When the morning dawned, however, and Peace ran eagerly down to visit her garden, she stopped in dismay at the sight which greeted her eyes. On the ground, strewn all over the patch, were broken, battered melon-rinds; and the two mammoth balls were gone.
"Oh, my darlings! my precious melons!" she cried in grief. "Someone has eaten them all up!" Throwing herself flat amid the wreck, she sobbed as if her heart would break, so overwhelmed by her loss that it never occurred to her to report the disaster to the rest of the family. It was too cruel!
When the hot tears had relieved the little heart somewhat, she sat up and looked about her once more, saying, with quivering lips, "I don't s'pose they would have won a prize anyway, but it was hatefully mean of whoever took them. I'll bet Mike O'Hara did it to get even with me for selling the others to the city folks and keeping all the money myself! I'm going straight over and tell him what a nice kind of a gentleman he is."
She bounced to her feet, started swiftly across the patch, caught her toe in a tough vine and fell sprawling on the ground again, rapping her head smartly on a small, unripe melon at the edge of the field. "Mercy! you're a hard-shelled old sinner!" she exclaimed, rubbing her bruised forehead and glaring at the offending fruit. "Well, no wonder! I hit a knife, as sure as you're alive! It ain't Mike's either. It's—Hector Abbott's! Why didn't I think of him before? Of course he is the culvert; but I'll bet he will wish he hadn't seen those melons when I get through with him."
Burning with indignation, she sped away to the village, never pausing until the Judge's house was reached. As she approached the place she could see the family gathered around the breakfast table, set on the wide, screened porch; and forgetting to knock, she threw open the door and rushed in as if on the wings of the wind. Straight to Hector's chair she stalked, and before the surprised family could recover their breath, she clutched the unhappy youth by the hair and jerked him out of his seat, crying accusingly, "Hec Abbott, you disgraceful son of a judge! You stole my melons, my State Fair melons! You can't say you didn't, 'cause I've found your knife in the garden! I s'pose it walked there, didn't it? Well, maybe it did, but you walked it! You can just settle for damages this very minute!"
By this time the Judge had found his tongue, and loosening the angry fingers from his youngest son's luxuriant topknot, he demanded of Peace, "What do you mean by such actions? Where are your manners? Why didn't you knock? Who brought you up?"
"Why didn't Hec knock when he came for my melons last night? Where are his manners? What did he mean by such actions? You brung him up!"
Len Abbott choked over his coffee, Cecile hid her face in her napkin, and even the anxious mother smiled, but the Judge looked more ruffled than abashed, and he fairly thundered, "How do you know the knife is Hector's?"
"Don't you s'pose I have seen it enough to know whose it is? Didn't I grab it from him the day he pretended to cut off Lola Hunt's ears? I cut his hand, too, but he deserved it! He's the meanest boy at school next to Jimmy Jones. Teacher took the knife away one time when he was skinning a frog, and I saw it then. Anyway, it's got his name on it,—not just his 'nitials, but his whole name. And there it is!"
She held out the article for the Judge's inspection, and that worthy gentleman, seeing the look of guilt in his small son's face, pocketed it, saying whimsically to the wrathful accuser, "That is merely circumstantial evidence. He might yet be innocent of the charge."