ught back his color, when, addressing the
sympathizing crowd, Yetmore said:

"It made me feel a bit sick to think what chances these boys ran last
night. Every one knows how hard it is to tell those houses apart; and
that fellow might easily have made a mistake and blown up Tom Connor's
house on one side or Hughy Hughes' on the other."

"Yes," said I; "and all the more so as Joe and I last evening put a
second window into Tom's house, so that any one coming across lots
after dark might just as well have taken Tom's house for old Snyder's."

"Phew!" whistled one of the men in the crowd. "Then it's Hughy Hughes
that's to be congratulated. If that rascal _had_ made such a mistake,
and had chosen the second house from Tom's instead of the second house
from Snyder's we'd have been making arrangements for six funerals about
now. Hughy has four children, hasn't he?"

I could not help feeling sorry for Yetmore. Convinced as I was that he
had at least connived in a plot to destroy Tom's house, I felt sure that
he had been far from intending personal injury to any one; and I felt
sure, too, that he was thoroughly sincere, when, rising from his seat
and addressing the assemblage, he said:

"Men, I'm sorry to lose my house, of course--that goes without
saying--but when I think of what might have happened it doesn't trouble
me that much"--snapping his finger and thumb. "I tell you, men, I'm
downright thankful it was _my_ house that was blown up and nobody
else's."

As he said this he looked at Joe and me, and I felt convinced that it
was to us and not to the assembled throng that he addressed his remark.
The people, however, not knowing what we did, loudly applauded the
magnanimity of the sentiment, and many of them pressed forward to shake
hands again.

Yetmore had never been so popular as he was at that moment. Everybody
sympathized with him over his loss; everybody admired the dignified way
in which he accepted it; and everybody would have been delighted to hear
that some compensating piece of good fortune had befallen him.

Strange to say, at that very moment that very thing happened.

Suddenly we were all attracted by a distant shouting up the street.
Looking through the front window, we saw that all the people outside had
turned and were gazing in that direction. By one impulse everybody in
the store surged out through the doorways, when we saw, still some
distance away, a man running down the middle of the street, w