"I think not."
"Better," said Jack, whose face was a little flushed with the wine. "Much better. Robinson Crusoe always wanted to get home again. So did Selkirk. So did Philip Quarles."
Then the host produced cigars. Later on, brandy-and-water.
The brandy and water made Mr. Gilead P. Beck, who found himself a good deal crowded out of the conversation, insist on having his share. He placed his square box on the table, and loosed the straps.
"Let me tell you," he said, "the story of my Luck. I was in Sonora City," he began, patting his box affectionately, "after the worst three months I ever had; and I went around trying to borrow a few dollars. I got no dollars, but I got free drinks—so many free drinks, that at last I lay down in the street and went to sleep. Wal, gentlemen, I suppose I walked in that slumber of mine, for when I woke up I was lying a mile outside the town.
"I also entertained angels unawares, for at my head there sat an Indian woman. She was as wrinkled an old squaw as ever shrieked at a buryin'. But she took an interest in me. She took that amount of interest in me that she told me she knew of gold. And then she led me by the hand, gentlemen, that aged and affectionate old squaw, to a place not far from the roadside; and there, lying between two rocks, and hidden in the chaparelle, glittering in the light, was this bauble." He tapped his box. "I did not want to be told to take it. I wrapped it in my handkerchief and carried it in my hand. Then she led me back to the road again. 'Bad luck you will have,' she said; 'but it will lead to good luck so long as that is not broken, sold, given away, or lost.' Then she left me, and here it is."
He opened the little box. There was nothing to be seen but a mass of white wool.
"Bad luck I have had. Look at me, gentlemen. Adam was not more destitute when the garden-gates were shut on him. But the good will come, somehow."
He removed the wool, and, behold, a miracle of nature! Two thin plates of gold delicately wrought in lines and curious chasing, like the pattern of a butterfly's wing, and of the exact shape, but twice as large. They were poised at the angle, always the same, at which the insect balances itself about a flower. They were set in a small piece of quaintly marked quartz, which represented the body.
"A golden butterfly!"