Anne nodded.
"We were sitting on a bench resting after the game, and the subject of basketball came up. Before I knew it, she was telling me all about finding the list of signals you lost last fall. She gave them to one of our class, you can guess who."
"Miriam," said Anne.
"Yes, it was Miriam. I always suspected that she had more to do with it than anyone else. She gave Julia the signals, because she wanted to see me humiliated, and fastened suspicion on you to shield herself. She knew that I had boasted, openly, that my team would win. When Julia gave me the statement that cleared you in the eyes of the girls, she told me that she was under promise not to tell how she obtained the signals. But I'm sure she knew that I suspected Miriam. What do you think we ought to do about it?"
Grace looked anxiously at Anne.
"I don't know, yet," Anne replied. "Now listen to my news. I have felt ever since the game that your getting locked up was not accidental. I don't know why I felt so, but I did, nevertheless. So I set to work to find out if any one else had been around there that day. I went to the janitress and asked her if she had noticed any one in the corridors before halfpast one. That was about the time that people began to come, you know. She said she hadn't. She was down in the basement and didn't go near the upstairs classrooms until after two o'clock. But when she did go up there she found this."
Anne held up a curious scarab pin that Grace immediately recognized. It was one that Miriam Nesbit often wore, and was extremely fond of.
"It's Miriam's," gasped Grace. "I wonder why——" She stopped. The reason Miriam had not made her loss known was plain. She was afraid to tell where and when she had lost her pin.
"I see," said Grace slowly. "It looks pretty bad, doesn't it? But why didn't the janitress take it straight to Miss Thompson? That's what she usually does with articles she finds."
"She missed seeing Miss Thompson that Saturday," said Anne. "When I hunted her up early Monday morning, in order to question her, she asked me if I had lost a pin. She said she had just returned one to Miss Thompson, and told me where she found it. I asked her to describe the pin, and at once recognized it. Every girl in school knows that scarab of Miriam's. There is nothing like it in Oakdale.