A little wrangle seemed to have begun before Ruth arrived, and the senior thought to settle the difficulty and start the day with “clear decks,” by getting at the seat of the trouble.

“What is the matter, Mary Pease?” she asked a flushed and indignant girl who was angrily glaring at another.  “Calm down, honey.  Don’t let your anger rise.”

“If Amy Gregg says again that I took her gold pen, I’ll tell something about her she won’t like, now I warn her!” threatened Mary.

“Well, it’s gone!” stormed Amy, “and you’re the nearest.  I’d like to know who took it if you didn’t?”

“Well! of all the nerve!  I want you to understand that I don’t have to steal pens.”

“Hold on, girls,” put in Ruth.  “This must not go on.  You know, I shall be obliged to report you both.”

“Of course!” snarled Amy.  “You big girls are always telling on us.”

“Oh!” and “Shame!” was the general murmur about the classroom; for most of the girls loved Ruth.

“Why, you nasty thing!” cried Mary Pease, glaring at Amy.  “You ought to be ashamed.  I’ll tell what I know about you!”

“Mary!” exclaimed Ruth, with sudden fright.  “Be still.”

“I guess you don’t know what I know about Gregg, Ruth Fielding,” cried the excited Mary.

“We do not want to know,” Ruth said hastily.  “Let us stop this wrangling and turn to our work.  Suppose Miss Brokaw should come in?”

“And I guess Miss Brokaw or anybody would want to know what I saw that night of the fire,” declared Mary Pease, wildly. “I know whose room the fire started in, and how it started.”

“Mary!” cried Ruth, rising from her seat, while the girls of the class uttered wondering exclamations.

But Mary was hysterical now.

“I saw a light in her room!” she cried, pointing an accusing finger at the white-faced and shaking Amy.  “I peeped through the keyhole, and it was a candle burning on her table.  She said she didn’t have a candle.  Bah!”

“Be still, Mary!” commanded Ruth again.

Amy Gregg was terror-stricken and shrank away from her accuser; but the latter was too excited to heed Ruth.

“I know all about it.  So does Miss Scrimp.  I told her.  That Amy Gregg left the candle burning when she went to supper and it fell off her table into the waste basket.

“And that,” concluded Mary Pease, “was how the fire started that burned down the West Dormitory, and I don’t care who knows it, so there!”

CHAPTER XVII

ANOTHER OF CURLY’S TRICKS

Miss Scrimp, the matron of the old West Dormitory, had bound Mary Pease to secrecy.  But, as Jennie put it, “the binding did not hold and Pease spilled the beans.”

The story flew over the school like wildfire.  Miss Scrimp, actually in tears, was inclined to blame Ruth Fielding for the outbreak of the story.