knew how horrid they were
and how they've all the time been picking on us girls."

"Well, I don't see that it makes any difference why Miss Walters did
it," Billie broke in, and there was something in her tone that made the
girls stop talking and look at her expectantly. "The fact is, she has
left the 'Dill Pickles' in charge and they're trying to starve us to
death. Now what I want to know is this: Are we just going to stand
around and let them do it? Or are we going to fight?"

"Fight!" they cried, their pale faces beginning to flush with hope.

"What do you want us to do, Billie?" asked Laura eagerly.

"Listen and I'll tell you." She leaned forward and one could almost have
heard a pin drop in the room. "There's only one way I know of that we
can get food that 'The Pickles' don't give to us."

"And that?"

"Is to raid the pantry and storeroom," said Billie, her eyes gleaming.
"We'll probably find plenty of cooked things in the pantry, and if we
don't, we'll go on into the storeroom and get canned sardines and
vegetables and soup. I know I don't care what I eat, as long as I get
enough of it."

The girls were silent a minute, staring at Billie half hopefully, half
fearfully. To raid the pantry and storeroom? It had never been done in
all the history of Three Towers. It would be open rebellion! And yet
they were hungry--terribly hungry--two of them had been faint and sick
from lack of food.

"Will you do it?" asked Billie, her eyes blazing at them.

"We will!" they almost shouted, and then rose such a pandemonium that
Billie, trying to scream above the noise, found her voice drowned
completely.

After a minute they quieted down a little--enough to listen to her,
anyway.

"Please don't make so much noise," she begged. "We'll be likely to make
our raid a great deal easier if we wait until the cooks are gone and the
teachers are in bed. We don't care if we are caught, but we don't want
to be caught until after we've had something to eat."

The girls realized the common sense in this, but it was all they could
do to be patient and wait. The thought of something to eat--all they
wanted to eat--after a week of starvation made them ravenous, furiously
impatient of delay.

The time passed at last, however, and when the "lights out" gong sounded
through the hall the girls were apparently in bed and fast asleep.

Hardly five minutes had passed before the doors of the different
dormitories opened, and the girls