Produced by Robert Prince, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks

and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

NAN SHERWOOD AT ROSE RANCH

OR

THE OLD MEXICAN'S TREASURE

BY

ANNIE ROE CARR

CONTENTS

I. SCHOOL REOPENS

II. INTRODUCTIONS

III. "CURFEW SHALL NOT RING TO-NIGHT"

IV. WALKING THE PLANK

V. RHODA IS UNPOPULAR

VI. THE MEXICAN GIRL

VII. DOWN THE SLOPE

VIII. AFTERNOON TEA

IX. NOT ALWAYS "BUTTERFINGERS"

X. THE TREASURE OF ROSE RANCH

XI. JUANITA

XII. ROSE RANCH AT LAST

XIII. OPEN SPACES

XIV. THE POOR LITTLE CALF

XV. A TROPHY FOR ROOM EIGHT

XVI. EXPECTATIONS

XVII. THE ROUND-UP

XVIII. THE OUTLAW

XIX. A RAID

XX. THE ANTELOPE HUNT; AND MORE

XXI. IN THE OLD BEAR DEN

XXII. AFTER THE TEMPEST

XXIII. THE LETTER FROM JUANITA

XXIV. UNCERTAINTIES

XXV. THE STAMPEDE

XXVI. WHO ARE THEY?

XXVII. THE FUNNEL

XXVIII. A PRISONER

XXIX. A TAMED OUTLAW

XXX. TREASURE-TROVE

CHAPTER I

SCHOOL REOPENS

"And of course," drawled Laura Polk, she of the irrepressible spirits and what Mrs. Cupp called "flamboyant" hair, "she will come riding up to the Hall on her trusty pinto pony (whatever kind of pony that is), with a gun at her belt and swinging a lariat. She will yell for Dr. Beulah to come forth, and the minute the darling appears this Rude Rhoda from the Rolling Prairie will proceed to rope our dear preceptress and bear her off captive to her lair—"

"My—goodness—gracious—Agnes!" exclaimed Amelia Boggs, more frequently addressed as 'Procrastination Boggs', "you are getting your metaphors dreadfully mixed. It is a four-legged beast of prey that bears its victim away to its 'lair.'"

"How do you know Rollicking Rhoda from Crimson Gulch hasn't four legs?" demanded the red-haired girl earnestly. "You know very well from what we see in the movies that there are more wonders in the 'Wild and Woolly West' than are dreamed of in your philosophy, Horatio-Amelia."

"One thing I say," said a very much overdressed girl who had evidently just arrived, for she had not removed her furs and coat, and was warming herself before the open fire in the beautiful reception hall where this conversation was going on, "I think Lakeview Hall is getting to be dreadfully common, when all sorts and conditions of girls are allowed to come here."

"Oh, I guess this Rhododendron-girl from Dead Man's Den has money enough to suit even you, Linda," Laura Polk said carelessly.

"Money isn't everything, I hope," said the girl in furs, tossing her head.

"Hear! Hear!" exclaimed Laura, and some of the other girls laughed.
"Linda's had a change of heart."

"Dear me!" sniffed Linda Riggs, "how smart you are, Polk. Just as though I was not used to anything but money—"

"True. You are. But you have never talked about much of anything else before this particular occasion," said the red-haired girl. "What has happened to you, Linda mine, since you separated from us all at the beginning of the winter holidays?"

Linda merely sniffed again and turned to speak to her particular chum, Cora Courtney.

"You should have been with me in Chicago, Cora—at my cousin, Pearl Graves', house. I tried to get Pearl—she's just about our age—to come to Lakeview Hall; but she goes to a private school right in her neighborhood—oh! a very select place. No girl like this wild Western person Polk is talking about, would be received there. No, indeed!"

"Hi, Linda!" broke in the irrepressible red-haired girl, "why didn't you try to enter that wonderful school?"

"I did ask to. But my father is so old-fashioned," complained Linda. "He would not hear of it. Said it would not be treating Dr. Beulah right."

"Oh, oh!" groaned Laura. "How the dear doctor would have suffered,
Linda, if you had not come back to her sheltering arms."

The laugh this raised among the party made Linda's cheeks flame more hotly than before. She would not look at the laughing group again. A flaxen-haired girl with pink cheeks and blue eyes—one of the smallest though not the youngest in the party—came timidly to Linda Riggs' elbow.

"Did you spend all your vacation in Chicago?" she asked gently. "I was to go to visit Grace; but there was sickness at home, and so I couldn't. Didn't the Masons come back with you, Linda?"

"And Nan Sherwood and Bess Harley?" questioned Amelia Boggs, the homely girl. "They went to the Masons' to visit, didn't they?"

"I'm sure I could not tell you much about them," Linda said, shrugging her shoulders. "I had something else to do, I can assure you, than to look up Sherwood and Harley."

"Why!" gasped the fair-haired girl, "Grace wrote me that you were at her house, and went to the theater with them, and that—that—"

"Well, what of it, Lillie Nevins?" demanded the other sharply.

"In her letter she said you had a dreadful accident. That you were run away with in a sleigh and that Nan Sherwood and Walter saved your life."

"That sounds interesting!" cried Laura Polk. "So Our Nan has been playing the he-ro-wine again? How did it happen?"

"She has been putting herself forward the same as usual," snapped
Linda Riggs. "I suppose that is what you mean. And Grace is crazy.
Walter did help me when Madam Graves' horses ran away; but Nan
Sherwood had nothing to do with it. Or, nothing much, at least."

"Keep on," said Laura Polk, dryly, "and I guess we'll get the facts of the case."

"If you think I am going to join this crew that praises Nan
Sherwood to the skies, you are mistaken," cried Linda.

"All right. We'll hear all about it when Bess Harley comes," said
Laura, laughing. She did like to plague Linda Riggs.

"Where are Nan and Bess, to say nothing of Gracie?" Amelia Boggs wanted to know. "You came on the last train, didn't you, Linda?"

"Oh, I did not pay much attention to those on the train," said Linda airily. "Father had his private car put on for me, and I rode in that."

Mr. Riggs was president of the railroad, and by no chance did his daughter ever let her mates lose sight of that fact.

"My goodness!" exclaimed Cora, "didn't you have anybody with you?"

"Well, no. You see, I invited Walter and Grace Mason, but they had people in the chair car they thought they must entertain," and she sniffed again.

"Oh, you Linda!" laughed Laura. "I bet I know who they were entertaining."

"Here comes the bus!" cried Amelia suddenly.

A rush of more than half the girls gathered about the open hearth for the great main entrance door of Lakeview Hall followed the announcement. This hall was almost like a castle set upon a high cliff overlooking Lake Huron on one side and the straggling town of Freeling, and Freeling Inlet, on the other.

The girls flung open the door. The school bus had just stopped before the wide veranda. Girls were fairly "boiling out of it," as Laura declared. Short, tall, thin, stout girls and girls of all ages between ten and seventeen tramped merrily up the steps with their handbags. Such a hullabaloo of greeting as there was!

"Come on, Cora," said Linda, haughtily. "Let us go up to our room.
They are positively vulgar."

"Oh, no, Linda!" Cora cried. "I want to stay and see the fun."

"Fun!" gasped the disdainful Linda.

"Yes," said Cora, who was a terrible toady, but who showed some spirit on this occasion. "I want to have fun with the other girls. I don't want to be left out of everything just because of you. Even if you are going to flock by yourself this term, as you did most of last, because you are all the time quarreling with the girls that have the nicest times, I'm going to get into the fun."

This, according to Linda Riggs' opinion, was crass ingratitude and treachery. Besides, she and Cora had the nicest room in the Hall, for it had been fixed up especially for his daughter by Mr. Riggs; and Cora, who was poor, was allowed to be Linda's roommate without extra charge.

"You mean that you want to run with that Nan Sherwood and Bess
Harley crew!" exclaimed Linda.

"I want to get into some of the fun. And so do you, Linda! Don't act offish," and Cora walked toward the open door to meet the new arrivals.

It was a terrible shock to the railroad magnate's daughter—this. The defection of her chief henchman and ally would rather break up the little group which Laura Polk had unkindly dubbed "the School of Snobs." With all her wealth Linda had but few retainers.

In the van of the newcomers were a rather comely, brown-eyed girl with a bright and cheerful expression of countenance, a dark beauty with curls and flashing eyes, and a demure but pretty girl to whom Lillie Nevins ran with exclamations of joy. This last was Grace Mason, the flaxen-haired girl's chum.

"Oh, Nancy! how well you look," cried Laura, hugging the brown-eyed girl. And to the curly-haired one: "What mischief have you got into, Bess? You look just as though you had done something."

"Don't say a word!" gasped Bess Harley in the red-haired girl's ear. "It's what we are going to do. Some sawneys have arrived. We'll have a procession."

"Oh, say!" exclaimed Amelia Boggs, "there is one special sawney expected. Did she come on this train with you other girls?"

"Oh, that's so! Who has seen Roistering Rhoda of the Staked Plains?
Mrs. Cupp said she was due tonight," cried Laura.

"For goodness' sake!" exclaimed Bess, "who is that?"

"A sawney!" cried one of the other girls.

"They say she is Rhoda Hammond, from the very farthest West there is," Laura said gravely. "Of course she will ride in on a mustang, or something like that."

"What! with the snow two feet deep?" laughed the brown-eyed girl, tossing off her furs and smiling at the group of her schoolmates with happy mien.

"Say not so!" begged Laura. "No pony? What is the use of having a cow-girl fresh from the wildest West come to Lakeview Hall unless she comes in proper character?"

Nan Sherwood, having swept her old friends with her quick glance, now looked back at the group that had followed her into the hall. The bus had been so crowded and so dark that she had not known half of those who had been with her coming up from the Freeling railroad station.

"How nice it is to get back, isn't it?" she murmured to her special chum, Bess Harley.

"I should say!" agreed Elizabeth, warmly and emphatically.

Laura Polk, as an older girl and, after all, one of the most thoughtful, suddenly noticed a stranger in brown who still stood just inside the door that somebody had thoughtfully closed.

She made quite a charming, not to say striking, figure, as she stood there alone, just the faintest smile upon her lips, yet looking quite as neglected and lonely as any novice could possibly look.

This stranger wore brown furs and a brown coat, with a hat to match on which was a really wonderful brown plume. She wore bronze shoes and hose. Even Linda Riggs was dressed no more richly than this girl; only the latter was dressed in better taste than Linda.

Laura, leaving the gay company, went quickly toward the girl in brown and held out her hand.

"I am sure you are a stranger here," she said. "And I am a member of the Welcoming Committee. I am Laura Polk. And you—?"

"I am Rhoda Hammond," said the demure girl quietly.

"What!" almost shouted the startled Laura. "You're never! You can't be! Not Rollicking Rhoda from Rustlers' Roost, the wild Western adventuress we've heard so much about?"

"No," said the girl in brown, still placidly. "I am Rhoda Hammond from Rose Ranch."

CHAPTER II

INTRODUCTIONS

"Oh, my auntie!" murmured Amelia Boggs, using most uncommendable slang. "Stung!"

But Laura Polk, if inclined to be boisterous and rather rude in her jokes, was by no means petty. She burst into such a good-natured and disarming laugh that the girl in brown was forced to join her.

"There, Laura," said Bess Harley, "the biter for once is the bitten. I hope you are properly overcome."

Nan Sherwood likewise hastened to offer the new girl her hand.

"I am glad to greet you, Rhoda Hammond," she said sympathetically. "You must not mind our animal spirits. We just do slop over at this time, my dear. Wait till you see how gentle and decorous we have to be after the semester really begins. This is only letting off steam, you know."

"Do you meet all newcomers with the same grade of hospitality?" asked Rhoda Hammond, with more than a little sarcasm in both her words and tone.

"Only more so," Bess Harley assured her. "Oh, Nan! consider what they did to us when we came here for the first time last September. 'Member?"

Nan nodded with sudden gravity in her pretty face. She was not likely to forget that trying time. She had been on a very different footing with her schoolmates for the first few weeks of her life at Lakeview Hall than she was now.

Rhoda Hammond, the new girl, seemed to apprehend something of this change, for she said quickly and with much good sense:

"Well, if you two could stand it, and are evidently so much thought of now, I'll grin and bear it, too. Though it isn't just as we are taught to treat strangers out home. At Rose Ranch if a person is a tenderfoot we try to make it particularly easy for him."

"Oh, my dear," drawled Bess, her eyes dancing, "it works just the opposite at a girls' boarding school, believe me!"

Her chum, Nan, was for the moment not in a laughing mood. She could scarcely realize now that she was the same Nan Sherwood who had come so wonderingly and timidly to Lakeview Hall.

Of the Sherwoods there were only Nan and her father and mother. They were an especially warmly attached trio and probably, if a most wonderful and startling thing had not happened, Nan and Momsey and Papa Sherwood would never have been separated, or been fairly shaken out of their family existence, as they had been just about a year before this present story opens.

The Sherwoods lived in a little cottage on Amity Street in Tillbury. Bess Harley lived with her parents and brothers and sisters in the same town; but they were much better off financially than the Sherwoods. Mr. Sherwood was a foreman in the Atwater Mills, and when that company abruptly closed down, Nan's father was thrown out of work and the prospect of real poverty stared the Sherwoods in the face.

Then the unexpected happened. A distant relative of Mrs. Sherwood's died, leaving her some property in Scotland. But it was necessary for her to appear personally before the Scotch courts to obtain Hughie Blake's fortune.

Circumstances were such, however, that her parents could not take
Nan with them. It was a hard blow to the girl; but she was plucky
and ready to accept the determination of Momsey and Papa Sherwood.
When they started for Scotland, Nan started for Pine Camp with her
Uncle Henry, and the first book of this series relates for the most
part Nan's exciting adventures in the lumber region of the Michigan
Peninsula, under the title of: "Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp; Or, the
Old Lumberman's Secret."

As has been mentioned, Nan and her chum, Bess Harley, had come to Lakeview Hall the previous September. The matter of Momsey's fortune had not then been settled in the Scotch courts; but enough money had been advanced to make it possible for Nan to accompany her chum to the very good boarding school on the shore of Lake Huron.

In "Nan Sherwood at Lakeview Hall; Or, the Mystery of the Haunted Boathouse," the two friends are first introduced to boarding-school life, and to this very merry, if somewhat thoughtless, company of girls that have already been brought to the attention of the reader in our present volume.

They were for the most part nice girls and, at heart, kindly intentioned; but Nan had gone through some harsh experiences, as well as exciting times, during the fall and winter semester at Lakeview Hall. She had made friends, as she always did; and the Masons, Grace and Walter, determined to have her with them in Chicago over the holidays. Therefore, in the third volume of the series, "Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays; Or, Rescuing the Runaways," we find Nan and her chum with their friends in the great city of the Lakes.

During those two weeks of absence from school Nan certainly had experienced some exciting times. Included in her adventures were her experiences in rescuing two foolish country girls who had run away to be motion picture actresses. In addition Nan Sherwood had saved little Inez, a street child, and had taken her back to "the little dwelling in amity," as Papa Sherwood called their Tillbury home. For Nan's parents had returned from across the seas, and she was beginning this second semester at Lakeview Hall in a much happier state of mind in every way than she had begun the first one.

It was only to be expected that Nan would try to make the coming of the girl in brown, Rhoda Hammond, more pleasant than her own first appearance at school had been.

But the girls who had remained at the Hall over the holidays were fairly wild. At least, Mrs. Cupp said so, and Mrs. Cupp, Doctor Beulah Prescott's housekeeper, ought to know for she had had complete charge of the crowd during the intermission of studies.

"And, believe me," sighed Laura Polk, "we've led the dear some dance."

Mrs. Cupp looked very stern now as she suddenly appeared from her office at the end of the big hall. She scarcely responded to the greetings of the girls who had returned—not even to Nan's—but asked in a most forbidding tone:

"Who is there new? Girls who have for the first time arrived, come into my office at once. There is time for the usual formalities before supper."

"Oh, my dear," murmured Bess Harley wickedly, and loud enough for the girl in brown to hear her, "she is in a dreadful temper. She certainly will put these poor sawneys through the wringer tonight."

Rhoda Hammond evidently took this "with a grain of salt." She asked, before going to the office:

"What sort of instrument of torture is the 'wringer,' please?"

"I am speaking in metaphor," explained Bess. "But you wait! She will wring tears from your eyes before she gets through with you. As the little girls say, you can see her 'mad is up.'"

"Oh, now, Elizabeth," warned Nan, "don't scare her."

Rhoda walked away without another word. Bess looked after her with an admiring light in her eyes.

"Oh, Nan! isn't she beautifully dressed?"

"Richly dressed, I agree," said Nan. "But Mrs. Cupp will have something to say about that."

"I know," giggled the wicked and slangy Bess. "She'll give her an earful about dressing 'out of order.' She is worse than Linda."

"No. Better," said Nan confidently. "Whoever chose that girl's outfit showed beautiful taste, even if she is dressed much too richly for the standard of Lakeview Hall."

Linking arms a little later, when the supper gong sounded, the two friends from Tillbury sought the pleasant dining-room where the whole school—"primes" as well as the four upper divisions—ate at long tables, with an instructor in charge of each division.

But discipline was relaxed to-night, as it was always at such times. Even Mrs. Cupp, who, all through the meal, marched up and down the room with a hawk eye on everything and everybody, was less strict than ordinarily.

The moment Nan Sherwood appeared the little girls hailed her as their chum and "Big Sister." Nothing would do but she must sit at their table and share their food for this one meal.

"Oh, dear, Nan!" cried one little miss, "did you bring back Beautiful Beulah all safe and sound with you? Shall we have her to play with again this term?"

"Why, bless you, honey!" returned the bigger girl, "I did not even take the doll away. Mrs. Cupp has charge of it, and if she lets me, we will take it up into Room Seven, Corridor Four, to-morrow."

"Oh, won't that be nice?" acclaimed the little girls, for Nan's big doll was an institution at Lakeview Hall among more than the children in the primary department.

But at the end of the meal Nan was dragged away by the older girls.
They were an excited and hilarious crowd.

"There's something doing!" whispered Bess in Nan's ear. "That new girl is on our corridor. You know the room that was shut up all last term?"

"Number eight?"

"That is the one. Rhoda has got it. And what do you think?"

"Almost any mischief," replied Nan, with dancing eyes.

"Oh, now, Nan! Well, Laura has told her that the room is haunted. Says a girl died there two years ago and it's never been used since. And so now her ghost will be sure to haunt it—"

"I think that is both mean and silly of Laura," interrupted Nan, with vigor. "She will have some of these little girls, who will be bound to hear the tale, scared half to death. Is that poor girl going to live in Number Eight alone?"

"She is until somebody else comes to mate with her," said Bess carelessly. "Come on, old Poky. We're going to have some fun with that wild Westerner."

"I'll go along," agreed Nan, smiling again, "if only to make sure that you crazy ones do not go too far in your hazing."

CHAPTER III

"CURFEW SHALL NOT RING TONIGHT"

In Corridor Four had always been centered most of Lakeview Hall's "high jinks," to quote Laura Polk. Although Procrastination Boggs, Nan Sherwood, Bess Harley, and several other dwellers on this corridor stood well up in their classes, Mrs. Cupp was inclined to locate most infractions of the school rules in the confines of Corridor Four.

"Our overflowing an-i-mile spirits, young ladies, are our bane," quoted Laura, talking through her nose. "Dr. Beulah has been away—has not arrived home yet—and we unfortunate orphans have been driven to bed with the chickens. I, for one, have revolted."

"You don't look very revolting, Laura," drawled Amelia Boggs, "even with that red necktie on crooked."

"Just the same, I have anarchistic tendencies. I feel 'em," declared the red-haired girl.

"That is not anarchism you feel," scoffed Bess. "If I had eaten what you did for supper—"

"Oh, say not so!" begged Laura. "Don't tell me that all this disturbance within me is from merely what I ate. Why, I feel that I might lead an assault on Cupp's office, take her by force, and immure her in—"

"The old secret passage to the boathouse," put in Nan.

"Oh, goodness—gracious—Agnes!" said Amelia, looking at one of her watches, "if we are going to do anything to that wild Western mustang to-night—"

"Hush! Have no fear," interrupted Laura. "There is time enough."

"Procrastination should know that," giggled Bess, "with all the watches and clocks she owns."

"While we gab here," went on Amelia, "curfew time approaches."

Laura struck an attitude. "Listen, girls!" she cried. "'Curfew shall not ring to-night!'"

"Now, don't begin reciting old chestnuts like that," sniffed Bess.

"It is an announcement of revolt, not a recitation, I'd have you know," declared the red-haired girl.

"What do you mean, Laura?" Nan asked, suddenly seeing that Laura really had some meaning underneath her raillery.

"Hush, children!" crooned the red-haired girl. "What is our greatest trial—our most implacable enemy—in this fair Garden of Eves? Tell me!"

"Mrs. Cupp," sighed Nan.

"Nay, nay! She is but the slave of the lamp," responded Laura, still in flowery fashion. "The bete noire of the girls of Lakeview Hall is the half-past nine o'clock curfew. And I vow it shall not ring to-night!"

"Why won't it?" asked Nan, finally grown suspicious.

"Because," hissed Laura, her eyes dancing, "I climbed up into the tower this forenoon and unhooked and hid the bell-clapper. They won't find it for one while, now you mark my word!"

"Oh, Laura!" gasped Nan; but then she, too, had to join in the peal of laughter that the other girls in Room Seven, Corridor Four, emitted.

"What a joke!" exclaimed Bess.

"It's one of those jokes best kept secret," advised Amelia Boggs, who, after all, possessed a fund of caution. "Mrs. Cupp will be desperately moved when she finds it out."

"At least," Nan agreed, "Laura is right. Curfew will not ring to-night. But Mrs. Cupp will find some other way of making it known that retiring hour has arrived. We'd best get to work if we are going to have a procession of the sawneys."

"Girls," suddenly asked Bess, "who ever started that lumberman's slang of 'sawney' for 'greenhorn' up in this hall of acquired good English?"

"Oh, come, Bess!" groaned Amelia, "the term hasn't really opened yet. Don't make us delve into the past for the roots of our language. It's us for the procession now!"

Nan Sherwood entered into the plan for the evening's hazing of newcomers for a special reason. She had liked the girl from the West, Rhoda Hammond, at first sight. Not for her beautiful clothing, but for something Nan had seen in her countenance.

The former purposed to take an active part in whatever was done to the newcomer because she believed she could influence the more thoughtless girls to the extent that nothing very harsh would be done to Rhoda.

"I'll stir up the animals," cried Bess, hopping off her bed, where she had been perching. "We want a big crowd to help worry that Hammond girl."

She was gone in a flash to get together the other girls of Corridor
Four. Laura yawned:

"I wonder if we'll be able to worry that wild Western young person much, after all?" she said. "She looked to me like a cool sort of person."

"I don't know," said Amelia. "I think she's stuck up."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that," cried Nan.

"She's dressed to kill, just the same. I'd like to take her for a good long tramp in that outfit she came in."

"Procrastination means this Riotous Rhoda has got too much money—like Linda Riggs," put in Laura.

"I wonder if that Rose Ranch she comes from is a nice place," said
Nan. "Just think! A real cattle ranch!"

"Pooh!" said Amelia. "My uncle owns a dairy farm. What's the difference whether you have muley cows or long-horned Texas steers?"

Laura was still chuckling at this when Bess returned with several girls who crowded into the room behind her. There was a busy time for a few minutes as the girls dressed Amelia in an old pillow-slip with eye-holes burned in it, and placed in her hand the staff of a broom, over the brush-end of which was drawn another bag, on which, in charcoal, Grace Mason deftly drew a very wise looking owl in outline.

Thus arrayed, Amelia was to lead the procession and be Mistress of Ceremonies. They were about to start when Laura Polk was suddenly missed.

"Now, where has she gone?" demanded Bess. "She's just like a flea!
You put your hand on her, and there she isn't!"

But Laura was back in a moment. She brought with her, and dangled before their wondering gaze, a suit of paint-stained overalls, jumper and all, that evidently by their size belonged to Henry, the boatkeeper and man of all work of Lakeview Hall.

"I hid 'em the other day," declared the red-haired girl. "You never know what may happen, or how such garments as these may come in use."

"But, for pity's sake, Laura!" gasped Nan, "what are they for?"

"Don't they make just the uniform needed for a cowgirl? What say? I bet she rides astride, and these old overalls will remind her of home, at Rustlers' Roost, and all that, you know."

The shrieks of laughter that answered this proposal threatened to bring some of the teachers and so spoil the fun altogether. Finally, however, Amelia Boggs got the crowd into line, and the parade marched out of Room Seven into the corridor.

Room Eight was almost directly opposite the one occupied by Nan and Bess; but Amelia led the procession the full length of the hall and returned again before rapping a summons on Rhoda Hammond's door.

"Oh, yes! In a minute," cried a small voice from inside.

But Amelia waited on no appeal of this character. She found on turning the knob that the door was unlocked. She flung it open and stalked in, the other girls trailing two by two behind her.

"Oh, dear me! what do you want?" gasped Rhoda.

She had removed and hung up in the clothes-closet the beautiful furs, dress, and hat. Her bag was open on the couch, but it seemed to contain no kimono, and the Western girl remained half hidden behind the portiere that hung before the closet.

"What do you want?" she repeated, gazing in wonder at the tall figure of the Mistress of Ceremonies.

"We are just in time," said Amelia behind her mask, and in a supposed-to-be-sepulchral voice. "The sawney is all prepared to don her costume. Hither, slave! and see that she dons the costume quickly, for we must haste."

"The slave hithers," said Laura jovially. "Here you are,
Rambunctious Rhoda from Rawhide Springs. Put 'em on."

She held out the overalls and jumper to the surprised new girl, who hesitated to take them.

"Hic jacet! The varlet refuses 'em!" hissed the red-haired girl.

"Goodness, Laura," whispered Nan. "That means 'here lies'—and nobody is telling stories."

"She's got her Latin and Shakesperean English most awfully mixed," giggled one of the other girls.

"And 'varlet' is the wrong gender, anyway," observed Bess.

"Silence!" commanded the Mistress of Ceremonies. "Silence in the ranks. Will she not don the costume?"

"Put 'em on!" commanded Laura again, shaking the painter's suit before the hesitating Western girl.

"She would better," said Amelia threateningly, "or I will call to your aid all these, my faithful followers, who have already been through the fiery trial."

"I don't want to go through any fiery trial," said Rhoda. "But if you insist, I'll put on that jacket and the pants."

"'Pants' is truly Western, isn't it, Laura?" asked Amelia Boggs.
"Civilized folk say trousers."

"I see I have much to learn," said Rhoda, too meekly, perhaps.

She slipped quickly into the roomy overalls behind the curtain, and then came forth, putting on the jumper. Her bare arms and shoulders were brown and firm. Nan thought Rhoda's figure was as attractive as her face was pretty. She caught the new girl's glance and smiled encouragingly.

"Doesn't she make a darling boy!" whispered Bess Harley to her chum.

But the other girls—at least, some of them—meant to make the newcomer feel keenly her position as a "sawney."

"She wears 'em just as though she was at home in them," said Laura drawlingly. "I tell you she is a regular cowgirl at home on the Hot Dog Mesa. Isn't that so, Miss Rhoda?"

"You seem to know," replied the Western girl bruskly.

Laura suddenly whispered to the hooded Amelia. The latter cleared her throat portentously and said:

"Sawney, it is evident that you must be taught your place. Meekness becomes you lambkins when you first come to Lakeview Hall. Slave, prepare the bandage."

"What's that?" demanded Rhoda. "Do you know, I don't like this foolishness much."

"The fiery trial all right for yours!" exclaimed Laura, who had caught up a towel and was folding it dexterously. "Turn around!"

"I won't!" declared Rhoda flatly.

"Mutiny!" exclaimed Amelia. "Seize the captive and bandage her eyes at once," and she pounded on the floor with the broom handle.

Nan was one of those who grabbed the Western girl. But she did so to whisper swiftly in Rhoda's ear:

"Don't fight against it. It's only fun."

"Fun!" repeated Rhoda in disgust.

But she gave over struggling. Laura blindfolded her quickly and securely. Of course she might have torn the bandage off, for her hands were free. But she waited more calmly now for what might come next.

CHAPTER IV

WALKING THE PLANK

Nan Sherwood knew very well that there was no intention of really injuring the new girl; therefore she made no objection to what was done. Indeed, she helped haze Rhoda Hammond, but more for the sake of seeing that the Western girl was not taken advantage of in any way than for the fun of the prank.

Nan did not know what Amelia and Laura had planned to do to the new girl, but knowing the older girls as well as she did, she was sure that nothing very bad was intended.

Somebody found an old striped silk parasol with some of the panels split, and this was opened and given to Rhoda to carry. The line of march was then taken up, with the victim directly behind the Mistress of Ceremonies and Laura and Nan shutting off all chance of Rhoda's escape.

The latter's cheeks were very red and her teeth gripped her lower lip tightly. Bess mentioned, giggling, that Rhoda looked already as though she were going through the fiery trial!

Nan realized it would have gone much better for the Western girl if she had taken it smiling. She feared that Rhoda's attitude would make the hazing more severe and more prolonged. She wished she knew what was in the minds of Laura and Amelia Boggs regarding the new girl.

The procession marched through Corridor Four to the rear stairway. Amelia stalked ahead, carrying the broom, her "wand of office." The stairway led threateningly near to Mrs. Cupp's room.

"Don't dare breathe even, while we are going down," hissed Laura.

"Silence!" reiterated Amelia.

They descended carefully—all but the prisoner. But when she made too much noise Laura poked her.

"Here!" the red-haired girl muttered, "make believe you are stealing upon a band of Indians to scalp 'em—the poor things! You don't walk like a prairie rose. You stamp along more like a charging buffalo."

"Goodness!" sighed Lillie Nevins, in the rear, "how much our Laura knows about the West, doesn't she?"

At the titter which followed this remark, their leader hissed for silence again. The procession was now winding down the stairway to the rear of Mrs. Cupp's office. They were bound for the basement, it seemed.

For a moment Nan Sherwood wondered if the older girls intended to reach the subterranean passage which connected the trunk room with the boathouse at the foot of the cliff. Then she remembered that the trunk room would be locked at this hour and that Mrs. Cupp had the key.

But the gymnasium was down here, too. The cellars under the school were enormous. Castle-like, the great, rambling building had been constructed by a man with more imagination than money. The latter ran out before his castle on the cliff was completed. After years of emptiness, Dr. Beulah Prescott had obtained it and made it into what it now was—a school for girls.

The great gymnasium was not locked. Laura ran quickly when they entered the dusky place, and punched the light buttons.

"What do you suppose Mrs. Gleason will say?" whispered Grace Mason.
Mrs. Gleason was the athletic instructor.

"She won't say a thing if she doesn't know," declared Bess promptly.

Some one closed the door, and Nan saw then that there were at least twenty girls in the room. Some had joined the procession from other corridors. Now they all began to gabble at once, and Amelia pounded frantically for order.

Nan saw that the bandage was sufficiently tight across Rhoda's eyes. Then she led her into the middle of the great room. Amelia was beckoning.

There had been repairs going on in the gymnasium during the holidays, and a good deal of the paraphernalia had been disarranged. It was evident, too, that the workmen were not entirely through. A long plank, used by the men as a scaffolding, stretched from one set of horizontal bars to another on the platform at one end of the room.

Laura called the other girls and in whispers directed them to gather all the mattresses and pile them on the platform under the somewhat insecure plank. Amelia, her eyes sparkling through the holes in the pillow-slip, held Nan and the prisoner back.

"Sawney," the tall girl said sternly, "as you have filed objections to being tried by fire according to the ancient and honorable custom of Lakeview lambkins, you shall be treated as a robber—No! A pirate. You shall be made to walk the plank."

"Well," said Rhoda, rather scornfully. She did not see anything funny in all this.

"It will be a pretty deep well you will plop into," threatened
Amelia. "Ready, slaves?"

"Your slaves are slavishly ready," called Laura from the platform. "Let the sawney climb the ship's taffrail and be plunged into the sea."

"We ought to tie her hands behind her," said one girl, as they marched down the room.

"No," said Nan.

"That is right," said Amelia. "We must give her a chance to swim when she strikes the water."

"Oh, fiddlesticks!" murmured Rhoda.

But Nan saw Laura run and fill a big dipper with water from the spigot and give it to one of the other girls, who climbed quickly to the platform. Then Laura came to seize the victim's other arm. She and Nan marched Rhoda, willy-nilly, down the room and up the steps to the platform.

Rhoda stumbled on each step and held her head down. Nan, therefore, judged that Rhoda could see a little from under the bandage. But she did not call Laura's attention to this fact.

"Mount her quickly, slaves!" called Amelia from below. "Force her to walk the plank instantly!"

There had been a stepladder set up against the first horizontal bar set, right at the end of the plank. Nan saw that the mattresses were all in place and that a fall from the plank would only be about three feet. Such a fall was not likely to be serious, and to girls used to athletic drill it seemed a mere nothing. And yet—

"Come on!" commanded Laura, half lifting Rhoda up the stepladder.

"Careful, Laura!" whispered Nan. "If she should fall—"

"Then she will escape drowning," said the red-haired girl, coolly and aloud.

"Fudge!" muttered the victim, who seemed in a very much disgusted mood.

"Beseemeth the candidate is not sufficiently impressed by her situation," hissed Laura.

She and Nan had scrambled up the steps with the blindfolded Rhoda.
There was a cross-plank which gave the three uncertain footing.

"Oh, look out!" gasped Nan, wavering herself upon the edge of the plank.

"Hey! We don't want to have to raise the 'man overboard' cry just yet," grumbled Laura. "Easy there, Nancy!"

Nan whispered in Rhoda's ear: "Walk straight ahead. It isn't hard.
I'll be ready to catch you."

"Out on the plank, sawney!" commanded Amelia from below.

Laura pushed Rhoda ahead. The candidate for initiation, even if she could see a little from under the bandage, had at best a very uncertain idea of where she was, or where she was going. Besides, with one's eyes practically blinded, it is very difficult indeed to walk a chalk line, even on the floor. And this plank that was far from steady was only about a foot in width.

"Oh!" ejaculated Rhoda, one foot before the other and her arms waving for a balance. The parasol did not help much.

"Oh! oh! oh!" was the prolonged wail from the crowd below.

"You—think—you're—so—smart!" Again the Western girl teetered back and forth. Laura gave her another slight push. Rhoda took one more step, and let the parasol fall.

"Good!" encouraged Nan.

"Treason!" croaked Laura, observing Nan's encouragement of the candidate.

"Have a care, sawney," declared Amelia Boggs sternly. "A false step and you are lost! The ravening sea is below you. Feel the spray dashing in your face!"

Quick as a flash the girl with the dipper filled her palm with water and threw it upward. It spattered into Rhoda's face and she jerked back her head.

The motion destroyed the balance she had gained. She uttered a stifled ejaculation and wavered again. Laura stretched out a hand and wickedly nudged the victim.

"Oh, don't!" yelled Nan, and she leaped down upon the mattresses.

Rhoda completely lost her equilibrium. She uttered another scream and stepped out into space.

"Man overboard!" shouted Laura.

And as Rhoda fell the girl with the dipper flung its contents over the flying figure of the new girl.

CHAPTER V

RHODA IS UNPOPULAR

The blindfolded Rhoda came down so awkwardly that Nan feared she would be hurt. The girl from Tillbury screamed a warning—which was useless.

But in that exciting moment Nan noted something that afterward gave her a sidelight upon Rhoda Hammond's character. As the Western girl felt herself going she snatched off the blindfolding towel.

Self-possession! Rhoda owned that attribute, largely developed. She was cool, if angry.