“Do you know who did it?” repeated Nan.
“Maybe I do,” Bert answered slowly. “And maybe I don’t,” he added, as Nan gave a gasp of surprise. “Anyhow, I’m not going to tell.”
That was all there was time to say. The last bell was giving its final strokes, and Bert and his sister hurried to their seats. Danny and Sam, with other boys and girls, also hastened in to their room; and then came silence, for they were not, of course, allowed to whisper in class.
The pupils had been sitting quietly a minute or two when an electric bell in the room rang. This was the signal for the children to march to the big assembly hall where the morning exercises were held.
“Attention!” called Miss Skell, who taught Bert and Nan. “Rise! Turn! March!”
There was the tramping of a hundred feet and the children were on their way to the auditorium.
It was at the close of the exercises, after the Bible reading and the singing of patriotic songs, that the principal, Mr. James Tarton, stepped to the edge of the platform and said:
“Boys and girls, I have an unpleasant announcement to make. I am very sorry to have to speak of it. But an accident happened this morning. Perhaps some of you may know what it was.”
By the gasps and murmurs that ran through the room it was easy to tell that a number of the pupils knew about what the principal was going to speak.
“Some one—a boy I think it must have been, for I doubt if a girl could throw so hard and straight. Some boy broke the rule about snowballing within a block of the school,” went on Mr. Tarton, “and threw a ball, or a chunk of ice, against one of the stained-glass windows of the church. The window was broken, and of course must be paid for. It is only right that the boy who broke it should pay for it. Now I am going to ask the boy who threw the snowball against the church window to be man enough to stand up and admit it. He will not be punished if he frankly confesses, but of course he or his father will have to pay for the broken glass.”