"I do know to whom that letter was sent, for I saw her drop it. I picked it up to return it to her, but before I could do so it disappeared from my history. I could not help reading the first line because it stood out so plainly before me when I picked the letter from the floor. I know nothing further of its contents, and I do not wish to. That line was silly enough. The girl did not know what had become of it until I went to her later and told her about finding it and also about its loss afterward. From that moment to this I have never laid eyes upon it, and I wish I never had seen it at all. You may believe me or not as you choose, but until I came into this school such things had never entered my head, and mother and Uncle Athol would be perfectly disgusted with the whole showdown. And so am I." Beverly paused for want of breath. _"Who dropped that letter?"_ The words were in italics, notwithstanding the fact that some vague doubts were beginning to form in the back of the principal's brain. "Do you for one second think that I will tell you?" blazed Beverly. "I am very positive that you will tell me without a moment's delay, or you will be suspended from this school within twenty-four hours, if not expelled. Her name! At once!" "I shall never tell you no matter what you do to me. What do you take me for? How _dare_ you think me capable of such a low-down, mucker trick?" Unconsciously she had lapsed into Athol's vernacular. It was the last touch to Miss Woodhull's wrath. She actually flew up out of her chair and catching Beverly by her shoulders shook her soundly. Then it all happened in a flash. Miss Woodhull was a tall woman and a large woman as well. She weighed at least one-hundred-seventy pounds. But from lack of proper exercise (she loathed walking) and the enjoyment of the many luxuries which the past successful years had made possible, she was exactly like a well-modeled India rubber figure. Beverly was tall for a girl not yet sixteen, and as the result of having grown up with two active healthy boys, and having done every earthly thing which they had done, she was a living, vital bunch of energy and well-developed muscles, and fully as strong as Athol. Never since tiny childhood when Mammy Riah had smacked her for some misdeed, or her mother had spanked her for some real transgression, had hand been laid upon her excepting in a caress. That any human being could so lose her self-control as to resort to such methods of correction she would not have believed possible. Then in a flash all the fighting blood of the Ashbys and Seldons boiled, and with a cry of outraged feelings Beverly Ashby laid hold of Miss Woodhull's flabby arms with a pair of slender muscular hands, backed her by main force against the chair which she had so hastily vacated, and plumped that dumbfounded lady down upon it with a force which made her teeth crack together, as she cried indignantly: "How dare you touch me! How dare you!"