slipped up on poor
smiling and complacent Dowley so nice and easy and softly, that
he never suspected anything was going to happen till the blow
came crashing down and knocked him all to rags.

A fine effect. In fact, as fine as any I ever produced, with so
little time to work it up in.

But I saw in a moment that I had overdone the thing a little.
I was expecting to scare them, but I wasn't expecting to scare
them to death. They were mighty near it, though. You see they
had been a whole lifetime learning to appreciate the pillory; and
to have that thing staring them in the face, and every one of them
distinctly at the mercy of me, a stranger, if I chose to go and
report--well, it was awful, and they couldn't seem to recover
from the shock, they couldn't seem to pull themselves together.
Pale, shaky, dumb, pitiful? Why, they weren't any better than
so many dead men. It was very uncomfortable. Of course, I thought
they would appeal to me to keep mum, and then we would shake hands,
and take a drink all round, and laugh it off, and there an end.
But no; you see I was an unknown person, among a cruelly oppressed
and suspicious people, a people always accustomed to having advantage
taken of their helplessness, and never expecting just or kind
treatment from any but their own families and very closest intimates.
Appeal to _me_ to be gentle, to be fair, to be generous? Of course,
they wanted to, but they couldn't dare.

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE YANKEE AND THE KING SOLD AS SLAVES

Well, what had I better do? Nothing in a hurry, sure. I must
get up a diversion; anything to employ me while I could think,
and while these poor fellows could have a chance to come to life
again. There sat Marco, petrified in the act of trying to get
the hang of his miller-gun--turned to stone, just in the attitude
he was in when my pile-driver fell, the toy still gripped in his
unconscious fingers. So I took it from him and proposed to explain
its mystery. Mystery! a simple little thing like that; and yet it
was mysterious enough, for that race and that age.

I never saw such an awkward people, with machinery; you see, they
were totally unused to it. The miller-gun was a little double-barreled
tube of toughened glass, with a neat little trick of a spring
to it, which upon pressure would let a shot escape. But the shot
wouldn't hurt anybody, it would only drop into your hand. In the
gun were two sizes--wee mustard-seed shot, and