the eyes that met hers were piteous with distress.

"My, oh!" cried Don Alonzo. "I vowed no one should do her any hurt,
and now I've done it myself."

There was little sleep in the Pitkin house that night. The neighbors
came flocking in with cries and questions; and when all was explained,
Don Alonzo found himself the hero of the hour. For once he did not
hide under the bed, but received everybody--from Deacon Bassett down
to the smallest boy who came running in shirt and trousers,
half-awake, and athirst for marvels--with modest pride, and told
over and over again how it all happened.

'Twas no great thing, he maintained. He had fooled considerable with
phosphorus, and had some of the luminous paint that he had mixed
some time before. Thinking about these fellows, he remembered a
story he read once, where they painted up a dead body to scare away
some murdering robbers. He thought a living person was as good as a
dead one, any day; so he tried it on, and it appeared to succeed. He
didn't think likely those men would stop short of the next township,
from the way they were running when he got down. Oh, the snake? That
was Joe's whip. He presumed likely it hurt some, from the way they
yelled.

But the best of all was when Joe came home, the very next day, and
when, the three of them sitting about the supper-table, Mira herself
told the great story, from the first moment of Deacon Bassett's
visit down to the triumphant close--"And I see him coming back,
shining like a corpse-candle, and I fell like dead on the floor!"