Wednesday at noon
`` 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 could n't bring himself to make allowances . 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 of a flock of innocent pigeons going over the heads of some lazy boys . In the first place , Susan Lanham talked about things .