The Wrong Twin. Harry Leon Wilson

and the results were blasting, though the occasion was happier. Indeed, the intention of Juliana had been wholly amiable, for it was at the picnic of the Methodist Sunday-school.

      She came upon the twins in a fair dell, where they watched other children at a game, and she took very civil notice of them, saying, "How do you do, young gentlemen?" in deep, thrilling tones, and though they had been doing very well until that moment, neither of the twins had recovered strength to say so. To them she had been more formidable than a schoolteacher. Their throats had closed upon all utterance. Now as she faced them, a dozen feet away, even though the words "Patricia Whipple" applied to but one of their number, the twins took the challenge to themselves and quailed. They knew that deep and terrible voice menaced themselves as well as the late Ben Blunt—for that mere street urchin, blown upon by the winds of desolation, had shrivelled and passed. In his place drooped a girl in absurd boy's clothes, her hair messily cut off, smoking something she plainly did not wish to smoke. The stricken lily of vice drooped upon its stem.

      One by one the three heads turned to regard the orator. How had she contrived that noiseless approach? How had she found them at all in this seclusion? The heads having turned to regard her, turned back and bowed in stony glares at the rich Whipple-nourished turf. They felt her come toward them; her shadow from the high sun blended with theirs. And again the voice, that fearsome organ on which she managed such dread effects:

      "Patricia Whipple, what does this mean?"

      She confronted them, a spare, grim figure, tall, authoritative, seeming to be old as Time itself. How were they to know that Juliana was still youthful, even attired youthfully, though by no means frivolously, or that her heart was gentle? She might, indeed, have danced to them as Columbine, and her voice would still have struck them with terror. She brought her deepest tones to those simple words, "What does this mean?" All at once it seemed to them that something had been meant, something absurd, monstrous, lawless, deserving a ghastly punishment.

      The late Ben Blunt squirmed and bored a heel desperately into the turf above a Whipple whose troubles had ceased in 1828. She made a rough noise in her throat, but it was not informing. The Wilbur twin, forgetting his own plight, glanced warm encouragement to her.

      "I guess she's got aright to run away," he declared, brazenly.

      But in this burst of bravado he had taken too little account of his attire. He recalled it now, for the frosty gray eyes of Juliana ran about him and came to rest upon his own eyes. For the taut moment that he braved her glance it unaccountably seemed to him that the forbidding mouth of the woman twitched nervously into the beginning of a smile. It was a fleeting effect, but it did seem as if she had almost laughed, then caught herself. And there was a tremolo defect in the organ tone with which she now again demanded in blistering politeness, "May I ask what this means?"

      The quick-thinking Merle twin had by now devised an exit from any complicity in whatever was meant. He saw his way out. He spoke up brightly and with no shadow of guilt upon his fair young face.

      "I told her it was wrong for the young to smoke; it stunts their growth and leads to evil companions. But she wouldn't listen to me."

      There was a nice regret in his tone.

      Miss Juliana ignored him.

      "Patricia!" she said, terribly.

      But the late Ben Blunt, after the first devastating shock, had been recovering vitality for this ordeal.

      "I don't care!" she announced. "I'll run away if I want to!" And again, bitterly, "I don't care!"

      "Run away!"

      Juliana fairly bayed the words. She made running away seem to be something nice people never, never did.

      "I don't care!" repeated the fugitive, dully.

      There was a finality about it that gave Juliana pause. She had expected a crumpling, but the offender did not crumple. It seemed another tack must be taken.

      "Indeed?" she inquired, almost cooingly. "And may I ask if this absurd young creature was to accompany you on your—your travels?" She indicated the gowned Wilbur, who would then have gone joyously to his reward, even as had Jonas Whipple. His look of dumb suffering would have stayed a judge less conscientious. "I presume this is some young lady of your acquaintance—one of your little girl friends," she continued, though it was plain to all that she presumed nothing of the sort.

      "He is not!" The look of dumb suffering had stoutened one heart to new courage. "He's a very nice little boy, and he gave me these ragged clothes to run away in, and now he'll have to wear his Sunday clothes. And you know he's a boy as well as I do!"

      "She made him take a lot of money for it," broke in the Merle twin. "I was afraid she wasn't doing right, but she wouldn't listen to me, so she gave him the money and I took charge of it for him."

      He beamed virtuously at Miss Juliana, who now rewarded him with a hurried glance of approval. It seemed to Miss Juliana and to him that he had been on the side of law and order, condemning and seeking to dissuade the offenders from their vicious proceedings. He felt that he was a very good little boy, indeed, and that the tall lady was understanding it. He had been an innocent bystander.

      Miss Juliana again eyed the skirted Wilbur, and the viewless wind of a smile's beginning blew across the lower half of her accusing face. Then she favoured the mere street urchin with a glance of extreme repugnance.

      "I shall have to ask all of you to come with me," she said, terribly.

      "Where to?" demanded the chief culprit.

      "You know well enough."

      This was all too true.

      "Me?" demanded the upright Merle, as if there must have been some mistake. Surely no right-thinking person could implicate him in this rowdy affair!

      "You, if you please," said Miss Juliana, but she smiled beautifully upon him. He felt himself definitely aligned with the forces of justice. He all at once wanted to go. He would go as an assistant prosecuting attorney.

      "Not—not me?" stammered the stricken Wilbur.

      "By all means—you!" Miss Juliana sharpened her tone She added, mysteriously: "It would be good without you—good, but not perfect."

      "Now I guess you'll learn how to behave yourself in future!" admonished Merle, the preacher, and edged toward Miss Juliana as one withdrawing from contamination.

      "Oh, not me!" pleaded the voice of Wilbur.

      "I think you heard me," said Miss Juliana. "Come!"

      She uttered "come" so that not mountains would have dared stay, much less a frightened little boy in a girl's dress. In his proper garb there had been instant and contemptuous flight. But the dress debased all his manly instincts. He came crawling, as the worm. The recent Ben Blunt pulled a cap over a shorn head and advanced stoically before the group.

      "One moment," said Miss Juliana. "We seem to be forgetting something." She indicated the hat of Patricia Whipple lying on the ground near where smouldered the two ends of the abandoned pennygrab. "I think you might resume this, my dear, and restore the cap to its rightful owner." It was but a further play of her debased fancy. The mere street urchin was now decked in a girl's hat and a presumable girl wore an incongruous cap. "I will ask you two rare specimens to precede me," she said when the change was made. They preceded her.

      "I don't care!" This was more bravado from the urchin.

      "Well, don't you care!" Juliana said it, soothingly.

      "I will, too, care!" retorted the urchin, betraying her sex.

      "Will she take us to the jail?" whispered the trembling Wilbur.

      "Worse!" said the girl. "She'll take us home!" Side by side they threaded an aisle between rows of the carefree dead, whom no malignant Miss Juliana could torture. Behind them marched their captor, Merle stepping blithely beside her.

      "It's lovely weather for this time of year," they