remembers no more."

At this point in her narrative Betty made a dramatic pause. Then she
continued abruptly and in an ordinary tone, "It is the dogs who find
her, and they dig her out of the snow, and the dear old shepherd and his
wife and some other people come with them; and so she is brought back to
the gray house, and never reaches the open doors where the angels ladder
would have led her through. She is sorry--for days she is terribly
sorry; for she is ill, and suffers a good bit of pain. But she is all
right again now; only, somehow, she can never forget that experience. I
think I have told you all I can tell you to-night."

Instantly, at a touch, the lights were turned on again, and the room was
full of brilliancy. Betty jumped up from her posture on the floor. The
girls flocked round her.

"But, oh Betty! Betty! say, please say, was it you?"

"I am going to reveal no secrets," said Betty. "I said I saw the girl.
Well, I did see her."

"Then she must have been you! She must have been you!" echoed voice
after voice. "And were you really nearly killed in the snow? And did you
fall asleep in your snow-bed? And did--oh, did the fairies come, and
afterwards the angels? Oh Betty, do tell!"

But Betty's lips were mute.

CHAPTER XIII

A SPOKE IN HER WHEEL

If Betty Vivian really wished to keep her miserable secret, she had done
wisely in removing the little packet from its shelter in the trunk of
the old oak-tree; for of course Sibyl remembered it in the night,
although Betty's wonderful story had carried her thoughts far away from
such trivial matters for the time being. Nevertheless, when she awoke in
the night, and thought of the fairies in the heather, and of the girl
lying in the snow-bed, she thought also of Betty standing by the stump
of a tree and removing something from within, looking at it, and putting
it back again.

Sibyl, therefore, took the earliest opportunity of telling her special
friends that there was a treasure hidden in the stump of the old tree.
In short, she repeated Betty's exact action, doing so in the presence of
Martha West.

Martha was a girl who invariably kept in touch with the younger girls.
There are girls who in being removed from a lower to an upper school
cannot stand their elevation, and are apt to be a little queer and
giddy; they have not quite got their balance. Such girls could not fall
into more excellent hands than those of Martha. She heard Sibyl now
cha