in the eerie darkness of the night, startling contrasts--the rush and
thronging of the city life against the peaceful quiet of Jerry's
mountain. It was so easy, back there, Jerry thought, to just know at
_once_, what was right and what was wrong; there were no uncertain
demands upon one's loyalty to the little old school in the Notch--one
had only to learn one's lesson and that was all; even in her play back
there there had not been any of the fierce joy of competition she had
learned at Highacres!

And mother, with wonderful wisdom, had brought her so close to God and
had taught her to understand His Love and His Anger. Jerry dug her face
deep into her pillow. Wouldn't God forgive a lie that was for the honor
of the school? Wouldn't He know how Ginny was needed as forward on the
Lincoln team? It was a perplexing thought. Jerry told herself, with a
sense of shame, that she had really not thought much about God since she
had come to the Westleys. She had gone each Sunday with the others to
the great, dim, vaulted church, but she had thought about the artists
who had designed the beautiful colored saints in the windows and about
the pealing music of the organ and not about God or what the minister
was saying. Back home she had always, in church, sat between her mother
and the little window where through the giant pines she could see a
stretch of blue sky broken by a misty mountain-top; when one could see
that and smell the pine and hear, above the drone of the preacher's
voice, the clear note of a bird, one could feel very close to the God
who had made this wonderful, beautiful world and had put that sweet note
in the throat of a little winging creature.

Then Gyp's words taunted her. "You can back out--if you want to!" Oh,
no--she would not do that--now; she would not be a coward, she would see
it through; she would measure up to the challenge, let it cost what it
might she would hold the honor of the school--_her_ school (she said it
softly) above all else!

Jerry had never been severely punished in her life; as she sat very
quietly in Dr. Caton's office waiting for assembly to end she wondered,
with a quickening curiosity, what it would seem like. Anyway, _nothing_
could be worse than having to walk out of the room before all those
staring boys and girls.

But Jerry found that something _was_! Barbara Lee came into the room,
looking surprised, disappointed and unhappy.

"Jerry," she exclaimed, "I can't believe i