that of her husband, on which the
butterfly still rested, the insect drooped its wings and seemed on the
point of falling to the floor. Even the bright spots of gold upon its
wings and body, unless her eyes deceived her, grew dim, and the glowing
purple took a dusky hue, and the starry lustre that gleamed around the
blacksmith's hand became faint and vanished.

"It is dying! it is dying!" cried Annie, in alarm.

"It has been delicately wrought," said the artist, calmly. "As I told
you, it has imbibed a spiritual essence--call it magnetism, or what you
will. In an atmosphere of doubt and mockery its exquisite
susceptibility suffers torture, as does the soul of him who instilled
his own life into it. It has already lost its beauty; in a few moments
more its mechanism would be irreparably injured."

"Take away your hand, father!" entreated Annie, turning pale. "Here is
my child; let it rest on his innocent hand. There, perhaps, its life
will revive and its colors grow brighter than ever."

Her father, with an acrid smile, withdrew his finger. The butterfly
then appeared to recover the power of voluntary motion, while its hues
assumed much of their original lustre, and the gleam of starlight,
which was its most ethereal attribute, again formed a halo round about
it. At first, when transferred from Robert Danforth's hand to the small
finger of the child, this radiance grew so powerful that it positively
threw the little fellow's shadow back against the wall. He, meanwhile,
extended his plump hand as he had seen his father and mother do, and
watched the waving of the insect's wings with infantine delight.
Nevertheless, there was a certain odd expression of sagacity that made
Owen Warland feel as if here were old Pete Hovenden, partially, and but
partially, redeemed from his hard scepticism into childish faith.

"How wise the little monkey looks!" whispered Robert Danforth to his
wife.

"I never saw such a look on a child's face," answered Annie, admiring
her own infant, and with good reason, far more than the artistic
butterfly. "The darling knows more of the mystery than we do."

As if the butterfly, like the artist, were conscious of something not
entirely congenial in the child's nature, it alternately sparkled and
grew dim. At length it arose from the small hand of the infant with an
airy motion that seemed to bear it upward without an effort, as if the
ethereal instincts with which its master's spirit had endowed