ut this cloak away first."

He pushed the chest back to its place under the eaves and started after
her, pulling out his handkerchief as he went, to wipe away a stray
cobweb into which he had thrust his hand. It reminded him of the story.

"You know," he suggested, consolingly, "there's bound to be some way out
of your dungeon. I'll spend all the rest of the vacation helping you
twist cobwebs for your rope, if you like."

She made no answer then to his offer of assistance. She felt that she
could not steady her voice if she tried to speak her appreciation of
his sympathy.

So she called out, as she dashed past him: "As Joyce used to say at the
house pah'ty, 'the last one down is a jibbering Ornithorhynchus!'"

Away they went in a mad race, whose noisy clatter made it seem to the
old Colonel in his den that the rafters were falling in. But on the
landing she paused an instant.

"It--it helps a lot, Rob," she said, wistfully, "to have you
undahstand,--to know that you know how it hurts."

"I wish I could really help you," he answered, earnestly. "You're a game
little chum!"

She flashed back a grateful smile from under her wet eyelashes, and led
the race on down the next flight of stairs.

CHAPTER XII.

HUMDRUM DAYS

ALL through the rest of that week, and through New Year's Day, Lloyd
managed to keep her resolution bravely. Even when the time came for the
girls to go back to school without her, she went through the farewells
like a little Spartan, driving down to the station with tearful Betty,
who grieved over Lloyd's disappointment as if it had been her own.

When the train pulled out, with the four girls on the rear platform, she
stood waving her handkerchief cheerily as long as she could see an
answering flutter. Then she turned away, catching her breath in a deep
indrawn sob, that might have been followed by others if Rob had not been
with her. He saw her clench her hands and set her teeth together hard,
and knew what a fight she was making to choke back the tears, but he
wisely gave no sign that he saw and sympathized. He only proposed a
walk over to the blacksmith shop to see the red fox that Billy Kerr had
trapped and caged. But a little later, when she had regained her
self-control and was poking a stick between the slats of the coop where
the fox was confined, to make it stretch itself, he said, suddenly:

"By cricky, you were game, Lloyd! If it had been me, I couldn't have
gone to the st