do with mine?" said I, airily.
"Well; as for me, the very first thing I am going to do is to
purchase, in perpetuity, a fine new lamp for St. Stanislaus!"

CHAPTER XV

IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT

Timid tentative rifts and wedges of blue had ventured back into the
cold gray sky, and a stout-hearted robin or two heralded spring. One
morning coming from mass I saw in the thin watery sunshine the painted
wings of the Red Admiral flash by, and I welcomed him as one welcomes
the long-missed face of a friend. I cannot choose but love the Red
Admiral. He has always stirred my imagination, for frail as his gay
wings are they have nevertheless borne this dauntless small Columbus
of butterflies across unknown seas and around uncharted lands, until
like his twin-sister the Painted Lady he has all but circled the
globe. A few days later a handful of those gold butterflies that
resemble nothing so much as new bright dandelions in the young grass,
dared the unfriendly days before their time as if to coax the lagging
spring to follow.

The sad white streamers disappeared from doors and for a space the
little white hearse ceased to go glimmering by. Then at many windows
appeared small faces bearing upon them the mark of the valley of the
shadow through which they had just passed. Although they were on side
streets in the dingy mill district, far removed from our pleasant
windows that looked out upon trees and flowers, all Appleboro was
watching these wan visages with wiser and kinder eyes.

Perhaps the most potent single factor in the arousing of our civic
conscience was a small person who might have justly thought we hadn't
any: I mean Loujaney's little ma, whose story had crept out and gone
from lip to lip and from home to home, making an appeal to which there
could be no refusal.

When Major Cartwright heard it, the high-hearted old rebel hurried
over to the Parish House and thrust into my hand a lean roll of bills.
And the major is by no means a rich man.

"It's not tainted money," said the major, "though some mighty good
Bourbon is goin' to turn into pap on account of it. However, it's an
ill wind that doesn't blow somebody good--Marse Robert can come on
back upstairs now an' thaw himself out while watchin' me read the
Lamentations of Jeremiah--who was evidently sufferin' from a dry spell
himself."

On the following Sunday the Baptist minister chose for his text that
verse of Matthew which bids us take heed that