n England, and no one
knows who they are. They just pass for ordinary innocent kind of people,
but they ask all kinds of questions, and pick up scraps of information
that will be useful to the enemy. How is it that most of our secrets
appear in the Berlin papers? There must be treachery going on somewhere.
It's generally in very unsuspected places. One of the teachers in a
school might just as well as not be a spy."

"How dreadful!" shuddered Dona.

"Well, you never know. Of course, they don't go about labelled 'In the
pay of the Kaiser', but there must be a great many people--English too,
all shame to them!--who are receiving money from Germany to betray their
country."

CHAPTER XXII

The Magic Lantern

When Marjorie took an idea into her head it generally for the time
filled the whole of her mental horizon. She had never liked Miss Norton,
and she now mistrusted her. The evidence that she had to go upon was
certainly very slight, but, as Marjorie argued, "Straws show how the
wind blows", and anyone capable of sympathizing with Germans might also
be capable of assisting them. She felt somewhat in the position of
Hamlet, doubting whether she had really surprised a dark secret or not,
and anxious for more circumstantial evidence before she told others of
her suspicions. She strictly charged Dona not to mention meeting Miss
Norton in the little hamlet of Sandside, which Dona readily promised.
She was not imaginative, and was at present far more interested in rows
of cauliflowers or specimens of seaweeds than in problematical German
spies.

Marjorie, with several detective stories fresh in her memory, determined
to go to work craftily. She set little traps for Miss Norton. She would
casually ask her questions about Germany, or about prisoners of war, to
judge by her answers where her sympathies lay. The mistress, however,
was evidently on her guard, and replied in terms of caution. One thing
Marjorie learned which she considered might be a suspicious
circumstance. Miss Norton received many letters from abroad. She had
given foreign stamps to Rose Butler, who had seen her tear them off
envelopes marked "Opened by the censor". The stamps were from Egypt,
Malta, Switzerland, Spain, Holland, and Buenos Ayres, a strange variety
of places in which to have correspondents, so thought Marjorie.

"Of course they're opened by the censor, but who knows if there isn't a
secret cipher under the guise of an ordinary lett