ne."

Ada flounced out of her chair and from the room. Her departure created a
ripple of curiosity. It was most unusual for a girl to be dismissed from
table, and had Ada only known it, she had drawn the attention of the
whole school to herself.

Miss Lacey went on to her seat, without a glance at the flushed faces of
Norma and Alice.

"Some day," said Bobby furiously, "I'm going to throw a plate at
that girl!"

"No, you're not," contradicted Betty. "Then Mrs. Eustice would rise up
and send you from the room and you'd feel about half the size Ada does
now. For mercy's sake, don't descend to anybody's level--make 'em come up
to fight on yours."

They were all glad to get through the meal and find themselves outdoors.
It was a perfect autumn day, warm and hazy, and the red and gold of the
leaves showed burnished from the hillside. They tramped rather silently
at first, and then, as the tense mood wore off, their tongues were
loosened and they chattered like magpies.

"Here's a tree!" shouted Louise and Frances, who were in the lead.

When they had picked all the nuts on the ground, Bobby essayed to climb
the tree. She made rather sad work of the effort, for a shag-bark
hickory is not the easiest tree in the world to climb, and after she had
torn her skirt in two places and mended it with safety pins, she gave up
the attempt.

"Let's walk further," she suggested. "We'll mark our trail as we go like
the Indians."

This idea caught the fancy of the girls, and they marked an elaborate
trail, building little mounds at every turn and leaving odd arrangements
of stones to mark their passing.

"Come on, I'll race you," shouted Bobby suddenly. "I feel just like
exercising."

Betty wondered what she called the scramble through the woods, but she,
too, was ready for a run. They set off pellmell, laughing and shouting.

"Look out!" shrieked Betty, stopping so suddenly that Libbie and Louise
fell against her. "Look! I almost ran right into it!"

She pointed ahead to where the ground fell away abruptly. A great chasm,
like an angry scar, was cut through the earth, and on the side opposite
to the girls a steep hill came down in an uncompromising slant.

"What a dandy hill for coasting!" ejaculated Bobby. "Let's come up here
this winter. We can steer away from this hole."

"That's no hole," said Norma Guerin, in an odd voice. "That's Indian
Chasm. And it's miles long."

Betty stared at her. She had thought Indian Cha