"Silence!" reiterated Amelia.

They descended carefully--all but the prisoner. But when she made
too much noise Laura poked her.

"Here!" the red-haired girl muttered, "make believe you are
stealing upon a band of Indians to scalp 'em--the poor things! You
don't walk like a prairie rose. You stamp along more like a
charging buffalo."

"Goodness!" sighed Lillie Nevins, in the rear, "how much our Laura
knows about the West, doesn't she?"

At the titter which followed this remark, their leader hissed for
silence again. The procession was now winding down the stairway to
the rear of Mrs. Cupp's office. They were bound for the basement,
it seemed.

For a moment Nan Sherwood wondered if the older girls intended to
reach the subterranean passage which connected the trunk room with
the boathouse at the foot of the cliff. Then she remembered that
the trunk room would be locked at this hour and that Mrs. Cupp had
the key.

But the gymnasium was down here, too. The cellars under the school
were enormous. Castle-like, the great, rambling building had been
constructed by a man with more imagination than money. The latter
ran out before his castle on the cliff was completed. After years
of emptiness, Dr. Beulah Prescott had obtained it and made it into