MYSTERY
For several minutes Billie Bradley stood at the window straining her eyes in the direction in which the man had disappeared, scarcely daring to breathe.
Then, when she was sure that whoever the fellow was he did not intend to come back, she turned from the window with a little sigh of mingled excitement and relief.
It was only a sigh, but it sounded so loud in the stillness of the room that it suddenly brought Billie to her senses.
Shivering a little, she crept into bed and drew the covers up under her chin. It would never do to be discovered by Miss Ada at this last minute, and she certainly could not do any good by standing there staring out of the window.
Whoever the man was, he had gone now and would not return. But could she be sure of that? Suppose he had been a thief—she shivered and drew the covers over her head. In that case she should have roused Miss Ada and told her the story.
But then, Miss Ada's first question was sure to be, "How did you happen to be standing by the window at twelve o'clock at night?"
Then would come suspicion, a search, perhaps, and discovery. No, she couldn't, she couldn't! But what had that man been doing?
For more than an hour she lay, too excited to sleep, shivering at any sudden sound, wondering—wondering. Toward morning she fell asleep, only to dream of picnics where one did nothing but catch codfish and eat them, of a strange man with a stooping figure, running across a lawn bathed in moonlight.
Luckily for the girls who had been at the party, there were other girls in dormitory "C" who had gone to bed at the usual respectable hour—Amanda Peabody and Eliza Dilks, for instance—and who, as usual, heard the rising bell. If it had not been for them and the noise they made Billie and the others of the five might have slept on till noon.