rls came this fall that _you_ were
determined to contaminate them if you could. Every girl here will
remain in her seat after prayers in the chapel to-morrow morning.
Remember!"

She whipped out a notebook and pencil and evidently wrote Mary Cox's
name at the head of her list. The Fox was furiously red and furiously
angry.

"I might have known you would be spying on us, Miss Picolet," she said,
bitingly. "Suppose some of us should play the spy on _you_, Miss
Picolet, and should run to Mrs. Tellingham with what we might discover?"

"Go to your room instantly!" exclaimed the French teacher, with
indignation. "You shall have an extra demerit for _that_, Miss!"

Yet Ruth, who had been watching the teacher's face intently, saw that
she became actually pallid, that her lips seemed to be suddenly blue,
and the countless little wrinkles that covered her cheeks were more
prominent than ever before.

Mary Cox flounced out and disappeared. The teacher pointed to the
chums' waste-basket and said to Bell, the unfaithful sentinel:

"Empty your plate in that receptacle, Miss Tingley. Spill the contents
of that vase in the bowl. Now, Miss, to your room."

Belle obeyed. So she made each girl, as she called her name and wrote
it in her book, throw away the remains of her feast, and pour out the
chocolate. One by one they were obliged to do this and then walk
sedately to their rooms. Jennie Stone was caught on the way out with a
most suggestive bulge in her loose blouse, and was made to disgorge a
chocolate layer cake which she had sought to "save" when the unexpected
attack of the enemy occurred.

"Fie, for shame, Miss Stone!" exclaimed the French teacher. "That a
young lady of Briarwood Hall should be so piggish! Fie!"

But it was after all the other girls had gone and Ruth and Helen were
left alone with her, that the little French teacher seemed to really
show her disappointment over the infraction of the rules by the pupils
under her immediate charge.

"I hoped for better things of you two young ladies," she said,
sorrowfully. "I feared for the influence over you of certain minds
among the older scholars; but I believed you, Ruth Fielding, and you,
Helen Cameron, to be too independent in character to be so easily led
by girls of really much weaker wills. For one may _will_ to do evil,
or to do good, if one chooses. One need not _drift_.

"Miss Fielding! take that basket of broken food and go down to the
ba