Not a word did Molly say to Nance or the unsuspecting Judy next morning about her appointment with President Walker.

"Don't forget Latin versification at ten," Nance had cautioned her as she left the sitting room a quarter before ten.

Molly had forgotten it and everything else except the matter in hand, but the President's word was law and she prepared to obey and skip the lecture.

The President was waiting for her in the little study. No one was about and an ominous quiet pervaded the whole place.

"Sit down," said Miss Walker, without replying to Molly's greeting of good morning. "So it's you, is it, who has been wandering about the grounds at night in a gray dressing gown, scaring the students? I need not tell you how disgusted and grieved I am, Miss Brown."

Molly turned as white as a sheet. She had never dreamed that Miss Walker suspected her of being the campus ghost.

But she answered steadily:

"You are mistaken, Miss Walker. The ghost chased Nance and me the other night when we were coming back from the village. We were really frightened. I suppose it's some insane person."

"Then what were you doing on the campus at that hour, and where did you get that ladder?"

Molly turned her wide blue eyes on the President with reproachful protest, and Miss Walker suddenly looked down at the blotter on the desk.

"Answer my question, Miss Brown," she asked more gently.

How could Molly explain without telling on

Judy, and yet did not that reckless, silly Judy deserve to be told on?

Suddenly two tears trickled down her cheeks. She let them roll unheeded and clasped her hands convulsively in her lap.

"I insist on an answer to my question, Miss Brown," repeated the President, without looking up. Molly pressed her lips together to keep back the sobs.

"I never saw the ladder until a few minutes before you did," she answered hoarsely. "I—oh, Miss Walker, you make it very hard," she burst out suddenly, leaning on the table and burying her face in her hands.

And then the most surprising thing happened. The President rose quickly from her chair, hurried over to where Molly was sitting with bowed head and drew the girl to her as tenderly as Molly's own mother might have done.

"There, there, my darling child," she said soothingly. "I haven't the heart to torture you any longer. I know, of course, that it was your friend, Miss Kean, who was at the bottom of last night's performance, and as usual you came down to help her when she fell. I only wanted you to tell me exactly what you knew."

The truth is, the President had tried an experiment on Molly and the experiment had failed, and no one was more pleased than Miss Walker herself in the failure. She liked to see her girls loyal to each other. But things had not been going well at Wellington that autumn. There was an undercurrent of mischief in the air, a dangerous element, carefully hidden, and still slowly undermining the standards of Wellington. Miss Walker was very much enraged over the rumor that the ghost of her beloved sister had been seen wandering about the campus. This was too much. Her Irish maid had repeated the story to her and she had determined to lay that ghost without the assistance of the night watchman or any one else.

The surprise of first being stretched on the grill and then embraced by the President of Wellington College brought Molly to herself like a shock of cold water. She looked up into the older woman's face and smiled and the two sat down side by side on a little sofa, the President still holding Molly's hand. There might be some who could resist the piteous look in those blue eyes, but not President Walker.

"I'm afraid I'm just a weak old person," she said to herself, giving the hand a little squeeze and then releasing it.

"Judy wasn't the ghost, either, Miss Walker," said Molly, glad to be able to defend her friend on safe grounds. "The night we were chased Judy was in our rooms all the time. Last night was the first time she had ever done anything so foolish. It was only because a girl she goes with bet she wouldn't. It was the same girl that made her dye her hair," Molly added, without any feeling of disloyalty.

"Ahem! And who is this young woman who has such a bad influence on Miss Kean?"

Molly flushed. Was she to be placed on the grill again? But after all there was no harm in telling the name of the girl who had brought all Judy's trouble on her.

"Adele Windsor."

"And what do you know of her?"

"I don't know anything about her except that she has fascinated Judy."

"And Judy must be punished," mused the President. "Judy is a very difficult character and she must be brought to her senses if she expects to remain at Wellington."

"Judy loves Wellington, indeed she does, Miss Walker. It's only that she has got into a wrong way of thinking this year. I've heard her tell freshmen how splendid it was here and how they would grow to love it like all the rest of us."

"She has not been doing well at all. She never studies. You see I know all about my girls."

"You didn't know," went on Molly, "that the Jubilee entertainment was all Judy's idea. She gave it to Adele Windsor—I don't know why—just because she was in one of her obstinate moods, but I heard her plan out the whole thing the opening night of college—and it was all for the glory of Wellington."

The President's face softened.

"Molly," she said, as if she had always called the young girl by her first name, "do you wish very much to save your friend?"

"Oh, I do, I do. I can't think of any sacrifice I wouldn't make to keep Judy from being——" she paused and lowered her eyes. Was Miss Walker thinking of expelling Judy? But Miss Walker was not that kind of a manager. She often treated her erring girls very much as a doctor treats his patients with a few doses of very nasty but efficacious medicine.

"What is your opinion of what had best be done, then? You know her better than I do. What do you advise?"

Molly was amazed.

"Me? You ask my advice?" she asked.

The President nodded briskly.

"Well, the best way to bring Judy to her senses is to give her a good scare and let it come out all right in the end."

The President smiled.

"You're one of the wisest of my girls," she said, "now, run along. If I've made you miss a lecture I'm sorry."

"It will come out all right in the end, Miss Walker?" asked Molly, turning as she reached the door.

"I promise," answered the other, smiling again as if the question pleased her.

And so Molly escaped from the grill feeling really very happy, certainly much happier than when she entered the office.

Late that evening while Molly and Nance were preparing to take a walk before supper, Judy rushed into the room. There was not a ray of color in her face and her hair stood out all over her head as if it had been charged with electricity.

"Oh, Molly, Molly," she cried, "did you know the President had overheard everything that was said last night? She was at the foot of the ladder all the time. You are not implicated, I saw to that, and I've not told where I got the ladder. I simply said some one had given it to me. No one is in it but me. But I'm in it deep. Girls, I've lost out. It's all over. I've got to go. Oh, heavens, what a fool I've been."

Judy flung herself on the divan and buried her face in the pillows.

For a moment Molly almost lost faith in the President's promise.

"What do you mean when you say you must go, Judy?" she asked.

"It can't be true," burst out Nance, whose love for Judy sometimes clothed that young woman's sins in a garment of light.

"Not expelled?" added Molly, in a whisper.

"No, no, not that; but suspended. I can come back just before mid-years, but don't you see the trick? How can I pass my exams then? And Mama and Papa, what will they think? And, oh, the Jubilee and all of you and Wellington? Molly, I've been a wicked idiot and some of my sins have been against you. I was jealous about that Jimmy Lufton because he had seemed to be my property and you took him away. And, Nance, I was mad with you because you were always preaching. I didn't really like Adele Windsor. I think she is horrid. She's malicious and she makes trouble. I've found that out, but she got me in her toils somehow——"

And so poor Judy rambled on, confessing her sins and moaning like a person in mortal pain. She had worked herself into a fever, her face was hot and she looked at the girls with burning, unseeing eyes.

"Papa will be so disappointed," she went on. "It will be harder on him than on Mama for me not to graduate with the class, and oh, I did love all of you—I really did."

Tears, which Molly had never seen Judy shed but once before, now worked two tortuous little paths down her flushed cheeks.

Molly and Nance comforted and nursed her into quiet. They bathed her face and loosened her dyed locks which were now beginning to show a strange tawny yellow at the roots and a rusty brownish color at the ends. All the time Molly was thinking very hard.

"Judy," she said, at last, when they had got her quiet. "There's no reason why you shouldn't pass the mid-years and graduate with your class if you want to."

"But how? I'm so behind now I can hardly catch up, and if I miss six weeks I can never do it."

"Yes, you can," said Molly. "This is what you must do. Go down to the village and get board anywhere, with Mrs. Murphy or Mrs. O'Reilly. Take all your books and begin to study. Every day some of us will come down and coach you, Nance or I, or Edith—I know any of the crowd would be glad to, so as not to lose you."

"But the Christmas holidays," put in Judy.

"I shall be here for all the holidays," said Molly. "It will be all right."

And so the matter was settled. The very next day Judy's exile began. She engaged a room at Mrs. O'Reilly's, her obstinate mood slipped away from her and she was happier and more like her old self than she had been in weeks. And Molly was happy, too. She felt that she had saved Judy and freed her at the same time from the clutches of Adele Windsor.

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