The work was done very noiselessly; there was no outward
disturbances, yet; but the women were in deadly earnest; there were
far, far too many small graves in our cemetery, and they were being
taught to ask why the children who filled them hadn't had a fair
chance? The men might smile at many things, but fathers couldn't smile
when mothers of lost children wanted to know why Appleboro hadn't
better milk and sanitation. And there, under their eyes bulked the
huge red mills, and every day from the bosom of this Moloch went up
the smoke of sacrifice.

Behind all this gathering of forces stood an almost unguessed figure.
Not the lovely white-haired lady of the Parish House; not big
Westmoreland; not handsome Laurence, nor outspoken Miss Sally Ruth
with a suffrage button on her black basque; but a limping man in gray
tweeds with a soft felt hat pulled down over his eyes and a butterfly
net in his hand. That net was symbolic. With trained eye and sure hand
the naturalist caught and classified us, put each one in his proper
place.

Keener, shrewder far than any of us, no one, save I alone, guessed the
part it pleased him to play. Laurence was hailed as the Joshua who was
to lead all Appleboro into the promised land of better paving, better
lighting, better schools, better living conditions, better city
government--a better Appleboro. Behind Laurence stood the Butterfly
Man.

He seldom interfered with Laurence's plans; but every now and then he
laid a finger unerringly upon some weak point which, unnoticed and
uncorrected, would have made those plans barren of result. He amended
and suggested. I have seen him breathe upon the dry bones of a
project and make it live. It satisfied that odd sardonic twist in him
to stand thus obscurely in the background and pull the strings. I
think, too, that there must have been in his mind, since that morning
he had watched the bluejay destroy his nest, some obscure sense of
restitution. Once, in the dark, he had worked for evil. Still keeping
himself hidden, it pleased him now to work for good. So there he sat
in his workroom, and cast filaments here and there, and spun a web
which gradually netted all Appleboro.

There was, for instance, the _Clarion_. We had had but that one
newspaper in our town from time immemorial. I suppose it might have
been a fairly good county paper once,--but for some years it had
spluttered so feebly that one wondered how it survived at all. In
spite of this,