Then Mr. Prescott saw the nurse coming, and he hurried off.
The next time that Uncle John came Billy asked him what had become of the man—“the poor man,” Billy called him.
“That man,” said Uncle John, his mouth growing rather firm, “was found out in his sin.
“He undertook a little too much when he set fire to one end of the mill, and then tried to blow up the main office. That’s too much for one man to do at one time, especially when he’s a man that leaves things around.”
“Oh!” said Billy.
“Now,” said Uncle John, “he’s where he’s having his actions regulated.”
“I hope,” said Billy, “that they’ll be good to him.”
“Billy,” said Uncle John, very decidedly, “all that you are called upon to do about that man is to believe that he couldn’t think straight.
“But the way this world is made makes it necessary, when a man can’t think straighter than to try to destroy the very mill where he’s working, for some one else to do a part of his thinking for him.
“That’s what the men that make the laws are trying to do. They are trying to help men to think straight.”