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 tender and proud and joyful in his looks, took her unresisting hand and drew her forward.

“Mary Virginia!” I had not known how rich and deep the Butterfly Man’s voice could be.  “Mary Virginia, we promised you last night that if you would trust us, the Padre and me, we’d find the right way out, didn’t we?  Now this is what happened:  the Padre took his troubles to the Lord, and the Lord presently sent him back to me—­with the beginning of the answer in his hand!  And here’s the whole answer, Mary Virginia.”  And he placed in her hand the package of letters that meant so much to her.

My mother gave a little scream.  “Armand!” she said, fearfully.  “She has told me all. Mon Dieu, how have you two managed this, between midnight and morning?  My son, you are a De Rance:  look me in the eyes and tell me there is nothing wrong, that there will be no ill consequences—­”