mates turned in
accusatory horror upon her. They suspected her of betraying them; of
using her elevated position to hand down untrustworthy information.

"Please, Mr. Garvan," she said in tones more of sorrow than of anger,
skilfully showing her knowledge of the answer while denying his right to
it, "that question isn't on the map of Africa."

[Illustration:
"'Please, Mr. Garvan,' she said"]

A flush of annoyance mounted to the young master's forehead. Out of the
corner of her eye Sissy saw the preliminary twitch of the corners of his
lips that served the class for a danger-signal.

"What is the highest mountain, Cecilia?" he repeated sternly.

Sissy stood a moment looking at him. All that she might not say--her
contempt for pledge-breakers, her shocked hero-worship now forever a
thing of the past, her outraged school-girl's affection--she shot
straight at the master from her angry eyes.

Then she sat down.

"I don't know," she said.

He looked up from his book, incredulous. Ten credits out of one hundred
gone at one fell swoop--ten of Sissy Madigan's credits, for which she
fought so gallantly and which she cherished so jealously when she once
had them in her possession.

"I--don't--know," repeated Sissy, disdainfully.

The master passed the question. But as he put it to the next girl, Sissy
put another question, with her eyes, to the same girl.

"Are you a scab?" her steady gaze challenged. "Are you going to benefit
by what a mate suffers for principle's sake? Are you a coward who
doesn't dare to stand up for your class? And--do you know what you'll
get from me if you are?"

"I--don't--know," faltered the girl.

A glory of triumph shot over Sissy's face. It leaped like a sunrise from
peak to peak in a mountain-range of obstinacy. "I don't know"--"I don't
know"--"I don't know"--the shibboleth of the strikers' cause went down
the line. The master was shamed in public by the banner pupils of his
school. He writhed, but he put the question steadily to every girl till
he came to Irene, last in the line.

"What is the highest mountain in the world?" he asked, perfunctorily
now.

But, to his amazement, she rose, and, looking out of the window up to
the mountain to the skirts of which the town clung, she answered:

"Mount Davidson."

Sissy's savage joy followed so quickly upon her horror at her own
sister's defection that the closing of school left her in a trembling
storm of emotions. In the d