any."

"And the Lord knows what the little fiends would have done next, but Juliana Whipple happened to be passing, and heard the poor child's screams and took her away from them."

"That dreadful, dreadful Wilbur!" cried Winona.

"Reform school," spoke the judge, as if he uttered it from the bench.

"But something queer," went on Mrs. Penniman. "Juliana took the twins home in the pony cart, with Wilbur wearing Patricia's dress—it's a plaid gingham I made myself—and someone gave him a lot of money and let him go, and they didn't give Merle any because Ed Seaver saw them on River Street, and Wilbur had it all. And what did Patricia Whipple say to Don Paley but that she was going to have one of the twins for her brother, because no one else would get her a brother, and so she must. But what would she want one of those little cutthroats for? That's what puzzles me."

"Merle is not a cutthroat," said Winona with tightening lips.   "He never will be a cutthroat." She left all manner of permissible suspicions about his brother.

"Well, it just beat me!" confessed her mother. "Maybe they've been reading Wild West stories."

"Wilbur, perhaps," insisted Winona. "Merle is already very choice in his reading."

"A puzzle, anyway—why, there they come!"

And the manner of their coming brought more bewilderment to the house of Penniman. For the criminal Wilbur did not come shamed and slinking, but with rather an uplift. Behind him gloomily trod the Merle twin. Even at a distance he was disapproving, accusatory, put upon. It was to be seen that he washed his hands of the evil.

"Whatever in the world—" began Mrs. Penniman, for Wilbur in the hollow of his arm bore a forked branch upon which seemed to perch in all confidence a free bird of the wilds.

"A stuffed bird!" said the peering Winona, and dispelled this illusion.

The twins entered the gate. Midway up the gravelled walk Wilbur Cowan began a gurgling oration.

"I bet nobody can guess what I brought! Yes, sir—a beautiful present for every one—that will make a new man of poor old Judge Penniman, and this lovely orange—that's for Mrs. Penniman—and I bet Winona 

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