“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 heard him say.

CHAPTER II

They came all too soon to a gate giving upon the public road and the world of the living who make remarks about strange sights they witness.  Still it was a quiet street, and they were accorded no immediate reception.  There stood the pony cart of Miss Juliana, and this, she made known, they were to enter.  It was a lovely vehicle, drawn by a lovely fat pony, and the Wilbur twin had often envied those privileged to ride in it.  Never had he dreamed so rich a treat could be his.  Now it was to be his, but the thing was no longer a lovely pony cart; it was a tumbril—­worse than a tumbril, for he was going to a fate worse than death.

The shameful skirt flopped about his bare legs as he awkwardly clambered into the rear seat beside the sex-muddled creature in a boy’s suit and a girl’s hat.  Miss Juliana and the godly Merle in the front seat had very definitely drawn aloof from the outcasts.  They chatted on matters at large in the most polite and social manner.  They quite appeared to have forgotten that their equipage might attract the notice of the vulgar.  When from time to time it actually did this the girl held her head brazenly erect and shot back stare for stare, but the Wilbur twin bowed low and suffered.