"Of course I shan't peep," said Maggie disdainfully; and she buried her face in the pillow like a person of strict honour. But Tom looked round warily as he walked to the closet; then he stepped into the narrow space, and almost closed the door. Maggie kept her face buried until Tom called out, "Now, then, Magsie!" Nothing but very careful study could have enabled Tom to present so striking a figure as he did to Maggie when she looked up. With some burnt cork he had made himself a pair of black eyebrows that met over his nose, and were matched by a blackness about the chin. He had wound a red handkerchief round his cloth cap to give it the air of a turban, and his red comforter across his breast as a scarf--an amount of red which, with the frown on his brow, and the firmness with which he grasped a real sword, as he held it with its point resting on the ground, made him look very fierce and bloodthirsty indeed. Maggie looked bewildered for a moment, and Tom enjoyed that moment keenly; but in the next she laughed, clapped her hands together, and said, "O Tom, you've made yourself like Bluebeard at the show." It was clear she had not been struck with the presence of the sword--it was not unsheathed. Her foolish mind required a more direct appeal to its sense of the terrible; and Tom prepared for his master-stroke. Frowning fiercely, he (carefully) drew the sword--a real one--from its sheath and pointed it at Maggie. "O Tom, please don't," cried Maggie, in a tone of dread, shrinking away from him into the opposite corner; "I shall scream--I'm sure I shall! Oh, don't! I wish I'd never come upstairs!" [Illustration: "O Tom, please don't,", cried Maggie.] The corners of Tom's mouth showed an inclination to a smile that was immediately checked. Slowly he let down the scabbard on the floor lest it should make too much noise, and then said sternly,-- "I'm the Duke of Wellington! March!" stamping forward with the right leg a little bent, and the sword still pointed towards Maggie, who, trembling, and with tear-filled eyes, got upon the bed, as the only means of widening the space between them. Tom, happy in this spectator, even though it was only Maggie, proceeded to such an exhibition of the cut and thrust as would be expected of the Duke of Wellington. "Tom, I will not bear it--I will scream," said Maggie, at the first movement of the sword. "You'll hurt yourself; you'll cut your head off!" "One--two," said Tom firmly, though at "two" his wrist trembled a little. "Three" came more slowly, and with it the sword swung downwards, and Maggie gave a loud shriek. The sword had fallen with its edge on Tom's foot, and in a moment after he had fallen too.