“Soap in my kit?” cried Harriet, rising slowly to her feet.

“Yes.”

“But—­why—­what is it doing there?” gasped the astonished girl.

“That is what we should like to know.  No one had access to your kit except yourself.  The box was locked and the key hung where you placed it when you last had occasion to close the box.”

“Yes, yes, but——­”

“We also found flakes of soap scattered about on the floor in the kitchen.  I slipped on a shaving of it and nearly fell just now when I visited the kitchen.  Did you have any soap in your kit?”

“Certainly not, Mrs. Livingston.”

“Then how did it come to be there just now when I opened the box?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” answered Harriet despairingly.  “But surely, Mrs. Livingston, you do not accuse me of anything so dreadful as mixing soap with the consomme?  Oh, you don’t mean that; you can’t mean it?”

“While I am not by any means accusing you, the facts on the face of the affair speak for themselves, and——­”

The Chief Guardian was interrupted by the sudden springing to her feet of Crazy Jane.  Her face was flushed; her hair was disarranged her arms were raised above her head.

[Illustration:  “Oh, Shame On All of You!” Cried Jane.]

“Oh, shame on all of you!” cried the girl.  “My darlin’ Harriet wouldn’t do such a thing.  Never!  Show me the one who did it, knowing that the darlin’ girl would be accused.  I’ll scratch her eyes out, I will!”

Jane was in a towering rage.  The calm voice of Mrs. Livingston interrupted the tirade.

“Miss McCarthy, be good enough to resume your seat,” she said.

Jane hesitated.  For a few perilous seconds she struggled with herself.  The girls expected an outbreak more vehement than her first.  Instead, Jane sat down with an emphasis that jarred the dishes on the table.

“We will now continue with this matter.  Can any person here explain, first how the consomme happens to be soaped, and secondly why soap is found in Miss Burrell’s kit?” questioned Mrs. Livingston.

A painful silence reigned in the cook tent.  There seemed to be no explanation of the mystery.

“There was nothing of the sort in the box when last I used it,” reiterated Harriet, “I am positive of that, Mrs. Livingston.  Nor could it have been at the bottom of the box under the other things.  Knowing that I had finished my work in the soup test, I examined the contents of the box to put everything in order.”

“You locked the box afterwards?”

“Immediately.  I hung the key in its accustomed place, too.”

“You have no idea when the soap was dropped into the soup kettle?”

“No.  But wait!  Just before I came into the cook tent to sit down I tasted the soup, as I had done a dozen times before while in the kitchen to make sure that it was exactly as it should be.”

“Did you taste it just before you came in to dinner?  Did you detect anything wrong with it, Miss Burrell?”