Cautiously Billie peeped into the room and saw that Amanda and Eliza were busily at work doing something to the teacher’s desk at the other end of the room. They were alone, so it must have been Amanda who had switched on the light. The girl was bold with the courage of stupidity. Laura uttered a stifled exclamation, and would have pushed past Billie but the latter held her back. For still another minute she hesitated, then called to the girls softly. “Now,” she said, and ran swiftly into the room, Laura and Vi beside her. So quickly and silently did they come that they were almost upon the two girls before either of them looked up. Then—— “Amanda Peabody!” cried Billie, her voice choked with anger. “We’ve caught you this time! Now let’s see what you were doing!” CHAPTER XVIII—AMANDA’S REVENGE Amanda’s jaw dropped and she sprang back while Eliza cowered behind her. The former held an ink bottle which she had been about to turn upside down in Miss Race’s desk. With a quick movement Laura snatched it from the girl’s hand and held it aloft triumphantly. “Look, Billie,” she said in a loud whisper. “Amanda was going to spill this in the desk and then blame it on you.” Amanda made a quick dart for the door, but Billie ran after her and pulled her back. “Not yet,” she said, grimly. “You’ll wait till we’re through with you or I’ll go to Miss Walters and report the whole thing. You had better not try to get funny.” Amanda started to bluster, but on second thoughts decided not to. Billie and her chums had the argument all on their side this time, and the thought made her fume inwardly. As for the “Shadow,” her homely face was pale with fright, and she stood motionless and scared on the spot where the girls had first discovered her. The plan of the two conspirators had evidently been to upset the teacher’s desk and then blame the whole thing on Billie. But how could Amanda hope to prove that Billie had done it all? Thus thought the girls as they rummaged through the desk in search of some further trick. And then, they found it. “Look at this!” cried Billie, holding aloft a little square of linen at sight of which Amanda grew more sullen and Eliza quaked. “It’s my handkerchief with my initials and my laundry mark on it. Those—those—girls—were going to leave it here after spilling the ink, and when Miss Race found it she would of course think that I was the guilty one. Oh—what shall we do to them?” She glared at the tricksters while Amanda tossed her head defiantly and Eliza shrank still farther back into the corner. “But that would have been so silly,” cried Laura, who had snatched the handkerchief from Billie and was examining it eagerly. Vi, in her turn was trying to pull it from her. “Miss Race would know that you would have sense enough not to give yourself away by leaving your handkerchief. Their heads sure are made of bone,” and she favored the girls with a contemptuous glance that was harder to bear than Billie’s anger.