Hinpoha herself, life was not worth living. The scene with Aunt
Phoebe, when she heard of her disgrace, was too painful to record here.
Suffice to say that Hinpoha was regarded as a criminal of the worst type
and was never allowed to forget for one instant that she had disgraced
the name of Bradford forever. It was awful not to be going to school and
getting lessons. Those days at home were nightmares that she remembered
to the end of her life with a shudder. The only ray of comfort she had
was the fact that Nyoda and the Winnebagos stood by her stanchly. "I can
bear it," she said to Nyoda forlornly, "knowing that you believe in me,
but if you ever went back on me I couldn't live." Nyoda urged her no
more to tell her secret, for she suspected that it concerned some one
else whom Hinpoha would not expose, and trusted to time to solve the
mystery and remove the stain from Hinpoha's name.

The excitement over, school settled down into its old rut. Joe Lanning's
father sent him away to military school and Abraham's father began to
use his influence to have him reinstated. Mr. Goldstein put forth such a
touching plea about Abraham's having been led astray by Joe Lanning and
being no more than a tool in his hands, and Abraham promised so
faithfully that he would never deviate from the path of virtue again,
now that his evil genius was removed, if they would only let him come
back and graduate, that he was given the chance. Nothing new came up
about the cutting of the wires except that the end of a knife blade was
found on the floor under the place where the hole had been made in the
wall. There were no marks of identification on it and nothing was done
about it.

One day, Dick Albright, in the Physics room on the third floor of the
building, stood by the window and looked across at a friend of his who
was standing at the window of the Chemistry room. The two rooms faced
each other across an open space in the back of the building, which was
designed to let more light into certain rooms. This space was only open
at the third and fourth floors. The second floor was roofed over with a
skylight at this point. It was after school hours and Dick was alone in
the room. So, apparently, was his friend. Dick raised the window and
called across the space to the other boy, who raised his window and
answered him. From talking back and forth they passed to throwing a ball
of twine to each other. Once Dick failed to catch it, and falling sh