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The Green Satin Gown by Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
page 62 of 106 (58%)
touched the pillow till the precise second when something woke in
her brain and said "Five o'clock!" But to-night her sleep was broken.
She tossed and muttered in her dreams; and suddenly she sat up in bed
with eyes wide open and a distinct sense of something wrong. Her
first thought was of fire; she sniffed; the air was pure and clear.
Then, like a cry in her ears, came--"The burglars!" She held her
breath and listened; was the night as still as it was dark? No! a
faint, steady sound came to her ears. A mouse, was it, or--the sound
of a tool?

And then, almost noiselessly, a window was opened, the window of the
upper entry, next her room. Mira was at her own window in an instant,
raising it; that, too, opened silently, for Joe was a carpenter and
detested noisy windows. She peered out into the thick darkness. Black,
black! Was the blackness deeper there, just at the front door?
Surely it was! Surely something, somebody, was busy with the lock of
the door; and then she heard, as Don Alonzo had heard, a low sound
like a hiss, beside the soft scraping of the tool. What should she do?
The windows were fast, there was a bar and chain inside the door,
but what of that? Two desperate men could force an entrance anywhere
in a moment. What could she do, a woman, with only a sickly boy to
help her? And--who had opened that upper window? Was there a third
accomplice--for she thought she could see two spots of deeper
blackness by the door--hidden in the house? Oh, if only Joe had
borrowed his father's old pistol for her, as she had begged him to do!

Mira opened her lips to shout, in the hope of rousing the nearest
neighbors, though they were not very near. Opened her lips--but no
sound came from them. For at that instant something appeared at the
window next her own; something stepped from it, out on to the little
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