do, given me more than I ever
could have asked You for--and now it's up to me to make good--and I'll
do it!"

There came to listening me something of the emotion I experienced when
I said my first Mass--as if I had been brought so close to our Father
that I could have put out my hand and touched Him. Ah! I had had a
very small part to play in this man's redemption. I knew it now, and
felt humbled and abashed, and yet grateful that even so much had been
allowed me. Not I, but Love, had transformed a sinner and an outlaw
into a great scientist and a greater lover. And I remembered Mary
Virginia's childish hand putting into his the gray-winged Catocala,
and how the little moth, raising the sad-colored wings worn to suit
his surroundings, revealed beneath that disfiguring and disguising
cloak the exquisite and flower-like loveliness of the underwings.

He paused in his swinging stride, and looked down at me a bit shyly.

"Parson--you see how it is with me?"

"I see. And I think she is the greater lady for it and you the finer
gentleman," said I stoutly. "It would honor her, if she were ten times
what she is--and she is Mary Virginia."

"She is Mary Virginia," said the Butterfly Man, "and I am--what I am.
Yet somehow I feel sure I can care for her, that I can go right on
caring for her to the end of time, without hurt to her or sorrow to
me." And after a pause, he added, deliberately:

"I found something better than a package of letters to-night, parson.
I found--_Me_."

For awhile neither of us spoke. Then he said, speculatively:

"Folks give all sorts of things to the church--dedicate them in
gratitude for favors they fancy they've received, don't they? Lamps,
and models of ships, and glass eyes and wax toes and leather hands,
and crutches and braces, and that sort of plunder? Well, I'm moved to
make a free-will offering myself. I'm going to give the church my
kit, and you can take it from me the old Lady will never get her
clamps on another set like that until Gabriel blows his trumpet in the
morning. Parson, I want you to put those tools back where you had
them, for I shall never touch them again. I couldn't. They--well,
they're sort of holy from now on. They're my IOU. Will you do it for
me?"

"Yes!" said I.

"I might have known you would!" said he, smiling. "Just one more
favor, parson--may I put her letters in her hands, myself?"

"My son, my son, who but you should do that?" I pushed the package
across