lf-protection," laughed Ruth.

"I guess Mrs. Tellingham would have something to say about it, too,"
declared Helen.

It was not the subject of school clubs that was the burden of Ruth
Fielding's thought for most of that day, however. Nor did the arrival
of so many new scholars put the main idea in her mind aside. This
troubling thought was of Miss Picolet and the sound of the harp on the
campus at midnight. The absence of the French teacher from the
dormitory, the connection of the little lady with the obese foreigner
who played the harp on the _Lanawaxa_, and the sounding of harp-strings
on the campus in the middle of the night, were all dovetailed together
in Ruth Fielding's mind. She wondered what the mystery meant.

She saw Tony Foyle cleaning the campus lanterns during the day, and she
stopped and spoke to him.

"I heard you tell Jennie Stone last night that you had to drive street
musicians away from the school grounds, sir?" said Ruth, quietly. "Was
there a man with a harp among them?"

"Sure an' there was," declared Tony, nodding. "And he was a sassy
dago, at that! 'Tis well I'm a mon who kapes his temper, or 'twould
ha' gone har-r-rd wid him."

"A big man, was he, Mr. Foyle?" asked Ruth.

"What had that to do wid it?" demanded the old man, belligerently.
"When the Foyles' dander is riz it ain't size that's goin' to stop wan
o' that name from pitchin' into an' wallopin' the biggest felly that
iver stepped. He was big," he added; "but I've seen bigger. Him an'
his red vest--and jabberin' like the foreign monkey he was. I'll show
him!"

Ruth left Tony shaking his head and muttering angrily as he pursued his
occupation. Ruth found herself deeply interested in the mystery of the
campus; but if she had actually solved the problem of the sounding of
the harp at midnight, the reason for the happening, and what really
brought that remarkable manifestation about, was as deep a puzzle to
her as before.

CHAPTER XIII

BEGINNINGS

Youth adapts itself easily and naturally to all change. Ruth Fielding
and her chum, before that second evening at Briarwood Hall drew in,
felt as though they had known the place for months and some of the
girls all their lives. It was thus the most natural thing in the world
to assemble at meals when the school-bell tapped its summons, to stand
while the grace was being said, to chatter and laugh with those at the
table at which they sat, to speak and laugh with t