"Something gone wrong?" asked Clint, joining the other at the window and viewing the instrument solicitously. Penny nodded.
"I guess it's a goner," he muttered. "Look here." He held the violin out for Clint's inspection and the latter stared at it without seeing anything wrong until Penny sadly indicated a crack 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."