e started along this path at once,
walking until she was surely out of view of the girls in the windows
above, and then running to the fountain. She had some objection to
giving her new schoolmates the satisfaction of seeing that she was at
all frightened by this midnight jaunt.

She sped along the path and there was the statue looming right before
her. The trickle of the water, spouting into the basin, made a low and
pleasant sound. Nothing moved about the fountain.

"Perhaps, after all, Helen only _imagined_ there was somebody here,"
thought Ruth, and she pattered down the steps in her slippers, and so
climbed upon the marble ledge from which she could reach the gilded
goblet which was, as Helen had declared, placed between the feet of the
marble statue.

And then, suddenly, there was a rustle near at hand. Was that a
whisper--a sharp, muffled gasp? Ruth was startled, indeed, and
shuddered so that the "goose-flesh" seemed to start all over her.
Nevertheless, she clutched the goblet firmly and held it beneath one of
the spouts of the fountain. She was convinced that if there was
anybody behind the figure of marble, he was there for the express
purpose of frightening her--and she was determined not to be frightened.

The goblet was quickly filled and Ruth held it to her lips. She might
be watched, and she was determined to obey the mandate of the masked
leader of the hazing party. She would not give them the right to say
that _she_ was panic-stricken.

And then, with an unexpectedness that held her for an instant
spellbound, she heard a hasty hand sweep the taut strings of a harp!
She was directly below the figure and--if the truth must be told--she
looked up in horror, expecting to see the marble representation of a
harp vibrating under that sudden stroke!

There was no movement, of course, in the marble. There was no further
sound about the fountain. But the echo of that crash of music vibrated
across the campus and died away hollowly between the buildings. It had
been no sound called up by her imagination; the harp had been sounded
with a sure and heavy hand.

Ruth Fielding confessed her terror now on the instant. When power of
movement returned to her, she leaped from the basin's edge, scurried up
the steps to the path, and dashed at top speed for the dormitory,
bearing the goblet in one hand and catching up the draperies of her
long garment so as not to ensnare her feet.

She reached the build