“Miss Walker,” she exclaimed, her voice trembling with indignation, “we have just found out, or, rather, the engineer has discovered, that some one has cut the electric wires. It was a clean cut, right through. I do think it was an outrage.” She was almost sobbing in her righteous anger.
The President’s face looked very grave.
“Are you sure of this?” she asked.
“It’s true, ma’am,” put in the engineer, who had followed close on the heels of the senior.
Without a word, President Walker rose and walked to the centre of the platform. With much subdued merriment the students were leaving the gymnasium in a body. Lifting a small chair standing near, she rapped with it on the floor for order. Instantly, every student faced the platform, and those who had not reached the aisles sat down.
“Young ladies,” began the President in her calm, cultivated tones that could strike terror to the heart of any erring student, “I wish to speak a word with you before you leave the gymnasium to-night. Probably most of you are aware by this time that the accident to the electric lighting was really not an accident at all, but the result of a deliberate act by some one in this room. Of course, I realize, that in so large a body of students as we have at Wellington University there must, of necessity, be some black sheep. These we endeavor, by every effort, to regenerate and by mid-years it is usually not a difficult matter to discover those who are in earnest and those who consider Wellington College merely a place of amusement. Those who do consider it as such, naturally, do not—er—remain with us after mid-years.”
To Molly, sitting on the platform, and to other trembling freshmen in the audience, the President seemed for the moment like a great and stern judge, who had appointed mid-years as the time for a general execution of criminals.
“I consider,” went on the speaker in slow and even tones, “idleness a most unfortunate quality, and I am prepared to combat it and to convince any of my girls who show that tendency that good hard work and only good hard work will bring success. A great many girls come here preferring idleness and learn to repent it—before mid-years.”
A wave of subdued laughter swept over the audience.
“But,” said the President, her voice growing louder and sterner, “young ladies, I am not prepared to combat chicanery and trickery by anything except the most severe measures, and if there is one among you who thinks and believes she can commit such despicable follies as that which has been done to-night, and escape—I would say to her that she is mistaken. I shall not endure such treachery. It shall be rooted out. For the honor and the illustrious name of this institution, I now ask each one of you to help me, and if there is one among you who knows the culprit and does not report it to me at once, I shall hold that girl as responsible as the real culprit. You may go now, and think well over what I have said.”