"Miss Kroutz and Miss Rowena, my desk was opened last night, and my essay-the first rough draft-was carried off. Nobody but Angie Bryant and I knew that I was writing the examination essay, and to any other girl than I it would be mere waste paper. It is most vexatious, and I think it has been done as a trick-a practical joke."

Miss Rowena was a little lady—a wee bit of a dame, but of most dignified presence. She drew herself up to her full height, and had the effect thus of being very impressive.

"Elizabeth Armour, I agree with you. A practical joke of this sort is very unseemly and very discreditable to Ingleside. It appears as if the series of disgraceful occurrences which have disturbed our tranquillity of late belong to the same category. I shall sift the mattersift it to the bottom, and shall begin, with my sister's permission, by searching every box, trunk and drawer in the house."

Miss Kroutz was reluctant to consent, but as the search was to be general and public, and as the losers of property were numerous, she yielded. One of the most puzzling particulars was that the thief could not dispose of the goods taken in any apparently easy way. Ingleside was in the country, six miles from the railway station, and there was no village. No young lady, and no servant had gone away for the last month, and the only visitors had been the clergyman of the parish, his wife, and sister, and two elderly ladies, former preceptresses at Ingleside.

The trunks were searched, the rooms were ransacked, closets and cubby-holes were, so to speak, turned inside out, but all to no purpose. Not a missing brooch, or ribbon, or crisp dollar bill, or shining silver piece made its reappearance, and not a sign was discovered of Beth's lamented essay, or Angie's mother's picture.

Miss Kroutz consulted her lawyer, an old friend of her family. The situation was more than perplexing; it was alarming.

Mr. Clemend advised philosophy. "Evidently," he declared, "some one of these sweet young girls is addicted to dishonesty, and is very adroit in hiding her tracks. If her conscience could be touched, she might make restitution." "We have prayed for light," said Miss Kroutz, “but none is given us." She continued, "I will personally make up to the girls for all they lose, so far as I can. But there are some things I cannot return, as, for instance, Elizabeth's essay."

That very night, Miss Rowena, in her first sleep, was vaguely aware of some one in her room. Thus far, the teachers had lost nothing. The step that disturbed her, the faint waft of chill air from a softly opened door, were hardly more than enough to startle her slightly as she turned on her pillow, and being very tired she relapsed quickly into sleep again. She would have thought the experience a dream, if she had not in the morning discovered that her watch was gone. Miss Rowena's watch! If there was an article at Ingleside which was invested with sacredness, which partook of its owner's personality, it was that admirable timepiece, presented, as all the girls knew, to Rowena Kroutz on her twentieth birthday by her father, in appreciation of her rare qualities of heart and mind. More, it was not a watch bought originally for Miss Rowena; it was an heirloom.

Miss Rowena was now thoroughly incensed; she said little, but she meditated long. Finally, she announced to Miss Kroutz and the staff of assistants gathered in conclave that she should sit up and watch every night till she had solved the mystery. Miss Eleanor Kirkman, the teacher of rhetoric, agreed to share the first of her vigils. Nothing of their intention was disclosed to the girls. For two nights nothing happened. On the third, the dénouement came.

When everything was hushed at Ingleside in the dead stillness of midnight, as Miss Rowena and Miss Eleanor

were nodding beside a shaded lamp in the dim precincts of the library, they were suddenly shaken into alert wakefulness by the unmistakable sound of a footfall on the stair. It was a bare foot, and it made almost no noise; but they heard it, stepping slowly and carefully down, one step at a time, as a child descends, and there was also a very soft swish as of a trailing garment. Miss Kirkman would have screamed, but Miss Rowena's grip on her arm was of iron, and Miss Rowena's eyes were stern.

"Not a breath!" she whispered. "Come with me."

Truly there was nothing to fear, and the mystery was at once cleared. For, there on the stairway, clothed in her white nightgown, her long, fair hair in a heavy braid, her unseeing eyes looking neither to the right nor the left, came Angie Bryant, and in her hand was an unlighted silver candlestick, always kept on a bracket in the upper hall. On, on she came, through the corridor to the back door, which she noiselessly opened; then down the steps, and through the long garden to the old summer-house, which nobody ever entered.

"Oh, poor, poor Angie!" cried Miss Rowena, as she caught up a long shaker cloak and enveloped herself in its folds to follow Angie. Miss Kirkman's golf cap and cape were on a peg in the hall. They were warmly protected against the cold night. but the sleep-walker was lightly clad.

They walked down the long garden walk between the rows of privet and box, past the white statues set here and there among the flower-beds and over the narrow footbridge that spanned a little ravine, and paused at the summer-house, which Angie had entered. They observed her silently.

With the utmost care Angie deposited the candle-stick in a recess under the seat in the summer-house. Then she retraced her path, and did not stop until she gained her own chamber again.

Examination found every missing bit of property safe. Not a trinket, not a knickknack, not a pocketbook but was there in the miscellaneous collection of the kleptomaniac somnambulist. Miss Rowena was now confronted by a yet more delicate and difficult obligation. She sent for the physician who looked after the Ingleside girls when they were ill. He advised quietly returning every article to its owner, without further explanation than the information that it had been discovered after search and that nobody was to blame. "But," he said, "tell Miss Angie the whole story when you give her back her mother's picture. It will be a great shock, and a shock often proves the needed remedy for somnambulism."

Ingleside no longer suffers from predatory incursions. Angie Bryant was far more chagrined at finding herself the author of deeds of darkness than in discovering that she walked in her sleep. She has never repeated the latter performance, and she has had a long fit of illness, from which she has recovered, entirely to be trusted, asleep or awake.

MISS PAMELA'S EASTER BONNET

T had been the custom of Miss Pamela Brent to buy a new bonnet every year in time to be worn on Easter Sunday. On that day Miss Pamela always appeared in church in a gray silk gown that was either new or had been so freshened up that it had an effect of newness. Her gloves, her shoes, every item of her dainty toilet, bespoke studied care at Easter-tide. The neighbors and old friends of Miss Pamela had for so many seasons observed her practice of renovation as to costume that it had finally been taken for granted, and was anticipated precisely as were the birds and flowers that punctually came back to make beautiful the spring.

At other seasons of the year Miss Pamela contentedly wore old clothes, and an irreverent young cousin several degrees removed laughingly asserted that she had seen the same bonnet and cloak on Cousin Pamela at Christmas for the last dozen years. This was probably true. Miss Pamela thought anything good enough for the storm and cold of the winter, but long ago, in her girlhood, she had felt the thrill of romance in the spring, and although all that was left to her of that early dream was a mound in the cemetery, she still liked to dress at Easter in the fresh and dainty fashion as to fabric and tint that had once pleased the eyes of her only lover.

When the village milliner sent to town for her spring orders, they included, as a rule, something rather fine and costly for Pamela Brent. She was now well past sixty, but this made no difference with her in the fastidious delicacy of her annual choice.

When, therefore, April returned and the milliner re