“I was right inside that house yesterday,” said the Wilbur twin, pointing to the Whipple New Place and boasting a little—­he would not have to reveal the dreadful details of his entry.  “Right inside of it,” he added to make sure that his father would get all his importance.  But the father seemed not enough impressed.

“You’ll probably go into better houses than that some day,” he merely said, and added:  “You learn a good trade like mine and you can always go anywhere; always make your good money and be more independent than Whipples or even kings in their palaces.  Remember that, Sputterboy.”

“Yes, sir,” said Wilbur.

His father never addressed the Merle twin by any but his rightful name, nor did he ever address the other by the one the dead mother had affixed to him, miscalling him by a number of titles, among which were Sputterboy, Gig, Doctor, and Bill.

Before ascending quite to the Whipple New Place they left the dusty road for a path that led over a lawnlike stretch of upland, starred with buttercups and tiny anemones, and inhabited by a colony of gophers that instantly engaged Frank, the dog, now free of his leash, in futile dashes.  They stood erect, with languidly drooped paws, until he was too near; then they were inexplicably not there.  Frank at length divined that they unfairly achieved these disappearances by descending into caverns beneath the surface of the earth.  At first, with frantic claws and eager squeals, he tore at the entrances to these until the prey appeared at exits farther on, only to repeat the disappearance when dashed at.  Frank presently saw the chase to be hopeless.  It was no good digging for something that wouldn’t be there.

“There’s life for you, Doctor,” said Dave Cowan.  “Life has to live on life, humans same as dogs.  Life is something that keeps tearing itself down and building itself up again; everybody killing something else and eating it.  Do you understand that?”

“Yes, sir,” said Wilbur, believing he did.  Dogs killed gophers if they caught them, and human beings killed chickens for Sunday dinners.

“Humans are the best killers of all,” said Dave.  “That’s the reason they came up from monkeys, and got civilized so they wear neckties and have religion and post offices and all such.”

“Yes, sir,” said Wilbur.

They climbed to a green height and reclined on the cool sward in the shade of a beech tree.  Here they could pick out the winding of the quick little river between its green banks far below, and look across the roofs of slumbrous Newbern.  The Wilbur twin could almost pick out the Penniman house.  Then he looked up, and low in the sky he surprisingly beheld the moon, an orb of pale bronze dulled from its night shine.  Never before had he seen the moon by day.  He had supposed it was in the sky only at night.  So his father lectured now on astronomy and the cosmos.  It seemed that the moon was always there, or about there, a lonesome old thing, because there was no life on it.  Dave spoke learnedly, for his Sunday paper had devoted a page to something of this sort.