The knowledge of his complete loneliness and utter insignificance was hourly thrust upon him.  He brooded and fretted until he was in a fever; yet he never guessed the cause.  He was filled with a vast impatience, a longing that he scarcely could endure.

It was June by the zodiac, June by the Limberlost, and by every delight of a newly resurrected season it should have been June in the hearts of all men.  Yet Freckles scowled darkly as he came down the trail, and the running tap, tap that tested the sagging wire and telegraphed word of his coming to his furred and feathered friends of the swamp, this morning carried the story of his discontent a mile ahead of him.

Freckles’ special pet, a dainty, yellow-coated, black-sleeved, cock goldfinch, had remained on the wire for several days past the bravest of all; and Freckles, absorbed with the cunning and beauty of the tiny fellow, never guessed that he was being duped.  For the goldfinch was skipping, flirting, and swinging for the express purpose of so holding his attention that he would not look up and see a small cradle of thistledown and wool perilously near his head.  In the beginning of brooding, the spunky little homesteader had clung heroically to the wire when he was almost paralyzed with fright.  When day after day passed and brought only softly whistled repetitions of his call, a handful of crumbs on the top of a locust line-post, and gently worded coaxings, he grew in confidence.  Of late he had sung and swung during the passing of Freckles, who, not dreaming of the nest and the solemn-eyed little hen so close above, thought himself unusually gifted in his power to attract the birds.  This morning the goldfinch scarcely could believe his ears, and clung to the wire until an unusually vicious rap sent him spinning a foot in air, and his “PTSEET” came with a squall of utter panic.

The wires were ringing with a story the birds could not translate, and Freckles was quite as ignorant of the trouble as they.

A peculiar movement beneath a small walnut tree caught his attention.  He stopped to investigate.  There was an unusually large Luna cocoon, and the moth was bursting the upper end in its struggles to reach light and air.  Freckles stood and stared.

“There’s something in there trying to get out,” he muttered.  “Wonder if I could help it?  Guess I best not be trying.  If I hadn’t happened along, there wouldn’t have been anyone to do anything, and maybe I’d only be hurting it.  It’s—­it’s——­Oh, skaggany!  It’s just being born!”

Freckles gasped with surprise.  The moth cleared the opening, and with many wabblings and contortions climbed up the tree.  He stared speechless with amazement as the moth crept around a limb and clung to the under side.  There was a big pursy body, almost as large as his thumb, and of the very snowiest white that Freckles ever had seen.  There was a band of delicate lavender across its forehead, and its feet were of the same colour; there were antlers, like tiny, straw-colored ferns, on its head, and from its shoulders hung the crumpled wet wings.  As Freckles gazed, tense with astonishment, he saw that these were expanding, drooping, taking on color, and small, oval markings were beginning to show.