The soft fluffy bangs blazed up like tow, and too terrified to move, Eliza Hughes still sat on top of Katie, screaming louder than Cora had done. The sight brought Katie to her senses, however, and scrambling up from under Eliza, she flew at Cora and began beating out the fire with her bare hands. Cora, who had not discovered that her hair was ablaze, did not know what to make of such strange treatment. Her first thought was that Katie had gone crazy with fright, and that was why she had flown at her and begun to beat her on the head. It was all over in an instant, and the fire put out so quickly that only Cora's bangs were scorched, and Katie's fingers but slightly burned.
But the screams had reached through the uproar of blind man's buff, and the whole party poured out into the courtyard to see what had happened. There was great excitement for a little while, and Kitty, enjoying the confusion she had stirred up, giggled as she listened to Cora's startling description of the man that had peeped over her shoulder. "He didn't look like any one I'd ever seen before," she declared. "He was tall and handsome and dressed like a soldier."
"Oh, surely not, Cora," answered Miss Allison, who saw that some of the little girls gathered around her were badly frightened. "That couldn't be, you know. The cellar is quite empty. Give me the candle, and I'll go down and show you."
"Oh, no, please, auntie, don't go down," cried Kitty, seeing that the time had come to confess. "It is just a Hallowe'en joke. We didn't suppose that Cora would be scared. We just wanted to tease her because she seemed so sure that she would find Walter down there. Go and bring him up, boys."
Ranald and Rob started down the stairs, with Keith carrying a candle, and Malcolm calling for Walter to come on and help carry out his rival. The four boys, picking up the dummy as if it had been a real man, carried it up the steps and laid it carefully on the ground. So comical did it look with its pudgy pillow face, that everybody laughed except Cora. She was furiously angry, and not all Kitty's penitent speeches or the boys' polite apologies could appease her. If it had not been for Miss Allison she would have flounced home in high displeasure. But she as usual poured oil on the troubled waters, and talked in such a tactful way of her harum-scarum niece's many pranks, that there was no resisting such an appeal. She allowed herself to be led back to the house, but she would not join in any of the games.
"Mom Beck says I'll have bad luck for seven years because I broke that looking-glass," she said, mournfully.
"Oh, nonsense!" exclaimed Miss Allison. "Don't give it another thought, dear, it is only an old negro superstition."
She might have added that it was to herself and brother the ill luck had come, since it was her silver mirror that was broken, and Harry's rubber boots that would be henceforth useless for wading because of the holes thoughtless Kitty had made in them with safety-pins, when she fastened them to the pillows.
Refreshments were served soon after they went back to the house. Not the cakes and ices that usually attended parties in the Valley, but things suggestive of Hallowe'en. Pop-corn, nuts, and apples, doughnuts and molasses candy. Then the fate cake was cut, and everybody took a slice to carry home to dream on.