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CHAPTER I – SWEET BRIARS AND SOUR PICKLES

The single gas jet burning at the end of the corridor was so dim and made so flickering a light that it added more to the shadows of the passage than it provided illumination. It was hard to discover which were realities and which shadows in the long gallery.

Not a ray of light appeared at any of the transoms over the dormitory doors; yet that might not mean that there were no lights burning within the duo and quartette rooms in the East Dormitory of Briarwood Hall. There were ways of shrouding the telltale transoms and – without doubt – the members of the advanced junior classes had learned such little tricks of the trade of being a schoolgirl.

At one door – and it was the portal of the largest “quartette” room on the floor – a tall figure kept guard. At first this figure was so silent and motionless that it seemed like a shadow only. But when another shadow crept toward it, rustling along the wall on tiptoe, the guard demanded, hissingly:

“S-s-stop! who goes there?”

“Oh-oo! How you startled me, Madge Steele!”

“Sh!” commanded the guard. “Who goes there?”

“Why – why – It’s I.”

“Give the password instantly. Answer!” commanded the guard again, and with some vexation. “‘I’ isn’t anybody.”

“Oh, indeed? Let me tell you that this ‘I’ is somebody – according to the gym. scales. I gained three pounds over the Easter holidays,” said “Heavy” Jennie Stone, who had begun her reply with a giggle, but ended it with a sigh.

“Password, Miss!” snapped the guard, grimly.

“Oh! of course!” Then the fat girl whispered shrilly: “‘Sincerity – befriend.’ That is what ‘S. B.’ stands for, I s’pose. Sweetbriars! and I have a big bag of sour pickles to offset the cloying sweetness of the Sweetbriars,” chuckled Heavy. “Besides, they say that vinegar pickles will make you thin – ”

“I don’t need them for that purpose,” admitted the guard at the door, still in a whisper, but accepting the large, “warty” pickle Heavy thrust into her hand.

“Will make me thin, then,” agreed the other. “Let me in, Madge.”

The guard, sucking the pickle convulsively the while, opened the door just a little way. A blanket had been hung on a frame inside in such a manner that scarcely a gleam of lamplight reached the corridor when the door was open.

“Pass the Sweetbriar!” choked Madge, with her mouth full and the tears running down her cheeks. “My goodness, Jennie Stone! these pickles are right out of vitriol!”

“Sour, aren’t they?” chuckled Heavy. “I handed you a real one for fair, that time, didn’t I, Madge?”

Then she tried to sidle through the narrow opening, got stuck, and was urged on by Madge pushing her. With a bang – punctuated by a chorus of muffled exclamations from the girls already assembled – she tore away the frame and the blanket and got through.

“Shut the door, quick, guard!” exclaimed Helen Cameron.

“Of course, that would be Heavy – entering like a female Samson and tearing down the pillars of the temple,” snapped Mercy Curtis, the lame girl, in her sharp way.

“Please repair the damage, Helen,” said Ruth Fielding, who presided at the far end of the room, sitting cross-legged on one of the beds.

The other girls were arranged on the chairs, or upon the floor before her. There was a goodly number of them, and they now included most of the members of the secret society known at Briarwood Hall as the “S. B.’s.”

Ruth herself was a bright, brown-haired girl who, without possessing many pretensions to real beauty of feature, still was quite good to look at and proved particularly charming when one grew to know her well.

She was rather plump, happy of disposition, and with the kindest heart in the world. She made both friends and enemies. No person of real character can escape being disliked, now and then, by those of envious disposition.

Ruth Fielding succeeded, usually, in winning to her those who at first disliked her. And this, I claim, is a better gift than that of being universally popular from the start.

Ruth had come from her old home in Darrowtown, where her parents died, two years before, to the Red Mill on the Lumano River, where her great-uncle, Jabez Potter, the miller, was inclined at first to shelter her only as an object of his grudging charity. In the first volume of this series, however, entitled “Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill; Or, Jasper Parloe’s Secret,” the girl found her way – in a measure, at least – to the uncle’s crabbed heart.

Uncle Jabez was a just man, and he considered it his duty, when Helen Cameron, Ruth’s dearest friend, was sent to Briarwood Hall to school, to send Ruth to the same institution. In the second volume, “Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall; Or, Solving the Campus Mystery,” was related the adventures, friendships, rivalries, and fun of Ruth’s and Helen’s first term at the old school.

In “Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp; Or, Lost in the Backwoods,” was told the adventures of Ruth and her friends at the Camerons’ winter camp during the Christmas holidays. At the end of the first year of school, they all went to the seaside, to experience many adventures in “Ruth Fielding at Lighthouse Point; Or, Nita, the Girl Castaway,” the fourth volume of the series.

A part of that eventful summer was spent by Ruth and her chums in Montana, and the girl of the Red Mill was enabled to do old Uncle Jabez such a favor that he willingly agreed to pay her expenses at Briarwood Hall for another year. This is all told in “Ruth Fielding at Silver Ranch; Or, Schoolgirls Among the Cowboys.”

The girls returned to Briarwood Hall and in the sixth volume of the series, entitled “Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island; Or, The Old Hunter’s Treasure Box,” Ruth was privileged to help Jerry Sheming and his unfortunate old uncle in the recovery of their title to Cliff Island in Lake Tallahaska, while she and her friends had some thrilling and many funny adventures during the mid-winter vacation.

The second half of this school year was now old. The Easter recess was past and the girls were looking forward to the usual break-up in the middle of June. The hardest of the work for the year was over. Those girls who had been faithful in their studies prior to Easter could now take something of a breathing spell, and the S. B.’s were determined to initiate such candidates as had been on the waiting list for reception into the secrets of the most popular society in the school.

The shrouded door of the quartette room occupied by Ruth, Helen, Mercy, and Jane Ann Hicks, from Montana, was opened carefully again and again until the outer guard, Madge Steele, had admitted all the candidates and most of the members of the S. B. order who were expected.

Each girl was presented with at least half a big sour pickle from Heavy’s store; but really, the pickles had nothing to do with the initiation of the neophytes.

There was a serious and helpful side to the society of the S. B.’s – as witness the password. Ruth, who was the most active member of the institution, realized, however, that the girls were so full of fun that they must have some way of expressing themselves out of the ordinary. Perhaps she had asked Mademoiselle Picolet, the French teacher, whose room was in this dormitory, and Miss Scrimp, the matron, to overlook this present infraction of the rules, for it must be admitted that the retiring bell had rung half an hour before the gathering in this particular room.

“All here!” breathed Ruth, at last, and Madge was called in. The candidates were placed in the middle of the floor. Ann Hicks, the girl from Silver Ranch, was one of these. Ann had proved her character and made herself popular in the school against considerable odds, as related in the preceding volume. Now, the honor of being admitted into the secret society was added to the other marks of the school’s approval.

“Candidates,” said Ruth, addressing in most solemn tones the group of girls before her, “you are about to be initiated into the degree of the Marble Harp. As Infants, when you first entered the school, you were all made acquainted with the legend of the Marble Harp.

“The figure of Harmony, presiding over the fountain in the middle of the campus, was modeled by the sculptor from the only daughter of the man who originally owned Briarwood Park before it became a school. Said sculptor and daughter – in the most approved fashion of the present day school of romanticist authors – ran away with each other, were married without the father’s approval, and both are supposed to have died miserably in a studio-garret.

“The heart-broken father naturally left his cur-r-r-se upon the fountain, and it is said – mind you, this is hearsay,” added Ruth, solemnly, “that whenever anything of moment is about to transpire at Briarwood Hall, or any calamity befall, the strings of the marble harp held in the hands of Harmony, are heard to twang.

“Of course, as has been pointed out before, the fact that the harp is in the shape of a lyre, must be considered, too, if one is to accept this legend. But, however, and nevertheless,” pursued Ruth, “it has been decided that the candidates here assembled must join in the Mackintosh March, and, in procession, led by our Outer Guard and followed – not to say herded– by our Rear Guard, must proceed once around the campus, down into the garden, and circle the fountain, chanting, as you have been instructed, the marching song.

“All ready! You all have your mackintoshes, as instructed? Into them at once,” commanded Ruth. “Into line – one after the other. Now, Outer Guard!”

The lights were extinguished; the blanket at the door was removed; Madge Steele led the way and Heavy, as the Rear Guard, was last in the line. Shrouded in the hoods of the mackintoshes, scarcely one of the girls would have been recognized by any curious teacher or matron.

Ruth hopped down from the bed, and the remaining Sweetbriars ran giggling to the windows. It was a drizzly, dark night. The paths about the campus glistened, and the lamps upon the posts flickered dimly.

Out of the front door filed the procession; when they were far enough away from the buildings which surrounded the campus, they began the chant, based upon Tom Moore’s famous old song:

 
“The harp that once through Briarwood Hall
        The  soul  of  music  shed,
    Now  hangs  as  mute  o’er  the  campus  fount
        As  though  that  soul  were  dead.”
 

Madge Steele, with her strong voice, led the chant. The girls, crowded at the open windows, began to giggle, for they could hear Heavy, at the end of the procession, sing out a very different verse.

“That rascal ought to be fined for that,” murmured The Fox, the sandy-haired girl next to Ruth.

“But, isn’t she funny?” gasped Helen, on the other side of the Chief of the S. B.’s.

“Oh, dear!” exclaimed Belle Tingley. “I hope Sarah Fish got there ahead of them. Won’t they be surprised when they get a baptism of a glass of water each from the fountain, as they go by?”

“They’ll think the statue has come to life, sure enough, if it doesn’t twang the lyre,” quoth Helen.

“They’ll get an unexpected ducking,” giggled Lluella Fairfax.

“It won’t hurt them,” Ruth said, placidly. “That’s why I insisted upon the mackintoshes.”

“It’s just as dark down there by the fountain as it can be,” spoke Helen, with a little shiver. “D’you remember, Ruthie, how they hazed us there when we were Infants?”

“Don’t I!” agreed her chum.

“If Sarah is careful, she can stand right up there against the statue and never be seen, while she can reach the water to throw it at the girls easily. There!” cried Belle. “They’re turning down the walk to the steps. I can see them.”

They all could see them – dimly. Like shadows the procession descended to the marble fountain, still chanting softly the refrain of the marching song. Suddenly a shriek – a very vigorous and startling sound – rang out across the campus.

“It’s begun!” giggled Belle.

But the sound was repeated – then in a thrilling chorus. Ruth was startled. She exclaimed:

“That wasn’t either of the candidates. It was Sarah who screamed. There! It is Sarah again. Something has happened!”

Something certainly had happened. There had been an unexpected fault somewhere in the initiation. The procession burst like a bombshell, and the girls scattered through the wet campus, utterly terrified, and screaming as they ran.

CHAPTER II – THE WILD GIRL

“Something awful must have occurred!” cried Helen Cameron.

Ruth did not remain at the window for more than a moment after seeing the girls engaged in the initiation disperse, and hearing their screams. She drew back from the crowding group and darted out of the room. Fortunately neither the French teacher, nor the matron, had yet been aroused. If the girls came noisily into the dormitory building, Ruth knew very well that “the powers that be” must of necessity take cognizance of the infraction of the rules.

The girl from the Red Mill sped down the broad stairway and out of the house. Some of the fastest runners among the frightened girls were already panting at the steps.

“Hush! hush!” commanded Ruth. “What is the matter? What has happened?”

“Oh! it’s the ghost!” declared one girl.

“So’s your grandmother’s aunt!” snapped another. “Somebody shoved Sarah into the water. It was no ghost.”

It was Madge Steele who last spoke, and Ruth seized upon the senior, believing she might get something like a sensible explanation from her.

“You girls go into the house quietly,” warned Ruth, as they scrambled up the stone steps. “Don’t you dare make a noise and get us all into trouble.”

Then she turned upon Madge, begging: “Do, do tell me what you mean, Madge Steele. Who pushed Sarah?”

“That’s what I can’t tell you. But I heard Sarah yelling that she was pushed, and she did most certainly fall right into the fountain when she climbed up there beside the statue.”

“What a ridiculous thing!” giggled Ruth. “Somebody played a trick on her. I guess she was fooled instead of the candidates being startled, eh?”

“I saw somebody – or something – drop off the other side of the fountain and run – I saw it myself,” declared Madge.

“Here comes Sarah,” cried Ruth, under her breath. “And I declare she is all wet!”

Sarah Fish was actually laughing, but in a hysterical way.

“Oh, dear me! was ever anything so ridiculous before?” she gasped.

“Hush! Don’t get Miss Picolet after us,” begged Madge.

“What really happened?” demanded Ruth, eagerly.

“Why – I’ll tell you,” replied Sarah, whose gown clung to her as though it had been pasted upon her figure. “See? I’m just soaked. Talk about sprinkling those silly lambs of candidates! Why, I was immersed – you see.”

“But how?”

“I slipped over there before the procession started from these steps. I was watching the girls, and listening to them sing, and didn’t pay much attention to anything else.

“But when I dodged down into the little garden, I thought I heard a footstep on the flags. I looked all around, and saw nothing. Now I know the person must have already climbed up on the fountain and gotten into the shadow of the statue – just as I wanted to do.”

“Was there really somebody there?” demanded Madge.

“How do you think I got into the fountain, if not?” snapped Sarah Fish.

“Fell in.”

“I did not!” cried Sarah. “I was pushed.”

“‘Did She Fall, or Was She Pushed?’” giggled Madge. “Sounds like a moving picture title.”

“You can laugh,” scoffed Sarah. “I wonder what you’d have done?”

“Got just as wet as you did, most likely,” said Ruth, calming the troubled waters. “Do go on, Sarah. So you really saw somebody?”

“And felt somebody. When I climbed up to get a footing beside the sitting figure, so that the girls would not see me, somebody shoved me – with both hands – right into the fountain.”

“That’s when you squalled?” asked Madge.

“Yes, indeed! And I rolled out of the fountain just as the – the person who pushed me, tumbled down off the pedestal and ran.”

“For pity’s sake!” ejaculated Ruth. “Do tell us who it was, Sarah.”

“Don’t you think I would if I could?” responded Sarah, trying to wring the water out of her narrow skirt.

Through the gloom appeared another figure – the too, too solid figure of Jennie Stone.

“Oh – dear – me! Oh – dear – me!” she panted. And then seeing Sarah Fish dripping there on the walk, Heavy fell upon the steps and giggled. “Oh, Sarah!” she gasped. “For once, your appearance fits your name, all right. You look like a fish out of its element.”

“Laugh – ”

“I have to,” responded Heavy.

“Well, if it were you – ”

“I know. I’d be floundering there in the water yet.”

“But tell me!” cried Ruth, under her breath. “Was it a girl who pushed you into the fountain, Sarah?”

“It wore skirts – I’m sure of that, at least,” grumbled Sarah.

“But it ran faster than any girl I ever saw run,” vouchsafed Heavy. “Did you see her just skimming across the campus toward the main building? Like the wind!”

“It must be one of our girls,” declared Madge.

“All right,” said Heavy. “But if so, it’s a girl I never saw run before. You can’t tell me.”

“You had better go in and get off your clothes, Sarah,” advised Ruth. Then she looked at Madge. Madge was one of the oldest girls at Briarwood. “Let’s go and see if we can find the girl,” Ruth suggested.

“I’m game,” cried Madge, as the other stragglers mounted the steps and disappeared behind the dormitory building door.

Both girls hurried down the walk under the trees to the main building. In one end of this Mrs. Tellingham and the Doctor had their abode. In the other end was the dining-room, with the kitchens and other offices in the basement. Besides, Tony Foyle, who was chief man-of-all-work about the Hall, and his wife, who was cook, had their living rooms in the basement of this building.

Ruth and Madge hoped to investigate the matter of the mysterious marauder without arousing the little old Irishman, but already they saw his lantern behind the grated window in the front basement, and, as the two girls came nearer, they heard him grumblingly unchain the door.

“Bad ‘cess to ’em! I seen ’em cavortin’ across the campus, I tell ye, Mary Ann! There’s wan of thim down here in the airy – ”

It was evident that the old couple had been aroused, and that Tony was talking to his wife, who remained in the bedchamber. Ruth seized Madge’s wrist and whispered in her ear:

“You run around one way, and I’ll go the other. There must be somebody about, for Tony saw her – ”

“If it is a girl.”

“Both Sarah and Heavy say it is. I’m not afraid,” declared Ruth, and she started off alone at once.

Madge disappeared around the corner. Ruth had darted into the heavily shaded space between the end of the main building and the next brick structure. There were no lights here, but there was a gas lamp on a post beyond the far corner, and before she was half way to it, she saw a shadow flit across the illuminated space about this post, and disappear behind a clump of snowball bushes.

Ruth ran swiftly forward, dodged around the other end of the clump of thick bushes, and suddenly collided with somebody who uttered a muffled scream. Ruth grabbed the girl by both shoulders and held on.

It was like trying to hold a wildcat. The girl, who was considerably smaller, and far slighter than Ruth, struggled madly to escape. She did not say a word at first, only straining to get away from Ruth’s strong grip.

“Now stop! now wait!” panted Ruth. “I want to know who you are – ”

The other tugged her best, but the girl of the Red Mill was very strong for her age, and she held on.

“Stop!” panted Ruth again. “If you make a noise, you’ll bring old Tony here – and then you will be in trouble. I want to know who you are and what you were doing down there at the fountain – and why you pushed Sarah into the water?”

“And I’d like to push you in!” ejaculated the other girl, suddenly. “You let go of me, or I’ll scratch you!”

“You can’t,” replied Ruth, firmly. “I’m holding you too tight.”

“Then I’ll bite you!” vowed the other.

“Why – you’re a regular wild girl,” exclaimed Ruth. “You stop struggling, or I’ll shout for help, and then Tony will come running.”

“D – don’t give me away,” gasped the strange girl, suddenly ceasing her struggles.

“Do you belong here?” demanded Ruth.

“Belong here? Naw! I don’t belong nowheres. An’ you better lemme go, Miss.”

“Why – you are a strange girl,” said Ruth, greatly amazed. “You can’t be one of us Briarwoods.”

“That ain’t my name a-tall,” whispered the frightened girl. “My name’s Raby.”

“But what were you doing over there at the fountain?”

“Gettin’ a drink. Was that any harm?” demanded the girl, sharply. “I’d found some dry pieces of bread the cook had put on top of a box there by the back door. I reckoned she didn’t want the bread, and I did.”

“Oh, dear me!” whispered Ruth.

“And dry bread’s dry eatin’,” said the strange girl. “I had ter have a drink o’ water to wash it down. And jest as I got down into that little place where I seed the fountain this afternoon – ”

“Oh, my, dear!” gasped Ruth. “Have you been lurking about the school all that time and never came and asked good old Mary Ann for something decent to eat?”

“Huh! mebbe she’d a drove me off. Or mebbe she’d done worse to me,” said the other, quickly. “They beat me again day ’fore yesterday – ”

“Who beat you?” demanded Ruth.

“Them Perkinses. Now! don’t you go for to tell I said that. I don’t want to go back to ’em – and their house ain’t such a fur ways from here. If that cook – or any other grown folk – seen me, they’d want to send me back. I know ’em!” exclaimed the girl, bitterly. “But mebbe you’ll be decent about it, and keep your mouth shut.”

“Oh! I won’t tell a soul,” murmured Ruth. “But I’m so sorry. Only dry bread and water – ”

“Huh! it’ll keep a feller alive,” said this strangely spoken girl. “I ain’t no softie. Now, you lemme go, will yer? My! but you are strong.”

“I’ll let you go. But I do want to help you. I want to know more about you —all about you. But if Tony comes – ”

“That’s his lantern. I see it. He’s a-comin’,” gasped the other, trying to wriggle free.

“Where will you stay to-night?” asked Ruth, anxiously.

“I gotter place. It’s warm and dry. I stayed there las’ night. Come! you lemme go.”

“But I want to help you – ”

“‘Twon’t help me none to git me cotched.”

“Oh, I know it! Wait! Meet me somewhere near here to-morrow morning – will you? I’ll bring some money with me. I’ll help you.”

“Say! ain’t you foolin’?” demanded the other, seemingly startled by the fact that Ruth wished to help her.

“No. I speak the truth. I will help you.”

“Then I’ll meet you – but you won’t tell nobody?”

“Not a soul?”

“Cross yer heart?”

“I don’t do such foolish things,” said Ruth. “If I say I’ll do a thing, I will do it.”

“All right. What time’ll I see you?”

“Ten o’clock.”

“Aw-right,” agreed the strange girl. “I’ll be across the road from that path that’s bordered by them cedar trees – ”

“The Cedar Walk?”

“Guess so.”

“I shall be there. And will you?”

“Huh! I kin keep my word as well as you kin,” said the girl, sharply. Then she suddenly broke away from Ruth and ran. Tony Foyle came blundering around the corner of the house and Ruth, much excited, slipped away from the brush clump and ran as fast as she could to meet Madge Steele.

“Oh! is that you, Ruth?” exclaimed the senior, when Ruth ran into her arms. “Tony’s out. We had better go back to bed, or he’ll report us to Mrs. Tellingham in the morning. I don’t know where the strange girl could have gone.”

Ruth did not say a word. Madge did not ask her, and the girl of the Red Mill allowed her friend to think that her own search had been quite as unsuccessful. But, as Ruth looked at it, it was not her secret.