The boys began to search about for dried sticks and twigs, while the girls were arranging the figure for her funeral pyre.

Suddenly, there was a wild war whoop. A crowd of boys dashed out of a thicket near by, each one carrying a lighted Jack-o'-lantern on top of a pole, and surrounded the effigy of the teacher.

"Help!" cried the girls, trying to defend the absurd thing from the attack, but they were too late. One of the boys seized the pole and rushed off in the darkness.

Miss Leece, in effigy, had been kidnapped in an instant, before David and his friends had had time to realize what had happened.

"Which way did they go?" he asked breathlessly.

"Through the thicket," cried Grace.

And the whole crowd dashed after the kidnappers. It was great fun for everybody except Anne, who was too tired to keep up the chase for long, and was soon lagging behind the others. David saw her and turned back.

"You are too little for all this junketing, Anne," he said kindly.

"Suppose I take you home? Shall I?"

"I wish you would, David," answered the girl. "I'm just about ready to drop, I'm so tired."

Taking her arm, he helped her over the ruts and rough places, until they finally emerged from the wood and started on the road to town.

There were many other Hallowe'en parties out that night; singing and laughing was heard in every direction.

"It's like a play," said Anne, "only everything is behind the scenes.

Don't think I haven't enjoyed it, David, just because I got tired. I never played with boys and girls of my own age before. What fun it is!"

"Isn't it?" replied the young man, "I love to get out, once in a while, and have a good time like this. I find I can work all the better after it's over."

Presently the others caught up with them, breathless and laughing.

"Miss Leece is stolen," cried Grace, "before ever she was hanged or burned. I do wonder what they'll do with her."

"Oh, leave her in the woods," responded Reddy, "to scare the birds away."

"Good night, Anne," continued Grace. "David will take you home. We go this way. Don't be frightened about to-morrow. I doubt if she says anything; and if she does, we are all implicated."

The young people separated, still singing and laughing; never dreaming of the storm brewing from their evening's prank.

"Anne," pursued David, as they strolled down River Street together, "when I make my flying machine will you be afraid to take a sail with me?"

"Never," replied Anne, "but I wish it had been made in time to carry me away from Miss Leece to-morrow morning."

And Anne's words had more meaning than either of them realized at the time.

Imagine the surprise and horror of the Hallowe'en party when, next morning, they discovered the effigy of Miss Leece planted right in front of the Girls' High School!

And the teacher herself was the first to see the impious outrage.

CHAPTER VIII

MISS LEECE

Yes, there stood the hideous, grotesque effigy just where her abductors had left her the night before, her green veil floating in the breezes.

As a figure of fun and an object of ridicule, she might not have created more than a ripple with the faculty. But it was evident that Miss Leece's function, even in effigy, was to make trouble.

And trouble was certainly brewing that memorable morning. The figure itself might never have been recognized, but a placard which had been pinned on the front of the old ulster left no room for doubt. Across it had been inscribed in large printed letters:

"THE MOST UNPOPULAR TEACHER IN SCHOOL."

No one dared take the effigy away for fear of being implicated.

Everybody had seen it, both men and women professors and the boys and girls of the two schools. But it was not until Miss Thompson, the princ.i.p.al of the Girls' High School, had arrived that the figure was removed.

"How could those boys have been so mean!" exclaimed Grace to her three friends just before the gong sounded. "They might have known what would happen."

There was an ominous quiet in the various cla.s.s rooms all morning; but nothing was said or done to indicate just when the storm would burst.

When the first cla.s.s in algebra met, Anne trembled with fear, but Miss Leece, in a robin's egg-blue dress, which offset the angry hue of her complexion, was apparently too angry to trust herself to look in the direction of the young girl and the lesson progressed without incident.

However, she was only biding her time.

"Miss Pierson," she said, toward the end of the lesson, in a voice so rasping as to make the girls fairly shiver, "go to the blackboard and demonstrate this problem."

Then she read aloud in the same disagreeable voice, the following difficult problem:

"'Train A starts from Chicago going thirty miles an hour. An hour later Train B starts from Chicago going thirty-five miles an hour. How far from Chicago will they be when Train B pa.s.ses Train A?'"

The girls looked up surprised. The problem was well in advance of what they had been studying and Miss Leece was really asking Anne to recite something she had not yet learned.

Anne hardly knew how to reply to the terrible woman who stood glowering at her as if she would like to crush her to bits.

"I'm sorry," said the girl. "I cannot."

"Miss Nesbit," said the teacher, "will you demonstrate this problem?"

Miriam rose with a little smile of triumph on her face and went to the blackboard, where she worked out the problem.

"Why, what on earth does the woman mean?" whispered Grace. "Are we expected to learn lessons we have never been taught and has that horrid Miriam been studying ahead?"

"I think I must be dreaming," replied Anne, looking sorrowfully at Miss Leece.

"Miss Pierson," thundered the teacher, "you are aware, I believe, that I permit no conversation in this cla.s.s. Stupidity and inattention are not to be supported in any student, and I must ask you to leave the room."

Anne rose in a dazed sort of way, looking very small and shabby as she left the room.

But Miss Leece was not to come off so easily in the fight, and Anne had a splendid champion in Grace Harlowe, who could not endure injustice and was fearless where her rights or her friends' rights were concerned.