So the time dragged on, and at length Concetta, though she never would admit it, fell asleep. Haleema kept herself awake by telling wonderful stories--some of them fairy tales, and some of them stories of adventures that she professed to have passed through. At last even her lively tongue was quiet, and she had given up kicking against the door, as a useless expenditure of energy. In the meantime the absence of the three girls had become the subject of conjecture on the part of the others downstairs. No one apparently had noticed when they left the gymnasium, though Nellie thought that she had seen them on their way to the street floor. "Perhaps they've just gone off for fun. Haleema's always up to some mischief." "They may have run off for good, like Mary Murphy." "Oh, no, there's no danger; that ain't likely. They know which side their bread's buttered on." The three vacant places troubled Angelina as she sat at the end of the table opposite Miss Dreen. "If I hadn't been away, they wouldn't have dared go off." Anstiss, to whom at last they applied for advice, was uncertain what they ought to do. She was sorry that this was the evening that Pamela and Julia and Miss South had taken to dine with Lois in Newton. It would be late when they returned, and she did not like the responsibility that had fallen upon her. While the discussion was going on, many thoughts were passing through Gretchen's mind. Not until tea-time had she learned of the disappearance of her schoolmates, and as she was not very quick-witted, she had not at first connected them with the end room. When she did recall Concetta's desire to explore it, she hesitated about speaking. In the first place, if Concetta heard that she had told of her previous efforts to pry into the mysteries of the trunks, she would surely take vengeance, especially if at the present time she happened not to be there. If she had been shut up in the room all this time, or in a trunk--and then the story of Ginevra came into Gretchen's mind, and she was half afraid to suggest that the end room be explored. So positive, however, was Angelina that the girls had run away, or at least had taken advantage of Miss South's absence to spend the evening out, that no one suggested exploring the house thoroughly. Anstiss herself had gone to the room of each girl to assure herself that they were not in one of them, and had sat herself down to her hour's reading when she noticed that Gretchen was softly weeping. "Why, what is the matter, child?" she asked, and Gretchen, wiping her eyes with a handkerchief that left a little dark streak, looked up for a moment, and then hung down her head without answering. "Tell her," said Nellie, who sat beside her, with a nudge that made Gretchen wriggle her shoulders. To save herself, perhaps, from a second such demonstration, when Anstiss repeated her question Gretchen replied: "I'm afraid that they're locked up in the attic." "Who? Haleema and the other two?"