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[Illustration]


  THE SILVER BUTTERFLY

  By
  MRS. WILSON WOODROW

  With Illustrations by
  HOWARD CHANDLER CHRISTY


  INDIANAPOLIS
  THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
  PUBLISHERS


  Copyright 1908
  The Bobbs-Merrill Company
  October


  PRESS OF
  BRAUNWORTH & CO.
  BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
  BROOKLYN, N. Y.




CHAPTER I


Hayden was back in New York again after several years spent in the
uttermost parts of the earth. He had been building railroads in South
America, Africa, and China, and had maintained so many lodges in this
or that wilderness that he really feared he might be curiously
awkward in adapting himself to the conventional requirements of
civilization. In his long roundabout journey home he had stopped for
a few weeks in both London and Paris; but to his mental discomfort,
they had but served to accentuate his loneliness and whet his
longings for the d