y 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
the bush swayed with a sinister motion. A deeper hush fell about them;
the breeze died and song birds stilled their notes. A calamity was
imminent. Neither watcher now doubted that a mocked Jonas Whipple would
terribly issue from the tangle of shrubbery.

The bushes were again agitated; then at the breaking, point of fear for
the Cowan twins the emergent figure proved to be not Jonas but a
trifling and immature female descendant of his, who now sped rapidly
toward them across the intervening glade, nor were the low mounds