n as mean a crowd as yours, and be your puppy-dog to
fight for you, let him come on. He's a fool if he does, that's all I
have to say. The whole town will want to ship you two fellows off before
night, and Pewee isn't going to fight your battles. What do you think,
Pewee, of fellows that put powder in a stove where they might blow up a
lot of little children? What do you think of two fellows that want me to
keep quiet after they let little Lum Risdale take a whipping for them,
and that talk about setting you on to me if I tell?"

Thus brought face to face with both parties, King Pewee only looked
foolish and said nothing.

Jack had worked himself into such a passion that he could not go to
Risdale's, but returned to his own home, declaring that he was going to
tell everybody in town. But when he entered the house and looked into
the quiet, self-controlled face of his mother, he began to feel cooler.

"Let us remember that some allowances are to be made for such boys," was
all that she said.

"That's what you always say, Mother," said Jack, impatiently. "I believe
you'd make allowances for the Old Boy himself."

"That would depend on his bringing up," smiled Mrs. Dudley. "Some people
have bad streaks naturally, and some have been cowed and brutalized by
ill-treatment, and some have been spoiled by indulgence."

Jack felt more calm after a while. He went back to the bedside of
Columbus, but he couldn't bring himself to make allowances.

CHAPTER XII

GREENBANK WAKES UP

If the pigeons had not crossed the valley on Monday, nobody would have
played truant, and if nobody had played truant on Monday, there would
not have been occasion to whip three boys on Tuesday morning, and if Ben
Berry and Riley had escaped a beating on Tuesday morning, they would not
have thought of putting gunpowder into the stove on Wednesday at noon,
and if they had omitted that bad joke, Columbus would not have got into
trouble and run away from school, and if he had escaped the fright and
the flight, he might not have had the fever, and the town would not have
been waked up, and other things would not have happened.

So then, you see, this world of ours is just like the House that Jack
Built: one thing is tied to another and another to that, and that to
this, and this to something, and something to something else, and so on
to the very end of all things.

So it was that the village was thrown into a great excitement as the
result