switch, catch her at that end and find out why she is here. Probably accepting a dare or going through with some childish prank."Hastily she tiptoed down the aisle between the stacks. Then, turning to her left, she put out her hand, touched a switch and released a flood of light. At first its brightness blinded her. The next instant she stared about her in astonishment. The place was empty.

"Deserted as a tomb," she whispered. And so it was. Not a trace of the child was to be seen.

"As if I hadn't seen her at all!" she murmured. "I don't believe in ghosts, but--where have I seen that face before? You'd never forget it, once you'd seen it. And I have seen it. But where?"

Meditatively she walked to the dummy elevator which carried books up and down. She started as her glance fell upon it. The carrier had been on this floor when she left it not fifteen minutes before. Now it was gone. The button that released it was pressed in for the ground floor.

"She couldn't have," she murmured. "The compartment isn't over two feet square."

She stared again. Then she pressed the button for the return of the elevator. The car moved silently upward to stop at her door. There was nothing about it to show that it had been used for unusual purposes.

"And yet she might have," she mused. "She was so tiny. She might have pressed herself into it and ridden down."

Suddenly she switched off the lights and hurried to a window. Did she catch a glimpse of a retreating figure at the far side of the campus? She could not be sure. The lights were flickering, uncertain.

"Well," she shook herself, then shivered, "I guess that's about all of that. Ought to report it, but I won't. They'd only laugh at me."

Again she shivered, then turning, tiptoed down the narrow passageway to carry out her original intention of going out of the building by way of the back stairs.

Her room was only a half block away in a dormitory on the corner of the campus nearest the library. Having reached the dormitory, she went to her room and began disrobing for the night. In the bed near her own, wrapped in profound sleep, lay her roommate. She wished to waken her, to tell her of the strange event of the night. For a moment she stood with the name "Florence" quivering on her lips.

The word died unspoken. "No use to trouble 

 Prev. P 3/99 next