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book. A loose leaf had fallen out of it. As Emily replaced it, her eyes fell on the title of a poem pasted on it. She caught it up, her breath coming quickly. A Legend of Abegweit—the poem with which Evelyn had won the prize! Here it was in this old, yellowed scrapbook of twenty years’ vintage—word for word, except that Evelyn had cut out two verses to shorten it to the required length.

“And the two best verses in it,” thought Emily, contemptuously. “How like Evelyn! She has simply no literary judgment.”

Emily replaced the books on the shelf, but she slipped the loose leaf into her pocket and ate her share of breakfast very absently. By this time men were on the roads breaking out the tracks. Perry and Teddy found a shovel in the barn and soon had a way opened to the road. They got home finally, after a slow but uneventful drive, to find the New Moon folks rather anxious as to their fate and mildly horrified to learn that they had had to spend the night in the old John house.

“You might have caught your deaths of cold,” said Elizabeth, severely.

“Well, it was Hobson’s choice. It was that or freeze to death in the drifts,” said Emily, and nothing more was said about the matter. Since they had got home safe and nobody had caught cold, what more was there to say? That was the New Moon way of looking at it.

The Shrewsbury way was somewhat different. But the Shrewsbury way did not become apparent immediately. The whole story was over Shrewsbury by Monday night—Ilse told it in school and described her drunken orgy with great spirit and vivacity, amid shrieks of laughter from her classmates. Emily, who had called, for the first time, on Evelyn Blake that evening, found Evelyn looking quite well pleased over something.

“Can’t you stop Ilse from telling that story, my dear?”

“What story?”

“Why, about getting drunk last Friday night—the night you and she spent with Teddy Kent and Perry Miller in