reat building there were two dormitory
buildings, the gymnasium, the library building, and a chapel which had
been built only the year before by subscriptions of the graduates of
the school and of the parents of the scholars then attending. But it
was growing dusk now and the two friends could not see much of the
buildings around the campus.

Mrs. Grace Tellingham and her husband (the Doctor never by any chance
came first in anybody's mind!) had started the school some years before
in a small way; but it had grown rapidly and was, as we have seen, very
popular. Many girls were graduated from the institution to the big
girls' colleges, for it was, in fact, a preparatory school.

The chums went in at the broad door and saw a library at the right hand
into which a tidy maid motioned them, with a smile. It was a large
room, the walls masked by bookshelves, all filled so tightly that it
did seem as though room for another book could not be found. But Mrs.
Tellingham was not there.

Bending over the table, however, (and it was a large, leather-covered
table with a great student lamp in the center, the shade of which threw
a soft glow of light in a circle upon it) was a gentleman whose
shoulders were very round and who seemed to be so near-sighted that his
nose must have been within an inch or so of the book which he read. He
was totally unconscious of the girls' presence, and he read in a half
whisper to himself, like a child conning a lesson.

Ruth and Helen looked at each other, each thinking the same question.
Could this be Doctor Tellingham, the great historian? They glanced
again at the hoop-shouldered man and wondered what his countenance was
like, for they could not see a feature of it as he read. But Ruth
_did_ notice one most surprising fact. The stooping gentleman wore a
wig. It was a brown, rather curly wig, while the fringe of natural
hair all around his head was quite white--of that yellowish-white that
proclaims the fact that the hair was once light brown, or sandy in
color. The brown wig matched the hair at one time, without doubt; but
it now looked as though two gentlemen's heads had been merged in
one--the younger gentleman's being the upper half of the present
apparition.

For several minutes the chums stood timidly in the room and the old
gentleman went on whispering to himself, and occasionally nodding his
head. But at length he looked up, and in doing this he saw the girls
and revealed hi