"Further," continued Mr. Jackson, "you were seen in the company of Joe Lanning the day before these things happened." Now, Hinpoha had walked home from school with Joe that Wednesday. She had done it merely because she was too courteous to snub him flatly when he had caught up with her on the street. She despised him just as the rest of the class did and avoided him whenever she could, but when brought face to face with him she had not the hardihood to refuse his company. That this innocent act should be misconstrued into meaning that she was mixed up in his doings seemed monstrous. Yet Mr. Jackson apparently believed this to be the truth. Things seemed to be closing around her. To Mr. Jackson her guilt was perfectly clear. She was a friend of Joe Lanning's; she had lent him her dog to work mischief on the stage; she admitted being in the electric room and refused to tell what she had been doing there. "Well," he said crisply, "somebody cut those wires Thursday Afternoon, and only one person was seen going in and out of the electric room during that time, and that person is yourself. You admit that you were in there doing something which will not bear explanation. It looks pretty suspicious, doesn't it?" "I didn't do it," Hinpoha declared stoutly. In her distress she did not dare meet Nyoda's eyes. What was Nyoda thinking of her, anyhow? "And so," continued Mr. Jackson, not heeding her denial, "until you can give a satisfactory explanation of your presence in the electric room last Thursday I must consider that you had something to do with the cutting of those wires. I have been asked by the Board of Education to look into the matter thoroughly and to punish the culprit with expulsion from school. As all evidence points to you as the guilty person, I shall be obliged, under the circumstances, to expel you." Hinpoha sat as if turned to stone. The wild beating of her heart almost suffocated her. Expelled from school! But even with that terrible sentence ringing in her ears it never entered her head to betray Emily. If this was to be the price of loyalty, then she would pay the price. There was no other way. She had not been clever enough to explain her presence in the electric room to the satisfaction of Mr. Jackson and yet breathe no word of the real situation, and this was the result. Her head whirled from the sudden calamity which had overwhelmed her; her thoughts were chaos. She hardly heard when Mr. Jackson said curtly, "You may go." As one in a dream she walked out of the office. Nyoda came out with her. "Of all things," said Mr. Wardwell to Mr. Jackson, when they were left alone, "to think that a girl should have done that thing." "It seems strange, too," mused Mr. Jackson, "that she should have been able to do it. You would hardly look for a girl to be cutting electric wires, would you? It takes some skill to do that. Where did she learn how to do it?"