Mrs. Comstock entered dragging her heavy feet.  Her dress skirt was gone, her petticoat wet and drabbled, and the waist of her dress was almost torn from her body.  Her hair hung in damp strings; her eyes were red with crying.  In one hand she held the lantern, and in the other stiffly extended before her, on a wad of calico reposed a magnificent pair of Yellow Emperors.  Elnora stared, her lips parted.

“Shall I put these others in the kitchen?” inquired a man’s voice.

The girl shrank back to the shadows.

“Yes, anywhere inside the door,” replied Mrs. Comstock as she moved a few steps to make way for him.  Pete’s head appeared.  He set down the moths and was gone.

“Thank you, Pete, more than ever woman thanked you before!” said Mrs. Comstock.

She placed the lantern on the table and barred the door.  As she turned Elnora came into view.  Mrs. Comstock leaned toward her, and held out the moths.  In a voice vibrant with tones never before heard she said:  “Elnora, my girl, mother’s found you another moth!”

CHAPTER XIII

WHEREIN MOTHER LOVE IS BESTOWED ON ELNORA, AND SHE FINDS AN ASSISTANT IN MOTH HUNTING

Elnora awoke at dawn and lay gazing around the unfamiliar room.  She noticed that every vestige of masculine attire and belongings was gone, and knew, without any explanation, what that meant.  For some reason every tangible evidence of her father was banished, and she was at last to be allowed to take his place.  She turned to look at her mother.  Mrs. Comstock’s face was white and haggard, but on it rested an expression of profound peace Elnora never before had seen.  As she studied the features on the pillow beside her, the heart of the girl throbbed in tenderness.  She realized as fully as any one else could what her mother had suffered.  Thoughts of the night brought shuddering fear.  She softly slipped from the bed, went to her room, dressed and entered the kitchen to attend the Emperors and prepare breakfast.  The pair had been left clinging to the piece of calico.  The calico was there and a few pieces of beautiful wing.  A mouse had eaten the moths!

“Well, of all the horrible luck!” gasped Elnora.

With the first thought of her mother, she caught up the remnants of the moths, burying them in the ashes of the stove.  She took the bag to her room, hurriedly releasing its contents, but there was not another yellow one.  Her mother had said some had been confined in the case in the Limberlost.  There was still a hope that an Emperor might be among them.  She peeped at her mother, who still slept soundly.

Elnora took a large piece of mosquito netting, and ran to the swamp.  Throwing it over the top of the case, she unlocked the door.  She reeled, faint with distress.  The living moths that had been confined there in their fluttering to escape to night and the mates they sought not only had wrecked the other specimens of the case, but torn themselves to fringes on the pins.  A third of the rarest moths of the collection for the man of India were antennaless, legless, wingless, and often headless.  Elnora sobbed aloud.