chapter of a book I was anxious to finish, but
couldn't, my eyes being tempted by the greener and fresher page
opening before them. Flint smoked a virulent pipe and read his papers.

Presently he laid his finger upon a paragraph and handed me the
paper.... And I read where one "Spike" Frazer had been shot to death
in a hand-to-hand fight with the police who were raiding a dive
suspected of being the rendezvous of drug-fiends. Long wanted and at
last cornered, Frazer had fought tigerishly and died in his tracks,
preferring death to capture. A sly and secretive creature, he had had
a checkered career in the depths. It was his one boast that more than
anybody else he had known and been a sort of protege of the once
notorious Slippy McGee, that King of Crooks whose body had been found
in the East River some years since, and whose daring and mysterious
exploits were not yet altogether forgotten by the police or the
underworld.

"_Sic transit gloria mundi!_" said the Butterfly Man in his gentle
voice, and looked out over the peaceful garden and the Sunday calm
with inscrutable eyes. I returned the paper with a hand that shook. It
seemed to me that a deep and solemn hush fell for a moment upon the
glory of the day, while the specter of what might have been gibbered
at us for the last time.

Out of the heart of that hush walked two women--one little and rosy
and white-haired, one tall and pale and beautiful with the beauty upon
which sorrow has placed its haunting imprint. Her black hair framed
her face as in ebony, and her blue, blue eyes were shadowed. By an
odd coincidence she was dressed this morning just as she had been when
the Butterfly Man first saw her--in white, and over it a scarlet
jacket. Kerry and little Pitache rose, met them at the gate, and
escorted them with grave politeness. The Butterfly Man hastily emptied
his pipe and laid aside his newspapers.

"Your note said we were to come, that everything was all right," said
my mother, looking up at him with bright and trustful eyes. "Such a
relief! Because I know you never say anything you don't mean, John."

He smiled, and with a wave of the hand beckoned us into the workroom.
Madame followed him eagerly and expectantly--she knew her John Flint.
Mary Virginia came listlessly, dragging her feet, her eyes somber in a
smileless face. She could not so quickly make herself hope, she who
had journeyed so far into the arid country of despair. But he, with
something