"What has the boy been doing now, Mr. White?" the lady asked.
"Look there, ma'm, at those four windows all smashed, and the squire had all the broken panes mended only a fortnight ago."
"How was it done, Mr. White?"
"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.