Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man

I presently decided that I could and must question my guest. So far he had volunteered no information beyond the curt statement that his name was John Flint and he was a hobo because he liked the trade. He had been stealing a ride and he had slipped—and when he woke up we had him and he hadn't his leg. And if some people knew how to be obliging they'd make a noise like a hoop and roll away, so's other people could pound their ear in peace, like that big stiff of a doctor ordered them to do.

As I stood by the bed and studied his sullen, suspicious, unfriendly face, I came to the conclusion that if this were not McGee himself it could very well be some one quite as dangerous.

"Friend," said I, "we do not as a rule seek information about the guests in these rooms. We do not have to; they explain themselves. I should never question your assertion that your name is Flint, and I sincerely hope it is Flint; but—there are reasons why I must and do ask you for certain definite information about yourself."

The hand lying upon the coverlet balled into a fist.

"If John Flint's not fancy enough for you," he suggested truculently, "suppose you call me Percy? Some peach of a moniker, Percy, ain't it?"

"Percy?"

"I am also," said I, regarding him steadily and ignoring his flippancy, "I am also obliged to ask you what is your occupation—when you are not stealing rides?"

"Looks like it might be answering questions just now, don't it? What you want to know for? Whatever it is, I'm not able to do it now, am I? But as you're so naturally bellyaching to know, why, I've been in the ring."

"So I presumed. Thank you," said I, politely. "And your name is John Flint, or Percy, or Algy, just as I choose. Percy and Algy are rather unusual names for a gentleman who has been in the ring, don't you think?"

"I think," he snarled, turned suddenly ferocious, "that I'm named what I dam' please to be named, and no squeals from skypilots about it, neither. Say! what you driving at, anyhow? If what I tell you ain't satisfying, suppose you slip over a moniker to suit yourself—and go away!"

"Oh! Suppose then," said I, without taking my eyes from his, "suppose, then, that I chose to call you—Slippy McGee?"

I am sure that only his bodily weakness kept him from flying at my throat. As it was, his long arms with the hands upon them outstretched like a beast's claws, shot out ferociously. His face contracted horribly, and of a sudden the sweat burst out upon it so blindingly that he had to put up an arm and wipe it away. For a moment he lay still, glaring, panting, helpless; while I stood and watched him unmoved.

I made no reply; only a great compassion for this mistaken and miserable creature surged like a wave over my heart.

"For God's sake don't stand there staring like a bughouse owl!" he gritted. "Well, what you going to do? Bawl for the bulls? What put you wise?"

"Help you to get well. No. I opened your bag—and looked up the newspapers," I answered succinctly.

"Huh! A fat lot of good it'll do me to get well now, won't it? You think I ought to thank you for butting in and keeping me from dying without knowing anything about it, don't you? Well, you got another think coming. I don't. Ever hear of a pegleg in the ring? Ever hear of a one-hoofed dip! A long time I'd be Slippy McGee playing cat-and-mouse with the bulls, if I had to leave some of my legs home when I needed them right there on the job, wouldn't I? Oh, sure!"

"And was it," I wondered, "such a fine thing to be Slippy McGee, flying from the police, that one should lament his—er—disappearance?"

His eyes widened. He regarded me with pity as well as astonishment.

"I am sorry," said I soothingly, "that you have lost your leg, of course. But better to lose your leg than your soul, my son. Why, how do you know—"

He writhed. "Can it!" he implored. "Cut it out! Ain't I up against enough now, for God's sake? Down and out—and nothing to do but have my soul curry-combed and mashfed by a skypilot with both his legs and all his mouth on him! Ain't it hell, though? Say, you better send for the cops. I'd rather stand for the pen than the preaching. What'd you do with my bag, anyway?"

"But I really have no idea of preaching to you; and I would rather not send for the police—afterwards, when you are better, you may do so if you choose. You are a free agent. As for your bag, why—it is—it is—in the keeping of the Church."

"Huh!" said he, and twisted his mouth cynically. "Huh! Then it's good-bye tools, I suppose. I'm no churchmember, thank God, but I've heard that once the Church gets her clamps on anything worth while all hell can't pry her loose."

"Why, that's it exactly!" said I, smiling. "Once the Church gets real hold of a thing—or a man—worth while, she holds on so fast that all hell can't pry her loose. Won't you try to remember that, my son!"

"If it's a joke, suck the marrow out of it yourself," said he sourly. "It don't listen so horrible funny to me. And you haven't peeped yet about what you're going to do. I'm waiting to hear. I'm real interested."

"Why, I really don't know yet," said I, still cheerfully. "Suppose we wait and see? Here you are, safe and harmless enough for the present. And God is good; perhaps He knows that you and I may need each other more than you and the police need each other—who can tell? I should simply set myself strictly to the task of getting entirely well, if I were you—and let it go at that."

He appeared to reflect; his forehead wrinkled painfully.

"Devil-dodger," said he, after a pause, "are you just making a noise with your face, or is that on the level?"

"That's on the level."

His hard and suspicious eyes bored into me. And as I held his glance, a hint of wonder and amazement crept into his face.

"God A'mighty! I believe him!" he gasped. And then, as if ashamed of that real feeling, he scowled.

"Let us agree upon John Flint," I decided.

"Help yourself," he agreed, equably.

Clélie, with wrath and disapproval written upon every stiffened line, brought him his broth, which he took with a better grace than I had yet witnessed. He even added a muttered word of thanks.

"It's funny," he reflected, when the yellow woman had left the room with the empty bowl, "it's sure funny, but d'ye know, I'm lots easier in my mind, knowing you know, and not having to think up a hard-luck gag to hand out to you? I hate like hell to have to lie, except of course when I need a smooth spiel for the cops. I guess I'll snooze a bit now," he added, as I rose to leave the room. And as I reached the door:

"Parson?"

"Well?"

"Why—er—come in a bit to-night, will you? That is, if you've got time. And look here: don't you get the notion in your bean I'm just some little old two-by-four guy of a yegg or some poor nut of a dip. I'm not. Why, I've been the whole show and manager besides. Yep, I'm Slippy McGee himself."

"Thank you, John Flint," said I, with due modesty.

Heaven knows why I should have been pleased and hopeful, but I was. My guest was a criminal; he hadn't shown the slightest sign of compunction or of shame; instead, he had betrayed a brazen pride. And yet—I felt hopeful. Although I knew I was tacitly concealing a burglar, my conscience remained clear and unclouded, and I had a calm intuitive assurance of right. So deeply did I feel this that when I went over to the church I placed before St. Stanislaus a small lamp full of purest olive oil, which is expensive. I felt that he deserved some compensation for hiding that package under his sheaf of lilies.

The authorities of our small town knew, of course, that another forlorn wretch was being cared for at the Parish House. But had not the Parish House sheltered other such vagabonds? The sheriff saw no reason to give himself the least concern, beyond making the most casual inquiry. If I wanted the fellow, he was only too glad to let me keep him. And who, indeed, would look for a notorious criminal in a Parish House Guest Room? Who would connect that all too common occurrence, a tramp maimed by the railroad, with, the mysterious disappearance of the cracksman, Slippy McGee? So, for the present, I could feel sure that the man was safe.

Judge Mayne's son, Laurence, full of a fresh and boyish enthusiasm, was such another instrument. He had a handsome, intelligent face, a straight and beautiful body, and the pleasantest voice in the world. His mother in her last years had been a fretful invalid, and to meet her constant demands the judge and his son had developed an angelic patience with weakness. They were both rather quiet and undemonstrative, this father and son; the older man, in fact had a stern visage at first glance, until one learned to know it as the face of a man trained to restraint and endurance. As for the boy, no one could long resist the shrewd, kind youngster, who could spend an hour with the most unlikely invalid and leave him all the better for it. I was unusually busy just then, Clélie frankly hated and feared the man upstairs, my mother had her hands full, and there were many heavy and lonesome hours which Laurence set himself the task of filling. I left this to the boy himself, offering no suggestions.

"A dent! In Flint? With what adamantine pick, oh hardiest of miners!"

"With a book. Guess!"

"I couldn't. I give up."

"The Bible!" said Laurence.

The Bible! Had I chosen to read it to him, he would have resented it, been impervious, suspicious, hostile. I looked at the boy's laughing face, and wondered, and wondered.

"And how," said I, curious, "did you happen to pitch on the Bible?"

"Well, if after the manner of men Paul fought with wild beasts at Ephesus," I said hopefully. "I dare say he'll be able to hold his own even with John Flint."

"I like Paul best of all, myself," said Laurence. "You see, Padre, my father and I have needed a dose of Paul more than once—to stiffen our backbones. So I'm going to turn the fighting old saint loose on John Flint. 'By, Padre;—I'll look in to-morrow—I left poor old Elijah up in a cave with no water, and the ravens overdue!"

He went down our garden path whistling, his cap on the back of his head, and I looked after him with the warm and comforting sense that the world is just that much better for such as he.

The boy was now, in his last high school year, planning to study law—all the Maynes took to law as a duck to water. Brave, simple-hearted, direct, clear-thinking, scrupulously honorable,—this was one of the diamonds used to cut the rough hard surface of Slippy McGee.

Across our garden and across Miss Sally Ruth Dexter's you could see in Major Appleby Cartwright's yard the peach trees in pink party dresses, ruffled by the wind. Down the paths marched my mother's daffodils and hyacinths, with honey-breathing sweet alyssum in between. Robins and wrens, orioles and mocking-birds, blue jays and jackdaws, thrushes and blue-birds and cardinals, all were busy house-building; one heard calls and answers, saw flashes of painted wings, followed by outbursts of ecstasy. If one should lay one's ear to the ground on such a morning I think one might hear the heart of the world.

"Hallelujah! Risen! Risen!" breathed the glad, green things, pushing from the warm mother-mold.

"Living! Living! Loving! Loving!" flashed and fluted the flying things, joyously.

We wheeled our man out into this divine freshness of renewed life, stopping the chair under a glossy, stately magnolia. My mother and Clélie and Laurence and I bustled about to make him comfortable. Pitache stood stock still, his tail stuck up like a sternly admonishing forefinger, a-bossing everything and everybody. We spread a light shawl over the man's knees, for it is not easy to bear a cruel physical infirmity, to see oneself marred and crippled, in the growing spring. He looked about him, snuffed, and wrinkled his forehead; his eyes had something of the wistful, wondering satisfaction of an animal's. He had never sat in a garden before, in all his life! Think of it!

On principle Miss Sally Ruth disapproves of most men and many women. She does not believe in wasting too much sympathy upon people either; she says folks get no more than they deserve and generally not half as much.

Miss Sally Ruth Dexter is a rather important person in Appleboro. She is fifty-six years old, stout, brown-eyed, suffers from a congenital incapacity to refrain from telling the unwelcome truth when people are madly trying to save their faces,—she calls this being frank,—is tactless, independent, generous, and the possessor of what she herself complacently refers to as "a Figure."

For a woman so convinced we're all full of natural and total depravity, unoriginal sinners, worms of the dust, and the devil's natural fire-fodder, Miss Sally Ruth manages to retain a simple and unaffected goodness of practical charity toward the unelect, such as makes one marvel. You may be predestined to be lost, but while you're here you shall lack no jelly, wine, soup, chicken-with-cream, preserves, gumbo, neither such marvelous raised bread as Miss Sally Ruth knows how to make with a perfection beyond all praise.

There is a cherished legend in our town that Major Appleby Cartwright once went over to Savannah on a festive occasion and was there joyously entertained by the honorable the Chatham Artillery. The Chatham Artillery brews a Punch; insidious, delectable, deceptive, but withal a pernicious strong drink that is raging, a wine that mocketh and maketh mad. And they gave it to Major Appleby Cartwright in copious draughts.

Coming home upon the heels of this, the major arose, put on his Prince Albert, donned his top hat, picked a huge bunch of zinnias, and at nine o'clock in the morning marched over to Miss Sally Ruth Dexter's.

We differ as to certain unimportant details of that historic call, but we are in the main agreed upon the conversation that ensued.

"Sally Ruth," said the major, depositing his bulky person in a rocking chair, his hat upon the floor, and wiping his forehead with a spotless handkerchief the size of a respectable sheet, "Sally Ruth, you like Old Maids?" Here he presented the zinnias.

"Why, I've got a yard full of 'em myself, Major. Whatever made you bother to pick 'em? But to whom much hath more shall be given, I suppose," said she, resignedly, and put them on the whatnot.

"What good under God's sky does it do you to be an old maid, Sally Ruth? You're flyin' in the face of Providence. No lady should fly in the face of Providence—she'd a sight better fly to the bosom of some man, where she belongs. This mawnin' I looked out of my window and my eye fell upon these unfortunate flowers. Right away I thought of you, livin' over here all alone and by yourself, with no man's bosom to lean on—you haven't really got anything but a few fowls and the Lord to love, have you? And, Sally Ruth, tears came to my eyes. Talk not of tears till you have seen the tears of warlike men! I believe it would almost scare you to death to see me cryin', Sally Ruth! I got to thinkin', and I said to myself: 'Appleby Cartwright, you have always done your duty like a man. You charged up to the very muzzle of Yankee guns once, and you weren't scared wu'th a damn! Are you goin' to be scared now? There's a plain duty ahead of you; Sally Ruth's a fine figure of a woman, and she ought to have a man's bosom to lean on. Go offer Sally Ruth yours!' So here I am, Sally Ruth!" said the major valiantly.

Miss Sally Ruth regarded him critically; then:

"You're drunk, Appleby Cartwright, that's what's the matter with you. You and your bosom! Why, it's not respectable to talk like that! At your age, too! I'm ashamed of you!"

"I've seen its effects before. Go home and sleep it off," said Miss Sally Ruth, not unkindly. "If you came over to warn me about filling up on Artillery Punch, your duty's done—I've never been entertained by the Chatham Artillery, and I don't ever expect to be. I suppose it was intended for you to be a born goose, Appleby, so it'd be a waste of time for me to fuss with you about it. Go on home, now, do, and let Cæsar put you to bed. Tell him to tie a wet rag about your head and to keep it wet. That'll help to cool you off."

"Sally Ruth," said the major, laying his hand upon his heart and trying desperately to focus her with an eye that would waver in spite of him, "Sally Ruth, somebody's got to do something for you, and it might as well be me. My God, Sally Ruth, you're settin' like clabber! It's a shame; it's a cryin' shame, for you're a fine woman. I don't mean to scare or flutter you, Sally Ruth,—no gentleman ought to scare or flutter a lady—but I'm offerin' you my hand and heart; here's my bosom for you to lean on."

"That Savannah brew is worse even than I thought—it's run the man stark crazy," said Miss Sally Ruth, viewing him with growing concern.

"Me crazy! Why, I'm askin' you," said the major with awful dignity, "I'm askin' you to marry me!"

"Marry you? Marry fiddlesticks! Shucks!" said the lady.

"I hope," said Miss Sally Ruth tartly, "that it's my last chance to make a born fool of myself. Why, you old gasbag, if I had to stay in the same house with you I'd be tempted to stick a darning needle in you to hear you explode! Appleby, I'm like that woman that had a chimney that smoked, a dog that growled, a parrot that swore, and a cat that stayed out nights; she didn't need a man—and no more do I."

"Sally Ruth," said the major feelingly, "when I came here this mawnin' it wasn't for my own good—it was for yours. And to think this is all the thanks I get for bein' willin' to sacrifice myself! My God! The ingratitude of women!"

He looked at Miss Sally Ruth, and Miss Sally Ruth looked at him. And then suddenly, without a moment's warning, Miss Sally Ruth rose, and took Major Appleby Cartwright, who on a time had charged Yankee guns and hadn't been scared wu'th a damn, by the ear. She tugged, and the major rose, as one pulled upward by his bootstraps.

"Ouch! Turn loose! I take it back! The devil! It wasn't intended for any mortal man to marry you—Sally Ruth, I wouldn't marry you now for forty billion dollars and a mule! Turn loose, you hussy! Turn loose!" screeched the major.

"I was born"—shake—"an old maid,"—shake, shake, shake—"I have lived—by the grace of God"—shake, shake, shake—"an old maid, and I expect"—shake—"to die an old maid! I don't propose to have"—shake—"an old windbag offering me his blubbery old bosom"—shake, shake, SHAKE—"at this time of my life!—and don't you forget it, Appleby Cartwright! THERE! You go back home"—shake, shake, shake—"and sober up, you old gander, you!"

Major Appleby Cartwright stood not upon the order of his going, but went at once, galloping as if a company of those Yankees with whom he had once fought were upon his hindquarters with fixed bayonets.

However, they being next-door neighbors and friends of a lifetime's standing, peace was finally patched up. In Appleboro we do not mention this historic meeting when either of the participants can hear us, though it is one of our classics and no home is complete without it. The Major ever afterward eschewed Artillery Punch.

This morning, over the fence, Miss Sally Ruth addressed our invalid directly and without prelude, after her wont. She doesn't believe in beating about the bush:

"The wages of walking up and down the earth and going to and fro in it, tramping like Satan, is a lost leg. Not that it wasn't intended you should lose yours—and I hope and pray it will be a lesson to you."

A quick approval of this plain truth showed in Miss Sally Ruth's snapping eyes.

"Come!" said she, briskly. "If you've got sense enough to see that, you're not so far away from the truth as you might be. Collecting your wages is the good and the bad thing about life, I reckon. But everything's intended, so you don't need to be too sorry for yourself, any way you look at it. And you could just as well have lost both legs while you were at it, you know." She paused reflectively. "Let's see: I've got chicken-broth and fresh rolls to-day—I'll send you over some, after awhile." She nodded, and went back to her housework.

Laurence went on to High School, Madame had her house to oversee, I had many overdue calls; so we left Pitache and John Flint together, out in the birdhaunted, sweet-scented, sun-dappled garden, in the golden morning hours. No one can be quite heartless in a green garden, quite hopeless in the spring, or quite desolate when there's a dog's friendly nose to be thrust into one's hand.

He seemed to want none of us; I have seen him savagely repulse the dog, who, shocked and outraged at this exhibition of depravity, withdrew, casting backward glances of horrified and indignant reproach.

But as the lovely, peaceful, healing days passed, that bitter and contracted heart had to expand somewhat. Gradually the ferocity faded, leaving in its room an anxious and brooding wonder. God knows what thoughts passed through that somber mind in those long hours, when, concentrated upon himself, he must have faced the problem of his future and, like one before an impassable stone wall, had to fall back, baffled. He could be sure of only one thing: that never again could he be what he had been once—"the slickest cracksman in America." This in itself tortured him. Heretofore, life had been exactly what he chose to make it: he had put himself to the test, and he had proven himself the most daring, the coolest, shrewdest, most cunning, in that sinister world in which he had shone with so evil a light. He had been Slippy McGee. Sure of himself, his had been that curious inverted pride which is the stigmata of the criminal.

"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."

That afternoon she brought the little girl with her, to make our acquaintance. When the child, shyly friendly, looked up, it seemed to me for an anguished moment as if another little girl had walked out of the past, so astonishingly like was she to that little lost playmate of my youth. Right then and there Mary Virginia walked into my heart and took possession, as of a place swept and garnished and long waiting her coming.

When we knew her better my mother used to say that if she could have chosen a little girl instead of the little boy that had been I, she must have chosen Mary Virginia Eustis out of all the world.

Like Judge Mayne's Laurence, she chose to make the Parish House her second home—for indeed my mother ever seemed to draw children to her, as by some delightful magic. Here, then, the child learned to sew and to embroider, to acquire beautiful housewifely accomplishments, and to speak French with flawless perfection; she reaped the benefit of my mother's girlhood spent in a convent in France; and Mrs. Eustis was far too shrewd not to appreciate the value of this. And so we acquired Mary Virginia.

I watched the lovely miracle of her growth with an almost painful tenderness. Had I not become a priest, had I realized those spring hopes of mine; and had there been little children resembling their mother, then my own little girls had been like this one. Even thus had been their blue eyes, and theirs, too, such hair of such curling blackness.

"We are all made of dust," said my mother once. "But Mary Virginia's is star dust. Star dust, and dew, and morning gold," she added musingly.

"She simply cannot imagine evil, much less see it in anything or in anybody," I told Madame, for at times the child's sheer innocence troubled me for her. "One is puzzled how to bring home to this naïve soul the ugly truth that all is not good. Now, Laurence is better balanced. He takes people and events with a saving grain of skepticism. But Mary Virginia is divinely blind."

My mother regarded me with a tolerant smile. "Do not worry too much over that divinely blind one, my son," said she. "I assure you, she is quite capable of seeing a steeple in daylight! Observe this: yesterday Laurence angered her, and she seized him by the hair and bumped his head against the study wall—no mild thump, either! She has in her quite enough of the leaven of unrighteousness to save her, at a pinch—for Laurence was entirely right, she entirely wrong. Yet—she made him apologize before she consented to forgive him, and he did it gratefully. She allowed him to understand how magnanimous she was in thus pardoning him for her own naughtiness, and he was deeply impressed, as men-creatures should be under such circumstances. Such wisdom, and she but a child! I was enchanted!"

"Good heavens! Surely, Mother, I misunderstand you! Surely you reproved her!"

"Perfectly right? Why, you said—indeed, I assure you, you said that Laurence had been entirely right, she entirely wrong!"

"Oh, that! I see; well, as for that, she was."

"Then, surely—"

"My son, a woman who is in the wrong is entirely right when she makes the man apologize," said my mother firmly. "That is the Law, fixed as the Medes' and the Persians', and she who forgets or ignores it is ground between the upper and the nether millstones. Mary Virginia remembered and obeyed. When she grows up you will all of you adore her madly. Why, then, should she be reproved?"

I have never been able to reflect upon Laurence getting his head bumped and then gratefully apologizing to the darling shrew who did it, without a cold wind stirring my hair. And yet—Laurence, and I, too, love her all the more dearly for it! Miserere, Domine!

It was May when Mary Virginia came back to Appleboro. She had written us a bubbling letter, telling us just when we were to expect her, and how happy she was at the thought of being home once more. We, too, rejoiced, for we had missed her sadly. My mother was so happy that she planned a little intimate feast to celebrate the child's return.

Next door Miss Sally Ruth was feeding and scolding her cooing pigeons, which fluttered about her, lighting upon her shoulder, surrounding her with a bright-colored living cloud; the judge's black cat Panch lay along the Mayne side of the fence and blinked at them regretfully with his slanting emerald eyes. From the Mayne kitchen-steps came, faintly, Daddy January's sweet quavering old voice:

John Flint, silent, depressed, with folded lips and somber eyes, hobbled about awkwardly, savagely training himself to use the crutches Westmoreland had lately brought him. Very unlovely he looked, dragging himself along like a wounded beast. The poor wretch struck a discordant note in the sweet peacefulness of the spring evening; nor could we say anything to comfort him, we who were not maimed.

Miss Sally Ruth, scattering pigeons right and left, dashed to the fence to call greetings. My mother, seizing the child by the arms, held her off a moment, to look her over fondly; then, drawing her closer, kissed her as a daughter is kissed.

I laid my hand on the child's head, happy with that painful happiness her presence always occasioned me, when she came back after an absence—as if the Other Girl flashed into view for a quick moment, and then was gone. Laurence, who had followed, stood looking down at her with boyish condescension.

"Huh! I can eat hominy off her head!" said he, aggravatingly.

"Old Mister Biggity!" flashed Mary Virginia. And then she turned and met, face to face, the fixed stare of John Flint, hanging upon his crutches as one might upon a cross,—a stare long, still, intent, curious, speculative, almost incredulous.

Clélie, in a speckless white apron and a brand-new red-and-white bandanna to do greater honor to the little girl whom she adored, set a table under the trees and spread it with the thin dainty sandwiches, the delectable little cakes, and the fine bonbons she and my mother had made to celebrate the child's return. And we had tea, making very merry, for she had a thousand amusing things to tell us, every airy trifle informed with something of her own brave bright mirthful spirit. John Flint sat nearby in the wheel chair, his crutches lying beside it, and looked on silently and ate his cake and drank his tea stolidly, as if it were no unusual thing for him to break bread in such company.

"Padre," said Mary Virginia with deep gravity. "My aunt Jenny says I'm growing up. She says I'll have to put up my hair and let down my frocks pretty soon, and that I'll probably be thinking of beaux in another year, though she hopes to goodness I won't, until I've got through with school at least."

The almost unconscious imitation of Miss Jenny's pecking, birdlike voice made me smile.

"I'm 'most thirteen years old, Laurence Mayne," said Mary Virginia, with dignity. "You're only seventeen, so you don't need to give yourself such hateful airs. You're not too old to be greedy, anyhow. Padre, am I growing up?"

"I fear so, my child," said I, gloomily.

"You're not glad, either, are you, Padre?"

"But you were such a delightful child," I temporized.

"Oh, lovely!" said Laurence, eying her with unflattering brotherliness. "And she had so much feeling, too, Mary Virginia! Why, when I was sick once, she wanted me to die, so she could ride to my funeral in the front carriage; she doted on funerals, the little ghoul! She was horribly disappointed when I got better—she thought it disobliging of me, and that I'd done it to spite her. Once, too, when I tried to reason with her—and Mary Virginia needed reason if ever a kid did—she bumped my head until I had knots on it. There's your delightful Mary Virginia for you!"

"Anyhow, you didn't die and become an angel—you stayed disagreeably alive and you're going to become a lawyer," said Mary Virginia, too gently. "And your head was bumpable, Laurence, though I'm sorry to say I don't ever expect to bump it again. Why, I'm going away to school and when I come back I'll be Miss Eustis, and you'll be Mr. Mayne! Won't it be funny, though?"

"Not half as big fools as boys are, though," said she, dispassionately. "My father says the man is always the bigger fool of the two."

Laurence snorted. "I wonder what we'll be like, though—both of us?" he mused.

"You? You're biggity now, but you'll be lots worse, then," said Mary Virginia, with unflattering frankness. "I think you'll probably strut like a turkey, and you'll be baldheaded, and wear double-lensed horn spectacles, and spats, and your wife will call you 'Mr. Mayne' to your face and 'Your Poppa' to the children, and she'll perfectly despise people like Madame and the Padre and me!"

"You never did have any reasoning power, Mary Virginia," said Laurence, with brotherly tact. "Our black cat Panch would put it all over you. Allow me to inform you I'm not biggity, miss! I'm logical—something a girl can't understand. And I'd like to know what you think you're going to grow up to be?"

"Oh, let's quit talking about it," she said petulantly. "I hate to think of growing up. Grown ups don't seem to be happy—and I want to be happy!" She turned her head, and met once more the absorbed and watchful stare of the man in the wheel-chair.

"Weren't you sorry when you had to stop being a little boy and grow up?" she asked him, wistfully.

"Me?" he laughed harshly. "I couldn't say, miss. I guess I was born grown up." His face darkened.

"There's a lot not fair," he told her, "when you're born and brought up like I was. The worst is not so much what happens to you, though that's pretty bad; it's that you don't know it's happening—and there's nobody to put you wise. Why," his forehead puckered as if a thought new to him had struck him, "why, your very looks get to be different!"

Mary Virginia started. "Oh, looks!" said she, thoughtfully. "Now, isn't it curious for you to say just that, right now, for it reminds me that I brought something to the Padre—something that set me to thinking about people's looks, too,—and how you never can tell. Wait a minute, and I'll show you." She reached for the pretty crocheted bag she had brought with her, and drew from it a small pasteboard box. None of us, idly watching her, dreamed that a moment big with fate was upon us. I have often wondered how things would have turned out if Mary Virginia had lost or forgotten that pasteboard box!

"I happened to put my hand on a tree—and this little fellow moved, and I caught him. I thought at first he was a part of the tree-trunk, he looked so much like it," said the child, opening the little box. Inside lay nothing more unusual than a dark-colored and rather ugly gray moth, with his wings folded down.

"One wouldn't think him pretty, would one?" said she, looking down at the creature.

Mary Virginia smiled, and picking up the little moth, held his body, very gently, between her finger-tips. He fluttered, spreading out his gray wings; and then one saw the beautiful pansy-like underwings, and the glorious lower pair of scarlet velvet barred and bordered with black.

"I brought him along, thinking the Padre might like him, and tell me something about him," said the little girl. "The Padre's crazy about moths and butterflies, you must understand, and we're always on the lookout to get them for him. I never found this particular one before, and you can't imagine how I felt when he showed me what he had hidden under that gray cloak of his!"

"He's a member of a large and most respectable family, the Catocalæ," I told her. "I'll take him, my dear, and thank you—there's always a demand for the Catocalæ. And you may call him an Underwing, if you prefer—that's his common name."

The cripple in the chair put out his hand with a hint of timidity in his manner; he was staring at Mary Virginia as if some of the light within her had dimly penetrated his grosser substance.

"Could I hold it—for a minute—in my own hand?" he asked, turning brick-red.

"Of course you may," said Mary Virginia pleasantly. "I see by the Padre's face this isn't a rare moth—he's been here all along, only my eyes have just been opened to him. I don't want him to go in any collection. I don't want him to go anywhere, except back into the air—I owe him that for what he taught me. So I'm sure the Padre won't mind, if you'd like to set him free, yourself."

She put the moth on the man's finger, delicately, for a Catocala is a swift-winged little chap; it spread out its wings splendidly, as if to show him its loveliness; then, darting upward, vanished into the cool green depth of the shrubbery.

Now, Mary Virginia's eyes had fallen, idly enough, upon John Flint's hands lying loosely upon his knees. Her face brightened.

"Padre," she suggested suddenly, "why don't you let him help you with your butterflies? Look at his hands! Why, they're just exactly the right sort to handle setting needles and mounting blocks, and to stretch wings without loosening a scale. He could be taught in a few lessons, and just think what a splendid help he could be! And you do so need help with those insects of yours, Padre—I've heard you say so, over and over."

The child was right—John Flint did have good hands—large enough, well-shaped, steel-muscled, powerful, with flexible, smooth-skinned, sensitive fingers, the fingers of an expert lapidary rather than a prize-fighter.

"We'll call it settled, then," said Mary Virginia happily.

Laurence took her home at dusk; it was a part of his daily life to look after Mary Virginia, as one looks after a cherished little sister. When they were younger the boy had often complained that she might as well be his sister, she quarreled with him so much; and the little girl said, bitterly, he was as disagreeable as if he'd been a brother. In spite of which the little girl, for all her delicious impertinences, looked up to the boy; and the boy had adored her, from the time she gurgled at him from her cradle.

My mother left us, and John Flint and I sat outdoors in the pleasant twilight, he smoking the pipe Laurence had given him.

"Parson," said he, abruptly, "Parson, you folks are swells, ain't you? The real thing, I mean, you and Madame? Even the yellow nigger's a lady nigger, ain't she?"

"I am a poor priest, such as you see, my son, Madame is—Madame. And Clélie is a good servant."

"But you were born a swell, weren't you?" he persisted. "Old family, swell diggings, trained flunkies, and all that?"

"I was born a gentleman, if that is what you mean. Of an old family, yes. And there was an old house—once."

"God called me through affliction, my son."

"Oh," said my son, blankly. "Huh! But I bet you the best crib ever cracked you were some peach of a boy before you got that 'S.O.S.'"

"I was, like the young, the thoughtless young, a sinner."

"I suppose," said he tentatively, after a pause, "that I'm one hell of a sinner myself, according to Hoyle, ain't I?"

"I do not think it would injure you to change your—course of life, nor yet your way of mentioning it," I said, feeling my way cautiously. "But—we are bidden to remember there is more joy in heaven over one sinner saved than over the ninety-and-nine just men."

"Is that so? Well, it listens like good horse-sense to me," said Mr. Flint, promptly. "Because, look here: you can rake in ninety-and-nine boobs any old time—there's one born every time the clock ticks, parson—but they don't land something like me every day, believe me! And I bet you a stack of dollar chips a mile high there was some song-and-dance in the sky-joint when they put one over on you for fair. Sure!" He puffed away at his pipe, and I, having nothing to say to this fine reasoning, held my peace.

"Parson, that kid's a swell, too, ain't she? And the boy?"

"Laurence is the son of Judge Hammond Mayne."

"I suppose," I agreed, "that the little girl is what you might call a swell, too."

"I never," said he, reflectively, "came what you might call talking close to real swells before. I've seen 'em, of course—at a distance. Some of 'em, taking 'em by and large, looked pretty punk, to me; some of 'em was middling, and a few looked as if they might have the goods. But none of 'em struck me as being real live breathing people, same as other folks. Why, parson, some of those dames'd throw a fit, fancying they was poisoned, if they had to breathe the same air with folks like me—me being what I am and they being—what they think they are. Yet here's you and Madame, the real thing—and the boy—and the little girl—the little girl—" he stopped, staring at me dumbly, as the vision of Mary Virginia rose before him.

"She is, indeed, a dear, dear child," said I. His words stung me somewhat, for once upon a time, I myself would have resented that such as he should have breathed the same air with Mary Virginia.

"I'd almost think I'd dreamed her," said he, thoughtfully, "that is, if I was good enough to have dreams like that," he added hastily, with his first touch of shame. "I've seen 'em from the Battery up, and some of 'em was sure-enough queens, but I didn't know they came like this one. She's bran-new to me, parson. Say, you just show me what she wants me to help you with, and I'll do it. She seems to think I can, and it oughtn't to be any harder than opening a time-vault, ought it?"

"I suppose that's the polite for punching you in the wind," said he, just as gravely. "And I didn't think you'd ever monkeyed with a vault; why, you couldn't, not if you was to try till Gabriel did his little turn in the morning—not unless you'd been caught when you were softer and put wise. Man, it's a bigger job than you think, and you've got to have the know-how and the nerve before you can put it over. But there—I'll keep it dark, seeing you want me to." He stretched out his hands, regarding them speculatively. "They are classy mitts," he remarked impersonally. "Yep, seemed like they were just naturally made to—do what they did. They were built for fine work." At that his jaw snapped; a spasm twitched his face; it darkened.

"The work little Miss Eustis suggested for you," I insinuated hastily, "is what very many people consider very fine work indeed. About one in a thousand can do it properly."

"Lead me to it," said he wearily, and without enthusiasm, "and turn me loose. I'll do what I can, to please her. At least, until I can make a getaway for keeps."