"By a big stone, ma'm, which caught the frame where they joined,
and smashed them all."

"I did not do it, Mrs. Ellison, indeed I didn't."

"Why do you suppose it was Reuben?" Mrs. Ellison asked the master.

"Because I had kept him in, half an hour after the others went home
to dinner, for pinching young Jones and making him call out; and he
had only just gone out of the gate when I heard the smash; so there
is no doubt about it, for all the others must have been in at their
dinner at that time."

"I didn't do it, ma'm," the boy repeated. "Directly I got out of
the gate, I started off to run home. I hadn't gone not twenty yards
when I heard a smash; but I wasn't going for to stop to see what it
was. It weren't no business of mine, and that's all I know about
it."

"Mamma," the younger of the two girls said eagerly, "what he says
is quite true. You know you let me run down the village with the
jelly for Mrs. Thomson's child, and as I was coming down the road I
saw a boy come out of the gate of the school and run away; and then
I heard a noise of broken glass, and I saw another boy jump over
the hedge opposite, and run, too. He came my way and, directly he
saw me, he ran to a gate and climbed over."

"Do you know who it was, Kate?" Mrs. Ellison asked.

"Yes, mamma. It was Tom Thorne."

"Is Thomas Thorne here?" Mrs. Ellison asked in a loud voice.

There was a general turning of the heads of the children to the
point where a boy, somewhat bigger than the rest, had been
apparently studying his lessons with great diligence.

"Come here, Tom Thorne," Mrs. Ellison said.

The boy slouched up with a sullen face.

"You hear what my daughter says, Tom. What have you to say in
reply?"

"I didn't throw the stone at the window," the boy replied. "I
chucked it at a sparrow, and it weren't my fault if it missed him
and broke the window."

"I should say it was your fault, Tom," Mrs. Ellison said
sharply--"very much your fault, if you throw a great stone at a
bird without taking care to see what it may hit. But that is
nothing to your fault in letting another boy be punished for what
you did. I shall report the matter to the squire, and he will speak
to your father about it. You are a wicked, bad boy.

"Mr. White, I will speak to you outside."

Followed by her daughters, Mrs. Ellison went out; Kate giving a
little nod, in reply to the grateful look that Reuben Whitney cast
towards her, and his muttered:

"Thank y