, Miss
Ashton!"

"And who were the boys?" asked Miss Ashton, thinking perhaps she might
aid the other troubled principal.

"The boys! oh, the boys!" and Mamie's face looked truly distressed
now. "Please don't ask me, Miss Ashton. I'd cut my tongue out before
I'd tell you!"

"Very well, go on with your ride."

Then Mamie repeated fully and truly all that a girl in the flush of
excitement caused by a stolen sleigh-ride could be expected to
remember, not palliating one thing, from the supper to the dance, and
the clamber in at midnight through the open window.

If at some points a little laugh gurgled up from her fun-loving soul,
as she told her tale, Miss Ashton understood, and forgave it.

"I thank you, Mamie," said she at last; and she stroked the little
hand given to her so loyally for the sacrificial feruling, but she
turned her eyes away. What Mamie might have read there, she dared not
trust to the girl's quick sight; indeed, she hardly dared to trust the
feeling that prompted it in herself.

There was no use to have another Faculty meeting, and depend upon it
for help; she must settle the trouble alone.

It was Susan Downer who was next called to the principal's room.

She went tremblingly. What was to happen to her now? Miss Ashton knew
the girls' names who went on the sleigh-ride, and as yet no one had
been punished. Could it be about "Storied West Rock"? How Susan by
this time hated its very name, and how much she would have given if
she had never known it, she could best have told.

"Susan," said Miss Ashton, as with a pale face and downcast eyes the
girl stood before her, "when I asked you about your brother's visit to
you on the night of the sleigh-ride, you did not tell me of the note
he gave you, and you gave to Mamie Smythe. If you had, you would have
saved me many troubled hours."

"You did not ask me," said Susan promptly.

"True. Did you know the contents of the note?"

"Mamie asked me to go with them, but I refused. I was afraid you
wouldn't like it, and I'd much rather lose a ride any time than
displease you;" and Susan, as she said this, looked bravely in Miss
Ashton's face.

"That's all," the principal said gravely, and Susan, with a lighter
heart than that with which she had entered, left the room; but Miss
Ashton thought, as she watched the forced smile on the girl's face,
"There's one that can't be trusted; what a pity, for she is not
without ability!" Then she remembered the st