A Final Reckoning | Page 2

be if they would let me alone; but everything that is done bad,
they put it down to me."
"But what have you been doing now, Reuben?"
"I have done nothing at all, ma'm; but he's always down on me," and he
pointed to the master, "and when they are always down on a fellow, it's

no use his trying to do right."
"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.
"Yes, mamma. It was Tom Thorne."

"Is Thomas Thorne here?" Mrs. Ellison asked in a loud voice.
There was a general turning of the heads of the children to the point
where a boy, somewhat bigger than the rest, had been apparently
studying his lessons with great diligence.
"Come here, Tom Thorne," Mrs. Ellison said.
The boy slouched up with a sullen face.
"You hear what my daughter says, Tom. What have you to say in
reply?"
"I didn't throw the stone at the window," the boy replied. "I chucked it
at a sparrow, and it weren't my fault if it missed him and broke the
window."
"I should say it was your fault, Tom," Mrs. Ellison said sharply--"very
much your fault, if you throw a great stone at a bird without taking care
to see what it may hit. But that is nothing to your fault in letting another
boy be punished for what you did. I shall report the matter to the squire,
and he will speak to your father about it. You are a wicked, bad boy.
"Mr. White, I will speak to you outside."
Followed by her daughters, Mrs. Ellison went out; Kate giving a little
nod, in reply to the grateful look that Reuben Whitney cast towards her,
and his muttered:
"Thank you, miss."
"Walk on, my dears," Mrs. Ellison said. "I will overtake you, in a
minute or two.
"This will not do, Mr. White," she said, when she was alone with the
master. "I have told you before that I did not approve of your thrashing
so much, and now it is proved that you punish without any sufficient
cause, and upon suspicion only. I shall report the case at once to the
squire and, unless I am greatly mistaken, you will have to look out for

another place."
"I am very sorry, Mrs. Ellison, indeed I am; and it is not often I use the
cane, now. If it had been anyone else, I might have believed him; but
Reuben Whitney is always in mischief."
"No wonder he is in mischief," the lady said severely, "if he is punished,
without a hearing, for all the misdeeds of others. Well, I shall leave the
matter in the squire's hands; but I am sure he will no more approve than
I do of the children being ill treated."
Reuben Whitney was the son of a miller, near Tipping. John Whitney
had been considered a well-to-do man, but he had speculated in corn
and had got into difficulties; and his body was, one day, found floating
in the mill dam. No one knew whether it was