ade out of itself, a coffin
like a bit of rotting wood. Look at it! There it lies, stone-dead for
all a man's eyes can see!

"And yet this thing will answer a call no ears can hear and crawl out
of its coffin something entirely different from what went into it!
I've seen it with my own eyes, but how it's done I don't know; no, nor
no man since the world was made knows, or could do it himself. What
does it? What gives that call these dead-alive things hear in the
dark? What makes a crawling ugliness get itself ready for what's
coming--how does it _know_ there's ever going to be a call, or that
it'll hear it without fail?"

"Some of us call it Nature: but others call it God," said I.

"Search me! I don't know what It is--but I do know there's got to be
Something behind these things, anyhow," said he, and turned the
chrysalis over and over in his palm, staring down at it thoughtfully.
He had used Westmoreland's words, once applied to his own case! "Oh,
yes, there's Something, because I've watched It working with grubs,
getting 'em ready for five-inch moths and hand-colored butterflies,
Something that's got the time and the patience and the know-how to
build wings as well as worlds." He laid the little inanimate mystery
aside.

"It's come to the point, parson, where I've just _got_ to know more. I
know enough now to know how much I don't know, because I've got a peep
at how much there is to know. There's a God's plenty to find out, and
it's up to me to go out and find it."

"Some of the best and brightest among men have given all the years of
their lives to just that finding out and knowing more--and they found
their years too few and short for the work. But such help as you need
and we can get, you shall have, please God!" said I.

"I'm ready for the word to start, chief." And heaven knows he was.

His passion transformed him; he forgot himself; took his mind off
himself and his affairs and grievances and hatreds and fears; and thus
had chance to expand and to grow, in those following years of
patientest effort, of untiring research and observance, of lovingest
study. Days in the open woods and fields burned his pale skin a good
mahogany, and stamped upon it the windswept freshness of out of doors.
The hunted and suspicious glance faded from his eyes, which took on
more and more the student's absorbed intensity; the mouth lost its
sinister straightness; and while it retained an uncompromising
firmness, it learned