e copse here, of trees and low bushes, which sheltered
her from all observation. Nobody was likely to come and disturb her, for
the girls preferred the glade, and seldom troubled to enter the paddock.
She flung herself down on the grass and tried to face the matter calmly.
She had begged Rona to confess, and Rona in return had accused her of
taking the pendant. This was turning the tables with a vengeance. How
could her room-mate have become possessed of such a preposterous idea?
And in what a web of mystery the affair seemed involved! One certainty
came as an immense relief. Rona was not guilty. More than this, she was
behaving with an extraordinary amount of courage and loyalty.

"She believes I took it, and yet she is bearing all the blame, and
shielding me for the sake of the school," groaned Ulyth. "Oh, what must
she be thinking of me! We're all at cross-purposes. Did she really fancy
that when I said: 'Remember the Camp-fire', I was begging her to screen
me? Somebody took the pendant and put it in her pocket; that's the ugly
part of the business. It's throwing the blame from one to another. What
we've got to do is to find out the real guilty person, and that's not
going to be easy, I'm afraid."

Ulyth sighed and wiped her eyes. She had been deeply hurt at Rona's
sudden attack. It is humiliating to find that where you occupied a
pedestal you are now, even temporarily, a broken idol.

"She's right to scorn me if she imagines I'm such a sneak, but how could
she suppose I would? And yet I thought her guilty. Oh dear, it's a
horrible muddle! How shall we ever get it straight?"

Ulyth sat thinking, thinking, and was no nearer to a solution of her
problem when she suddenly heard the brisk ringing of a bicycle-bell on
the road below. Springing up eagerly, she rushed to the wall, and
shouted just in time to stop Mrs. Arnold, whose machine was whisking
past.

"Hallo, Ulyth! What are you doing there?"

"I'm coming over. Do please wait for me!"

And Ulyth, scrambling somehow across the wall, slid down a gravelly bank
on to the road.

"You're the one person in the world I want to see," she added, hugging
her friend impetuously. "Oh, Mrs. Arnold, the most dreadful things have
been happening at school! Somebody took Stephie's pendant, and it fell
out of Rona's pocket, and everybody thinks Rona took it, and Rona thinks
it's me. What are we to do?"

"Sit down here and tell me all about it. Yes, please, begin at the very