e, you are to look into rows of stony faces and
when you finish, there is not to be a word spoken, not a single
handclap, nothing but stillness as the girls file out of the hall."

Jimmy laughed.

"A sort of glacial exit, I suppose. It makes me chilly to think of it.
Miss Slammer had a lucky escape."

They were paddling now in the very center of the upper lake, but so
absorbed were they in their conversation that they had scarcely noticed
a canoe in front of them.

Suddenly there came a cry, a splash and then a moment of perfect
stillness followed by a confused sound of voices from the shore. The
next instant Judy saw in front of them an upturned canoe and two heads
just rising above the water. Before she had time to realize the danger,
Jimmy Lufton had torn off his coat, flung his hat into the bottom of the
canoe and, with a carefully planned leap, had cleared the side of the
canoe, sending it spinning over the water, shaking and quivering like a
frightened animal. And now Judy beheld him swimming with long strokes
toward the place where the two heads had appeared, disappeared and once
more reappeared. In that flash of a moment she had recognized the blonde
plaits of Margaret Wakefield and the wet curls of Jessie Lynch. As she
mechanically paddled toward the struggling figures, she remembered that
Jessie could not swim a stroke and that Margaret could only swim under
the most favorable circumstances in a shallow tank.

[Illustration: Before she had time to realize the danger, Jimmy Lufton
had torn off his coat.--_Page_ 132.]

"He can't hold them both up at once," thought Judy, with a throb of fear
as she frantically beat the water with her paddle in her effort to reach
them.

For a moment Jimmy himself was in a quandary. It looked as if he would
have to let one girl go to save the other, when he saw one of the canoe
paddles floating within reach. He gave it a swift push toward the
struggling Margaret.

"Put that under your arms and go slow," he shouted, and made for Jessie.
In two strokes he had caught her by her coat collar and was swimming
swiftly toward the upturned canoe.

"Even in the water, Jessie's irresistible attraction had prevailed," the
girls said afterward when they could discuss this almost tragic event
with calmness.

"Hold on tight to the canoe, little girl," he said, and turned toward
Margaret, who was all but exhausted now. He caught her just as she was
sinking, and held her up until a ro