"but I'm going to
take you home." He looked so inexorable that Mary Virginia shrugged
her shoulders.

"Oh, all right, Mr. Flint, I'll go," said she. "What difference does
it make? I'll even go to bed--as I'm told." And she added in a tone of
indescribable bitterness: "I have read that men lie down and sleep
peacefully the night before they are hanged. Well, I suppose they
could: they hadn't anything but death to face on the morrow, but I--"
and she caught her breath.

"Why not take it for granted to-night that you'll be looked after
to-morrow?" suggested Flint. "Mary Virginia, nothing's ever so bad as
it's going to be."

"Oh, yes, I'll be looked after to-morrow!" said she, bitingly. "Mr.
Inglesby will see to that!" She covered her face with her hands.

"Oh, I don't know!" The Butterfly Man shut his mouth on the words like
a knife. "Inglesby may think he's going to, but somehow _I_ think he
won't."

"Ah!" said she scornfully. "Perhaps _you'll_ be able to stop him?"

"Perhaps," he agreed. "If I don't, somebody or something else will.
It's very unlucky to be too lucky too long. You see, everybody's got
to get what's coming to them, and it generally comes hardest when
they've tied themselves up to the notion they're It. Somehow I fancy
Mr. Inglesby's due to come considerable of a cropper around about
now."

"Between now and to-morrow night?" she wondered, with sad contempt.

"Why not? Anything can happen between a night and a night." He looked
at her with shrewd appreciation: "You have taken yourself so
seriously," said he, "that you've pretty nearly muddled yourself into
being tragic. Those fellows knew who they were dealing with when they
tackled _you_. They could bet the limit you'd never tell. So long as
you didn't tell, so long as they had nobody but you to deal with, they
had you where they wanted you. But now maybe things might happen that
haven't been printed in the program."

"What things?" she mocked somberly.

"I don't know, yet," he admitted, "But I do know there is always a
way out of everything except the grave. The thing is to find the right
way. That's up to the Padre and me. Parson, would you mind going after
Madame now, please? The sooner we go the better."

Have I not said my mother is the most wonderful of women? I waked her
in the small hours with the startling information that Mary Virginia
was downstairs in John Flint's workroom, and that she herself must
dress and accompany her home. A