Would I?  Instantly I knew this book was not finished.  As I held the firm, heavy, leaf-rolled cocoons in my hand, I could see the last chapter sliding over from fourteen to fifteen to make place for Promethea, the loveliest of the Attacine group, a cousin of Cecropia.  Often I had seen the pictured cocoon, in its neat little, tight little leaf-covered shelter, and the mounted moths of scientific collections and museums; I knew their beautiful forms and remembered the reddish tinge flushing the almost black coat of the male and the red wine and clay-coloured female with her elaborate marks, spots, and lines.  Right there the book stopped at leaf-fall early in November to await the outcome of those three cocoons.  If they would yield a pair in the spring, and if that pair would emerge close enough together to mate and produce fertile eggs, then by fall of the coming year I would have a complete life history.  That was a long wait, thickly punctuated with `ifs.’

Then the twig was carried to my room and stood in a vase of intricate workmanship and rare colouring.

Every few days I examined those cocoons and tested them by weight.  I was sure they were perfect.  That spring I had been working all day and often at night, so I welcomed an opportunity to spend a few days at a lake where I would meet many friends; boating and fishing were fine, while the surrounding country was one uninterrupted panorama of exquisite land and water pictures.  I packed and started so hastily I forgot my precious cocoons.  Two weeks later on my return, before I entered the Cabin, I walked round it to see if my flowers had been properly watered and tended.  It was not later than three in the afternoon but I saw at least a dozen wonderful big moths, dusky and luring, fluttering eagerly over the wild roses covering a south window of the Deacon’s room adjoining mine on the west.  Instantly I knew what that meant.  I hurried to the room and found a female Promothea at the top of the screen covering a window that the caretaker had slightly lowered.  I caught up a net and ran to bring a step-ladder.  The back foundation is several feet high and that threw the tops of the windows close under the eaves.  I mounted to the last step and balancing made a sweep to capture a moth.  They could see me and scattered in all directions.  I waited until they were beginning to return, when from the thicket of leaves emerged a deep rose-flushed little moth that sailed away, with every black one in pursuit.  I almost fell from the ladder.  I went inside, only to learn that what I feared was true.  The wind had loosened the screen in my absence, and the moth had passed through a crack, so narrow it seemed impossible for it to escape.

Only those interested as I was, and who have had similar experience, know how to sympathize.  I had thought a crowbar would be required to open one of those screens!  With sinking heart I hurried to my room.  Joy!  There was yet hope!  The escaped moth was the only one that had emerged.  The first thing was to fasten the screen, the next to live with the remaining cocoons.