“No, don’t you worry any about me.  I wouldn’t change places with anybody alive, I’m too glad for everything that’s ever happened to me, good and bad.  I’m not ashamed of the beginning, no, nor I’m not afraid of the end.

“Will you believe me, though, when I tell you what worried me like the mischief for awhile?  Family, parson!  You can’t live in South Carolina without having the seven-years’ Family-itch wished on you, you know.  I felt like a mushroom standing up on my one leg all by myself among a lot of proper garden plants—­until I got fed up on the professional Descendant banking on his boneyard full of dead ones; then I quit worrying.  I’m Me and alive—­and I should worry about ancestors!  Come to think about it, everybody’s an ancestor while you wait.  I made up my mind I’d be my own ancestor and my own descendant—­and make a good job of both while I was at it.”

But I was too sad to smile.  And after awhile he asked gently: 

“Are you grieving because you think I’ve lost love?  Parson, did you ever know something you didn’t know how you knew, but you know you know it because it’s true?  Well then—­I know that girl’s mine and I came here to find her, though on the face of it you’d think I’d lost her, wouldn’t you?  Somewhere and sometime I’ll come again—­and when I do, she’ll know me.”

And to save my life I couldn’t tell him I didn’t believe it!  His manner even more than his words impressed me.  He didn’t look improbable.

“One little life and one little death,” said the Butterfly Man, “couldn’t possibly be big enough for something like this to get away from a man forever.  I have got the thing too big for a dozen lives to hold.  Isn’t that a great deal for a man to have, parson?”

“Yes.” said I.  “It is a great deal for a man to have.”  But I foresaw the empty, empty places, in the long, long years ahead.  I added faintly:  “Having that much, you have more than most.”

“You only have what you are big enough not to take,” said he.  “And I’m not fooling myself I shan’t be lonesome and come some rough tumbles at times.  The difference is, that if I go down now I won’t stay down.  If there was one thing I could grieve over, too, it would be—­kids.  I’d like kids.  My own kids.  And I shall never have any.  It—­well, it just wouldn’t be fair to the kids.  Louisa’ll come nearest to being mine by bornation—­though I’m thinking she’s managed to wish me everybody else’s, on her curl.”

“So!  You are your own ancestor and your own descendant, and everybody’s kids are yours!  You are modest, hein?  And what else have you got?”

His eyes suddenly danced.  “Nothing but the rest of the United States,” said the Butterfly Man, magnificently.  And when I stared, he laughed at me.

“It’s quite true, parson:  I have got the whole United States to work for.  Uncle Sam.  U.S. Us! I’ve been drafted into the Brigade that hasn’t any commander, nor any colors, nor honors, nor even a name; but that’s never going to be mustered out of service, because we that enlist and belong can’t and won’t quit.