“I guess nobody would want ’em that owns ’em,” conceded Wilbur.

“Well, you climb over first.”

“We better both go together at the same time.”

“No, one of us better try it first and see; then, if it’s all right, I’ll climb over, too.”

“Aw, I know a better patch up over West Hill in the Whipple woods.”

“What you afraid of?  Nobody would care about a few old blackberries.”

“I ain’t afraid.”

“You act like it, I must say.  If you wasn’t afraid you’d climb that fence pretty quick, wouldn’t you?  Looky, the big ones!”

The Wilbur twin reflected on this.  It sounded plausible.  If he wasn’t afraid, of course he would climb that fence pretty quick.  It stood to reason.  It did not occur to him that any one else was afraid.  He decided that neither was he.

“Well, I’m afraid of things that ain’t true that scare you in the dark,” he admitted, “but I ain’t afraid like that now.  Not one bit!”

“Well, I dare you to go.”

“Well, of course I’ll go.  I was just resting a minute.  I got to rest a little, haven’t I?”

“Well, I guess you’re rested.  I guess you can climb a plain and simple fence, can’t you?  You can rest over there, can’t you—­just as well as what you can rest here?”

The resting one looked up and down the lane, then peered forward into the shadowy tangle of green things with its rows of headstones.  Then, inhaling deeply, he clambered to the top of the fence and leaped to the ground beyond.

“Gee, gosh!” he cried, for he had landed on a trailing branch of blackberry vine.

He sat down and extracted a thorn from the leathery sole of his bare foot.  The prick of the thorn had cleaned his mind of any merely fanciful fears.  A surpassing lot of berries was there for the bold to take.  His brother stared not too boldly through the fence at the pioneer.

“Go on and try picking some,” he urged in the subdued tones of extreme caution.

The other calmly set to work.  The watcher awaited some 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.