George Marston went into the country as teacher in a school in which there had been much bad order. The directors were in earnest; they wanted a good school, but for the salary they offered they had not been able to secure a man who could handle the big boys who made the trouble. They were not especially bad boys; but the tradition of mischief in the school was so persistent that no teacher had been able to overcome it. During the fall term there was no trouble, for then only meek little girls and small boys attended. But on the first Monday after Thanksgiving, corn-shucking being over, the older pupils came in an avalanche of good-natured noise. The room, before so sparsely populated by a few pupils, seemed to overflow with their energy. Trouble was not long in coming, and it took the shape of a shower of fine shot, which pattered down from the ceiling during the spelling lesson. George knew that the hour of trial had come, and he called out bravely: “Who did that?” There was no response. The little girls were peeping timidly from their books, but the big boys and girls frankly relished the coming fun. “We may as well settle it now,” said George Marston. “We can’t have a school without good order. Of course I want to be just, and first of all I want to know who threw that shot. Will you tell me?” No one spoke. Then the teacher went around the room, asking each one in turn if he had done it. Every one denied it. There was clearly an understanding among the pupils that gave the teacher no chance. So Marston gave it up for the time being, and lessons were taken up again. But at four o’clock he asked four of the leading boys, those he suspected most, to stay after school. When the rest had gone, he conducted an exhaustive examination, trying to find who was responsible for the disturbance. The evidence was flippant, contradictory, mockingly frank; but he found out nothing. Still with his idea of locating the offense in one person, George held another trial the next night, with the same result. Then he took the matter to the board. “One or two persons must have thrown that shot,” he said to the board members, “and if I can find the person who did it, and make an example of him, then I know I can manage the school without trouble. But so far I can’t find the offender. There doesn’t seem to be a ringleader; they all hang together so.” “Why can’t you find the offender?” asked one member. “Because they all lie about it—at least there’s one person who is lying. If only I could find that one person!” “Why not lick them all, since they’re all mixed up in it?” This director was a coarsely practical man. “Because one person did the deed, and he ought to bear the punishment,” George replied. “If I keep my eyes open and wait, in time I’ll be sure to catch the boy that threw that shot.”