which ran the full
length of the brown surface.

"Oh, I see," said Clint. "Too bad. Will it hurt it much?"

Penny viewed him in surprise. "Hurt it! Why, it spoils it! It'll never
have the same tone, Thayer. It--it's just worthless now! I was
pretty"--there was a catch in Penny's voice--fond of this old feller."

"That is a shame," said Clint sympathetically. "How'd you do it?"

Penny laid the violin down beside him on the window-seat and gazed at it
sorrowfully a moment. Finally, "I didn't do it," he answered. "I found
it like that an hour ago."

"Then--how did it happen? I suppose they're fairly easy to bust, aren't
they?"

"No, they're not. Whoever cracked that had to give it a pretty good
blow. You can see where it was hit."

"But who--Was it Emery, do you think?" Emery was Penny's room-mate, a
quiet fifth form fellow who lived to stuff and who spent most of his
waking hours in recitation room or school library. "He might have
knocked it off, I dare say."

Penny shook his head. "It wasn't Gus and it wasn't the chambermaid. I
asked them both. Besides, the violin was in its case leaning in the
corner. No, somebody took it out and either struck it with something or
hit it over the corner of the table. I think probably they hit it on
the table."

Clint stared. "You mean that--that someone did it deliberately?" he
gasped incredulously. "But, Durkin, no one would do a thing like that!"

"Of course, I've got another one," said Penny, "but it isn't like this.
This is a Moretti and cost sixty dollars twelve years ago. You can't buy
them any more. Moretti's dead, and he only made about three a year, and
there aren't many anyhow."

"But, Durkin, who could have done it?"

Penny didn't answer; only picked up the violin tenderly and once more
traced the almost imperceptible crack along the face of the
mellowed wood.

"You don't mean"--Clint's voice dropped--don't mean Dreer?"

"I can't prove it on him," answered Penny quietly.

"But--but, oh, hang it, Durkin, even Dreer wouldn't do as mean a thing
as that!" But even as he said it Clint somehow knew that Penny's
suspicions were correct, and, at variance with his assertion, added
wrathfully: "By Jove, he ought to be thrashed!"

"He said he'd get even," observed Penny thoughtfully.

Clint sat down on the end of the window-seat and looked frowningly at
Penny. "What are you going to do?" he asked finally.

"Don't see that I can do anything except grin," was the r