I
cannot say, but if she heard no sound within she always passed on and left
them to their innocent (?) slumbers. So on she went from one room to
another, but, luckily, the alarm had gone before, and at each room
darkness and profound silence prevailed. Satisfied that "all was well,"
she murmured something about, "It is always well to be upon the alert, for
once the girls understand that someone is sure to detect the first signs
of mischief, they are far less liable to carry it to excess," she set off
for her own room. In passing by the housemaid's door she saw that it was
not tightly closed and locked, as was the custom at night, and, with a
joyous chuckle at her own astuteness, she pounced upon it, locked the
door, and withdrawing the key sailed triumphantly to her room, where,
serene in her sense of well-doing, she fell as sound asleep as her nature
permitted.

Meantime, how fared it with the mice in the trap? When the key was turned
in the door, and they were made prisoners, nothing but the pitch darkness
which enveloped them as a garment prevented each girl's face from plainly
announcing to her neighbor: "Here is a pretty kettle of fish!" There were
five in the closet: Ruth, Edith, Pauline, May and Marie. Luckily, a
resourceful party. When all sound from the hall had ceased, Ruth gave just
one howl, and then jumped up and down three times as hard as she could
jump, by way of giving vent to her state of mind. Fortunately, the door
was a heavy one and the sound did not reach Mother Stone's ears.

"You crazy thing!" exclaimed Edith, "next thing you know you will have her
after us again."

"Suppose we do; we've got to get out somehow, haven't we?"

"Yes, but she is the last one in the world we want to let us out. What a
fix! If the girls only knew of it, they would come and let us out."

"How could they when she has the key, I'd like to know?"

Edith groaned: "I never thought of that plagued old key. Bother take her
and it, too! Why couldn't she have gone to bed just as everybody else did,
and have minded her own business, too."

"That was exactly what she thought she was doing," laughed May.

"It's all very well to laugh, but _how_ are we to get down to the laundry,
I'd like to know; or the girls ever find out where we are?"

While all this talking had been going on, little Marie, the liveliest,
slightest, most quick-witted girl in the school, had been doing a lot of
thinking, and now turned to the others and