Her meaning, stripped of its eloquent verbage, slowly dawned upon six minds! A murmur of protest threatened to become a roar. Gyp hastily dropped her fine oratory and pleaded humbly:

"It's so _little_ for one of us to do compared to what it means, and if we _didn't_ do it and South High beat us, why, we'd suffer lots more with remorse than we would just taking Ginny's punishment for her.

Anyway, what did the promise we solemnly made _mean_? Nothing? We're a nice bunch! _I'm_ perfectly willing to take Ginny Cox's place, but I think each Raven ought to have the chance and we should draw lots----"

"Yes, that would be the fairest way," agreed Pat Everett in a tone that suggested someone had died just the moment before.

"I always draw the unlucky number in everything," shivered Peggy Lee.

"There'll have to be two this time, then, for I always do, too," groaned a sister Raven.

"Shall we do it, girls? Shall we prove to the world that we Ravens can make any sacrifice for our school?"

"Yes--yes," came thickly from paralyzed throats.

In a dead silence Gyp and Pat prepared seven slips of paper. Six were blank; upon the seventh Pat drew a long snake with head uplifted, ready to strike. The slips were carefully folded and shaken in Jerry's hat.

Gyp put the hat in the middle of the room.

"Let's each one go up with her eyes shut tight and draw a slip. Then don't open it until the last one has been drawn." They all agreed--if they had to do it they might as well make the ceremony as much of a torture as possible!

So horrible was the suspense that a creaking board made the Ravens jump; a shutter slamming somewhere in another part of the building almost precipitated a panic. After an interval that seemed hours each Raven sat with a white slip in her nervous fingers.

"Now, one--two--three--_open_!" cried Gyp.

Another moment of silence, a sharp intake of breath, a rattle of paper, then: "Oh--_I have it_!" cried Jerry in a small, frightened voice.

CHAPTER XVII

DISGRACE

"Will the young gentleman or lady who built the snow-woman that stood on the school grounds yesterday morning go at once to my office?"

Dr. Caton's tone was very even; he might have been asking the owner of some lost article to step up and claim it, but each word cut like a sharp-edged knife deep into poor Jerry Travis' heart.

She sat in the sixth row; that meant that, to reach that distant door, she must face almost the entire school! Her eyes were downcast and her lips were pressed together in a thin, bluish line. She heard a low murmur from every side. Above it her steps seemed to fall in a heavy, echoing thud.

Not one of the Ravens dared look at poor Jerry; each wondered at her courage, each felt in her own heart that had the unlucky slip fallen to _her_ lot she could never have done as well as Jerry had----

Then, instinctively, curious eyes sought for Ginny Cox--Ginny, who had been unjustly accused by her schoolmates. But Ginny at that moment was huddled in her bed under warm blankets with a hot-water-bag at her feet and an ice-bag on her head, her worried mother fluttering over her with a clinical thermometer in one hand and a castor-oil bottle in the other, wishing she could diagnose Ginny's queer symptoms and wondering if she had not ought to call in the doctor!

Jerry had had a bad night, too. At home, in her room, Gyp's eloquent arguments had seemed to lose some of their force. Jerry persisted in seeing complications in the course that had fallen to her lot.

"It's acting a lie," she protested.

"The cause justifies _that_," cried Gyp, sweepingly. "Anyway, I don't believe Dr. Caton will be half as hard on you as he would have been on Ginny Cox. It's your first offence and you can act real sorry."

"How can I act real sorry when I haven't _done_ anything?" wailed Jerry.

"You'll _have_ to--you must pretend. The harder it is the nobler your sacrifice will be. And some day everyone will know what you did for the honor of the school and future generations will----"

"And I was trying so hard for the Lincoln Award!" Real tears sprang to Jerry's eyes.

"Oh, you can work harder than ever and win it in spite of this,"

comforted Gyp, who truly believed Jerry could do anything.

"And I can't play on the hockey team in the inter-class match this week!"

"Of _course_ it's hard, Jerry." Gyp did not want to listen to much more--her own conviction might weaken. "But nothing matters except the match with South High. _That's_ why you're doing it! Now if you want to just back out and bring shame upon the Ravens as well as dishonor to the school--all right! Only--I've told Ginny."

"I'll do it," answered Jerry, falteringly. But long after Gyp had gone off into dreamless slumber she lay, wide-eyed, trying to picture this sudden and unpleasant experience that confronted her. Her whole life up to that moment when, in Mr. John's automobile, she had whirled around her mountain, bound for a world of dreams, had been so simple, so entirely free from any tangles that could not be straightened out, in a moment, by "Sweetheart" that her bewilderment, now, made her lonely and homesick for Sunnyside and her mother's counsel. The glamour of her new life, happy though it was, lifted as a curtain might lift, and revealed, in the eerie darkness of the night, startling contrasts--the rush and thronging of the city life against the peaceful quiet of Jerry's mountain. It was so easy, back there, Jerry thought, to just know at _once_, what was right and what was wrong; there were no uncertain demands upon one's loyalty to the little old school in the Notch--one had only to learn one's lesson and that was all; even in her play back there there had not been any of the fierce joy of competition she had learned at Highacres!

And mother, with wonderful wisdom, had brought her so close to God and had taught her to understand His Love and His Anger. Jerry dug her face deep into her pillow. Wouldn't God forgive a lie that was for the honor of the school? Wouldn't He know how Ginny was needed as forward on the Lincoln team? It was a perplexing thought. Jerry told herself, with a sense of shame, that she had really not thought much about God since she had come to the Westleys. She had gone each Sunday with the others to the great, dim, vaulted church, but she had thought about the artists who had designed the beautiful colored saints in the windows and about the pealing music of the organ and not about God or what the minister was saying. Back home she had always, in church, sat between her mother and the little window where through the giant pines she could see a stretch of blue sky broken by a misty mountain-top; when one could see that and smell the pine and hear, above the drone of the preacher's voice, the clear note of a bird, one could feel very close to the God who had made this wonderful, beautiful world and had put that sweet note in the throat of a little winging creature.

Then Gyp's words taunted her. "You can back out--if you want to!" Oh, no--she would not do that--now; she would not be a coward, she would see it through; she would measure up to the challenge, let it cost what it might she would hold the honor of the school--_her_ school (she said it softly) above all else!

Jerry had never been severely punished in her life; as she sat very quietly in Dr. Caton's office waiting for assembly to end she wondered, with a quickening curiosity, what it would seem like. Anyway, _nothing_ could be worse than having to walk out of the room before all those staring boys and girls.

But Jerry found that something _was_! Barbara Lee came into the room, looking surprised, disappointed and unhappy.

"Jerry," she exclaimed, "I can't believe it."

Jerry wanted to cry out the truth--it wasn't fair. Miss Lee sat down next to her.

"If you had to make fun of someone, why _didn't_ you pick out me--anyone but poor little Miss Gray! I think that if you knew how unhappy and--and _drab_ poor Miss Gray's life has been, how for years she had to pinch and save and deny herself all the little pleasures of life in order to care for her mother who was a helpless invalid, you'd be sorry you had in the smallest measure added any to her unhappiness."

"I wouldn't hurt her feelings for the world," burst out Jerry. Did she not know more about poor little Miss Gray than did even Barbara Lee?

"Then _why_----" But at this dangerous moment Dr. Caton walked into the room.

Jerry's sentence was very simple. She listened with downcast eyes. She was to lose all school privileges for a week; during that time she must occupy a desk in the office, she must eat her lunch alone at this desk, she must not share in any of the school activities until the end of suspension. She must apologize to Miss Gray.

In Jerry's punishment there was an element of novelty that softened its sting. It was very easy to apologize to Miss Gray, partly because she was really innocent and partly because a fresh bunch of violets adorned Miss Gray's desk toward which Jerry had contributed thirty-four cents.

Then a message from the Ravens was spirited to her.

You're _wonderful_! We're proud of you. Keep up your nerve. Blessed is the lot of the martyr when for honor he has suffered.

The Ravens.

P. S. Coming out of history I heard Dana King say to another boy that he didn't believe you did it at _all_--that you are shielding SOME ONE else!

Your Adoring Gyp.

Too, Jerry found the office a most interesting place. No one glanced toward her corner and she could quietly watch everything that happened.

And on the second day Uncle Johnny "happened"--in a breezy fashion, coming over and pinching her cheek. Uncle Johnny did not know of her disgrace; by tacit agreement not a word of it had been breathed at home.

Dr. Caton, annoyed and disapproving, crisply intimated why Jerry was there. Uncle Johnny tried to make his lips look serious but his eyes danced. Over Dr. Caton's bald head he winked at Jerry.