"Sure, ma'am, jest as I told ye this afternoon, the big felly that sassed me last fall, tryin' ter git in ter play his harp, and with his other vagabonds, was hanging around again to-day. I hear him an' his rapscallion companions is in Lumberton. They've been playing about here and there, for a month back. And now I see him comin' along with his harp on his back—bad 'cess to him! P'raps they're walkin' across to Sivin Oaks, an' are takin' in Briarwood as a 'cross-cut'."
"Hush!" whispered the Preceptress. "Isn't that somebody over yonder—by the fountain?"
They were all three silent, keeping close in the shadow. Some object did seem to be moving in the shadow of the fountain. Suddenly there sounded on the still night air the reverberating note of a harp—a crash of sound following the flourish of a practised hand across the wires.
"Bless us and save us!" muttered Tony. "'Tis the marble harp. 'Tis a banshee playin'."
"Be still!" commanded Mrs. Tellingham. "It is nothing of the kind, you very well know, Tony. Ah!"
She had looked instantly toward the illuminated window of the French teacher's study at the other side of the campus. The shade had snapped up to the top of the casement, and the shadow of Miss Picolet appeared. The French teacher had heard the voice of the harp.
"Oh, poor little thing," murmured Mrs. Tellingham. "This seems like spying and eavesdropping, Ruth Fielding; but I mean to stop this thing right here and now. She shall not be frightened out of her wits by this villain."
They heard no further sound from the harp at the fountain. But the door of the West Dormitory opened and the little figure of Miss Picolet appeared, wrapped in some long, loose garment, and she sped down toward the fountain. Soon she was out of sight behind the marble statue.
"Come!" breathed the Preceptress.
They heard Miss Picolet and the man chattering in their own language—the man threatening, the woman pleading—when the trio got to the fountain. Ruth was a poor French scholar, but of course Mrs. Tellingham understood what they said. And the Preceptress glided around the fountain and confronted the harpist with a suddenness that quite startled him.