 Stories of human beings who, by a wave of a magic wand, are transformed into animals are an inevitable part of the literature of our childhood. But now and then, we come upon an incident which makes us pause and wonder whether our childish imaginings are quite as childish as they seem. Ms. Olive Clarke, who was, for 20 years, the principal of the girl's national school at Whittlesey, was not a stern disciplinarian, but one thing she did insist on was strict observance of the curfew. Consequently, when at 12.30 on a certain night in the year 1911, she saw a shaft of light still gleaming beneath the door of Janet Seton's room, she decided to investigate. Hello there, Ms. Clarke. Do you realize what time it is? Your light should have been out over two hours ago. Oh, but I couldn't help it. I've been reading this book, and I forgot all about time. There's a little boy in it, and he turns into a bird, and he flies all over the world. That's enough, Janet. You shouldn't be reading such childish nonsense. But you see, Ms. Clarke, I believe in things like that. I'm quite sure that lots of birds and animals are really the souls of dead people in disguise. It was almost a week later that Ms. Clarke found on her office desk a message from Janet Seton, asking her to come to the dormitory at her earliest convenience. Ms. Clarke, will you tell me something, please? Did anybody, any girl who used to go to school here, ever die in this room? Well, now that you ask, yes. I thought so. Why? Because she's come back. There she is, over there in the corner. Ms. Clarke wheeled around and stared at the spot where Janet was pointing. There, at the juncture of two walls, a large red butterfly was clinging. She was there when I came in last night. I don't know how she got in. The door and the windows were closed. For more than a month, the butterfly remained in precisely the same spot, and nothing could convince Janet Seton that it was not a reincarnation of the girl who had died. Then, late in the spring, they found its lifeless body on the floor. Just because she died doesn't prove anything. Her soul probably passed to another animal of some sort. Summer of that year, Janet Seton graduated from the girl's national. And for 16 years thereafter, no one connected with the school heard from her. And then, on a morning in March 1927, she came back and dropped into Ms. Clarke's office and began to reminisce about her childhood experience. Remember what a silly little fool I was, Ms. Clarke. I insisted that coral butterfly was the soul of a dead girl. Janet, there's still a butterfly in your room. Every spring, at just about the same time, one has appeared in the same corner for 16 years. There's one up there now. There is no need to accept the interpretation which Janet Seton offered for this strange story when she was a child. And yet, even after we've rejected it, the facts are that a red admiral butterfly did reappear each year in the same corner of the same room. And that it remained there until it's death. These facts are, in themselves, incredible but true.