have been cleared for
it. Somewhere, far off, an ambitious rooster crowed to make the sun
rise.

It took us a long time to reach home. It was all of a quarter past
four when we turned into the Parish House gate, cut across the garden,
and reached Flint's rooms. Faint, trembling in every limb, I fell into
a chair, and through a mist saw him kneel and blow upon the coals of
the expiring fire, upon which he dropped a lightwood knot. A ruddy
glow went dancing up the chimney. Then he was beside me again. Very
gently he removed hat and overcoat. And then I was sitting peacefully
in the Morris chair, in my old cassock, and with my own old biretta on
my head; and there was no longer that thin buzzing, shrill and
torturing as a mosquito's, singing in my ears. At my knee stood Kerry,
with his beautiful hazel eyes full of a grave concern; and beside him,
calm and kind and matter-of-fact, the Butterfly Man himself stood
watching me with an equal regard. I rubbed my forehead. The incredible
had happened, and like all incredible things it had been almost
ridiculously simple and easy of accomplishment. Here we were, we two,
priest and naturalist, in our own workroom, with an old dog wagging
his tail beside us. Could anything be more commonplace? The last trace
of nightmare vanished, as smoke dispelled by the wind. If Mary
Virginia's letters had not been within reach of my hand I would have
sworn I was just awake out of a dream of that past hour.

"She has escaped from them, they cannot touch her, she is free!" I
exulted. "John, John, you have saved our girl! No matter what they do
to Eustis they can't drag her into the quicksands _now_."

But he went walking up and down, shoulders squared, face uplifted. One
might think that after such a night he would have been humanly tired,
but he had clean forgotten his body. His eyes shone as with a flame
lit from inward, and I think there was on him what the Irish people
call the _Aisling_, the waking vision. For presently he began to
speak, as to Somebody very near him.

"Oh, Lord God!" said the Butterfly Man, with a reverent and fierce
joy, "she's going to have her happiness now, and it wasn't holy priest
nor fine gentleman you picked out to help her toward it--it was me,
Slippy McGee, born in the streets and bred in the gutter, with the
devil knows who for his daddy and a name that's none of his own! For
that I'm Yours for keeps: _You've got me_.

"You've done all even God Almighty can