e materials of which the
stranger's costume were made were rather cheap.

"This is Dare Hall, isn't it?" she asked the group of girls above her on
the porch. "I suppose there is a porter to help--er--the man with my
baggage?"

"It is a rule of the college," said Edith, promptly, "that each girl
shall carry her own baggage to her room. No male person is allowed
within the dormitory building."

There was a chorused, if whispered, "Oh!" from the other girls, and the
newcomer looked at Edith, suspiciously.

"I guess you are spoofing me, aren't you?" she inquired.

"Help! help!" murmured May MacGreggor. "That's the very latest English
slang."

"She's brought it direct from 'dear ol' Lunnon'," gasped one of the
other sophomores.

"Dear me!" said Edith, addressing her friends, "wouldn't it be nice to
have a 'close up' taken of that heap of luggage? It really needs a
camera man and a director to make this arrival a success."

The girl who had just come looked very much puzzled. The chauffeur
seemed eager to be gone.

"If I can't help take in the boxes, Miss, I might as well be going," he
said to the new arrival.

"Very well," she rejoined, stiffly, and opening her purse gave him a
bill. He lifted his cap, entered the car, touched the starter and in a
moment the car whisked away.

"I declare!" said May MacGreggor, "she looks just like a castaway on the
shore of a desert island, with all the salvage she has been able to
recover from the wreck."

And perhaps the mysterious R. F. felt a good deal that way.

CHAPTER IV

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Greenburg was the station on the N. Y. F. & B. Railroad nearest to
Ardmore College. It was a small city of some thirty or forty thousand
inhabitants. The people, not alone in the city but in the surrounding
country, were a rather wealthy class. Ardmore was a mile from the
outskirts of the town.

Ruth Fielding and Helen Cameron, her chum, had arrived with other girls
bound for the college on the noon train. Of course, the chums knew none
of their fellow pupils by name, but it was easily seen which of those
alighting from the train were bound for Ardmore.

There were two large auto-stages in waiting, and Ruth and Helen followed
the crowd of girls briskly getting aboard the buses. As they saw other
girls do, the two chums from Cheslow gave their trunk checks to a man on
the platform, but they clung to their hand-baggage.

"Such a nice looking lot of girls," murmured He