en long
in the school were glad that she was not looking at them in that way.

"I have heard of this matter before," Miss Russell said, at last. "I am
going to devote my own time to investigating it, and think I shall need
no help; though I thank you," it was to Miss Ivors that she spoke, "for
bringing it to my notice, as it was right for you to do. I think I need
not detain you longer, ladies."

When the teachers were gone, Miss Russell stepped to the window and
said, softly, "Grace!"

There was no reply. An owl hooted in the distance; a bird chirped
somewhere near by. That was all.

"Grace!" said the Principal again. "If you are there, I wish you would
come in and let me speak to you."

Still no reply. After waiting a moment, the Principal closed the window
with a sigh. On leaving the room she paused a moment to look at the
photograph of a lovely young woman, in the dress of twenty years ago,
which stood on her desk.

"Dear Edith!" said Miss Russell. "My first pupil! I'll keep your girl
for you, Edith, if I can!"

* * * * *

Was Grace Wolfe outside the window when the Principal called her? Who
can tell? It is certain that ten minutes after she was at the supper in
Bedlam.

The tenant of Bedlam, Miss Cornelia Hatch (familiarly known as Colney
Hatch, in remembrance of the famous English Insane Asylum), was not
actually mad, though many of the scholars thought her so. She was a
special student of natural history, botany, and zoology; she was
absent-minded and forgetful to the last degree. When she came into
class, she often had to be brought there, some good-natured classmate
dragging her away by main force from her private experiments. If she did
remember to come of her own accord, she was apt to have a half-completed
articulation hanging around her neck, or a dried frog skin stuck behind
her ear for safe-keeping. Her hair was generally untidy, owing to this
habit of sticking things in it while she worked; you never could tell
what it would be, vertebrae, or seaweed, or pine-cones, but you could
safely reckon on finding something extraneous in Colney's ruffled black
hair. As for her clothes, she was usually enveloped in a huge brown
gingham apron, with many pockets, which held snakes, or eggs, or roots,
or anything else that would not go comfortably in her hair. When the
apron became too dirty (she had had two at the beginning of the term,
but one had been destroyed in an explo