ll, why don't you _see_ if I will? I bet you're afraid yourself."

"Oh, I am, am I?" said Penrod, in a reckless voice--and his finger
touched the trigger. It seemed to him that his finger no more than
touched it; perhaps he had been reassured by Sam's assertion that the
trigger was difficult. His intentions must remain in doubt, and probably
Penrod himself was not certain of them; but one thing comes to the
surface as entirely definite--that trigger was not so hard to pull as
Sam said it was.

_Bang!_ _Wh-a-a-ack._ A shattering report split the air of the stable
and there was an orifice of remarkable diameter in the alley door. With
these phenomena, three yells, expressing excitement of different kinds,
were almost simultaneous--two from within the stable and the third from
a point in the alley about eleven inches lower than the orifice just
constructed in the planking of the door. This third point, roughly
speaking, was the open mouth of a gayly dressed young colored man whose
attention, as he strolled, had been thus violently distracted from some
mental computations he was making in numbers, including, particularly,
those symbols of ecstasy or woe, as the case might be, seven and eleven.
His eye at once perceived the orifice on a line enervatingly little
above the top of his head; and, although he had not supposed himself so
well known in this neighborhood, he was aware that he did, here and
there, possess acquaintances of whom some such uncomplimentary action
might be expected as natural and characteristic. His immediate procedure
was to prostrate himself flat upon the ground, against the stable doors.

In so doing, his shoulders came brusquely in contact with one of them,
which happened to be unfastened, and it swung open, revealing to his
gaze two stark-white white boys, one of them holding an enormous pistol
and both staring at him in stupor of ultimate horror. For, to the glassy
eyes of Penrod and Sam, the stratagem of the young colored man, thus
dropping to earth, disclosed, with awful certainty, a slaughtered body.

This dreadful thing raised itself upon its elbows and looked at them,
and there followed a motionless moment--a tableau of brief duration, for
both boys turned and would have fled, shrieking, but the body spoke:

"'At's a nice business!" it said reproachfully. "Nice business! Tryin'
blow a man's head off!"

Penrod was unable to speak, but Sam managed to summon the tremulous
semblance of a voice