“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 can’t guess what’s wrapped up in this box for her—­it’s the most beautiful album, and this first-class animal for my father, and it’ll last a lifetime if he takes care of it good; and I got me a dog to watch the house.”  Breathless he paused.

“Spent all his money!” intoned Merle.  “And he bought me this knife, too.”

He displayed it, but merely as a count in the indictment for criminal extravagance.  He had gone to the hammock to sit by Winona.  He needed her.  He had been too long unconsidered.

The sputtering gift-bringer bestowed the orange upon Mrs. Penniman, the album upon Winona, and the invigorator upon the now embarrassed judge.

“Thank you, Wilbur, dear!” Mrs. Penniman was first to recover her poise.

“Thanks ever so much,” echoed Winona, doubtfully.

She must first know that he had come by this money righteously.  The judge adjusted spectacles to read the label on his gift.

“Thank you, my boy.  The stuff may give me temporary relief.”

He had felt affronted that any one could suppose one bottle of anything would make a new man of him; and—­inconsistently enough—­affronted that any one should suppose he needed to be made a new man of.  He had not liked the phrase at all.

“And now perhaps you will tell us——­” began Winona, her lips again tightening.  But the Wilbur twin could not yet be brought down to mere history.

“This is an awful fighting dog,” he was saying.  “He’s called Frank, and he eats them up.  Yes, sir, he nearly et up that old Boodles dog just now.  He would of if I hadn’t stopped him.  He minds awful well.”