With the magnificent independence of the young, Molly-Cotton would have scouted the idea that she was searching for moths also, but I smiled inwardly as I noticed her check the horse several times and scan a wayside bush, or stretch of snake fence.  We were approaching the limits of town, and had found nothing; a slow rain was falling, and the shimmer on bushes and fences made it difficult to see objects plainly.  Several times I had asked her to stop the horse, or drive close the fields when I was sure of a moth or caterpillar, though it was very late, being close the end of August; but we found only a dry leaf, or some combination that had deceived me.

Just on the outskirts of Portland, beside a grassy ditch and at the edge of a cornfield, grew a cluster of wild tiger lilies.  The water in the ditch had kept them in flower long past their bloomtime.  On one of the stems there seemed to be a movement.

“Wait a minute!” I cried, and Molly-Cotton checked the horse, but did not stop, while I leaned forward and scanned the lilies carefully.  What I thought I saw move appeared to be a dry lily bloom of an orange-red colour, that had fallen and lodged on the grasses against a stalk.

“It’s only a dead lily,” I said; “drive on.”

“Is there a moth that colour?” asked Molly-Cotton.

“Yes,” I replied.  “There is an orange-brown species, but it is rare.  I never have seen a living one.”

So we passed the lilies.  A very peculiar thing is that when one grows intensely interested in a subject, and works over it, a sort of instinct, an extra sense as it were, is acquired.  Three rods away, I became certain I had seen something move, so strongly the conviction swept over me that we had passed a moth.  Still, it was raining, and the ditch was wet and deep.

“I am sorry we did not stop,” I said, half to myself, “I can’t help feeling that was a moth.”

There is where youth, in all its impetuosity, helped me.  If the girl had asked, “Shall I go back?” in all probability I would have answered, “No, I must have been mistaken.  Drive on!”

Instead, Molly-Cotton, who had straightened herself, and touched up her horse for a brisk entrance into town, said, “Well, we will just settle that ‘feeling’ right here!”

At a trot, she deftly cut a curve in the broad road and drove back.  She drew close the edge of the ditch as we approached the lilies.  As the horse stopped, what I had taken for a fallen lily bloom, suddenly opened to over five inches of gorgeous red-brown, canary-spotted wing sweep, and then closed again.

“It is a moth!” we gasped, with one breath.

Molly-Cotton cramped the wheel on my side of the carriage and started to step down.  Then she dropped back to the seat.

“I am afraid,” she said.  “I don’t want you to wade that ditch in the rain, but you never have had a red one, and if I bungle and let it escape, I never will forgive myself.”