ows and waving branches.

When the girls, moving softly over twigs and branches, so as to make no
noise, finally came to the meeting place they were surprised and a
little alarmed to find no one there.

The woods were dark and silent, save for the soft murmuring of the wind
among the trees.

"Nobody's here," said Vi, glancing nervously over her shoulder.

"Suppose nobody comes," whispered Laura. "Maybe it's all a joke."

"Well, if it is," said Billie with a rueful little smile, "the joke is
on us."

CHAPTER XVIII

THE "CODFISH" AGAIN

It seemed an age while Billie and Laura and Vi stood under the maple
tree before anything happened. It really was only about five minutes.
Then a sound was heard through the darkness. It was the cracking of a
twig.

The girls started, and Billie, drawing some bushes aside, peered out in
the direction of the sound. What she saw made her draw in her breath
sharply and Laura and Vi drew closer, looking over her shoulder.

Ten ghost-like figures were coming quickly toward them across the
moonlight-flooded lawn that surrounded Three Towers Hall.

It looked as though each figure had draped itself from head to foot in a
flowing sheet with places for the eyes and nose and mouth rudely cut
out. The girls, watching in half-frightened silence, were reminded of
the "Ku-Klux Klan" of post Civil War days, which they had seen once or
twice in moving pictures.

"Do you suppose it's the girls dressed up like that?" Laura whispered,
beginning to wish herself back in the security of her dormitory.

"Of course. Who else could it be?" said Billie, trying to make her voice
sound natural when the skin on the back of her neck was beginning to
crawl. "For goodness sake, don't let them think you're scared, whatever
you do," she whispered fiercely, as the first of the white-draped
figures reached the woods. "That's probably just what they're trying to
do."

The leader of the "ghosts," as they had already dubbed them in their
minds, came to a halt just a few feet in front of the chums, and her
followers drew up behind her.

Then they stood there, motionless as the trees around them, looking at
Billie and Laura and Vi through those ghastly white masks until the
girls thought they must scream.

They afterward found out that this was the "silence test," that unless
the girls passed this first test they were unworthy to belong to the
"Ghost Club." And passing the test consisted of doing what