The Camp Fire Girls at School; Or, The Wohelo Weavers

by Hildegard G. Frey

"I shall consider her guilty until she has proven her innocence," he maintained obstinately, "and you will find that I am right. That is nothing but a made-up story about going in there for something she had left. You noticed how she contradicted herself half a dozen times in as many minutes. She is the guilty one, all right," and in sore distress Nyoda left him.

The axe fell and Hinpoha was expelled from school. If lightning had fallen on a clear day and cleft the roof open, the pupils could not have been more dumbfounded. Hinpoha was the very last one any one would have suspected of cutting wires. In fact, many were openly incredulous. But Mr. Jackson took care to make all the damaging facts public, and Hinpoha's fair name was dragged in the mud. Emily Meeks was one who stood loyal to Hinpoha. She was ignorant that it was to shield her Hinpoha had refused to tell what she was doing in the electric room, as she had gone home before Hinpoha had retouched the picture, but she refused to believe that her angel, as she always thought of Hinpoha, could be guilty of any wrong doing.

As for Hinpoha herself, life was not worth living. The scene with Aunt Phoebe, when she heard of her disgrace, was too painful to record here. Suffice to say that Hinpoha was regarded as a criminal of the worst type and was never allowed to forget for one instant that she had disgraced the name of Bradford forever. It was awful not to be going to school and getting lessons. Those days at home were nightmares that she remembered to the end of her life with a shudder. The only ray of comfort she had was the fact that Nyoda and the Winnebagos stood by her stanchly. "I can bear it," she said to Nyoda forlornly, "knowing that you believe in me, but if you ever went back on me I couldn't live." Nyoda urged her no more to tell her secret, for she suspected that it concerned some one else whom Hinpoha would not expose, and trusted to time to solve the mystery and remove the stain from Hinpoha's name.

The excitement over, school settled down into its old rut. Joe Lanning's father sent him away to military school and Abraham's father began to use his influence to have him reinstated. Mr. Goldstein put forth such a touching plea about Abraham's having been led astray by Joe Lanning and being no more than a tool in his hands, and Abraham promised so faithfully that he would never deviate from the path of virtue again, now that his evil genius was removed, if they would only let him come back and graduate, that he was given the chance. Nothing new came up about the cutting of the wires except that the end of a knife blade was found on the floor under the place where the hole had been made in the wall. There were no marks of identification on it and nothing was done about it.

One day, Dick Albright, in the Physics room on the third floor of the building, stood by the window and looked across at a friend of his who was standing at the window of the Chemistry room. The two rooms faced each other across an open space in the back of the building, which was designed to let more light into certain rooms. This space was only open at the third and fourth floors. The second floor was roofed over with a skylight at this point. It was after school hours and Dick was alone in the room. So, apparently, was his friend. Dick raised the window and called across the space to the other boy, who raised his window and answered him. From talking back and forth they passed to throwing a ball of twine to each other. Once Dick failed to catch it, and falling short of the window, it rolled down upon the roof of the second story.

Dick promptly climbed out of the window, and sliding down the waterspout, reached the roof and went in pursuit of the ball. One of the windows opening from the third story onto this open space was that in the electric room, and it was under this window that the ball came to a standstill. As Dick stooped to pick it up he found a knife lying beside it. He brought it along with him and climbed back into his room. Then he pulled it out and looked at it. It was an ordinary pocket knife with a horn handle. On one side of the handle there was a plate bearing the name F. Boyd. "Frank Boyd's knife," said Dick to himself. "He must have dropped it out of the window." Idly he opened the blade. It was broken off about half an inch from the point. Dick began to turn things over in his mind. A piece of a knife blade had been found in the electric room. A knife with a broken blade had been found on the roof under the window of the electric room. That knife belonged to Frank Boyd. The inference was very simple. Frank had climbed in the window of the electric room from the roof of the second story and cut the wires, and then climbed out again, and so was not seen coming out of the room into the hall. In climbing out he had dropped the knife without noticing it. He had already left a piece of the blade inside. Frank Boyd was one of the lawless spirits who had caused much of the trouble all through the year. He had also been blackballed at the last election of the Thessalonian Society. It was very easy to believe that he would try to do something to spite the Thessalonians.

Dick hastened down to Mr. Jackson's office with the knife and asked him to fit the broken piece to the shortened blade. It fitted perfectly. Beyond a doubt it was Frank Boyd and not Hinpoha who had cut the wires in the electric room. The next morning Frank was confronted with the evidence of the knife and confessed his guilt. He had been in league with Joe Lanning, and cutting the wires had been his part of the job. He had done it in the early part of the evening while the actors were making up for their parts, getting in and out of the window, just as Dick had figured out. No one had detected him in the act and the lucky incident of Hinpoha's having been seen coming out of the electric room turned all suspicion away from him. Justice in his case was tardy but certain, and Frank Boyd was expelled, and Hinpoha was reinstated. Mr. Jackson, in his elation over having caught the real culprit and effectually breaking up the "Rowdy Ring," was gracious enough to make a public apology to Hinpoha. So the blot was wiped off her scutcheon, and Emily's secret was still intact, for no one ever asked again what Hinpoha had been doing in the electric room on the afternoon of the Thessalonian play.

CHAPTER XI.

ANOTHER COASTING PARTY.

"This is the terrible Hunger Moon, the lean gray wolf can hardly bay," quoted Hinpoha, as she threw out a handful of crumbs for the birds. The ground was covered with ice and snow, and the wintry winds whistled through the bare trees in the yard, ruffling up the feathers of the poor little sparrows huddling on the branches.