The Wrong Twin | Page 3

mysterious punishment for this desecration. Presently, nothing having happened, he glowed with a boldness of his own and mounted to the top of the fence, where he again waited. He whistled, affecting to be at ease, but with a foot on the safe side of the fence. The busy worker inside paid him no attention. Presently Merle yawned.
"Well, I guess I'll come in there myself and pick a few berries," he said very loudly.
He was giving fair notice to any malign power that might be waiting to blast him. After a fitting interval, he joined his brother and fell to work.
"Well, I must say!" he chattered. "Who's afraid to come into a graveyard when they can get berries like this? We can fill the pails, and that's thirty cents right here."
The fruit fell swiftly. The Wilbur twin worked in silence. But Merle appeared rather to like the sound of a human voice. He was aimlessly loquacious. His nerves were not entirely tranquil.
"They're growing right over this old one," announced Wilbur presently. Merle glanced up to see him despoiling a bush that embowered one of the brown headstones and an all but obliterated mound.
"You better be careful," he warned.
"I guess I'm careful enough for this old one," retorted the bolder twin, and swept the trailing bush aside to scan the stone. It was weather-worn and lichened, but the carving was still legible.
"It says, 'Here lies Jonas Whipple, aged eighty-seven,' and it says, 'he passed to his reward April 23, 1828,' and here's his picture."
He pointed to the rounded top of the stone where was graven a circle inclosing primitive eyes, a nose, and mouth. From the bottom of the circle on either side protruded wings.
Merle drew near to scan the device. He was able to divine that the intention of the artist had not been one of portraiture.
"That ain't either his picture," he said, heatedly. "That's a cupid!"
"Ho, gee, gosh! Ain't cupids got legs? Where's its legs?"
"Then it's an angel."
"Angels are longer. I know now--it's a goop. And here's some more reading."
He ran his fingers along the worn lettering, then brought his eyes close and read--glibly in the beginning:
Behold this place as you pass by. As you are now, so once was I. As I am now, so you must be. Prepare for death, and follow me.
The reader's voice lost in fullness and certainty as he neared the end of this strophe.
"Say, we better get right out of here," said Merle, stepping toward the fence. Even Wilbur was daunted by the blunt warning from beyond.
"Here's another," called Merle, pausing on his way toward the fence. In hushed, fearful tones he declaimed:
Dear companion in your bloom, Behold me moldering in the tomb, For Death is a debt to Nature due, Which I have paid, and so must you.
"There, now, I must say!" called Merle. "We better hurry out!"
But the Wilbur twin lingered. Ripe berries still glistened about the stone of the departed Jonas Whipple.
"Aw, gee, gosh, they're just old ones!" he declared. "It says this one passed to his reward in 1828, and we wasn't born then, so he couldn't be meaning us, could he? We ain't passed to our reward yet, have we? I simply ain't going to pay the least attention to it."
A bit nervously he fell again to picking the berries. The mere feel of them emboldened him.
"Gee, gosh! We ain't followed him yet, have we?"
"'As I am now, so you must be!'" quoted the other in warning.
"Well, my sakes, don't everyone in town know that? But it don't mean we're going to be--be it--right off."
"You better come just the samey!"
But the worker was stubborn.
"Ho, I guess I ain't afraid of any old Whipple as old as what this one is!"
"Well, anyway," called Merle, still in hushed tones, "I guess I got enough berries from this place."
"Aw, come on!" urged the worker.
In a rush of bravado he now extemporized a chant of defiance:
Old Jonas Whipple Was an old cripple! Old Jonas Whipple Was an old cripple!
The Merle twin found this beyond endurance. He leaped for the fence and gained its top, looking back with a blanched face to see the offender smitten. He wanted to go at once, but this might be worth waiting for.
Wilbur continued to pick berries. Again he chanted loudly, mocking the solemnities of eternity:
Old Jonas Whipple Was an old cripple! Was an old--
The mockery died in his throat, and he froze to a statue of fear. Beyond the headstone of Jonas Whipple, and toward the centre of the plot, a clump of syringa was plainly observed to sway with the movements of a being unseen.
"I told you!" came the hoarse whisper of Merle, but he, too, was chained by fright to the fence top.
They waited, breathless, in the presence of the king of terrors. Again