CHAPTER XX.
If Jack, after leaving Peter and racing for the ferry, had, under Peter's advice, formulated in his mind any plan by which he could break down Ruth's resolve to leave both her father and himself in the lurch and go out in the gay world alone, there was one factor which he must have left out of his calculations--and that was the unexpected.
One expression of Peter's, however, haunted him all the way home:--that Ruth was suffering and that he had been the cause of it.

Had he hurt her ?--and if so, how and when?
With this, the dear girl's face, with the look of pain on it which Miss Felicia had noticed, rose before him.
Perhaps Peter was right.

He had never thought of Ruth's side of the matter--had never realized that she, too, might have suffered.

To-morrow he would go to her.

If he could not win her for himself he could, at least, find out the cause and help relieve her pain.
This idea so possessed him that it was nearly dawn before he dropped to sleep.
With the morning everything changed.
Such a rain had never been known to fall--not in the memory of the oldest moss-back in the village--if any such ancient inhabitant existed.
Twelve hours of it had made rivers of the streets, quagmires of the roads, and covered the crossings ankle-deep with mud.