Miss Marlett’s Establishment for the Highest Education of Girls, more briefly known as “The Dovecot, Conisbeare,” was no exception, on a particularly cold February day--the day after Dicky Shields was found dead--to these pretty general rules. The Dovecot, before it became a girls’ school, was, no doubt, a pleasant English home, where “the fires wass coot,” as the Highlandman said. The red-brick house, with its lawn sloping down to the fields, all level with snow, stood at a little distance from the main road, at the end of a handsome avenue of Scotch pines. But the fires at Miss Marlett’s were not good on this February morning. They never _were_ good at the Dovecot. Miss Marlett was one of those people who, fortunately for themselves, and unfortunately for persons dwelling under their roofs, never feel cold, or never know what they feel. Therefore, Miss Marlett never poked the fire, which, consequently used to grow black toward its early death, and was only revived, at dangerously long intervals, by the most minute doses of stimulant in the shape of rather damp small coals. Now, supplies of coal had run low at the Dovecot, for the very excellent reason that the roads were snowed up, and that convoys of the precious fuel were scarcely to be urged along the heavy ways. This did not matter much to the equable temperature of Miss Marlett; but it did matter a great deal to her shivering pupils, three of whom were just speeding their morning toilette, by the light of one candle, at the pleasant hour of five minutes to seven on a frosty morning. “Oh dear,” said one maiden--Janey Harman by name--whose blonde complexion should have been pink and white, but was mottled with alien and unbecoming hues, “_why_ won’t that old Cat let us have fires to dress by? Gracious, Margaret, how black your fingers are!” “Yes; and I cant get them clean,” said Margaret, holding up two very pretty dripping hands, and quoting, in mock heroic parody: “Ho, dogs of false Tarentum, Are not my _hands_ washed white?” “No talking in the bedrooms, young ladies,” came a voice, accompanied by an icy draught, from the door, which was opened just enough to admit a fleeting vision of Miss Mariettas personal charms. “I was only repeating my lay, Miss Marlett,” replied the maiden thus rebuked, in a tone of injured innocence-- “‘Ho, dogs of false Tarentum,’” --and the door closed again on Miss Marlett, who had not altogether the best of it in this affair of outposts, and could not help feeling as if “that Miss Shields” was laughing at her. “Old Cat!” the young lady went on, in a subdued whisper. “But no wonder my hands were a little black, Janey. You forget that it’s my week to be Stoker. Already, girls, by an early and unexpected movement, I have cut off some of the enemy’s supplies.” So speaking, Miss Margaret Shields proudly displayed a small deposit of coals, stored, for secrecy, in the bottom of a clothes-basket.