's Street" and no other.

It was a tumultuous street as Noble splashed along the sidewalk.
Incredibly elastic, the shade-trees were practising calisthenics, though
now and then one outdid itself and lost a branch; thunder and lightning
romped like loosed scandal; rain hissed upon the pavement and capered
ankle-high. It was a storm that asked to be left to itself for a time,
after giving fair warning that the request would be made; and Noble and
the only other pedestrian in sight had themselves to blame for getting
caught.

This other pedestrian was some forty or fifty yards in advance of Noble
and moved in the same direction at about the same gait. He wore an old
overcoat, running with water; the brim of his straw hat sagged about his
head, so that he appeared to be wearing a bucket; he was a sodden and
pathetic figure. Noble himself was as sodden; his hands were wet in his
very pockets; his elbows seemed to spout; yet he spared a generous pity
for the desolate figure struggling on before him.

All at once Noble's heart did something queer within his wet bosom. He
recognized that figure, and he was not mistaken. Except the One figure,
and those of his own father and mother and three sisters, this was the
shape that Noble would most infallibly recognize anywhere in the world
and under any conditions. In spite of the dusk and the riot of the
storm, Noble knew that none other than Mr. Atwater splashed before him.

He dismissed a project for seizing upon a fallen branch and running
forward to walk beside Mr. Atwater and hold the branch over his
venerated head. All the branches were too wet; and Noble feared that Mr.
Atwater might think the picture odd and decline to be thus protected.
Yet he felt that something ought to be done to shelter Julia's father
and perhaps save him from pneumonia; surely there was some simple,
helpful, dashing thing that ordinary people couldn't think of, but that
Noble could. He would do it and not stay to be thanked. And then,
to-morrow evening, not sooner, he would go to Julia and smile and say;
"Your father didn't get too wet, I hope, after all?" And Julia: "Oh,
Noble, he's talked of you all day long as his 'new Sir Walter
Raleigh'!"

Suddenly will-o'-the-wisp opportunity flickered before him, and in his
high mood he paused not at all to consider it, but insanely chased it.
He had just reached a crossing, and down the cross street, walking away
from Noble, was the dim figure of a man carry