“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 reply.  “If I charge him with it he’ll deny it.  No one saw him do it, I guess.  He probably came in here early this afternoon.  I have French at two, you know, and he probably counted on that.  Gus never is in, anyhow.  After he did it he put it back in the case, but I knew as soon as I’d opened it that somebody had been at it because my handkerchief was underneath, and I always spread it on top.  If I beat him up he’ll go to Josh and Josh will say it was an unwarrantable attack, or something, and I’ll get the dickens.  I can’t afford that, because I’m trying hard for a Draper Scholarship and can’t take chances.  I guess he’s evened things up all right, Thayer.”

“It’s perfectly rotten!” said Clint explosively.  “If it was me I’d thrash him, scholarship or no scholarship!  The mean pup!”