Nort walked down the street with a number of boys behind him--_three_, to be exact, _not_ a "rabble." He was seen by old Mrs. Parker, one of our most prominent journalists, who was, as usual, beating her doormat on the front porch. He was seen by Jared Sparks, who keeps the woodyard, and by Johnny McGonigal, who drives the hack; and finally he was caught by the eagle eye of the Press, in the person of Captain Doane, as I have already related, and his shame was published abroad to the world through the columns of the _Star_. As nearly as I can make out, for the facts regarding any given event in Hempfield often vary in adverse proportion to the square of the number of persons doing the reporting, the main indictment against Nort upon this occasion was that he appeared in town, a stranger without a hat. _Without a hat!_ I admit that he _did_ stop in front of the Congregational Church; but I maintain that it is well worth any man's while to stop on a fine morning and look at our old church, with its mantle of ivy and the sparrows building their nests in the eaves. I admit also that he _did_ make a bow, a low bow, to the spire, but I deny categorically Johnny McGonigal's absurd yarn that he said: "Good mornin', church. Shorry sheem disrespechtful." Any one who knows Nort as well as I do would not consider his making a bow to a perfectly respectable old church as anything remarkable, or accusing him of having been intoxicated, save with the wine of spring and of youth. Why, I myself have often bowed to fine old oak trees and to hilltops. I wonder why it is that when small communities jump at conclusions, they so often jump the wrong way? And yet I don't want to blame Hempfield. You can see for yourself what it would mean--a stranger, without a hat, bowing to the spire of the Congregational Church--what it would mean in a town which has religiously voted "dry" every spring since the local-option law went into effect, which abhors saloons, which resounds with the thunders of pulpit and press against the iniquity of drink, and where, if there are three or four places where the monster may be quietly devoured, no one is supposed to know anything about them. I do not enlarge upon this picture of Nort with any delight, and yet I have always thought that it was a great help to Nort that he should have appeared in Hempfield in the guise of a vagabond. If we had known then that he had the right kind of a father, had come from the right kind of a college, and had already spent a good deal of money that he had not earned, I fear he would have been seriously handicapped. We should probably have looked the other way while he was bowing to the church--and considered that he was going without a hat for his health. As for putting him in the _Star_, we should never have dreamed of it!