"Poor fellow!" exclaimed Mrs. Maynard. "I never thought of you! How in
the world did you get to your camp?"

"I walked."

"In all that rain?"

"Well, I had been pretty well sprinkled, already. It was n't a question
of wet and dry; it was a question of wet and wet. I was going off
bareheaded, I lost my hat in the water, you know,--but your man, here,
hailed me round the corner of the kitchen, and lent me one. I've been
taking up collections of clothes ever since."

Mr. Libby spoke lightly, and with a cry of "Barlow's hat!" Mrs. Maynard
went off in a shriek of laughter; but a deep distress kept Grace silent.
It seemed to her that she had been lacking not only in thoughtfulness,
but in common humanity, in suffering him to walk away several miles in
the rain, without making an offer to keep him and have him provided for
in the house. She remembered now her bewildered impression that he was
without a hat when he climbed the stairs and helped her to the house; she
recalled the fact that she had thrust him on to the danger he had
escaped, and her heart was melted with grief and shame. "Mr. Libby"--she
began, going up to him, and drooping before him in an attitude which
simply and frankly expressed the contrition she felt; but she could not
continue. Mrs. Maynard's laugh broke into the usual cough, and as soon as
she could speak she seized the word.

"Well, there, now; we can leave it to Mr. Libby. It's the principle of
the thing that I look at. And I want to see how it strikes him. I want to
know, Mr. Libby, if you were a doctor,"--he looked at Grace, and