body. For--the Contessa----"

"Not for the Baronessa, anyhow," said I. "I should have stopped for a
mackintosh and even goloshes, had her safety been hanging in the
balance."

Then we both laughed, and Stefani, who by this time was showing us
the way through the rain to his own home, looked over his shoulder,
surprised and self-conscious, as if he feared that we were laughing at
him.

On the outskirts of straggling Martigny Bourg, he stopped before a
gloomy, grey stone house with four rows of closed wooden shutters,
which meant four floors of packed humanity. Even Martigny has its
tenements for poor workers, or those who would be workers if they
could, and this was one of them.

We followed Andriolo Stefani up four flights of narrow stone stairs,
picking our way by testing each step with a cautious foot, since light
there was none. Arrived at the top floor, we groped along a passage to
the back of the house, and our guide opened a door. There was a yellow
haze, which meant one candle-flame fighting for its life in the dark,
and we waited outside, while the Italian spoke for a moment to someone
we could not see. There came a note of protest in a woman's voice, but
the man's beat it down with some argument, and then Stefani returned
to ask us in.

Two women sat in a room almost bare of furniture, and both tried to
rise on our entrance; but one, who was young as years go, had her lap
full of little worn shoes, and the other, who looked older than the
allotted span, was nursing a wailing baby, half undressed.

I found myself strangely embarrassed with the coarse guilt of
intrusion. I was suddenly oppressed with self-conscious awkwardness,
wishing myself anywhere else, and not knowing what to do or say. In
all probability I looked haughty and disagreeable, though I felt
humble as a worm. How the Boy felt I have no means of knowing; I can
only tell how he acted. One would have thought that he had known these
poor people all his life. I lingered near the door, taking notes of
the sad picture; the two rough wooden boxes, in which slept three
little dark children, all apparently of exactly the same size; the
mattress on the floor near by for the parents; the open door leading
into a dark garret, where, no doubt, the grandmother crept to sleep;
the shelves on the wall, bare save for a few dishes of peasant-made
pottery; the pile of dried mud on the tiled floor, which the young
mother had been carefully scraping with a kni