I had just 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.