Sissy stood a moment looking at him. All that she might not say--her contempt for pledge-breakers, her shocked hero-worship now forever a thing of the past, her outraged school-girl's affection--she shot straight at the master from her angry eyes. Then she sat down. "I don't know," she said. He looked up from his book, incredulous. Ten credits out of one hundred gone at one fell swoop--ten of Sissy Madigan's credits, for which she fought so gallantly and which she cherished so jealously when she once had them in her possession. "I--don't--know," repeated Sissy, disdainfully. The master passed the question. But as he put it to the next girl, Sissy put another question, with her eyes, to the same girl. "Are you a scab?" her steady gaze challenged. "Are you going to benefit by what a mate suffers for principle's sake? Are you a coward who doesn't dare to stand up for your class? And--do you know what you'll get from me if you are?" "I--don't--know," faltered the girl. A glory of triumph shot over Sissy's face. It leaped like a sunrise from peak to peak in a mountain-range of obstinacy. "I don't know"--"I don't know"--"I don't know"--the shibboleth of the strikers' cause went down the line. The master was shamed in public by the banner pupils of his school. He writhed, but he put the question steadily to every girl till he came to Irene, last in the line. "What is the highest mountain in the world?" he asked, perfunctorily now. But, to his amazement, she rose, and, looking out of the window up to the mountain to the skirts of which the town clung, she answered: "Mount Davidson." Sissy's savage joy followed so quickly upon her horror at her own sister's defection that the closing of school left her in a trembling storm of emotions. In the dressing-room, where the girls were putting on their hats, she marched up to Irene, followed by her wrathful adherents and feeling like an avenging Brutus. "You're a sneak, Split Madigan! You're a coward, and--and a stupid coward. You don't know enough to betray your class and get the benefit of it, but you'd rather be mean than get credits, anyway. Nobody can count on you. Changeable Silk, that's what you are--changing color all the time, never standing firm! I hate you! Changeable Silk! Changeable Silk!" "Changeable Silk! Changeable Silk!" chanted her following. The little dressing-room rang with the cry of the mob, so filled with significance by the tone in which it was uttered that Irene paled and shrank. But only for a moment. The Madigans never lacked courage long. That fierce internecine strife waged by the clan in the old house high on the side of the hill made a Madigan quick and resolute. "Stupid yourself, Sissy! My answer made him madder than your not answering." Sissy looked at her searchingly. "But--did you--" she wavered. "Of course I did! Who's the stupid now? Do you s'pose I didn't know it was--" "What?--what?" Sissy repeated as her sister hesitated.