anything should happen so that we couldn't go to Rose Ranch with
her."

Perhaps this was rather a selfish thought on Bess Harley's part.
Still, Bess was not notably unselfish, although she had improved a
good deal during the months she had been at Lakeview Hall.

But Nan had occasion to remember her chum's words very clearly not
long thereafter, for she did find Rhoda Hammond in trouble. It was
one Friday afternoon when Nan was returning from her architectural
drawing lesson at Professor Krenner's cabin, up the lake shore.
Amelia had not gone that day, being otherwise engaged; so Nan was
alone on the path through the spruce wood that here clothed the
face of the high bluff on which Lakeview Hall was set.

A company of jays squalling in a thicket had been the only
disturbing sounds in the sun-bathed woods, when of a sudden Nan
heard somebody speak--a high and angry voice. Then in Rhoda's
deeper tones, she heard:

"What do you mean, confronting me like this? I do not know you. You
are crazy!"

"Maybe I am cr-r-razy!" cried the second voice, its owner rolling
her "r's" magnificently. "But I am not a thief. You, Senorita
Ham-mon', are that! You and all your fam-i-lee are the
thiefs--yes!"

Nan's thought flashed instantly to the Mexican girl in the shop in
Adminster. She had spoken in just this way. And she had given at