lse all safe and I'll come right after dinner. Good-bye."

[Illustration: THE GIRLS WATCHED HER IN BEWILDERMENT]

The girls watched her go in a daze of bewilderment. Just outside the
door she evidently bumped into some one, and her clattering laugh and
loud, "Goodness, how you scared me!" sounded as light-hearted and
unconcerned as possible.

"How did you ever guess that she was the one?" Eleanor asked at last.

"It just came over me," Betty answered. "But, why, she doesn't seem to
care one bit!"

"About running into me?" asked Jean Eastman, appearing suddenly in the
doorway. "Has she been doing damage in here, too?" No one answered and
Jean gave a quick look about the room, noticing the rummaged drawers,
the girls' excited, tragic faces, and the jewelry that Eleanor still had
in her hand. Then she made one of her haphazard deductions, whose
accuracy was the terror of her enemies and the admiration of her
followers.

"Oh, I see--it's more college robber. So our dear Blunderbuss is the
thief. I congratulate you, Eleanor, on the beautiful poetic justice of
your having been the one to catch her."

"Yes, she's the thief," said Betty, before Eleanor could answer. She had
a sudden inspiration that the best way to treat Jean, now that she
guessed so much, was to trust her with everything. "And she acts so
strangely--she doesn't seem to realize what she has done, and she
doesn't care a bit that we know it. She said----" And between them they
gave Jean a full account of their interview with Miss Harrison.

Jean listened attentively. "It's a pathetic case, isn't it?" she said at
last, with no trace of her mocking manner. "I wonder if she isn't a
kleptomaniac."

Betty and Eleanor both looked puzzled and Jean explained the long word.
"It means a person who has an irresistible desire to steal one
particular kind of thing, not to use, but just for the sake of taking
them, apparently. I heard of a woman once who stole napkins and piled
them up in a closet in her house. It's a sort of insanity or very nearly
that. Of course jewelry is different from napkins, but Miss Harrison has
taken so much more than she can use----"

"Especially so many pearl pins," put in Betty, eagerly. "Haven't you
noticed what a lot of those have been lost? She couldn't possibly wear
them all."

"Perhaps she meant to sell them," suggested Eleanor.

"But her family are very wealthy," objected Jean. "They spend their
summers where Kate does, and sh