s Ada and
told her the story.

But then, Miss Ada's first question was sure to be, "How did you happen
to be standing by the window at twelve o'clock at night?"

Then would come suspicion, a search, perhaps, and discovery. No, she
couldn't, she couldn't! But what had that man been doing?

For more than an hour she lay, too excited to sleep, shivering at any
sudden sound, wondering--wondering. Toward morning she fell asleep, only
to dream of picnics where one did nothing but catch codfish and eat
them, of a strange man with a stooping figure, running across a lawn
bathed in moonlight.

Luckily for the girls who had been at the party, there were other girls
in dormitory "C" who had gone to bed at the usual respectable
hour--Amanda Peabody and Eliza Dilks, for instance--and who, as usual,
heard the rising bell. If it had not been for them and the noise they
made Billie and the others of the five might have slept on till noon.

As it was, they rose resentfully, finding it hard to get their eyes
open, looking for their clothes half-heartedly, grumbling at everything
and everybody.

It was Billie, who had slept less than any of them, who whispered a
warning to them. She had seen Eliza and Amanda eyeing them suspiciously.
It would never do, after having managed the party so successfully, to
let the cat out of the bag after the affair was over.

The argument appealed to the girls, and they woke up with a suddenness
almost more suspicious than their former sleepiness had been.

It was not till noon that Billie found a chance to tell the girls what
she had seen from the dormitory window after the rest of them were in
bed.

By that time the last evidence of last night's party had been cleared
away, and the girls were beginning to feel secure again.

One by one they had run back to the dormitories between classes, made
the remnants of the feast into small paper bundles, and had smuggled
them down to the cellar and deposited them in the big box where all the
papers and other rubbish was kept until the man of all work about Three
Towers carted it off into the woods to be burnt up.

So now, in hilarious spirits, they answered Billie's call and flung
themselves in various characteristic and joyful attitudes upon her bed.

"Speak, woman, speak," Laura commanded her, stealing a chocolate from
Vi's sweater pocket. "What have you got to say for yourself?"

"Yes, what do you mean by getting up such a disgraceful affair as
ha