e. You've set me acrost oncet or twicet, and you've always been
'clever' to me, and I don't want to see no harm done you. You'd better
look out to-night. They's some chaps from Greenbank down here, and
they're in for a frolic, and somebody's hen-roost'll suffer, I guess;
and they don't like you boys, and they talked about routing you out
to-night."

"Thank you," said Jack.

"Let 'em rout," said Bob.

But the poor little Pet Owl was all in a cold shudder again.

About eleven o'clock, King Pewee's party had picked the last bone of
Mrs. Kane's chicken. It was yet an hour and a half before the moon would
be up, and there was time for some fun. Two boys from the neighborhood,
who had joined the party, agreed to furnish dough-faces for them all.
Nothing more ghastly than masks of dough can well be imagined, and when
the boys all put them on, and had turned their coats wrong-side out,
they were almost afraid of one another.

"Now," said Riley, "Pewee will knock at the door, and when they come
with their lantern or candle, we'll all rush in and howl like Indians."

"How do Indians howl?" asked Ben Berry.

"Oh, any way--like a dog or a wolf, you know. And then they'll be scared
to death, and we'll just pitch their beds, and dishes, and everything
else out of the door, and show them how to clean house."

Riley didn't know that Allen Mackay and Jack Dudley, hidden in the
bushes, heard this speech, nor that Jack, as soon as he had heard the
plan, crept away to tell Bob at the house what the enemy proposed to
do.

As the crowd neared the log-house, Riley prudently fell to the rear, and
pushed Pewee to the front. There was just the faintest whitening of the
sky from the coming moon, but the large apple-trees in front of the
log-house made it very dark, and the dough-face crowd were obliged
almost to feel their way as they came into the shadow of these trees.
Just as Riley was exhorting Pewee to knock at the door, and the whole
party was tittering at the prospect of turning Bob, Jack, and Columbus
out of bed and out of doors, they all stopped short and held their
breaths.

"Good gracious! Julius Caesar! sakes alive!" whispered Riley.
"What--wh--what is that?"

Nobody ran. All stood as though frozen in their places. For out from
behind the corner of the house came slowly a skeleton head. It was
ablaze inside, and the light shone out of all the openings. The thing
had no feet, no hands, and no body. It actually floated thr