“Are you writing something new?  Have you found another butterfly?” asked the young things, full of interest and respect.

Well, he had promised a certain paper by a certain time, though what people could find to like so much in what he had to say about his insects—­

“Because,” said Dabney, “you create in us a new feeling for them.  They’re living things with a right to their lives, and you show us what wonderful little lives most of them are.  You bring them close to us in a way that doesn’t disgust us.  I guess, Butterfly Man, the truth is you’ve found a new way of preaching the old gospel of One Father and one life; and the common sense of common folks understands what you mean, thanks you for it, likes you for it, and—­asks you to tell us some more.”

“Whenever a real teacher appears, always the common people hear him gladly,” said I, reflectively.

“Only,” said Mary Virginia, quickly, “when the teacher himself is just as uncommon as he can be, Padre.”  She smiled at John Flint with a sincerity that honored him.

He stood abashed and silent before this naive appreciation.  It was at once his greatest happiness and his deepest pain—­that open admiration of these clean-souled youngsters.

When he had gone, I too slipped away, for the still white night outside called me.  I went around to that favorite retreat of mine, the battered seat shut in among spireas and syringas.  I like to say my rosary out of doors.  The beads slipping through my fingers soothed me with their monotonous insistent petition.  Prayer brought me closer to the heart of the soft and shining night, and the big still stars.

They shall perish, but thou shalt endure; yea, all of them shall wax old as a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed; but thou art the same and thy years shall have no end.

The surety of the beautiful words brought the great overshadowing Presence near me.  And I fell into a half-revery, in which the hailmarys wove themselves in and out, like threads in a pattern.

Dreamily enough, I heard the youthful guests depart, in a gale of laughter and flute-like goodnights.  And I noted, too, that no light as yet shone in the Butterfly Man’s rooms.  Well—­he would hurl himself into the work to-morrow, probably, and clear it up in an hour or two.  He was like that.

My retreat was just off the path, and near the little gate between our grounds and Judge Mayne’s.  Thus, though I was completely hidden by the screening bushes and the shadow of the holly tree as well, I could plainly see the two who presently came down the bright open path.  Of late it had given me a curious sense of comfort to see Laurence with Mary Virginia, and, I reflected, he had been her shadow recently.  I liked that.  His strength seemed to shield her from Hunter’s ambiguous smile, from Inglesby’s thoughts, even from her own mother’s ambition.