him. The boy met him outside the school-building as he was returning for the afternoon session.

At the time Rusty had been talking with Mr. Phillips during the morning recess, Reuben had suddenly learned that she was suspected of having taken Mabel's note-book. As the days passed Mabel Graham seemed to be taking to heart her failures and zeroes of the first week after her loss. She kept his note-book, though rather in the way of conferring than accepting a favor; and when others had ceased to be willing to listen, still continued to talk about her loss to him. She did not venture to speak out as to her suspicion, but hinted darkly; and this morning on a sudden Reuben understood. She thought Rusty had done it! He was so filled with consternation that he lost her next words. Then he caught something about a light having been seen in the academy the night the book was taken, shining from the window of the big schoolroom. A little later that light was a light to him.

At first he was merely vaguely troubled at the thought of Rusty's being suspected; but as he was going home that noon, suddenly the thing struck him coldly. His heart sank. Rusty's words at the pond that day came back to him. Yes, she must have done it but not for herself. She must have done it for him. She had done it that he might win

the scholarship. He had worked hard this year— it must have seemed to Rusty that his heart was set on the scholarship and nothing else. And all the more because she felt him slow and stupid and old, would warm-hearted Rusty be sorry for him and want him to have what she believed to be his heart's desire. It was like her not to consider anything else to disregard Mabel's right utterly—and to do this wrong, quixotic deed for his sake.

Then it was that suddenly the recollection of the light seen in the academy windows came to him as a light indeed. He was out of breath from running when he caught Mr. Phillips.

"Mr. Phillips, I am afraid I gave you a wrong impression when I talked with you a week ago, he said. "I want to tell you-well, it's got out that a light was seen in the academy the night that Mabel's book disappeared. I want to tell you that I got hold of the keys and got into the big room that night. The light was from the lantern in my hands."

Mr. Phillips could not believe his ears.

"Reuben, do you mean to tell me you were in the schoolroom that night?" he asked.

"I was, Mr. Phillips, I was in there for a quarter of an hour," said Reuben; but one look into those honest, serious brown eyes was enough for the master.

"Do you know, Reuben, this is getting to be more than I can stand," he said. "Now you're trying to shield some one. See here-you're more mature than any of the others. You know perfectly well that I'm not the schoolmaster in this instance: I'm just one among you all. Suppose you tell me what you know, Reuben, and then you and I work together to straighten it out?"

It was hard to resist; it was the appeal of brother to brother, friend to friend; but even Mr. Phillips couldn't understand how impulsive Rusty could do something that no other girl could do-she could do wrong rightly, generously, even nobly. Reuben had to seem stiff and stubborn and unappreciative of what really went straight to his heart.

Before school closed Mr. Phillips again addressed the school on the subject.

He asked the aid of every scholar in solving the mystery. He would be glad if any one who had any idea whatever in regard to it, seem it ever so irrelevant, would trust him so far as to confide in him. And he closed by saying that in case the mystery were not solved, unless the book were found or its fate discovered, he would refuse to allow the prize to be awarded at the end of the year. He would feel compelled to ask Colonel Wadsworth to withdraw his generous offer.

CHAPTER XXXIII

HE weeks that followed were dreary, indeed,

TH

alike to those who considered the loss of the note-book a baffling mystery, and to Reuben Cartwright and Rusty Miller to whom it seemed not so much a mystery as an unhappy secret. Moreover, the trouble at the academy affected not only the senior class, their parents, and the teachers, but also the lower classes and their parents and even the people in both districts of the village who had no children. Mr. Langley had known no such experience since the death of his little Ella May, and of course that was quite different.

Then, too, it was a backward, rather dreary spring. A second and heavier snow-storm followed that of the twenty-ninth February and lingered on the hills, in the woods and the hollows of the meadows until May. Elsewhere it melted, and, reinforced by heavy rains, put the roads into the worst condition that any one in the village had ever known. Children who hadn't rubber-boots to wear back and forth to and from school had wet feet continually; and elderly people scarcely got out at all, driving being as uncomfortable as walking and

often less safe. Finally in the midst of a week of almost unremitting rain, driven hither and yon by strong cold winds, when lamps had to be lighted in the middle of the afternoon, though the spring equinox was past, a few persons began to wonder if Rusty Miller hadn't, after all, destroyed her classmate's note-book, and whether it wasn't rather too much of a good thing for Reuben Cartwright to shield her?

Mr. Phillips wasn't among the latter, but on Friday of that gloomy week, he hastened home directly after school was out, harnessed the calico horse, and drove through the mire and puddles over to Farleigh to consult the chairman of the school committee.

He found Mr. Langley in unclerical costume in the little old-fashioned "shop," a small detached building on the grounds at the parsonage, engaged in cleaning and polishing a bicycle. He had found it, second-hand, but little used, at Wenham upon one of his Monday visits and was planning to give it to Reuben Cartwright. As he alone had divined the depths of Reuben's desire for a wheel, so he had guessed his sacrifice and had been constrained to respect it. But now, after all this lapse of time, he felt justified in the purchase and the prospective gift. For one who rather eschewed physical exercise more strenuous than walking, he was putting con