got to make him see it as a duty. Well, once make him
see _that_, and he'll smash Inglesby."

"You can't mean--for heaven's sake--"

"I do mean. James Eustis."

Laurence got up, and walked about, whistling.

"Good Lord!" said he, "and I never even thought of him in that light.
Why ... he'd sweep everything clean before him!"

I am a priest. I am not even an Irish priest. Therefore politics do
not interest me so keenly as they might another. But even to my slow
mind the suitability of Eustis was apparent. Of an honored name, just,
sure, kind, sagacious, a builder, a teacher, a pioneer, the plainer
people all over the state leaned upon his judgment. A sane shrewd man
of large affairs, other able men of affairs respected and admired him.
The state, knowing what he stood for, what he had accomplished for her
farmers, what he meant to her agricultural interests, admired and
trusted him. If Eustis wanted any gift within the power of the people
to give, he had but to signify that desire. And yet, it had taken my
Butterfly Man to show us this!

"Bughunter," said Laurence, respectfully. "If you ever take the notion
to make me president, will you stand behind and show me how to run the
United States on greased wheels?"

"I?" John Flint was genuinely astounded. "The boy's talking in his
sleep: turn over--you 're lying on your back!"

"You won't?"

"I will not!" said the Butterfly Man severely. "I have got something
much more important on my hands than running states, I'll have you
know. Lord, man, I'm getting ready some sheets that will tell pretty
nearly all there is to tell about Catocala Moths!"

I remembered that sunset hour, and the pretty child of James Eustis
putting in this man's hand a gray moth. I think he was remembering,
too, for his eyes of a sudden melted, as if he saw again her face that
was so lovely and so young. Glancing at me, he smiled fleetingly.

CHAPTER X

THE BLUEJAY

When Mary Virginia was graduated, my mother sent her, to commemorate
that very important and pleasant occasion, one of her few remaining
treasures--a carved ivory fan which Le Brun had painted out of his
heart of hearts for one of King Louis' loveliest ladies. It still
exhaled, like a whiff of lost roses, something of her vanished grace.

"I have a fancy," wrote my mother to Mary Virginia, "that having
been pressed against women's bosoms and held in women's hands,
having been, as it were, symbols which expressed