could find a home on the walls, secure from the
meddlesome fingers of juniors. She intended to keep it as a sort of
sanctum for the monitresses, and had visions of holding committee
meetings there, and bringing tea in thermos flasks.

One morning she had arranged to spend a little time at the museum and to
meet Claudia, who had promised to come and help her. The trysting-place
was the old windmill, and Lorraine stood there waiting. Claudia was
late--the Castleton family were always late for everything--and Lorraine
walked impatiently up and down the road. Footsteps coming round the
corner made her turn expectantly. To her surprise, the new-comer was not
her friend, but her uncle, Mr. Barton Forrester.

"Why, Uncle!" she exclaimed. "What are you doing up here? I thought you
were so busy at the office?"

"So I am; and I ought to be at work now. This is what comes of being a
special constable! There's a pretty to-do to-day! The telephone wires
have been cut, and the job is to discover _where_!"

"The telephone wires cut!" echoed Lorraine. "But who has cut them?"

"Some spy, I suppose. One has constantly to be on the lookout for
treachery, especially in a place like this. If we could only find out
where the leakage is! There, Lorraine, I can't stay. I've got to see Mr.
Jermyn immediately."

Uncle Barton--busy, energetic little man that he was--waved his hand to
his niece and hurried away up the road, just as Claudia, also in a
hurry, turned the corner. Lorraine cut short her apologies with the news
about the telephone wires.

"It means," she explained, "that, until they find the place and can mend
it, Porthkeverne's cut off by telephone from all other places. You may
depend upon it, as Uncle says, there's some treachery at the bottom of
this. Isn't it horrible to think that there may be spies in the town,
ready to betray one's country?"

"Dreadful!" shuddered Claudia. "They ought to intern everyone who's the
least bit under suspicion."

The two girls walked rapidly to The Gables, and went into the
school-yard and up the outside staircase. Lorraine had the key in her
pocket, and unlocked the museum. Directly she entered, she noticed that
the room was not as she had left it. Some of the desks and boxes had
certainly been moved. She remembered exactly how she had placed them
yesterday. Her first thought was that Mrs. Jones, the charwoman, must
have been in to clean; but that was clearly impossible, for she herself