ticular purpose. That she had no suspicions about "Storied West
Rock" was plain, for not a question tended that way, but all toward
the sleigh-ride; for the first time since it had taken place Susan
felt glad that she had not gone.

She attached little importance to the giving of the note to Mamie
Smythe. How was she to know its contents? She was not in the habit of
opening other people's notes. To be sure, her conscience told her, she
did know them, and, besides, that troublesome old adage would keep
coming back to her, "The partaker is as bad as the thief."

Should Miss Ashton put the question point-blank to her, "Susan Downer,
did, or did you not, know of the sleigh-ride?" What should she answer?
To say she did, would be to bring not only herself, but all the other
girls into trouble, perhaps to be the means of their being expelled.

To say she knew nothing about it would be to tell a _lie_. Susan dealt
plainly enough with herself now, not even to cover it with the more
respectable name of falsehood, and it was so hard to escape Miss
Ashton if she were once on the track; she _would_ find out, and if
she did not expel her too, she would never respect her again.

It must be acknowledged, Susan's was a hard place; but she is not the
first, and will by no means be the last, to learn that the way of the
transgressor is often very, very hard.

"I don't care," was Susan's conclusion, after some hours of painful
thought. "Thanksgiving is most here, and she'll forget it before we
come back."

CHAPTER XIX.

DETECTIVES AT WORK.

Miss Ashton's forgetfulness was not of a kind to be depended upon. Mr.
Stanton, the janitor, had come to her a few days after the sleigh-ride
to tell her that he had found a back window unlocked; that he was sure
he had locked it carefully before going to bed, and that under the
window was the print of footsteps.

He "kind o' hated," he said, "to be a-telling on the gals, but then,
agin, he hadn't been there nigh eighteen years without learning that
gals were gals, as well as boys were boys, and weren't allers--not
zactly allers--doin' jist right; perhaps it was best to let Miss
Ashton know, and then--there now--he hated to do it awfully. If the
gals found it out it might set 'em agin him."

"Mr. Stanton," said Miss Ashton gravely, "if you had made this
discovery and kept it to yourself, you would have lost your place in
twenty-four hours. Please show me the window."

The snow, for