THE LOST RING
Into the lower halls and corridors of the school poured the children.
The last bell was still clanging, and they would not be marked late if
they reached their classrooms before the last peal. The bell would ring
for several minutes yet.
On all sides, as the boys and girls hurried in, could be heard talks
and gasps of astonishment, not unmixed with fear, about the breaking of
the church window.
“Oh, did you see it?”
“Did you hear it?”
“Didn’t it make a big crash!”
“What’ll the church people say?”
“I guess that window must ’a’ cost a thousand dollars!”
“Who did it?”
This last question was the one most often asked.
But no one seemed to know, or, if any one did, he or she was not
telling about it. Nan hurried with Flossie and Freddie to their
classroom, and then she hastened back toward her own. Bert was in Nan’s
room, and, seeing her brother just before she entered the door, Nan
whispered:
“Bert, did you break the church window?”
“No,” he answered, “I didn’t. Of course I didn’t do it!”
“Do you know who did it?”
Bert did not answer for a second or two. For the moment he and Nan were
by themselves, just outside their classroom door. Then Bert looked down
the corridor and saw Danny Rugg and Sam Todd coming along.
“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.”
Mr. Tarton stopped speaking and waited. It grew very still and quiet in
the room. If any one had dropped a pin it could have been heard in the
farthest corner. But no one dropped a pin. Nor did any one speak. Nor
did any boy stand up to say he had broken the window.
The silence continued. The teachers, sitting in a row back of Mr.
Tarton on the platform, looked at the faces of the boys and girls in
front of them.
“Well,” said the principal in a low voice, “I am waiting.”
Still no one got up. Some of the boys and girls began to shift uneasily
in their seats and shuffled their feet. They were getting what an older
person would call “nervous.”
“It does not seem,” went on Mr. Tarton, “that the boy who broke the
window is going to be man enough to own up to it. I dislike to do this,
but I must ask if any one here knows anything about it. I mean did any
of you see any one throw a snowball at the church window?”
There was a further silence, but only for a few seconds. Then up went
the hand of Sam Todd. Some of the girls gasped loudly, seeming to guess
what was coming next.
“Well, Sammie,” said Mr. Tarton kindly, “what do you know about
breaking the church window? Did you do it?”
“No, sir!”
“Do you know who did?”
“Yes, sir!”
More gasps of surprise.
“Who broke the window?” asked the principal.
“Bert Bobbsey!” said Sam in a firm voice, and Nan was so excited that
she cried out:
“Oh!”
Nor did the principal or any of the teachers scold her. But Bert was
not one to sit quietly and be falsely accused. In an instant he was on
his feet, raising his hand that he might get permission to speak.
“Well, Bert,” said Mr. Tarton quietly.
“I didn’t break that window!” cried the Bobbsey lad. “I didn’t even
throw a snowball toward it. I didn’t do it at all!” His face was very
red.
“Sammie, did you actually see Bert Bobbsey throw a snowball at the
stained-glass window and break it?” asked Mr. Tarton, and his voice was
stern.
“No, sir, I didn’t really see him break the window,” Sam replied. “But
I saw a snowball in his hand. I saw him raise his hand to throw the
snowball, and right after that I heard the glass crack. Bert Bobbsey
did it!”
“I did not!” exclaimed Bert.
“Quiet! That will do!” the principal called, raising his hand for
silence. “We will not go further into the matter here. Bert, come to my
office after school, and you also, Sam. We will talk about the broken
window then. The classes will now go to their own rooms.”
The teacher at the piano began to play a lively march, but there was
not much spring in the steps of Bert and Nan Bobbsey as they filed
back to Miss Skell’s room. Bert was hurt and indignant that Sam should
accuse him of breaking the window. Nan, too, felt sure that her brother
had not done it.
“Don’t let him scare you, Bert!” whispered Charlie Mason, one of Bert’s
best chums, to the Bobbsey lad in the corridor. “We know you didn’t do
it.”
Of course it was against the rule for Charlie to whisper thus in the
hall, but he was not caught at it. Bert was glad his chum had spoken
to him.
“Now, children,” said Miss Skell, when her pupils were again in their
seats, “we are going to forget all about the broken church window.
Mr. Tarton will attend to that. And please forget that Bert has been
mentioned as doing it.
“I, for one,” and Miss Skell smiled down at the blushing Bobbsey boy,
“don’t believe Bert would do such a thing. I think Sammie must be
mistaken. Now we shall go on with our lessons.”
Neither Danny nor Sam were in the room with Bert and Nan, and for this
the two Bobbseys were glad. Sam and his crony were in the same grade
with Bert and Nan, but, because of its size, the class recited in two
different rooms under separate teachers.
It took a little time for the class to quiet down after the unusual
excitement, but at length the recitations were proceeded with.
It was when Bert and Nan were hurrying home at the noon recess with
Flossie and Freddie that Nan said to her brother:
“Who broke that window, Bert? If you know you ought to tell, especially
since they say you did it.”
“Nobody says I did it except that sneak, Sam Todd, and he isn’t telling
the truth!” exclaimed her twin.
“Do you know who did it?” persisted Nan. Flossie and Freddie had run on
a little way ahead to play with children from their own class, and did
not hear what the two older Bobbseys were saying.
“I’m not sure,” answered Bert, looking about to make certain no one was
near enough to catch what he said, “I didn’t actually see him throw the
snowball, but I believe Danny Rugg broke that window.”
“Oh, Bert, do you, really?” gasped Nan.
“I sure do! I can’t prove it, for I didn’t see him. But he had a
snowball in his hand and he chucked it away when he was near the
church. And right after that the window broke. But I’m not going to
tell.”
“Oh, Bert, maybe you ought to! Do you remember the time Mr. Ringley’s
shoe store window was broken?”
“Yes,” answered Bert, “I remember that time.”
“They said you did that,” went on Nan. “But afterward old Mr. Roscoe
said he saw Danny Rugg throw the chunk of ice that broke the window.
And when Danny found out Mr. Roscoe had seen him, then Danny owned up
that he did it. Don’t you remember?”
“Yes, he broke Mr. Ringley’s window,” admitted Bert, speaking of
something that happened in the first book of this series, “The Bobbsey
Twins.” In that volume you meet Danny Rugg as a bad boy, who was very
unfriendly toward Nan and Bert. Then, after a fight, Danny seemed to
have reformed, and he became a better boy.
“He’s as bad as ever--breaking windows and things like that!” went on
Nan.
“We don’t know for sure that he did it,” cautioned Bert.
“It would be just like him to do it!” declared Nan. “Are you going to
tell mother?”
“Sure!”
And when Mrs. Bobbsey heard what had happened she advised Bert to speak
nothing but the truth and not to accuse Danny unless he was sure that
lad had broken the window.
“That’s the trouble,” sighed Bert. “I can’t be sure, but I feel pretty
certain that Danny did it.”
“It will all come out right,” his mother told him. “And of course you
must not say that you broke the window if you didn’t. Mr. Tarton is too
fair a man to let you be accused without good proof.”
And it was not very good proof that Sam Todd could give when later in
the day he and Bert went to the principal’s office. Sam told his story
over again.
“Yes,” Bert admitted, “I did have some snowballs in my hand. Danny Rugg
and Sam had been throwing at John Marsh, and he ran to where I was. I
was going to help John fight, but there wasn’t any need. And I tossed
away my snowballs before I got within a block of the school.”
“So did I,” said Sam. “And I think I saw you throw yours at the church
window, Bert. Maybe you didn’t mean to break it, but you did.”
“No, I didn’t!” insisted Bert stoutly.
“I think we had better have Danny Rugg in here to see what he knows
about it,” suggested Mr. Tarton. “It would not be fair to punish Bert
on just your say-so, Sammie. You might be honestly mistaken. Go out and
see if you can find Danny and bring him in here.”
But there was no need to go after Danny Rugg. Just as Sam was leaving
the principal’s office Danny came hurrying in, much excited.
“Oh, oh, Mr. Tarton!” he exclaimed.
“What is it?” asked the head of the school. And Bert found himself
wondering whether Danny was going to confess having broken the
stained-glass window of the church.
“Oh, Mr. Tarton!” gasped Danny. “I’ve lost my gold ring! My birthday
ring is gone!” and he held up his hand. No longer did the gold band
glitter on it.