ce and eyes. Let me again admit my
grave fault: I am a vain and proud old man, God forgive me!

"Your goose turned out a butterfly," said the judge. "One may well be
pardoned a little natural vanity when one has engineered a feat like
that! Common tramp, too, wasn't he?"

"No, he wasn't. He was a most uncommon one."

"I could envy the man his spontaneity and originality," admitted the
judge, rubbing _his_ nose. "Well, father, I'm perfectly satisfied, so
far, to have my only son tramp with him."

"So is my mother," said I.

At that the judge lifted his hat with a fine old-fashioned courtesy
good to see in this age when a youth walks beside a maid and blows
cigarette smoke in her face upon the public streets.

"When such a lady approves of any man," said he, gallantly, "it
confers upon him letters patent of nobility."

"We shall have to consider John Flint knighted, then," said my mother
merrily, when I repeated the conversation. "Let's see," she continued
gaily. "We'll put on his shield three butterflies, or, rampant on a
field, azure; in the lower corner a net, argent. Motto, '_In Hoc Signo
Vinces_.' There'll be no sign of the cyanide jar. I'll have nothing
sinister shadowing; the Butterfly Man's escutcheon!"

She knew nothing about the trust St. Stanislaus kept; she had never
met Slippy McGee.

CHAPTER IX

NESTS

Laurence at last hung out that shingle which was to tingle Appleboro
into step with the Time-spirit. It was a very happy and important day
for the judge and his immediate friends, though Appleboro at large
looked on with but apathetic interest. One more little legal light
flickering "in our midst" didn't make much difference; we literally
have lawyers to burn. So we aren't too enthusiastic over our
fledglings; we wait for them to show us--which is good for them, and
sometimes better for us.

This fledgling, however, was of the stuff which endures. Laurence was
one of those dynamic and dangerous people who not only think
independently themselves, but have the power to make other people
think. No one who came in contact with him escaped this; it seemed to
crackle electrically in the air around him; he was a sort of human
thought-conductor, and he shocked many a smug and self-satisfied
citizen into horrific life before he had done with him.

If this young man had not been one of the irreproachable Maynes
Appleboro might have set him down as a pestilent and radical theorist
and visionary.