"Tell me about him," I said. Sue drew an anxious little breath:
"Oh Billy, he has been getting so queer. It has all been such a strain on his mind. Every day he kept reading the news of the strike—and some days he would stamp and rage about till I was afraid to be with him. He talked about that death cell until I thought that I'd go mad. Sometimes when we were talking I thought that we had both gone mad."
I went upstairs and found him in a chair by the window. With unnatural, clumsy motions he rose and came to meet me.
"I'm all right, my boy." His voice had a mumbling quality and I noticed the strangeness in his eyes. "I'm all right. I'm glad to see you." Then his face clouded and hardened a little, and he tried to speak to me sternly:
"I'm glad you're clean out of that strike and its notions—glad you've come to your senses," he said. "You're lucky in having such a wife. She's been over here often lately—and she's worth a dozen like you and Sue. Have you seen Sue?"
"Yes."
"Well, she's all right."
I said nothing to this, and he shot a sidelong look at me:
"I had quite a time, my boy—I had to keep right at her." Another quick look. "I suppose she's told you how I went at her."
"Never mind, Dad, it's over now."