hat about
that?"

"It isn't--I didn't--you can't prove anything about me, Bert Bobbsey,
and if you go around telling that I took your ice cream, I--"

But Danny did not know what else to say. He was confused and his face
was white and red by turns, for he realized that Bert had good proof of
what he said.

"Better go slow," advised Bert, calmly. "I don't intend to go around
telling what you did. I just want to let you know that I am sure you
took our ice cream.

"I--I" began Danny. "You're only trying to fool me!" he exclaimed.
"That button wasn't in it at all!"

"Wasn't it?" asked Bert, quietly. "Well, you just ask Charley Mason,
or any of the fellows who were at the party, what we found in the
freezer, and see what they say."

Danny had nothing to reply to this. Thrusting the button in his pocket
he walked off. Bert was sure he had found the boy who had taken the
ice cream.

Later, from a boy who had been friends with Danny for some time, but
whose father, afterward, decided that his son was getting into bad
company, and made him cease playing with the school bully, Bert learned
that Danny had planned to take the ice cream freezer off the porch.

He and several boys did this, carrying it to the old barn. They had
provided themselves with large spoons, and were having a good time,
eating the cream, when they heard the approach of Bert and his friends,
and fled, leaving the cream behind.

It was during a dispute as to who should have the right to first dip
into the freezer that Danny and a boy named Jake Harkness had a
struggle, and in this Danny lost a button which fell into the ice cream
without anyone knowing it. The coat Danny wore that night he did not
put on again for some time, but when he did Bert saw the missing button.

Danny knew that he had been found out, and for a time he had little to
say. But Bert was boy enough not to be able to keep altogether quiet
over his discovery. From time to time he would ask Danny:

"Lost any more buttons, lately?"

"You let me alone!" Danny would reply, surlily.

Of course this made talk, the boys wanting to know what it meant, and
at last the story came out. This made Danny so angry that he picked
several quarrels with Bert. On his part Bert tried to avoid them, but
at last he could stand it no longer, and he and Danny came to blows
again, Danny striking first.

Bert had been brought up with the idea that fighting, unless it could
absolutely be