no voice came. She remembered making a fervent, speechless prayer.

In an instant her blood began to flow normally. She felt a wave of crimson surge into her cheeks, and she heard her own voice speaking to Margaret, stuffed out with sofa cushions to resemble Sir Toby Belch.

When the scene was over there was a great clapping of hands. It sounded to Molly like a sudden rainstorm in summer. And, like a summer shower, it was refreshing to the young actors in the great comedy.

“Good work, Molly,” Margaret whispered. “I think we carried that off pretty well. If only Judy doesn’t get scared again the thing will go all right.”

“Did Judy have stage fright?” demanded Molly, in surprise.

“You mean to say you didn’t know? She almost ruined the scene.”

“Poor old Judy,” thought Molly, “and just when she wanted to do her best, too.”

Judy did improve considerably as the play progressed, but even a friendly audience has an unrelenting way of retaining first impressions; or perhaps it was that poor Judy, sensitive and high strung, imagined the audience was cold to her and so allowed her spirit to be quenched. There were no cries for “Viola” from the people in front, and there were many for Malvolio, Sir Toby and Maria.

Again and again these three actors came forth and bowed their acknowledgment. During the intermission several of the freshmen ushers carried down bouquets of flowers. Jessie received two from admirers who appeared to keep a running account at the florist’s in the village. A splendid basket of red roses and a bunch of violets were handed over the footlights for Molly, and when she was summoned from the wings to appear and receive these floral offerings she flushed crimson and remarked to the usher:

“There must be some mistake. They couldn’t be for me.”

A ripple of laughter went over the entire house. There was another burst of applause which again brought Miss Molly Brown of Kentucky into prominence through no fault of her own.

The card on the magnificent basket of roses made known to her the fact that Miss Millicent Porter had thus honored her. The card on the violets merely said: “From a crusty old critic who believes in your success.”

“I thought Millicent Porter had a big crush on you,” observed Margaret later in the green room. “There’s no doubt about it now after this noble tribute.”

“Nonsense,” said Molly. “It’s because she has so much money and likes to spend it.”

“On herself, yes, buying clothes and big lumps of silver to play with; but not on you, Molly, dear, unless she had been greatly taken with your charms.”

Molly had seen a few college crushes and considered them absurd, a kind of idol worship by a young girl for an older one; but because she had been so closely with her own small circle, she had escaped a crush so far.

“I’ll never believe it,” she said. “I’m much too humble a person to be admired by such a grand young lady. She sent the roses because she had to recall her invitation to dinner.”

“Only time will prove it, Miss Molly,” answered Margaret.

The play ended with a grand storm of applause and college yells. Not in their wildest dreams had the juniors hoped for such success.

“It’s difficult to tell who was the best, they were all so excellent,” the president was reported to have said.

Finally, to satisfy the persistent multitude, each actor marched slowly in front of the curtain, and each was received with more or less enthusiasm.

“Rah-rah-rah; rah-rah-rah; Wellington—Wellington—Margaret Wakefield,” they yelled; or “What’s the matter with Molly Brown? She’s all right. Molly—Molly—Molly Brown.”

In the intoxicating excitement of this fifteen minutes nobody realized that Judy had withdrawn from the group of actors and hidden herself away somewhere behind the scenery. There was some speculation in the audience as to why Viola had not filed across the stage with the others, but since Judy’s really devoted friends were all behind the scenes, there was no one to bring her out unless she chose to show herself with the others.

“Wasn’t it simply grand?” cried Jessie, the last to taste the sweets of popularity. The hall was still ringing with:

“Jessie—Jessie—she’s all right!” when she bowed herself behind the curtain and joined her classmates in the green room. Then there came cries of:

“Speech! Speech! Wakefield! Wakefield!”

Margaret, as composed as a May morning, stepped to the front of the platform and gave one of her most appropriate addresses to the joy of the audience and the intense amusement of the faculty.

“Think of that child, only eighteen, and making such a speech! They are certainly a remarkable group of girls. So much individuality among them,” said Miss Walker to Miss Pomeroy, at her side.

“And rare charm in some of the individuals,” added Miss Pomeroy. “The little Brown girl, for instance, who, by the way, is as tall as I am, but so thin that she seems small, has magnetism that will carry her through many a difficulty in life. They tell me she is almost adored by her friends.”

In the meantime the juniors, entirely unconscious of these compliments from high places, and perhaps it was quite as well they were, had just missed Judy from their midst.

“Didn’t she go before the curtain with the rest of us?” some one asked.

“But how strange, when she had the leading part.”

“I thought I heard them give her the yell.”

“Judy, Judy,” called Molly.

“Here I am,” answered a muffled voice from behind the scenery.

Presently Judy appeared, showing a face so white and tragic that her friends were shocked. With a tactful instinct most of the girls hurriedly gathered their things together and disappeared, leaving only the intimates in the green room.

“Why, Judy, dearest, why did you hide yourself, and you the leading lady of the company?” exclaimed Molly reproachfully, when all outsiders had departed.

“Don’t flatter me, Molly,” Judy answered, in a hard, strained voice.

“But you were,” said Molly, “and you acted beautifully.”

“I ruined the play,” said Judy angrily. “I ruined the entire business, and you made me do it.”

“Oh, Judy,” cried Molly, “you are talking wildly. What do you mean?”

“You did. You upset me completely when you said: ‘don’t be so dictatorial.’ I never heard you make a speech like that before. And just as I was about to go on, too. It was cruel. It was unkind. If it had come from any one else but you——”

“Here—here,” broke in Margaret. “Really, Judy, you’re losing your temper.”

“She never said it, anyhow,” cried Nance. “I said it myself.”

“She did say it, Nance. You’re just trying to screen her,” replied Judy, who had worked herself into a nervous rage.

“Is this going to be a free fight?” asked Edith, who always enjoyed battles.

Molly was gathering up her things.

“Not as far as I am concerned,” she answered, in a trembling voice.

As she went out she looked sorrowfully back at Judy, but not another word did she say.

“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, Judy Kean?” cried Nance. “You’re jealous and that’s the whole of it,” and she flung herself out of the door after Molly. The others quickly followed. Certainly sympathy was against Judy.

And what of poor Judy left all alone in the gymnasium?

Torn with anger, remorse, jealousy and disappointment, she threw herself face downward on the empty stage.

Presently the janitor came in and switched off the lights.

CHAPTER VII.
A MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE.

Molly and Nance had little to say to each other that night as they undressed for bed. Nance was still filled with hot indignation over Judy’s “falling-off” as she called it, and Molly had no heart for conversation. The door to Judy’s bedroom at the other end of the sitting room was closed and they were not surprised when she did not call “good night” as was her custom. Nobody looked in on them. It was late and the Quadrangle was soon perfectly still.

Under the sheets, her head buried in the pillows, Molly cried a long time, softly and quietly, like a steady downpour of rain. It seemed somehow that her beloved friend, Judy, had died, and that she was grieving for her. At last, worn out, she fell asleep. It was a very heavy sleep. She felt as if her arms were tied and she was sinking down into space and, as is always the case with dreams of falling, she waked with a nervous leap as if her body had hit the bed and rebounded. As she fell she had dreamed that she heard a voice calling. Never mind what it said; already the word, whatever it was, was a mere pin point in her memory. It had flashed through her mind like a shooting star across the sky. It was brilliantly illuminating for the instant. Molly was sure that it meant a great deal. It was an important word, and it had an urgent significance. For the tenth of a second her mind had been wide awake, and now it was quite dark again.

Molly leaped out of bed and began pulling on her clothes.

“Why am I dressing?” she thought. “It is because I must—hurry!”

“Hurry,” that was the word. It came back to her now, quietly and significantly.

Nance wakened and sat up in bed.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I must hurry. Don’t stop me,” answered Molly.

Nance looked at her curiously.

“You’ve had a nightmare, Molly,” she said.

Molly glanced up vaguely as Nance switched on the light.

“Have I? I don’t know, but I must make haste, or I’ll be too late.”

“Too late for what?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Wake up, Molly. You’re asleep. Nothing is going to happen. You are here, in your own room.”

“Yes, yes. I understand, but I must hurry. Don’t stop me, Nance. You may come if you like, but don’t stop me.”

Nance had often heard that it was dangerous to awaken sleepwalkers too suddenly, and she believed now as she saw Molly slipping on her skirt and sweater that she was certainly asleep.

“Dearest Molly,” she insisted. “This is college. You are in your own room. It’s a quarter to twelve. Don’t go out of the room.”

Molly took no notice. Nance turned on another light and slipped across to Judy’s room. She must have help, and Judy was the nearest person.

“Judy’s not in her room,” she exclaimed suddenly, in a scared voice.

Molly gave a slight shudder.

“It’s Judy who needs me,” she said. “I was trying to remember. I couldn’t make it out at first. Put on your things, Nance. Don’t delay. Put out the light. We must hurry.”

Nance got into a few clothes as fast as she could. She slipped on tennis shoes and an ulster and presently the two girls were standing in the corridor.

“Where are we going, Molly?” asked Nance, now under the spell of the other’s conviction.

“This way,” answered Molly, looking indeed like a sleepwalker as she glided down the hall to the main steps.

If the girls had glanced back they would have noticed a figure creep softly after them.

“But the gate is locked,” objected Nance.

“I know, but we’ll find another way. Come on.”

Down the steps they hastened noiselessly. At the bottom, instead of going straight ahead, Molly turned to the left and led the way to a sitting room for visitors on the ground floor of the tower. The windows of the Tower Room, as it was known, looked out on the campus. They were small, deep-silled, and closed with iron-bound wooden shutters like the doors into the cloisters. Mounting a bench, Molly opened the inside glass casement of one of the windows and drew back the bolt which secured the shutter. Then she hoisted herself onto the sill, crawled through the window, and holding by both hands dropped to the ground. Nance, of a more practical temperament, wondered how they would ever get back into the Tower Room; but blind, unquestioning faith is an infinitely stronger staff to lean upon than uneasy speculation, as Nance was one day to find out.

“When the night watchman makes his rounds, will he see the window open in the tower?” she thought. “And if he does, what will he do? Give the alarm at once or try to find out our names and report us? If he reports us, what then? We may be expelled, or suspended or punished in some awful way.”

So Nance’s thoughts busily shaped out these tragic events as she followed Molly out of the window and dropped to the gravel walk below. The tower clock struck twelve while the two girls flitted across the campus. It was a strange adventure, Nance pondered, and one she would never have undertaken, or even considered, alone. But then her instincts were not like Molly’s. The inner voice which spoke to her sometimes was usually the sharp, reproving voice of a Puritan conscience. It spoke to her now, but she turned a deaf ear to it for once.

It told her how absurd she would appear to other people in this dangerous midnight escapade; what risks she was running. Judy, of course, had spent the night with one of the other girls, it said. It troubled her mind with whispers of doubts and fears; it ridiculed and abused her, but not once did it weaken her determination to follow Molly wherever she intended to go. And presently, when Molly quickened her footsteps into a run, Nance kept right at her elbow like a noonday shadow, foreshortened and broadened.

Molly turned in the direction of the lake. Nance’s heart gave a violent thump. She had believed all along that they were taking a short cut across to the gymnasium, instead of following the gravel walk.

“Molly, you don’t think——” she began breathlessly.

“Don’t talk now. Hurry,” was Molly’s brief reply.

Across a corner of the golf course they flew, and before Nance could take breath for another dash through a fringe of pine trees she caught sight of the waters, as black as ink. She clutched Molly’s arm.

“Did you hear anything?” she asked, in a frightened whisper.

They waited a moment, straining their ears in the darkness.

From the middle of the lake came the sound of a canoe paddle dipping into the water.

Molly breathed a sigh of relief.

“It’s all right,” she said, and they hastened down to the platform of the boathouse.

In another moment they had launched a small rowboat and were out on the lake.

“Will Judy Kean never learn sense?” Nance thought impatiently. “She’s just like a prairie fire. It only takes a spark to set her going and then she burns up everything in sight.”

Nance had never been able to understand why Judy could not hold her passionate, excitable temperament more in control. She, herself, had learned self-denial at an early age. But that was because she had a selfish mother.

“How did you ever guess she would be here, Molly?” she asked, as the prow of the boat cut softly through the waters of the lake with a musical ripple.

Nance was rowing, and Molly, who had never learned to handle oars, was sitting facing her.

“I don’t know. I can’t explain it. I dreamed that some one said ‘hurry,’ and the lake seemed to be the place to come to.”

Some two hundred feet beyond they now made out the silhouette of a canoe. Judy—of course it was Judy; already they recognized the outline of her slender figure—kneeling in the bottom of the boat, had stopped paddling. She held up her head like a startled animal when it scents danger. It occurred to Nance, watching her over her shoulder as they drew nearer, that there was really something wild and untamed in Judy’s nature. She remembered that, the first morning they had met her at Queen’s, Judy had laughingly announced that she had been born at sea on a stormy night. But it was no joking matter, Nance was thinking, and she fervently wished that Judy would learn to quell her troubled moods.

The next instant the two boats touched prows. The little canoe, the most delicate and sensitive craft that there is, quivered violently with the shock of the collision and sprang back. As it bounded forward again, Molly held out her hand. Instinctively Judy grasped it, and the two boats drew alongside each other.

“Crawl into our boat, Judy, dearest,” said Molly. “It will be easier to pull the canoe to shore if it’s empty.”

Judy prepared silently to obey. But a canoe is not a thing to be reckoned with at critical moments. Just as Judy raised her foot to step into the other boat, the treacherous little craft shot from under her, and over she toppled, headforemost into the waters. Fortunately, she was an excellent swimmer, and the star diver of the gymnasium pool. But the lake was not deep, and when she came up, sputtering and puffing, she found herself standing in water that was only shoulder high.

Nance often thought, in looking back on this painful episode, that nothing they could have said to Judy would have brought her so completely to her senses as this cold ducking. Certainly, if Judy had actually planned to jump into the lake, her wishes were most ludicrously carried out, and the struggle she now made to climb back into the boat showed that she was not anxious to stay any longer than she could help in the icy bath. It was a sight for laughter more than for tears, sensible Nance pondered with a slight feeling of contempt—that of Judy, struggling and kicking to draw herself into the boat. Indeed, she almost managed to upset them, too; but she did tumble in somehow, shivering and wet but extremely contrite.

“How did you know I was out here?” was the first question she put, when, having seized the rope on the prow of the canoe, they headed for shore.

“I didn’t know. I only guessed,” answered Molly.

“She was up and dressed before she even knew you were not in your room,” announced Nance.

“I was a fool,” exclaimed Judy, “and I know now what good friends you are to have come for me. I don’t know exactly what I intended to do out here,” she went on brokenly. “I felt ashamed to face any one, even mamma and papa. I might——” she broke off, shivering. Rivulets of water were pouring from her wet clothing into the bottom of the boat. She still wore the costume she had worn in the last scene of the play.

“I’ll give you my ulster as soon as we land, Judy,” said Nance, rowing with long rapid strokes which sent the boat skimming over the water.

“I’m just a low-down worthless dog,” went on Judy, taking no notice of Nance’s interruption. “There’s no good trying to apologize, Molly. Words don’t mean anything. But when the chance comes—and the chance always does come if you want it—I’ll be able to show you how sorry I am for what I did, and how much I really love you.”

“You showed me what a real friend you were last winter, Judy,” broke in Molly, “when you gave up your room at Queen’s for my sake. I wasn’t angry about what happened at the gym. I was hurt of course because I’m a sensitive plant, but I knew it would be all right in the end because we are too close to each other now to let a few hasty words come between us. But here we are at the boat landing.”

Having tied the two boats in the boat house, which was never kept locked, they hurried back to college. Nance insisted upon Judy’s putting on her ulster.

“You know I’m never cold,” she said.

“You girls will just kill me with kindness,” exclaimed Judy humbly.

But Nance did not even hear this abject speech. The question of how they were to get back into the Quadrangle was occupying her mind.

“We’re taking an awful risk,” she observed to Molly, in a low voice. “There is no other way but the window, I suppose.”

“I can’t think of any other way,” answered Molly, “unless we ring the bell over the gate and alarm the entire dormitory.”

“Suppose the night watchman has closed the window? What then?” demanded Nance.

“Why, we’ll just have to find some other way, then,” answered her optimistic friend.

But the window in the Tower Room was wide open, just as they had left it.

The doubting Nance still had another theory.

“Suppose the night watchman has left it open on purpose to catch us when we come back?” she suggested.

“I do wish you would stop hunting up troubles, Nance,” ejaculated Molly irritably. “I never found supposing did any good, anyhow.”

Nance, thus rebuked, said nothing more.

Molly, boosted by the other girls, pulled herself onto the window sill and climbed into the room. She looked about her cautiously. But Nance’s fears were groundless so far. The room was perfectly empty.

“Let down a chair,” whispered Judy.

There were no small chairs about, however, and she was obliged to choose a bench.

“How are we to get it back again?” she asked, after Nance had clambered in, and Judy, halfway through, paused to consider this question.

“Hurry, the watchman,” hissed Nance, on the lookout at the door. “He’s coming down the side corridor.”

The next instant Judy had leaped into the room, and the three girls were tearing along the hall and up the steps, Judy leaving a trail of water behind her. The watchman had seen them. They could hear the beat of his steps on the cement floor as he ran. The fugitives reached the upper corridor just as he arrived at the first landing on the stairs.

“Kick off your pumps, Judy, and pick up your skirts. He’ll trace us by the wet trail if you don’t.”

Another dash and they were in their sitting room, the door locked behind them. Oh, blessed relief!

Judy, in her stocking feet, was holding up her skirts with both hands. Nance had seized one of the slippers and she thought that Molly had the other.

But the final excitement of that eventful night was veiled in mystery.

As they had burst into their sitting room, some one ran swiftly across the room, through the passage into Judy’s room and into the corridor. They dared not follow and run the risk of meeting the night watchman, probably standing at that moment at the end of the corridor trying to trace that path of water, which, thanks be to Nance’s prudence, ended there and was lost on the green strip of carpet.

Below in the Tower Room the windows of the casement flapped back and forth in the wind which was rising steadily, and on the path below stood that telltale bench.

“Anyhow,” said Molly, “there’s only one person who knows we were out to-night and, whoever she is, she can’t tell without giving herself away.”

CHAPTER VIII.
COVERING THEIR TRACKS.

When the dressing bell rang next morning, three heavy-eyed and extremely weary young women felt obliged to pull themselves together and appear at the breakfast table. Judy had caught cold, and to disguise this condition had plastered pink powder on her nose, and now held her breath almost to suffocation to avoid coughing in public.

“Have you heard the news?” demanded Jessie, hurrying in late and sitting next to Nance.

“Why, no. What is it?” asked Nance calmly.

Molly felt the color rising in her cheeks, and Judy buried her snuffles in a long letter from her mother.

“There’s the greatest tale going around the Quadrangle! Everybody is talking about it,” continued Jessie. “One of the chambermaids started it, I think, because she told it to me just now.”

“What is it?” asked Edith Williams impatiently.

“Some of the Quadrangle girls were out last night gallivanting. They climbed through the Tower Room window, left a bench outside and the window open. I suppose the watchman frightened them before they could hide all traces.”

“That sounds like a wild freak,” commented Katherine. “What do you suppose they were doing?”

“They might have been doing lots of things,” replied Jessie mysteriously. “The maid said the watchman thought they had been driving or motoring with some Exmoor boys.”

“Whew!” ejaculated a sophomore. “I’m sorry for them if they are found out. I happen to know Prexy’s feelings about escapades like that.”

“Why? Were you ever caught?”

“No, of course not. Don’t you see me sitting here at the table? But my older sister was in the class with a girl who was caught. She was a campus girl.”

“What happened to her?” demanded Judy, forgetting her cold in the interest of the story.

“Bounced,” answered the sophomore briefly.

The Williamses and Jessie looked at Judy with mixed feelings of surprise; not because they noticed her cold or regarded it with any suspicion, but because, when they had parted company with her the night before she had been in the throes of a jealous rage and had spoken most insultingly to her best friend. Their glances shifted to Molly. The two girls were seated side by side. Judy was leaning affectionately against Molly’s shoulder while they looked together at a picture post card sent by Mary Stewart from France.

“All bets are off,” whispered Edith to her sister. “They have made it up. Molly is an angel of forgiveness. We were wrong for once.”

“And Margaret was correct.”

“A pound of Mexican kisses and two pounds of mixed chocolates,” said Margaret in Edith’s other ear. “I’ve won my bet, I hope you’ll take notice.”

“We were just taking notice,” answered Edith.

“But there’s some more of the story,” piped out Jessie again. “Don’t you want to hear the most exciting part?”

“Heavens, yes. Did they catch them?” asked several voices.

“No, no, but one of the girls was wet,” announced Jessie impressively. “She left a trail of water after her all the way up the steps.”

“I should think they could have traced her by that,” said Margaret.

“They could have if she had kept on trailing, but she must have remembered and held up her skirt, for it stopped right there.”

“Wise lady,” put in Katherine.

“She must have been canoeing and not driving, then,” observed Margaret. “Else why the significant fact of wet clothes?”

“Nice night to go canoeing in, cold and dark. Strange notion of pleasure,” remarked Edith.

“Well, there’s more still to come,” announced Jessie, when they had finished commenting on this remarkable escapade.

“For heaven’s sake, Jessie, you’re like a serial story of adventure—a thriller in every chapter. What now?”

“Well,” said Jessie, “you may well prepare for a thriller this time. The watchman found something.”

“What? What?” they cried, and Nance, Judy and Molly joined in the chorus with as much excitement as any of the others.

“He found a slipper.”

Judy made an enormous effort to keep her hand from trembling, as she raised her coffee cup to her dry, feverish lips. Molly, as usual under excitement, changed from white to red and red to white. Nance alone seemed perfectly calm.

“I don’t see how they can prove anything by that,” she observed. “There are probably fifty girls or even a hundred who wear the same size shoes here. Molly is the only girl I know of who wears a peculiar size, six and a half triple A.”

“Well, ‘one thing is certain and the rest is lies,’ as old Omar remarked,” said Margaret, rising from the table, “and that is, all juniors can prove an alibi last night. No junior would ever go gallivanting on the night of the junior play.”

“Hardly,” answered Nance, who had risen to the occasion with fine spirit and tact. Molly’s face resumed its normal color and Judy looked relieved.

“The thing they will have to do,” said Edith, “is to find the other slipper. And if the owner of that slipper takes my advice she’ll drop it down the deepest well in Wellington County.”

Molly and Nance and Judy hurried through breakfast and rushed back to their apartment. They locked all the doors carefully and gathered in Judy’s room.

“We have nearly fifteen minutes before chapel,” said Nance, speaking rapidly. “Judy, are your things dry? Get them quickly. They may search our rooms. Miss Walker is pretty determined once she’s roused, I hear.”

Judy gathered up the stiff, rough-dry garments that had been hanging on the heater all night, while Molly found tossed in a corner the mate to the fatal slipper. Judy held up Viola’s dress of old rose velvet.

“It’s ruined,” she exclaimed, “and that’s another complication. Suppose——”

“Don’t suppose,” interrupted Molly hastily, snatching the dress away from her. “Hurry, Nance, where shall we put them?”

For a temporary safe hiding place they chose the interior of the upright piano. Then they hastily made their beds, set their dressing tables to rights and dashed off to chapel just as the matron appeared on an ostensible tour of inspection.

It was possible that she was not being very vigilant with the juniors, however, that particular morning, knowing that they were one and all engaged in producing a very important play the night before. At any rate, she only glanced casually around, saw nothing incriminating and departed to the next room.

The president looked grave and worried at chapel, but, contrary to expectations, she had nothing to say after the prayer.

“It’s a bad sign,” observed a student. “When Prexy doesn’t say anything, she means business.”

Except for a few moments at lunch, the three girls did not meet in private consultation again until late in the afternoon. There was a busy sign on their study door. Molly smiled knowingly to herself, and gave the masonic tap.

“It’s a good idea,” she thought, “and will keep out inquisitive people until we decide what to do.”

She found Judy stretched on the sofa, feverish and coughing, while Nance was dosing her with a large dose of quinine and an additional dose of sweet spirits of niter.

“You’re going to kill me, Nance,” Judy was grumbling.

“For heaven’s sake, be quiet,” scolded Nance. “You haven’t any voice to waste. Molly, will you make her a hot lemonade? I think we had better get her to bed and cover her up with all the comforts so as to bring on a perspiration.”

“Only one?” inquired Judy.

“Get up from there and go to bed,” ordered Nance. “The inspection is over and there won’t be any chance of another one to-day. You’ll have to miss supper to-night. We’ll say you have one of your sick headaches.”

Judy obediently got out of her things while Molly flew around making hot lemonade, and Nance hung a blanket over the heater and pulled down their three winter comforts off a shelf in the closet.

Judy meekly allowed herself to be smothered under a mountain of covers, while she drank the lemonade with childish enjoyment.

“You always make good ones, Molly, darling, because you put in enough sugar. I’ll probably be melted into a fountain of perspiration like Undine, only she went away in tears,” she complained presently.

“That’s the object of the treatment,” answered Nance sternly. “Whatever is left of you after the melting process is over is quite well of the cold.”

Molly could have laughed if she had not been thinking of something else very hard.

The two girls sat down on the divan and began a subdued and earnest conversation.

“What are we to do with these things, Molly? We can’t leave them in the piano because the moment some one sits down to play we’ll be discovered.”

“Murderers take up the planks in the floor and hide their bloodstained clothing underneath,” observed Molly. “But we can’t do that, of course.”

They took the bundle from its hiding place and looked over the garments.

“I have an idea,” announced Nance, who had many practical notions on the subject of clothes. “Suppose we take the dress to the cleaner’s in the village and have it steamed.”

“Why can’t we steam it ourselves over the tea kettle?” demanded Molly. “We can and we’ll do it right now and press it on the wrong side. If it hadn’t been so much admired, it wouldn’t matter so very much, but some one’s sure to ask to see it or borrow it or something. How about the underclothes? Can’t we smooth them out with a hot iron before they go to the laundry?”

They set to work at once to heat water and irons, and presently were engaged in restoring the old rose velvet to a semblance of its former beauty.

“What are we going to do about that slipper?” demanded Molly, pausing in her labors.

“I’ve made up my mind to that,” replied Nance. “We must bury it.”

CHAPTER IX.
THE GRAVE DIGGERS.

Three times during the night Molly and Nance crept into Judy’s room and looked at her anxiously. She seemed to be sleeping heavily, but she tossed about the bed with feverish restlessness, and her forehead was burning hot.

Early in the morning the faithful friends were up again, tipping about like two wraiths of the dawn in their trailing dressing gowns.

“I’ll bathe her face and hands before she takes any tea,” said Molly. “She’s awake. I saw her open her eyes when I peeped in just now.”

Judy was awake and sitting bolt upright when they presently entered with the basin and towels. There was a strange look in her eyes. Molly remembered to have seen it before when Judy was in the grip of the wander thirst.

“Here you are, Sweet Spirits of Niter,” she cried, in a hoarse, excited voice. “Knowst thou the land of Sweet Spirits of Niter?” she began singing. “Knowst thou the Sweet Spirits? They are tall, slender, gray ladies done in long curving lines, like that.” She illustrated her ideas of these strange beings by sketching a picture on an imaginary canvas. “They lean against slim trees. They have soft musical voices and speak gently because they are sweet. You see? And the Land of Niter, what of it? It is a land of gray mists, always in twilight, and the Sweet Spirits who live in it are shadows. It is a sad land, but it is still and quiet and there are cool fountains everywhere. Sweet spirit, wouldst give me to drink of thy cup?”

Molly and Nance laughed. They knew that Judy was delirious, but it was impossible not to laugh over her strange, poetic illusion regarding sweet spirits of niter. Setting down the basin and towel, they retreated to the next room.

“We’d better make her a cup of beef tea as quickly as we can,” said Nance. “That will quench her thirst and nourish her at the same time. Good heavens, Molly, what shall we do if she begins to talk about the slipper and the lake?”

“I don’t know,” replied Molly, lighting the alcohol lamp, while Nance found the jar of beef extract. “I wish you hadn’t given her so much physic, Nance.” Molly had a deep-rooted objection to medicine, while Nance, on the other hand, was a firm believer in old-fashioned remedies. “Her stomach was in no condition for all that stuff. It was utterly upset. Her gastric juices had been lashed into a storm and hadn’t had time to subside.”

Nance smiled at Molly’s ignorance.

“You are getting the emotions and the stomach mixed, Molly, dear.”

Now, Molly had her own ideas on this subject, but it was vain to argue with her friend, the actual proprietor of a real medicine chest marked “Household Remedies,” which contained more than a dozen phials of physics.

Judy was, in fact, paying the penalty for her mental storm when on the night of the play she had run through the whole scale of emotions, beginning with stage fright and an awful fear and passing into mortification, disappointment, rage, remorse and finally sorrow, or it might be called self-pity, which inspired her to launch a canoe and paddle into the middle of the lake at midnight. It will never be known how near she came to jumping into the lake. It is difficult to reckon with an unrestrained, hypersensitive nature like hers, always up in the heights or down in the depths; sometimes capable of splendid acts of generosity and unselfishness, but capable also of inflicting cruel punishments for imagined offences.

Nance was for more medicine.

“Suppose I give her a big dose of castor oil, Molly,” she suggested, while she stirred the tea. “She had better take it before she drinks this.”

“Goodness, Nance, you’ll kill her,” exclaimed Molly, horrified. “Don’t you see that it is entirely a mental thing with Judy? What she needs is absolute quiet, and the quinine has probably excited her and made her delirious. She doesn’t need things to stimulate her. She’s almost effervescent in her normal condition, anyhow.”

“Castor oil isn’t a stimulant, child.”

“Perhaps not, but she’d better not be upset any more,” and in the end Molly had her way.

Returning in a few moments to bathe Judy’s face, she found the sick girl half out of bed.

“Get back into bed, Judy,” she said firmly. “You’re to have a nice quiet day in here and no one to bother you.”

“But the slipper. I’m looking for the other slipper,” began Judy, weeping. “Oh, dear, I must find the slipper. Nance, Molly, the slipper, have you seen the slipper, the old oaken slipper, the iron-bound slipper that hangs in the well. If it’s in the well now, drop it to the bottom. I hope it’s a deep well, the deepest well in Well County.”

It was unkind to laugh, but Molly could not keep her countenance.

“I might have known,” she thought, “that Judy could be more delirious than anybody in the world.”

Judy submitted to having her face bathed and drank the beef tea without a murmur. She appeared greatly refreshed and quieted and said a few rational words about having had bad dreams.

It was Sunday morning, frosty and bright. The bell of the Catholic Church in the village called devotees to early mass. It rang out joyfully and persuasively, reiterating its message to unbelievers. It was a cheerful sound and, in spite of Judy’s troubles, they felt comforted. The steam heat began its pleasant matins in the pipes. The kettle on the alcohol stove hummed busily. Molly began to make preparations for breakfast. Although she was not self-indulgent, discomfort was never an acceptable state to her.

“Get your bath, Nance,” she ordered, “and then you can come back and make the toast while I take mine.”

Nance departed for the bathrooms with soap and towels, while Molly busied herself spreading a lunch cloth on one of the study tables and placing a blue china bowl full of oranges in the center. Then she carefully extracted four eggs from a paper bag in a box on the outer window ledge; cut four thin, even slices of bread to be inserted in Judy’s patent electric toaster, and at intervals poured boiling water through the dripper into the coffee pot.

“If I were at home this morning,” she said, “I would be eating hot waffles and kidney hash.”

Suddenly she looked up. Judy was standing in the doorway.

“Molly,” she said, “I want my slipper.”

Molly took her hand and gently led her back to bed.

“Judy, would you like a cup of delicious, strong, hot coffee?” she asked, endeavoring to divert Judy’s quinine-charged senses.

“Very much, but the slipper——” Judy began to whimper like a child.

Molly hurried into the next room, found one of Nance’s slippers and gravely handed it to Judy, who grasped it carefully with both hands as if it were something very precious and brittle.

“When I gave her your slipper, Nance, I felt something like the old witch who had kidnapped the Queen’s infant and put a changeling in its place,” Molly observed later, in telling about this incident to Nance. “But there is nothing to do but humor her, I suppose, until the influence of the quinine wears off.”

“Where has she got it now?” asked Nance, ignoring Molly’s allusions to quinine.

“What? The changeling slipper? Under her pillow.”

Nance laughed.

“I’m thinking, Molly,” she remarked, “that to-day would be an excellent time to get rid of that other slipper. I don’t feel as if I could sleep comfortably another night in these rooms with the guilty thing around. Until we dig a hole and bury it deep, we shall never have any peace of mind.”

Molly was carefully peeling the shell from the end of an egg.

“Do you think we could leave her alone this afternoon?” she asked. “How long does quinine continue its ravages?”

“Oh, not long,” answered Nance, in a most matter of fact voice. “She’s such a sensitive subject, that is the trouble. Quinine doesn’t usually make people take on so. I never met any one so excitable and high strung as Judy. She gets her nerves tuned up to such a high pitch sometimes that I wonder they don’t snap in two.”

“Nance, don’t you think we ought to confess the whole thing to Miss Walker?”

“Do you think Judy would ever forgive us if we did?”

Molly sighed.

“I’m afraid not,” she said. “Confessing would involve so much. We would have to go back so far to the original cause, those wretched Shakespeareans. It would be pretty hard on poor old Judy. But the slipper, Nance—it’s such a ridiculous thing, our hiding that slipper. Where shall we hide it?”

“We must dig a grave and bury it,” said Nance, “and we must do it this afternoon and get the thing off our minds. Then all evidence will be destroyed and there will be no possible way of finding out about Judy.”

“You have forgotten about the visitor to our room in the night.”

“Yes,” admitted Nance, “there is that visitor. Who was she? What did she want? You haven’t missed anything, have you?”

“No,” replied Molly. “I have nothing valuable enough to steal except old Martin Luther, and he’s quite safe.”

She reached for the china pig on the bookshelves and shook him carefully. His interior gave out a musical jingle.

Clothed and fed and comforted, the two girls leaned back in their Morris chairs, with extra cups of coffee resting on the chair arms, to consider the question of Judy’s slipper. At last they came to a mutual agreement.

Otoyo, the safest, discreetest and least inquisitive of their friends, was to be taken partly into their confidence and left to look after Judy while they went on their mysterious errand. Otoyo, who had the racial peculiarity of the Japanese of never being surprised at anything, accepted this position of trust without a comment. Few students took Sunday morning walks at Wellington, and therefore morning was the safest time for the expedition. Judy, reënforced with a soft-boiled egg and a cup of coffee, appeared perfectly rational and quiet. She surrendered the slipper without a murmur, and turning over on her side dropped off to sleep. A Not-at-Home sign was hung on the door and Otoyo was cautioned not to let any one into Judy’s room. She was to say to all callers that Judy had a headache and was asleep.

Dressed for a tramp, with Judy’s slipper in one of the deep pockets of Nance’s ulster, and a knife, fork and table spoon for digging purposes in the other, the two girls presently left Otoyo on the floor immersed in study. They had scarcely closed the door when Judy called from the next room:

“Bring me that slipper, Otoyo.”

And the little Japanese, with a puzzled look on her face, obeyed.

As they hastened down the corridor, hoping devoutly not to meet intimate friends, Molly and Nance were stopped by the irrepressible Minerva Higgins.

“Isn’t this a stroke of luck?” she exclaimed. “You are going for a walk and so am I. I was just on the lookout for somebody. Girls here are so industrious Sunday mornings, I can never get any one to go walking until afternoon.”

Molly was silent. At that moment she yearned for the courage of Nance, who with a word could scatter Minerva’s cheeky assurance like chaff before the wind.

“It’s lack of character, I suppose,” she thought disconsolately. “But I couldn’t crush a fly, much less that presumptuous little freshman.”

She stood back, therefore, and let Nance have a clear field for the struggle.

“You are very kind to offer us your company, Miss Higgins, but we must beg to be excused to-day,” said Nance calmly.

“I call that a nice, Sunday-morning, Christian spirit,” cried Minerva, with an angry flash in her small, pig-like eyes.

“No, no, Minerva,” put in Molly gently. “You must not think that way about it. Nance and I have some important business to discuss, that’s all. You mustn’t imagine it’s unkind when older girls turn you down sometimes. You know it isn’t customary here for a freshman to invite herself to join an older girl. I believe it isn’t customary in any college. Don’t be angry, please.”

Hidden under layers of vanity, selfishness and stupid assurance, was Minerva’s better self which Molly hoped to reach, and some day she would break through the crust, but not this morning.

“Don’t tell me anything about upper-class girls—conceited snobs! I know all about them,” exclaimed Minerva angrily, as she marched down the corridor in a high state of rage.