Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man

GHB

Laurence Mayne and I brought John Flint downstairs and rolled him out into the glad, green garden, in the comfortable wheel-chair that the mill-people had given us for a Christmas present; my mother and Clélie followed, and our little dog

y cohorts, and over her green bowers floated her gayer lovers the early butterflies, clothed delicately as in kings' raiment. In the corners glowed the ruby-colored Japanese quince, and the long sprays of that flower I most dearly love, the spring-like

odils and hyacinths, with honey-breathing sweet alyssum in between. Robins and wrens, orioles and mocking-birds, blue jays and jackdaws, thrushes and blue-birds and cardinals, all were busy house-buildi

athed the glad, green things, p

ving!" flashed and fluted t

his tail stuck up like a sternly admonishing forefinger, a-bossing everything and everybody. We spread a light shawl over the man's knees, for it is not easy to bear a cruel physical infirmity, to see oneself marred and crippl

tly comes to her side of the fence to look him over. She came this morning, looked

e does not believe in wasting too much sympathy upon people either; she

congenital incapacity to refrain from telling the unwelcome truth when people are madly trying to save their faces,-she calls

retain a simple and unaffected goodness of practical charity toward the unelect, such as makes one marvel. You may be predestined to be lost, but while you're here you shall

e, cheerfully, that she guessed she must be one of those born eunuchs of the spirit the Bible mentions-it

ly entertained by the honorable the Chatham Artillery. The Chatham Artillery brews a Punch; insidious, delectable, deceptive, but withal a

e Albert, donned his top hat, picked a huge bunch of zinnias, and at

of that historic call, but we are in the m

t upon the floor, and wiping his forehead with a spotless handkerchief the size of a

ou bother to pick 'em? But to whom much hath more shall be given

id's a miserable, stiff, scentless sort of a flower. You might think, when you first glance at 'em, that they're just like any other fl

ne and by yourself, with no man's bosom to lean on-you haven't really got anything but a few fowls and the Lord to love, have you? And, Sally Ruth, tears came to my eyes. Talk not of tears till you have seen the tears of warlike men! I believe it would almost scare you to death to see me cryin', Sally Ruth! I got to thinkin', and I said to myself: 'Appleby Cartwright

regarded him c

er with you. You and your bosom! Why, it's not respectabl

otten me to swallow over a gallon of their infernal brew-and it goes down like silk, too

-I've never been entertained by the Chatham Artillery, and I don't ever expect to be. I suppose it was intended for you to be a born goose, Appleby, so it'd be a waste of time

ot to do something for you, and it might as well be me. My God, Sally Ruth, you're settin' like clabber! It's a shame; it's a cryin' shame, for you're a fine woman. I d

ght-it's run the man stark crazy," said Miss

said the major with awful digni

fiddlesticks! Shuc

red at her owl-like. "Woman," said he solemnly, "when I see m

n the same house with you I'd be tempted to stick a darning needle in you to hear you explode! Appleby, I'm like that woman that had a

sn't for my own good-it was for yours. And to think this is all the thanks I

g, Miss Sally Ruth rose, and took Major Appleby Cartwright, who on a time had charged Yankee guns and hadn't

tal man to marry you-Sally Ruth, I wouldn't marry you now for forty billion

tor out of her house and led him to her front gate. Here she paused, jaws firmly set, eyes glittering, and, as with hooks of steel, took firm hold up

ake-"to die an old maid! I don't propose to have"-shake-"an old windbag offering me his blubbery old bosom"-shake, shake, SHAKE-"at this ti

went at once, galloping as if a company of those Yankees with whom

In Appleboro we do not mention this historic meeting when either of the participants can hear us, though it

ed our invalid directly and without prelude, after he

it, tramping like Satan, is a lost leg. Not that it wasn't intended

said grimly, "there's nobody

lain truth showed in Miss

life, I reckon. But everything's intended, so you don't need to be too sorry for yourself, any way you look at it. And you could just as well have lost both legs while you were at

gether, out in the birdhaunted, sweet-scented, sun-dappled garden, in the golden morning hours. No one can be quite heartless in

body had betrayed him! It had become, not the splendid engine which obeyed his slightest wish, but a drag upon him. Realizing this acutely, untrained, undisciplined, he was savagely sullen, impenetrably morose. He tired

dog, who, shocked and outraged at this exhibition of depravity, wit

faced the problem of his future and, like one before an impassable stone wall, had to fall back, baffled. He could be sure of only one thing: that never again could he be what he had been once-"the slickest cracksman in America." This in itself tortured him. Heretofore, life had been exactly what he chose to

ld calculating brain, the wit, the will; and now, by a cruel chance and a stupid accident, he had lost out! The end had come for him, and he in his heyday! Ther

cipalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darknes