It is written in the Live Green Book that one may not stumble upon one of its secrets without at the same discovering something about others quite as fascinating and worth exploring. This is a wise and blessed law, which the angels of the Little Peoples are always trying to have enforced. Peter Champneys suspected the Red Admiral of being a fairy; so when he ran fleet-footed over the fields and through the woods and alongside the worm-fences after the Admiral, the angels of the Little Peoples turned his boyish head aside and made him see birds’ wings, and bees, and the shapes of leaves, and the colors of trees and clouds, and the faces of flowers. It is further written that one may not intimately know the Little Peoples without loving them. When one begins to love, one begins to grow. Peter, then, was growing.

Lying awake in the dark now wasn’t a thing to be dreaded; the dark was no longer filled with shapes of fear, for Peter was beginning to discover in himself a power of whose unique and immense value he was not as yet aware. It was the great power of being able clearly to visualize things, of bringing before his mind’s eye whatever he had seen, with every distinction of shape and size and color sharply present, and accurately to portray it in the absence of the original. If one should ask him, “What’s the shape of the milkweed butterfly’s wing, and the color of the spice-bush swallowtail, Peter Champneys? What does the humming-bird’s nest look like? What’s the color of the rainbow-snake and of the cotton-mouth moccasin? What’s the difference between the ironweed and the aster?” Ask Peter things like that, and lend him a bit of paper and a pencil, and he literally had the answers at his finger-tips.

But they never asked him what would, to him, have been natural questions; they wished him, instead, to tell them where the Onion River flows, and the latitude of the middle of Kamchatka, and to spell phthisis, and on what date the Battle of Somethingorother was fought, and if a man buys old iron at such a price, and makes it over into stoves weighing so much, and sells his stoves at such another price, what does it profit him, and other such-like illuminating and uplifting problems, warranted to make any school-child wiser than Solomon. It is a beautiful system; only, God, who is no respecter of systems, every now and then delights to flout it by making him a dunce like Peter Champneys, to be the torment of school-teachers and the delight of the angels of the Little Peoples.

Those long, silent, solitary hours in the open gave Peter the power of concentration, and a serenity that sat oddly on his slight shoulders. Thoughts came to him, out there, that he couldn’t put into words nor yet set down upon paper.

On warm nights, when his mother’s sewing-machine was for a time still and the tired little woman slept, Peter slipped out of the shed room into a big, white, enchanted world, and saw things that are to be seen only by an imaginative and beauty-loving little boy in the light of the midsummer moon. Big hawk-moths, swift and sudden, darted by him with owl-like wings. Mocking-birds broke into silvery, irrepressible singing, and water-birds croaked and rustled in the cove, where the tide-water lipped the land. The slim, black pine-trees nodded and bent to one another, with the moon looking over their shoulders. Something wild and sweet and secret invaded the little boy’s spirit, and stayed on in his heart. Maybe it was the heart-shaking call of the whippoorwill, or the song of the mocking-bird, truest voices of the summer night; or perhaps it was the spirit of the great green luna-moth, loveliest of all the daughters of the dark. Or perhaps the Red Admiral was indeed a fairy, as Peter said he was.

Peter was superstitious about the Red Admiral. He was a good-luck sign, a sort of flying four-leaf clover. Peter noticed that whenever the Red Admiral crossed his path now, something pleasant always impended; it meant that he wouldn’t be very unhappy in school; or maybe he’d find a thrush’s nest, or the pink orchid. Or the meeting might simply imply something nice and homey, such as a little treat his mother contrived to make for him when sewing had been somewhat better-paying than usual, and she could sit by the table and enjoy his enjoyment as only one’s mother can. Decidedly, the Red Admiral was good luck!

So, all along, quietly, persistently, not exactly secretly but still all by himself, Peter had been learning to use his fingers, as he had been learning to use his eyes and ears. He was morbidly shy about it. It never occurred to him that anybody might admire anything he could do, as nobody had ever admired anything he had done.

On his mother’s last birthday though Peter didn’t know then that it was to be her last he made for her his first sketch in water-colors. By herculean efforts he had managed to get his materials; he had picked berries, weeded gardens until his head whirled and his back ached, chopped fire-wood, run errands, caught crabs. Presently he had his paper and colors.

It was a beautiful surprise for Peter’s mother, that sketch, which was a larger copy of the one on the fly-leaf of his geography. There was the gray worm-fence, a bit of brown ditch, an elder in flower, a tall purple thistle, and on it the Red Admiral. Peter wished to make his mother personally acquainted with the Red Admiral, so he printed on the back of his picture:

My buterfly done for mother’s burthday by her loveing son
Peter Champneys the 11th Year of his Aige.

The little woman cried, and held him off the better to look at him, with love, and wonder, and pride, and drew his head to her breast and kissed his hair and eyes, and wished his dear, dear father had been there to see what her wonder-child could do.

“I can’t to save my life see where you get such a lovely gift from, Peter. It must be just the grace of God that sends it to you. Your dear father couldn’t so much as draw a straight line unless he had a ruler, I’m sure. And I’m not bright at all, except maybe about sewing. But you are different. I’ve always felt that, Peter, from the time you were a little baby. At the age of five months you cut two teeth without crying once! You were a wonderful baby. I knew it was in you to do something remarkable. Never you doubt your mother’s word about that, Peter! You’ll make your mark in the world yet! God couldn’t fail to answer my prayers and you the last Champneys.”

Peter was too innately kind and considerate to dim her joy with any doubts. He knew how he was rated berated is the better word for it. He knew acutely how bad his marks were: his shoulders too often bore witness to them. The words “dunce” and “sissy” buzzed about his ears like stinging gnats. So he wasn’t made vainglorious by his mother’s praise. He received it with cautious reservations. But her faith in him filled him with an immense tenderness for the little woman, and a passionate desire, a very agony of desire, to struggle toward her aspirations for him, to make good, to repay her for all the privations she had endured. A lump came in his throat when he saw her place the little sketch under his father’s picture, where her eyes could open upon it the first thing in the morning, and close to it at night.

“Ah, my dear! God’s will be done I’m not complaining but I wish, oh, how I wish you could be here to see what our dear child can do!” she told the smiling crayon portrait. “Some of these days the little son you’ve never seen is going to be a great man with a great name your name, my dear, your name!”

Her face kindled into a sort of exaltation. Two large tears ran down her cheeks, and two larger ones rolled down Peter’s. His heart swelled, and again he felt in his breast the flutter as of wings. Far, far away, on the dim and distant horizon, something glimmered, like sunlight upon airy peaks.

Peter’s mother wasn’t at all beautiful just a little, thin, sallow woman with mild brown eyes and graying hair, and a sensitive mouth, and dressed in a worn black skirt and a plain white shirt-waist. Her fingers were needle-pricked, and she stooped from bending so constantly over her sewing-machine. She had been a pretty girl; now she was thirty-five years old and looked fifty. She wasn’t in the least intellectual; she hadn’t even the gift of humor, or she wouldn’t have thought herself a sinner and besought Heaven to forgive sins she never committed. She used to weep over the Fifty-first Psalm, take courage from the Thirty-seventh, and when she hadn’t enough food for her body feed her spirit on the Twenty-third. She didn’t know that it is women like her who manage to make and keep the earth worth while. This timid and modest soul had the courage of a soldier and the patience of a martyr under the daily scourgings inflicted upon the sensitive by biting poverty. Peter might very well have received far less from a brilliant and beautiful mother than he received from the woman whose only gifts and graces were such as spring from a loving, unselfish, and pure heart.

For Peter’s sake she fought while she had strength to fight, enduring all things, hoping all things. She didn’t even know she was sacrificing herself, because, as Emma Campbell said, “Miss Maria’s jes’ natchelly all mother.” But of a sudden, the winter that Peter was turning twelve, the tide of battle went against her. The needle-pricked, patient fingers dropped their work. She said apologetically, “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I’m too sick to stay up any longer.” Nobody guessed how slight was her hold upon life. When the neighbors came in, after the kindly Carolina custom, she was cheerful enough, but quiet. But then, Maria Champneys was always quiet.

There came a day when she was unusually quiet, even for her. Toward dusk the neighbor who had watched with her went home. At the door she said hopefully:

“You’ll be better in the morning.”

“Yes, I’ll be better in the morning,” the sick woman repeated. After a while Emma Campbell, who had been looking after the house, went away to her cabin across the cove. Peter and his mother were alone.

It was a darkish, gusty night, and a small fire burned in the open fireplace. Shadows danced on the walls, and every now and then the wind came and tapped at the windows impatiently. On the closed sewing-machine an oil lamp burned, turned rather low. Peter sat in a rocking-chair drawn close to his mother’s bedside and dozed fitfully, waking to watch the face on the pillow. It was very quiet there in the poor room, with the clock ticking, and the soft sound of the settling log.

Just before dawn Peter replenished the fire, moving carefully lest he disturb his mother. But when he turned toward the bed again she was wide awake and looking at him intently. Peter ran to her, kissed her cheek, and held her hand in his. Her fingers were cold, and he chafed them between his palms.

“Peter,” said she, very gently, “I’ve got to go, my dear.” There was no fear in her. The child looked at her piteously, his eyes big and frightened in his pale face.

“And now I’m at the end,” said she bravely, “I’m not afraid to leave you, Peter. You are a brave child, and a good child. You couldn’t be dishonorable, or a coward, or a liar, or unkind, to save your life. You will always be gentle, and generous, and just. When one is where I am to-night, that is all that really matters. Nothing but goodness counts.”

Peter, with her hand against his cheek, tried not to weep. To conceal his terror and grief, and the shock of this thing come upon him in the middle of the night, to spare her the agony of witnessing his agony, was almost intuitive with him. He braced himself, and kept his self-control. She seemed to understand, for the hand he held against his cheek tried, feebly, to caress it. It didn’t tire her to talk, apparently, for her voice was firm and clear.

“You’re a gifted child, as well as a good child, Peter. But our people here don’t understand you yet, my dearest. Your sort of brightness is different from theirs and better, because it’s rarer and slower. Hold fast to yourself, Peter. You’re going to be a great man.”

Peter stroked her hand. The two looked at each other, a long, long, luminous look.

“My son, your chance is coming. I know that to-night. And when it comes, oh, for God’s sake, for my sake, for all the Champneyses’ sake, take it, Peter, take it!” Her voice rose at that, her hand tightened upon his; she looked at him imploringly.

“Take it for my sake,” she said with terrible earnestness and intensity. “Take it, darling, and prove that I was right about you. Remember how all my years, Peter, I toiled and prayed all for you, my dearest, all for you! Remember me in that hour, Peter, and don’t fail me, don’t fail me!”

“Oh, Mother, I won’t fail you! I won’t fail you!” cried Peter, and at that the tears came.

His mother smiled, exquisitely; a smile of faith reassured and hope fulfilled, and love contented. That smile on a dying mouth stayed, with other beautiful and imperishable memories, in Peter’s heart. Presently he ventured to ask her, timidly:

“Shall I go for somebody, Mother?”

“Are you afraid, dear?”

“No,” said Peter.

“Then stay by me. Just you and me together. You you are all I have I don’t need anybody else. Stay with me, Son, for a little while.”

Outside you could hear the wind moving restlessly, and the trees complaining, and the tide-water whispering. The dark night was filled with a multitudinous murmuring. For a long while Peter and his mother clung to each other. From time to time she whispered to him such pitiful comfortings as love may lend in its extremity.

The black night paled into a gray glimmer of dawn. Peter held fast to the hand he couldn’t warm. Her face was sharp and pale and pinched. She looked very little and thin and helpless. The bed seemed too big for so small a woman.

More gray light stole through the windows. The lamp on the closed machine looked ghostly, the room filled with shifting shadows. Maria Champneys turned her head on her pillow, and stared at her son with eyes he didn’t know for his mother’s. They were full of a flickering light, as of a lamp going out.

“‘Though I walk through the valley ’” Here her voice, a mere thin trickle of sound, failed her. As if pressed by an invisible hand her head began to bend forward. A thin, gray shade, as of inconceivably fine ashes, settled upon her face, and her nostrils quivered. The eyes, with the light fading from them, fixed themselves on Peter in a last look.

“’ of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.’” Peter finished it for her, his boyish voice a cry of agony.

A light, puffing breath, as of a candle blown out, exhaled from his mother’s lips. Her eyes closed, the hand in Peter’s fell limp and slack. The awful and mysterious smile of death fixed itself upon her pale mouth.

So passed Maria Champneys from her tiny house in Riverton, in the dawn of a winter morning, when the tide was turning and the world was full of the sound of water running seaward.