"Clarice Vigo, why don't you stop your noise?"

"Why do you not stop yours, mademoiselle?"

"I haven't spoken a word but sh! I have been trying my best to quiet
them all."

"So have I."

"Ellen Bond fell over me. She was scared to death by a screech-owl!"

"It was you fell over me, Miss Betsey."

"If we are going to try the charm," announced Peggy Morrison, "we must
begin. You had better all get in a line behind me and do just as I do.
You can't see me very well, but you can scatter the hempseed and say
what I say. And it must be done soberly, or Satan may come mowing at our
heels."

From a distant perch to which he had removed himself, the screech-owl
again remonstrated. Silence settled like the slow fluttering downward of
feathers on every throbbing figure. The stir of a slipper on the
pavement, or the catching of a breath, became the only tokens of human
presence in the old college. These postulants of fortune in their
half-visible state once more bore some resemblance to the young ladies
who had stood in decorum answering compliments between the figures of
the dance the night before.

On cautious shoe leather the march began. One voice, two voices, and
finally a low chorus intoned and repeated,--