Outside Wellington Hall, Laura and Selina stopped long enough to hold a hurried conversation. As a result they both set their faces toward Madison Hall to inform Marian Seaton of what was in store for her.

"It's simply outrageous!" she stormed, when Selina had gloomily finished relating the dire news. "I won't go to the gym to-morrow. Miss Rutledge has no right to interfere with the teams."

"She seems to think she has," shrugged Selina. "You'll have to do one of two things. Either resign now from the team, or go to the try-out to-morrow and take your chance of winning against Miss Stearns."

"I won't do either," flatly declared Marian. "I made the team and I won't be cheated of my position on it."

"Do you think you can outplay Miss Stearns?" asked Laura anxiously. "You didn't the other day, you know."

"You'd best resign," cut in Selina sharply, without giving Marian time to answer Laura's question. "If you go to the gym to-morrow it's going to create a lot of gossip about Laura and me. Dorothy Martin hasn't made a secret of her opinion of the other try-out. With Miss Rutledge there to-morrow as one of the judges and neither Laura nor I acting with her, it's going to look pretty bad for us."

"I tell you I sha'n't be there to-morrow," snapped Marian.

"Then you'll get yourself into trouble with Miss Rutledge and lose your position anyway," returned Selina with equal asperity. "I've already told you that I have received instructions to post a notice calling the sophomore team to practice by her order. If you resign now, that will end the whole thing. Of course the Stearns girl will get your position on the team. Still you can save your own dignity and ours by pretending in your resignation that you are deeply hurt. You can say, too, that you would have been very willing to give up your position on the team to Miss Stearns if you'd understood that she wanted it so much."

"But I'm not willing to do any such thing," angrily contended Marian. "I'll take my chance against Judith Stearns to-morrow before I'll tamely resign like that. Come to think of it, it would be much more dignified on my part to go to the gym. You, not I, have been accused of unfairness. You put me on the team, you know."

"Yes, and why did I?" flung back Selina hotly. "Because you asked me to do it. Now you think you can hang the unfairness on my shoulders and slip free of it yourself. Well, you can't. I know that Judith Stearns can outplay you. If I thought she couldn't, I'd say go ahead. But she can. As you won't resign of your own accord, I'm going to demand your resignation. If you don't give it to me in writing, I'll go straight back to Miss Rutledge and tell her the whole thing. I'd rather confess to her than have everybody down on Laura and me after to-morrow."

"You wouldn't do that. You can't scare me," sneered Marian.

"Oh, wouldn't I? Wait a little. You'll see."

"You'd be expelled from college. Just remember that. You'd find yourself worse off than if you kept still," triumphantly prophesied Marian.

"We wouldn't be expelled. You probably would be. We'd be severely reprimanded and Miss Rutledge would be down on us for the rest of the year. But you started the whole thing. You're the real offender. It would go hard with you."

"I'm sorry I asked you to help me, Selina Brown!" Marian exclaimed bitterly. "You're a treacherous snake! After all I've done for you, you turn against me like this."

For the next five minutes she continued to express her candid and very uncomplimentary opinion of Selina.

When she paused to take breath, Selina's only retaliation was, "Come on, Laura. We'll have to hurry if we expect to catch Miss Rutledge in her office. I suppose we'd best go to her house and wait for her. We'll be surer of seeing her then."

It had the desired effect. Marian crumpled, shed a few tears of pure rage, but finally wrote the resignation which Selina dictated.

"It worked!" was Selina's relieved exclamation, the moment they were out of Madison Hall. "She's a great coward, for all her boldness. She gave in more easily than I'd expected. You can imagine me confessing anything like that to Miss Rutledge, now can't you?"

Selina accompanied the query with a derisive laugh. It was echoed by Laura, though rather nervously.

"It was horrid to have to bully her." Laura made a gesture of distaste. "I'm glad we're safely out of it. We'd best keep out of such tangles hereafter, and let the sophs alone."

"I intend to," Selina said with grim decision. "I shall keep the managership of the teams, but I'll steer clear of trouble after this. Now let's hustle home. I must write Miss Rutledge a note and enclose Marian's resignation. I'll ask her to answer, stating whether it is satisfactory and asking what I am to do. I'll pretend that I found the resignation waiting for me at Creston Hall."

Half an hour later, Selina had written her letter and dispatched it to Warburton Hall, the faculty house where Miss Rutledge lived, by the small son of Mrs. Ingram, the matron of Creston Hall.

When the dean had read and re-read the two communications, she looked decidedly grave. After a brief interval of thoughtful meditation, she wrote Selina the following reply:

When the next morning's mail brought Judith the amazing news, unwillingly penned by Selina Brown, she was literally dumfounded. The mail arriving while she was at breakfast, she garnered the note from the house bulletin board on her way upstairs from the dining-room.

"For goodness' sake, read this!" she almost shouted, bursting in upon Jane, who was preparing to go to her first recitation. "I don't know what to make of it!"

A slow smile dawned on Jane's lips as she perused the agitating note.

"Marian never resigned by her own accord," she said. "It looks as though her scheme had somehow proved a boomerang. Someone stood up for you, Judy, mighty loyally. Miss Rutledge's name being mentioned in the note tells me that. Was it Dorothy, I wonder? No; it wasn't. She promised us that she wouldn't go to Miss Rutledge about it."

"It's a mystery to me," declared Judith. "I don't know what to do. I wonder——"

A rapping at the door sent her scurrying to open it.

"Why, Dorothy!" she exclaimed. "How did you know I wanted to see you?"

"I didn't know. I came because I have a special message for you from Miss Rutledge. She sent for me to come to her last night after dinner. I spent the evening with her and arrived here too late to see you. I was dying to tell Jane this morning at breakfast, but couldn't, of course, until I'd seen you. I'm glad you're both here. By the way, Judy, did you receive a note from Selina Brown?"

"I certainly did," emphasized Judith. "What's the answer to all this, Dorothy? I was never more astonished in all my life than when I read her note. What made Marian Seaton resign from the team, and why does Miss Rutledge want me to take her place? I'd just about made up my mind to go and ask her, when you came."

"You needn't," smiled Dorothy. "She has asked me to explain things to you in confidence. I'm going to take the liberty of including Jane. I'll explain why presently."

"I won't feel hurt if you don't, Dorothy," Jane said earnestly. "Perhaps you'd really rather tell Judy alone."

"No. I want you to hear the whole thing," Dorothy insisted. Whereupon she recounted what had occurred on the previous afternoon in the dean's office.

"I wanted you to know, Jane, just why I told Miss Rutledge that this affair was a hang-over from last year. I know she has no idea of whom I meant by the girl who was standing up for right. She may suspect Marian as being the other girl. I can't say as to that. I'm glad she knows now that there is such a condition of affairs at Wellington. She will not forget it if anything else comes up. She will be very well able to put two and two together, if need be."

"I'd never go to her of my own accord," Jane said with an emphatic shake of her russet head.

"You might be sent for some day, just as I was yesterday," returned Dorothy.

"But you haven't yet explained why Marian resigned, Dorothy," reminded Judith. "What did Miss Rutledge say about it?"

"She said that she had received a note from Selina, with Marian's resignation enclosed. Marian's reason for resigning was that she had learned you were dissatisfied over her appointment on the team. She preferred to give you her position rather than have you continue to make trouble about it."

Dorothy's lips curled scornfully as she said this.

"Then I won't accept it!" Judith blazed into sudden anger. "The idea of her writing such things about me! How can Miss Rutledge ask me to replace Marian after that? I won't do it."

"Yes, Judy, you must," Jane declared quietly. "Marian wrote that hoping you'd hear of it and refuse. She knew you'd insist on learning the particulars before you accepted. Miss Rutledge has shown her faith in you by asking you to replace Marian on the team."

"Selina Brown is behind the whole thing," asserted Dorothy.

"I believe it," quickly concurred Jane. "It's easy to see through things. She didn't want another try-out; so she made Marian resign. She must have used a pretty strong argument to do it. It was a case of the biter being bitten, I imagine."

"Exactly," Dorothy agreed. "Selina Brown and Laura Nelson ought to have more principle than engage in anything so dishonorable. They've managed to wriggle out of it at Marian's expense, but they have both lost caste by it. Depend upon it, a great many girls here will have their own opinion of the whole affair and it won't be complimentary to Marian, Selina and Laura."

"Someone may say that I am to blame for Marian's resigning," advanced Judith doubtfully.

"Someone undoubtedly will," concurred Jane, "but it won't carry much weight. You have too many friends, Judy, to bother your head about the spiteful minority. You were unfairly dealt with at the try-out. That's generally known. Now you've come into your own through a hitch in Marian's plans. She couldn't get back on the team again under any circumstances. You're not standing in her way. Don't stand in your own."

"I guess I'd better accept," Judith reluctantly conceded. "From now on I shall go armed to the teeth. Marian Seaton is apt to camp on my trail," she added with a giggle. "Good gracious, girls! Look at the time! We'll be late to chapel."

Absorbed in conversation, the trio had completely forgotten how swiftly time was scudding along.

"Late to chapel! Chapel will be over before ever we get there if you don't hurry!" exclaimed Jane ruefully.

Accordingly the three made a hasty exit from the room and the Hall, hurrying chapelwards at a most undignified pace.

That afternoon Judith sent her letter of acceptance to Selina Brown. The next day she reported in the gymnasium for practice with her old teammates. It was a joyful reunion, made more conspicuous by the attendance of a goodly number of sophomores, who had got wind of the news and who cheered Judith lustily when she appeared. The freshman team, who had so loyally fought for her, also made it a point to drop in on the practice and offer their congratulations.

The jubilant majority was undoubtedly heart and soul for Judith. Whatever the "spiteful minority," as Jane had put it, thought of her, she quite forgot in the delight of being at last really and truly on the official team.

"We certainly are a fine combination!" exulted Christine at the end of an hour's spirited work with the ball. "The freshmen will have to look out. And to think they were the ones to give Judy back to us!"

Christine, Adrienne and Barbara were among the few who knew that the freshman team had protested to Miss Rutledge. The five freshmen themselves had kept the matter fairly quiet. They had been sent for and privately informed by Miss Rutledge that Miss Seaton had resigned from the sophomore team of her own accord and that Miss Stearns was entitled to the vacancy.

They had also been gravely charged to let that end all discussion of the subject. Their point gained, they obeyed orders, except for a certain amount of curious speculation among themselves as to how it had come about.

In the end they agreed that Marian must have heard of their visit to Miss Rutledge and resigned out of pure mortification.

Jane, Judith and Dorothy kept the greater knowledge of the affair to themselves. Not even Adrienne knew the true facts. Selina Brown and Laura Nelson also found wisdom in silence. They were not hunting further trouble. They had had enough.

Selina had been allowed to keep her managership of the teams, and was shrewd enough to appreciate that another slip would be decidedly disastrous to her. Thereafter she became such a stickler for fair play as to prove decidedly amusing to at least three girls.

Marian Seaton found refuge in the "hurt feelings" policy as dictated to her by Selina. To her particular satellites she posed as a martyr and affected a lofty disdain for "certain girls who have no principle."

Inwardly she was seething with resentment against Judith. She confided to Maizie, her stand-by, that she didn't know which of the two she hated most, Judith Stearns or Jane Allen. She laid her latest defeat, however, at Judith's door. She believed that Judith had been the secret means of inciting the freshman team to protest and she was determined to be even. Furthermore, she confided to Maizie that it would be only a matter of time until Judith Stearns must lose every friend she had.