She sat up and pulled her hat straight, looking me right in the eye.

“If you’ll recall,” she said, “I came into the spring-house, and Arabella pulled that—­garment of Miss Cobb’s off a table.  It was early—­nobody was out yet.  You were alone, Minnie, or no,” she said suddenly, “you were not alone.  Minnie, who was in the pantry?”

“What has that to do with it?” I managed, with my feet as cold as stone.

She got up and buttoned her sweater.

“Don’t trouble to lie,” she said.  “I can see through a stone wall as well as most people.  Whoever got those letters thought they were stealing mine, and there are only two people who would try to steal my letters; one is Dick Carter, and the other is his brother-in-law.  It wasn’t Sam in the pantry—­he came in just after with his little snip of a wife.”

“Well?” I managed.

But she was smiling again, not so pleasantly.

“I might have known it!” she said.  “What a fool I’ve been, Minnie, and how clever you are under that red thatch of yours!  Dicky can not appear as long as I am here, and Pierce takes his place, and I help to keep the secret and to play the game!  Well, I can appreciate a joke on myself as well as most people, but—­Minnie, Minnie, think of that guilty wretch of a Dicky Carter shaking in the pantry!”

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” I said, but she only winked and went to the door.

“Don’t take it too much to heart,” she advised.  “Too much loyalty is a vice, not a virtue.  And another piece of advice, Minnie—­when I find Dicky Carter, stand from under; something will fall.”

They had charades during the rest hour that afternoon, the overweights headed by the bishop, against the underweights headed by Mr. Moody.  They selected their words from one of Horace Fletcher’s books, and as Mr. Pierce wasn’t either over or underweight, they asked him to be referee.

Oh, they were crazy about him by that time.  It was “Mr. Carter” here and “dear Mr. Carter” there, with the women knitting him neckties and the men coming up to be bullied and asking for more.

And he kept the upper hand, too, once he got it.  It was that day, I think, that he sent Senator Biggs up to make his bed again, and nobody in the place will ever forget how he made old Mr. Jennings hang his gymnasium suit up three times before it was done properly.  The old man was mad enough at the time, but inside of twenty minutes he was offering Mr. Pierce the cigar he’d won in the wood-chopping contest.

But if Mr. Pierce was making a hit with the guests, he wasn’t so popular with the Van Alstynes or the Carters.  The night the cigar stand was closed Mr. Sam came to me and leaned over the counter.

“Put the key in a drawer,” he said.  “I can slip down here after the lights are out and get a smoke.”

“Can’t do it, Mr. Van Alstyne,” I said.  “Got positive orders.”