She swung the horse to the other side, and I climbed down.  Gathering my skirts, I crossed the ditch as best I could, and reached the lily bed, but I was trembling until my knees wavered.  I stepped between the lilies and the cornfield, leaned over breathlessly, and waited in the pelting rain, until the moth again raised its wings above its back.  Then with a sweep learned in childhood, I had it.

While crossing the ditch, I noticed there were numbers of heavy yellow paper bags lying where people had thrown them when emptied of bananas and biscuits, on leaving town.  They were too wet to be safe, but to carry the moth in my fingers would spoil it for a study, so I caught up and drained a big bag; carefully set my treasure inside, and handed it to Molly-Cotton.  If you consider the word `treasure’ too strong to fit the case, offer me your biggest diamond, ruby, or emerald, in recompense for the privilege of striking this chapter, with its accompanying illustration, from my book, and learn what the answer will be.

When I entered the carriage and dried my face and hands, we peeped, marvelled, and exclaimed in wonder, for this was the most gorgeous moth of our collections.  We hastened to Portland, where we secured a large box at a store.  In order that it might not be dark and set the moth beating in flight, we copiously punctured it with as large holes as we dared, and bound the lid securely.  On the way home we searched the lilies and roadside for a mile, but could find no trace of another moth.  Indeed, it seemed a miracle that we had found this one late in August, for the time of their emergence is supposed to be from middle May to the end of June.  Professor Rowley assures me that in rare instances a moth will emerge from a case or cocoon two seasons old, and finding this one, and the Luna, prove it is well for nature students to be watchful from May until October.  Because these things happened to me in person, I made bold to introduce the capture of a late moth into the experience of Edith Carr in the last chapter of “A Girl of the Limberlost.”  I am pointing out some of these occurrences as I come to them, in order that you may see how closely I keep to life and truth, even in books exploited as fiction.  There may be such incidents that are pure imagination incorporated; but as I write I can recall no instance similar to this, in any book of mine, that is not personal experience, or that did not happen to other people within my knowledge, or was not told me by some one whose word I consider unquestionable; allowing very little material indeed, on the last provision.