"It certainly is." Mrs. Moon laughed. There isn't very much to tell. Everybody knows about the old Bloodgood graveyard at Tree Hill in which Miss Gibbie's parents and grandparents and great-grandparents are buried. Her mother was a Bloodgood; and everybody knows, also, that since the Yankee soldier, who died during the war at Judge Gault's house, was buried there the gate has been bricked up and nobody has ever been inside but Miss Gibbie and Jackson who cuts the grass."
"But how does she get in?" Mrs. Burnham's voice was puzzled inquiry.
"If there's no gate, how—
"She climbs up a ladder on the outside of the wall, which is eight feet high and two feet thick, and down another which is inside," interrupted Mrs. Tate, to whom the question had not been asked. "I wish to goodness I had been there the day she nabbed your boys, Beth. I don't wonder they were scared."
"They were certainly scared." Mrs. Moon wiped her lips and smiled reminiscently. "My boys followed her one day, Mrs. Burnham, and the result was one of the most ridiculous sights ever seen in Yorkburg.
"After finishing what she had to do that day, Miss Gibbie climbed up the ladder she keeps inside and started to get on the one outside, and there was none to get on. The boys had taken her ladder and hidden it, and they themselves were hiding behind an oak-tree some little distance off.
"At first they doubled up with laughter when they saw Miss Gibbie straddling the top of the wall, unable to get down either way; but suddenly, Richard said, she balanced herself on the top of the wall and sat there with her feet hanging over as if going to spend the day, and then in a flash she was down on the ground.
"Half a minute later she had each of them by the arm. Dick said his feet were dead feet, he couldn't budge. Neither could Frederick. The sudden jump had paralyzed them.
"'Moon boys!' she said—'Moon boys! Fine fun, wasn't it? Well, let's go home and have some more fun,' and down the hill she marched them and on into town. All the length of King Street they went, then into St. Mary's Road, then Fitzhugh Street, and back into King, and finally into her home in Pelham Place.
"All the time nothing had been said. Everybody who had seen them had stopped and stared, and some of the boys had started to follow, but Miss Gibbie had nodded her head backward, and a nod was enough. When they got in the house she took them up-stairs to a big bedroom and told them to sit down and cool off; then she locked the door and left them.
"Five hours later the door was opened and dinner was brought in. It was a good dinner, and the boys ate it, every bit of it, and, feeling better, were beginning to look around for means of escape, when in walked Miss Gibbie with two white things in her hand.