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The room became silent. The Governor’s thoughts were far away, planning, planning, almost always planning.

The stillness became lonesome. Then little John, the painter in the sand, ventured to ask his mother for a story, and she said:

“I am narrowing now in my knitting; ask your father, he is wool-gathering; call him home.”

Little John touched his father on the arm.

“It is a story that you would have,” said the Governor. “I am thinking all by myself on a case that comes up before me to-morrow, of a young man who has broken the law, but did not know that there was any such law to break. He had just come in from sea.

“Now, what would you do in such a case as that, Johnny? I am thinking how to be merciful to the man and just to others.”

“I would do what mother would do—mother, what would you do in a case like that?”

“I do not know; there may be things to be considered. I would follow my heart; if it would not endanger others.”

“Father, what will you do? Animals break laws about which they do not know. I pity them.”