"I would not use so unpleasant a word if I were you."

"But you are going to force me to do it?"

"I am not going to force you. You referred a few minutes ago to the time when you had a choice. Well, here is another time when you have a choice."

"Choice?" cried Doctor Sherman eagerly.

"Yes. You can testify, or not testify, as you please. Only in reaching your decision," added the dry, emotionless voice, "I suggest that you do not forget that I have in my possession your signed confession of that embezzlement."

"And you call that a choice?" cried Doctor Sherman. "When, if I refuse, you'll expose me, ruin me forever, kill Elsie's love for me! Do you call that a choice?"

"A choice, certainly. Perhaps you are inclined not to testify. If so, very well. But before you make your decision I desire to inform you of one fact. You will remember that I said in the beginning that I brought you down here to tell you something."

"Yes. What is it?"

"Merely this. That Miss West has discovered that I am behind this affair."

"What!" Doctor Sherman fell back a step, and his face filled with sudden terror. "Then—she knows everything?"

"She knows little, but she suspects much. For instance, since she knows that this is a plot, she is likely to suspect that every person in any way connected with the affair is guilty of conspiracy."

"Even—even me?"

"Even you."

"Then—you think?"

Blake turned his face sharply about upon Doctor Sherman—the first time since the beginning of their colloquy. It was his father's face—his father in one of his most relentless, overriding moods—the face of a man whom nothing can stop.

"I think," said he slowly, driving each word home, "that the only chance for people who want to come out of this affair with a clean name is to stick the thing right through as we planned."

Doctor Sherman did not speak.

"I tell you about Miss West for two reasons. First, in order to let you know the danger you're in. Second, in order, in case you decided to testify, that you may be forewarned and be prepared to outface her. I believe you understand everything now?"

"Yes," was the almost breathless response.

"Then may I be allowed to ask what you are going to do—testify, or not testify?"

The minister's hands opened and closed. He swallowed with difficulty.

"Testify, or not testify?" Blake insisted.

"Testify," whispered Doctor Sherman.

"Just as you choose," said Blake coldly.

The minister sank back to his seat upon the mossy log, and bowed his head into his hands. "Oh, my God!" he breathed.

There followed a silence, during which Blake gazed upon the huddled figure. Then he turned his set face down the glittering, dwindled stream, and, one shoulder lightly against the sycamore, he watched the sun there at the river's end sink softly down into its golden slumber.



CHAPTER XI

THE TRIAL

Katherine's first thought, on leaving Bruce's office, was to lay her discovery before Doctor Sherman. She was certain that with her new-found knowledge, and with her entirely new point of view, they could quickly discover wherein he had been duped—for she still held him to be an unwitting tool—and thus quickly clear up the whole case. But for reasons already known she failed to find him; and learning that he had gone away with Blake, she well knew Blake would keep him out of her reach until the trial was over.

In sharpest disappointment, Katherine went home. With the trial so few hours away, with all her new discoveries buzzing chaotically in her head, she felt the need of advising with some one about the situation. Bruce's offer of assistance recurred to her, and she found herself analyzing the editor again, just as she had done when she had walked away from his office. She rebelled against him in her every fibre, yet at the same time she felt a reluctant liking for him. He was a man with big dreams, a rough-and-ready idealist, an idealist with sharply marked limitations, some areas of his mind very broad, some dogmatically narrow. Opinionated, obstinate, impulsive, of not very sound judgment, yet dictatorial because supremely certain of his rightness—courageous, unselfish, sincere—that was the way she now saw the editor of the Express.

But he had sneered at her, sharply criticized her, and she hotly spurned the thought of asking his aid. Instead of him, she that evening summoned Old Hosie Hollingsworth to her house, and to the old lawyer she told everything. Old Hosie was convinced that she was right, and was astounded.

"And to think that the good folks of this town used to denounce me as a worshipper of strange gods!" he ejaculated. "Gee, what'll they say when they learn that the idol they've been wearing out their knee-caps on has got clay feet that run clear up to his Adam's-apple!"

They decided that it would be a mistake for Katherine to try to use her new theories and discoveries openly in defence of her father. She had too little evidence, and any unsupported charges hurled against Blake would leave that gentleman unharmed and would come whirling back upon Katherine as a boomerang of popular indignation. She dared not breathe a word against the city's favourite until she had incontrovertible proof. Under the circumstances, the best course seemed for her to ask for a postponement on the morrow to enable her to work up further evidence.

"Only," warned Hosie, "you must remember that the chances are that Blake has already slipped the proper word to Judge Kellog, and there'll be no postponement."

"Then I'll have to depend upon tangling up that Mr. Marcy on the stand."

"And Doctor Sherman?"

"There'll be no chance of entangling him. He'll tell a straightforward story. How could he tell any other? Don't you see how he's been used?—been made spectator to a skilfully laid scheme which he honestly believes to be a genuine case of bribery?"

At parting Old Hosie held her hand a moment.

"D'you remember the prophecy I made the day you took your office—that you would raise the dickens in this old town?"

"Yes," said Katherine.

"Well, that's coming true—as sure as plug hats don't grow on fig trees! Only not in the way I meant then. Not as a freak. But as a lawyer."

"Thank you." She smiled and slowly shook her head. "But I'm afraid it won't come true to-morrow."

"Of course a prophecy is no good, unless you do your best."

"Oh, I'm going to do my best," she assured him.

The next morning, on the long awaited day, Katherine set out for the Court House, throbbing alternately with hope and fear of the outcome. Mixed with these was a perturbation of a very different sort—an ever-growing stage-fright. For this last there was good reason. Trials were a form of recreation as popular in Calloway County as gladiatorial contests in ancient Rome, and this trial—in the lack of a sensational murder in the county during the year—was the greatest of the twelvemonth. Moreover, it was given added interest by the fact that, for the first time in recorded history, Calloway County was going to see in action that weirdest product of whirling change, a woman lawyer.

Hub to hub about the hitch-racks of the Square were jammed buggies, surries, spring wagons and other country equipages. The court-room was packed an hour before the trial, and in the corridor were craning, straining, elbowing folk who had come too late. In the open windows—the court-room was on the ground floor—were the busts of eager citizens whose feet were pedestaled on boxes, the sale of which had been a harvest of small coin to neighbouring grocers; and in the trees without youths of simian habit clung to advantageous limbs and strained to get a view of the proceedings. Old Judge Kellog who usually dozed on his twenty-first vertebra through testimony and argument—once a young fledgling of a lawyer, sailing aloft in the empyrean of his eloquence, had been brought tumbling confusedly to earth by the snoring of the bench—attested to the unusualness of the occasion by being upright and awake. And Bud White, the clerk, called the court to order, not with his usual masterpiece of mumbled unintelligibility, brought to perfection by long years of practice, but with real words that could have been understood had only the audience been listening.

But their attention was all fixed upon the counsel for the defence. Katherine, in a plain white shirt waist and a black sailor, sat at a table alone with her father. Doctor West was painfully nervous; his long fingers were constantly twisting among themselves. Katherine was under an even greater strain. She realized with an intenser keenness now that the moment for action was at hand, that this was her first case, that her father's reputation, his happiness, perhaps even his life, were at stake; and she was well aware that all this theatre of people, whose eyes she felt burning into her back, regarded her as the final curiosity of nature. Behind her, with young Harper at his side, she had caught a glimpse of Arnold Bruce, eying her critically and sceptically she thought; and in the audience she had glimpsed the fixed, inscrutable face of Harrison Blake.

But she clung blindly to her determination, and as Bud White sat down, she forced herself to rise. A deep hush spread through the court-room. She stood trembling, swallowing, voiceless, a statue of stage-fright, wildly hating herself for her impotence. For a dizzy, agonizing moment she saw herself a miserable failure—saw the crowd laughing at her as they filed out.

A youthful voice, from a balcony seat in an elm tree, floated in through the open window:

"Speak your piece, little girl, or set down."

There was a titter. She stiffened.

"Your—your Honour," she stammered, "I move a postponement in order to allow the defence more time to prepare its case."

Judge Kellog fingered his patriarchal beard. Katherine stood hardly breathing while she waited his momentous words. But his answer was as Old Hosie had predicted.

"In view of the fact that the defence has already had four months in which to prepare its case," said he, "I shall have to deny the motion and order the trial to proceed."

Katherine sat down. The hope of deferment was gone. There remained only to fight.

A jury was quickly chosen; Katherine felt that her case would stand as good a chance with any one selection of twelve men as with any other. Kennedy then stepped forward. With an air that was a blend of his pretentious—if rather raw-boned—dignity as a coming statesman, of extreme deference toward Katherine's sex, and of the sense of his personal belittlement in being pitted against such a legal weakling, he outlined to the jury what he expected to prove. After which, he called Mr. Marcy to the stand.

The agent of the filter company gave his evidence with that degree of shame-facedness proper to the man, turned state's witness, who has been an accomplice in the dishonourable proceedings he is relating. It all sounded and looked so true—so very, very true!

When Katherine came to cross-examine him, she gazed at him steadily a moment. She knew that he was lying, and she knew that he knew that she knew he was lying. But he met her gaze with precisely the abashed, guilty air appropriate to his role.

What she considered her greatest chance was now before her. Calling up all her wits, she put to Mr. Marcy questions that held distant, hidden traps. But when she led him along the devious, unsuspicious path that conducted to the trap and then suddenly shot at him the question that should have plunged him into it, he very quietly and nimbly walked around the pitfall. Again and again she tried to involve him, but ever with the same result. He was abashed, ready to answer—and always elusive. At the end she had gained nothing from him, and for a minute stood looking silently at him in baffled exasperation.

"Have you any further questions to ask the witness?" old Judge Kellog prompted her, with a gentle impatience.

For a moment, stung by this witness's defeat of her, she had an impulse to turn about, point her finger at Blake in the audience, and cry out the truth to the court-room and announce what was her real line of defence. But she realized the uproar that would follow if she dared attack Blake without evidence, and she controlled herself.

"That is all, Your Honour," she said.

Mr. Marcy was dismissed. The lean, frock-coated figure of Mr. Kennedy arose.

"Doctor Sherman," he called.

Doctor Sherman seemed to experience some difficulty in making his way up to the witness stand. When he faced about and sat down the difficulty was explained to the crowd. He was plainly a sick man. Whispers of sympathy ran about the court-room. Every one knew how he had sacrificed a friend to his sense of civic duty, and everyone knew what pain that act must have caused a man with such a high-strung conscience.

With his hands tightly gripping the arms of his chair, his bright and hollow eyes fastened upon the prosecutor, Doctor Sherman began in a low voice to deliver his direct testimony. Katherine listened to him rather mechanically at first, even with a twinge of sympathy for his obvious distress.

But though her attention was centred here in the court-room, her brain was subconsciously ranging swiftly over all the details of the case. Far down in the depths of her mind the question was faintly suggesting itself, if one witness is a guilty participant in the plot, then why not possibly the other?—when she saw Doctor Sherman give a quick glance in the direction where she knew sat Harrison Blake. That glance brought the question surging up to the surface of her conscious mind, and she sat bewildered, mentally gasping. She did not see how it could be, she could not understand his motive—but in the sickly face of Doctor Sherman, in his strained manner, she now read guilt.

Thrilling with an unexpected hope, Katherine rose and tried to keep herself before the eyes of Doctor Sherman like an accusing conscience. But he avoided her gaze, and told his story in every detail just as when Doctor West had been first accused. When Kennedy turned him over for cross-examination, Katherine walked up before him and looked him straight in the eyes a full moment without speaking. He could no longer avoid her gaze. In his eyes she read something that seemed to her like mortal terror.

"Doctor Sherman," she said slowly, clearly, "is there nothing you would like to add to your testimony?"

His words were a long time coming. Katherine's life hung suspended while she waited his answer.

"Nothing," he said.

"There is no fact, no detail, that you may have omitted in your direct testimony, that you now desire to supply?"

"Nothing."

She took a step nearer, bent on him a yet more searching gaze, and put into her voice its all of conscience-stirring power.

"You wish to go on record then, before this court, before this audience, before the God whom you have appealed to in your oath, as having told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?"

He averted his eyes and was silent a moment. For that moment Blake, back in the audience, did not breathe. To the crowd it seemed that Doctor Sherman was searching his mind for some possible trivial omission. To Katherine it seemed that he was in the throes of a final struggle.

"You wish thus to go on record?" she solemnly insisted.

He looked back at her.

"I do," he breathed.

She realized now how desperate was this man's determination, how tightly his lips were locked. But she had picked up another thread of this tangled skein, and that made her exult with a new hope. She went spiritedly at the cross-examination of Doctor Sherman, striving to break him down. So sharp, so rigid, so searching were her questions, that there were murmurs in the audience against such treatment of a sincere, high-minded man of God. But the swiftness and cleverness of her attack availed her nothing. Doctor Sherman, nerved by last evening's talk beside the river, made never a slip.

From the moment she reluctantly discharged him she felt that her chance—her chance for that day, at least—was gone. But she was there to fight to the end, and she put her only witness, her father, upon the stand. His defence, that he was the victim of a misunderstanding, was smiled at by the court-room—and smiled at with apparently good reason, since Kennedy, in anticipation of the line of defense, had introduced the check from the Acme Filter Company which Dr. West had turned over to the hospital board, to prove that the donation from the filter company had been in Dr. West's hands at the time he had received the bribe from Mr. Marcy. Dr. West testified that the letter containing this check had not been opened until many days after his arrest, and Katharine took the stand and swore that it was she herself who had opened the envelope. But even while she testified she saw that she was not believed; and she had to admit within herself that her father's story appeared absurdly implausible, compared to the truth-visaged falsehoods of the prosecution.

But when the evidence was all in and the time for argument was come, Katherine called up her every resource, she remembered that truth was on her side, and she presented the case clearly and logically, and ended with a strong and eloquent plea for her father. As she sat down, there was a profound hush in the court-room.

Her father squeezed her hand. Tears stood in his eyes.

"Whatever happens," he whispered, "I'm proud of my daughter."

Kennedy's address was brief and perfunctory, for the case seemed too easy to warrant his exertion. Still stimulated by the emotion aroused by her own speech and the sense of the righteousness of her cause, Katherine watched the jury go out with a fluttering hope. She still clung to hope when, after a short absence, the jury filed back in. She rose and held her breath while they took their seats.

"You have reached a verdict, gentlemen?" asked Judge Kellog.

"We have," answered the foreman.

"What is it?"

"We find the defendant guilty."

Doctor West let out a little moan, and his head fell forward into his arms. Katherine bent over him and whispered a word of comfort into his ear; then rose and made a motion for a new trial. Judge Kellog denied the motion, and haltingly asked Doctor West to step forward to the bar. Doctor West did so, and the two old men, who had been friends since childhood, looked at each other for a space. Then in a husky voice Judge Kellog pronounced sentence: One thousand dollars fine and six months in the county jail.

It was a light sentence—but enough to blacken an honest name for life, enough to break a sensitive heart like Doctor West's.

A little later Katherine, holding an arm of her father tightly within her own, walked with him and fat, good-natured Sheriff Nichols over to the old brick county jail. And yet a little later, erect, eyes straight before her, she came down the jail steps and started homeward.

As she was passing along the Square, immediately before her Harrison Blake came out of his stairway and started across the sidewalk to his waiting car. Discretion urged her to silence; but passion was the stronger. She stepped squarely up before him and flashed him a blazing look.

"Well—and so you think you've won!" she cried in a low voice.

His colour changed, but instantly he was master of himself.

"What, Katherine, you still persist in that absurd idea of yesterday."

"Oh, drop that pretence! We know each other too well for that!" She moved nearer and, trembling from head to foot, her passionate defiance burst all bounds. "You think you have won, don't you!" she hotly cried. "Well, let me tell you that this affair is not merely a battle that was to-day won and ended! It's a war—and I have just begun to fight!"

And sweeping quickly past him, she walked on into Main Street and down it through the staring crowds—very erect, a red spot in either cheek, her eyes defiantly meeting every eye.



CHAPTER XII

OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS AT BRUCE'S DOOR

On the following morning Bruce had just finished an editorial on Doctor West's trial, and was busily thumping out an editorial on the local political situation—the Republican and Democratic conventions were both but a few days off—when, lifting his scowling gaze to his window while searching for the particular word he needed, he saw Katherine passing along the sidewalk across the street. Her face was fresh, her step springy; hers was any but a downcast figure. Forgetting his editorial, he watched her turn the corner of the Square and go up the broad, worn steps of the dingy old county jail.

"Well, what do we think of her?" queried a voice at his elbow.

Bruce turned abruptly.

"Oh, it's you, Billy. D'you see Blake?"

"Yes." The young fellow sank loungingly into the atlas-seated chair. "He wouldn't say anything definite. Said it was up to the convention to pick the candidates. But it's plain Kennedy's his choice for mayor, and we'll be playing perfectly safe in predicting Kennedy's nomination."

"And Peck?"

"Blind Charlie said it was too early to make any forecasts. In doubt as to whom they'd put forward for mayor."

"Would Blake say anything about Doctor West's conviction?"

"Sorry for Doctor West's sake—but the case was clear—trial fair—a wholesome example to the city—and some more of that line of talk."

Bruce grunted.

The reporter leisurely lit a cigarette.

"But how about the lady lawyer, eh?" He playfully prodded his superior's calf with his pointed shoe. "I suppose you'll fire me off your rotten old sheet for saying it, but I still think she made a damned good showing considering that she had no case—and considering also that she was a woman." Again he thrust his toe into his chief. "Considering she was a woman—eh, Arn?"

"Shut up, Billy, or I will fire you," growled Bruce.

"Oh, all right," answered the other cheerfully. "After half a year of the nerve-racking social whirl of this metropolis, I think it would be sort of restful to be back in dear, little, quiet Chicago. But seriously now, Arn, you've got to admit she's good-looking?"

"Good looks don't make a lawyer!" retorted Bruce.

"But she's clever—got ideas—opinions of her own, and strong ones too."

"Perhaps."

The reporter blew out a cloud of smoke.

"Arn, I've been thinking about a very interesting possibility."

"Well, make it short, and get in there and write your story!"

"I've been thinking," continued Billy meditatively, "over what an interesting situation it would make if the super-masculine editor of the Express should fall in love with the lady law——"

Bruce sprang up.

"Confound you, Billy! If I don't crack that empty little——"

But Billy, tilted back in his chair, held out his cigarette case imperturbably.

"Take one, Arn. You'll find them very soothing for the nerves."

"You impertinent little pup, you!" He grabbed Billy by his long hair, held him a moment—then grinned affectionately and took a cigarette. "You're the worst ever!" He dropped back into his chair. "Now shut up!"

"All right. But speaking impersonally, and with the unemotional aloofness of a critic, you'll have to admit that it would make a good dramatic situation."

"Blast you!" cried the editor. "Shall I fire you, or chuck you through the window?"

"Inasmuch as our foremost scientists are uniformly agreed that certain unpleasant results may eventuate when the force of gravitation brings a human organism into sudden and severe juxtaposition with a cement sidewalk, I humbly suggest that you fire me. Besides, that act will automatically avenge me, for then your yellow old newspaper will go plum to blazes!"

"For God's sake, Billy, get out of here and let me work!"

"But, seriously, Arn—I really am serious now"—and all the mischief had gone out of the reporter's eyes—"that Miss West would have put up a stunning fight if she had had any sort of a case. But she had nothing to fight with. They certainly had the goods on her old man!"

Bruce turned from his machine and regarded the reporter thoughtfully. Then he crossed and closed the door which was slightly ajar, and again fixed his eyes searchingly on young Harper.

"Billy," he said in a low, impressive voice, "can you keep a big secret?"

At Bruce's searching, thoughtful gaze a look of humility crept into Billy's face.

"Oh, I know you've got every right to doubt me," he acknowledged. "I certainly did leak a lot at the mouth in Chicago when I was boozing so much. But you know since you pulled me out of that wild bunch I was drinking my way to hell with and brought me down here, I've been screwed tight as a board to the water-wagon!"

"I know it, Billy. I shouldn't for an instant——"

"And, Arn," interrupted Billy, putting his arm contritely across the other's shoulder, "even though I do joke at you a little—simply can't help it—you know how eternally grateful I am to you! You're giving me the chance of my life to make a man of myself. People in this town don't half appreciate you; they don't know you for what I know you—the best fellow that ever happened!"

"There, there! Cut it out, cut it out!" said Bruce gruffly, gripping the other's hand.

"That's always the way," said Billy, resentfully. "Your only fault is that you are so infernally bull-headed that a fellow can't even thank you."

"You're thanking me the right way when you keep yourself bolted fast to the water-cart. What I started out to tell you, what I want you to keep secret, is this: They put the wrong man in jail yesterday."

"What!" ejaculated Billy, springing up.

"I tell you this much because I want you to keep your eye on the story. Hell's likely to break loose there any time, and I want you to be ready to handle it in case I should have to be off the job."

"Good God, old man!" Billy stared at him. "What's behind all this? If Doctor West's the wrong man, then who's the right one?"

"I can't tell you any more now."

"But how did you find this out?"

"I said I couldn't tell you any more."

A knowing look came slowly into Billy's face.

"H'm. So that was what Miss West called here about day before yesterday."

"Get in there and write your story," said Bruce shortly, and again sat down before his typewriter.

Billy stood rubbing his head dazedly for a long space, then he slowly moved to the door. He opened it and paused.

"Oh, I say, Arn," he remarked in an innocent tone.

"Yes?"

"After all," he drawled, "it would make an interesting dramatic situation, wouldn't it?"

Bruce whirled about and threw a statesman's year book, but young Harper was already on the safe side of the door; and the incorrigible Billy was saved from any further acts of reprisal being attempted upon his person by the ringing of Bruce's telephone.

Bruce picked up the instrument.

"Hello. Who's this?" he demanded.

"Mr. Peck," was the answer.

"What! You don't mean 'Blind Charlie'?"

"Yes. I called up to see if you could come over to the hotel for a little talk about politics."

"If you want to talk to me you know where to find me! Good-by!"

"Wait! Wait! What time will you be in?"

"The paper goes to press at two-thirty. Any time after then."

"I'll drop around before three."

Four hours later Bruce was glancing through that afternoon's paper, damp from the press, when there entered his office a stout, half-bald man of sixty-five, with loose, wrinkled, pouchy skin, drooping nose, and a mouth—stained faintly brown at its corners—whose cunning was not entirely masked by a good-natured smile. One eye had a shrewd and beady brightness; the gray film over the other announced it without sight. This was "Blind Charlie" Peck, the king of Calloway County politics until Blake had hurled him from his throne.

Bruce greeted the fallen monarch curtly and asked him to sit down. Bruce did not resume his seat, but half leaned against his desk and eyed Blind Charlie with open disfavour.

The old man settled himself and smiled his good-natured smile at the editor.

"Well, Mr. Bruce, this is mighty dry weather we're having."

"Yes. What do you want?"

"Well—well—" said the old man, a little taken aback, "you certainly do jump into the middle of things."

"I've found that the quickest way to get there," retorted Bruce. "You know there's no use in you and me wasting any words. You know well enough what I think of you."

"I ought to," returned Blind Charlie, dryly, but with good humour. "You've said it often enough."

"Well, that there may be no mistake about it, I'll say it once more. You're a good-natured, good-hearted, cunning, unprincipled, hardened old rascal of a politician. Now if you don't want to say what you came here to say, the same route that brings you in here takes you out."

"Come, come," said the old man, soothingly. "I think you have said a lot of harder things than were strictly necessary—especially since we both belong to the same party."

"That's one reason I've said them. You've been running the party most of your life—you're still running it—and see what you've made of it. Every decent member is ashamed of it! It stinks all through the state!"

Blind Charlie's face did not lose its smile of imperturbable good nature. It was a tradition of Calloway County that he had never lost his temper.

"You're a very young man, Mr. Bruce," said the old politician, "and young blood loves strong language. But suppose we get away from personalities, and get away from the party's past and talk about its present and its future."

"I don't see that it has any present or future to talk about, with you at the helm."

"Oh, come now! Granted that my ways haven't been the best for the party. Granted that you don't like me. Is that any reason we shouldn't at least talk things over? Now, I admit we don't stand the shadow of a ghost's show this election unless we make some changes. You represent the element in the party that has talked most for changes, and I have come to get your views."

Bruce studied the loose-skinned, flabby face, wondering what was going on behind that old mask.

"What are your own views?" he demanded shortly.

Blind Charlie had taken out a plug of tobacco and with a jack-knife had cut off a thin slice. This, held between thumb and knife-blade, he now slowly transferred to his mouth.

"Perhaps they're nearer your own than you think. I see, too, that the old ways won't serve us now. Blake will put up a good ticket. I hear Kennedy is to be his mayor. The whole ticket will be men who'll be respectable, but they'll see that Blake gets what he wants. Isn't that so?"

Bruce thought suddenly of Blake's scheme to capture the water-works.

"Very likely," he admitted.

"Now between ourselves," the old man went on confidingly, "we know that Blake has been getting what he wants for years—of course in a quiet, moderate way. Did you ever think of this, how the people here call me a 'boss' but never think of Blake as one? Blake's an 'eminent citizen.' When the fact is, he's a stronger, cleverer boss than I ever was. My way is the old way; it's mostly out of date. Blake's way is the new way. He's found out that the best method to get the people is to be clean, or to seem clean. If I wanted a thing I used to go out and grab it. If Blake wants a thing he makes it appear that he's willing to go to considerable personal trouble to take it in order to do a favour to the city, and the people fall all over themselves to give it to him. He's got the churches lined up as solid behind him as I used to have the saloons. Now I know we can't beat Blake with the kind of a ticket our party has been putting up. And I know we can't beat Blake with a respectable ticket, for between our respectables——"

"Charlie Peck's respectables!" Bruce interrupted ironically.

"And Blake's respectables," the old man continued imperturbably, "the people will choose Blake's. Are my conclusions right so far?"

"Couldn't be more right. What next?"

"As I figure it out, our only chance, and that a bare fighting chance, is to put up men who are not only irreproachable, but who are radicals and fighters. We've got to do something new, big, sensational, or we're lost."

"Well?" said Bruce.

"I was thinking," said Blind Charlie, "that our best move would be to run you for mayor."

"Me?" cried Bruce, starting forward.

"Yes. You've got ideas. And you're a fighter."

Bruce scrutinized the old face, all suspicion.

"See here, Charlie," he said abruptly, "what the hell's your game?"

"My game?"

"Oh, come! Don't expect me to believe in you when you pose as a reformer!"

"See here, Bruce," said the other a little sharply, "you've called me about every dirty word lying around handy in the Middle West. But you never called me a hypocrite."

"No."

"Well, I'm not coming to you now pretending that I've been holding a little private revival, and that I've been washed in the blood of the Lamb."

"Then what's behind this? What's in it for you?"

"I'll tell you—though of course I can't make you believe me if you don't want to. I'm getting pretty old—I'm sixty-seven. I may not live till another campaign. I'd like to see the party win once more before I go. That's one thing. Another is, I've got it in for Blake, and want to see him licked. I can't do either in my way. I can possibly do both in your way. Mere personal satisfaction like this would have been mighty little for me to have got out of an election in the old days. But it's better than nothing at all"—smiling good-naturedly—"even to a cunning, unprincipled, hardened old rascal of a politician."

"But what's the string tied to this offer?"

"None. You can name the ticket, write the platform——"

"It would be a radical one!" warned Bruce.

"It would have to be radical. Our only chance is in creating a sensation."

"And if elected?"

"You shall make every appointment without let or hindrance. I know I'd be a fool to try to bind you in any way."

Bruce was silent a long time, studying the wrinkled old face.

"Well, what do you say?" queried Blind Charlie.

"Frankly, I don't like being mixed up with you."

"But you believe in using existing party machinery, don't you? You've said so in the Express."

"Yes. But I also have said that I don't believe in using it the way you have."

"Well, here's your chance to take it and use it your own way."

"But what show would I stand? Feeling in town is running strong against radical ideas."

"I know, I know. But you are a fighter, and with your energy you might turn the current. Besides, something big may happen before election."

That same thought had been pulsing excitedly in Bruce's brain these last few minutes. If Katherine could only get her evidence!

Bruce moved to the window and looked out so that that keen one eye of Blind Charlie might not perceive the exultation he could no longer keep out of his face. Bruce did not see the tarnished dome of the Court House—nor the grove of broad elms, shrivelled and dusty—nor the enclosing quadrangle of somnolent, drooping farm horses. He was seeing this town shaken as by an explosion. He was seeing cataclysmic battle, with Blind Charlie become a nonentity, Blake completely annihilated, and himself victorious at the front. And, dream of his dreams! he was seeing himself free to reshape Westville upon his own ideals.

"Well, what do you say?" asked Blind Charlie.

Controlling himself, Bruce turned about.

"I accept, upon the conditions you have named. But at the first sign of an attempt to limit those conditions, I throw the whole business overboard."

"There will be no such attempt, so we can consider the matter settled." Blind Charlie held out his hand, which Bruce, with some hesitation, accepted. "I congratulate you, I congratulate myself, I congratulate the party. With you as leader, I think we've all got a fighting chance to win."

They discussed details of Bruce's candidacy, they discussed the convention; and a little later Blind Charlie departed. Bruce, fists deep in trousers pockets, paced up and down his little office, or sat far down in his chair gazing at nothing, in excited, searching thought. Billy Harper and other members of the staff, who came in to him with questions, were answered absently with monosyllables. At length, when the Court House clock droned the hour of five through the hot, burnt-out air, Bruce washed his hands and brawny fore-arms at the old iron sink in the rear of the reporter's room, put on his coat, and strode up Main Street. But instead of following his habit and turning off into Station Avenue, where was situated the house in which he and Old Hosie ate and slept and had their quarrels, he continued his way and turned into an avenue beyond—on his face the flush of defiant firmness of the bold man who finds himself doing the exact thing he had sworn that he would never do.

He swung open the gate of the West yard, and with firm step went up to the house and rang the bell. When the screen swung open Katherine herself was in the doorway—looking rather excited, trimly dressed, on her head a little hat wound with a veil.

"May I come in?" he asked shortly.

"Why, certainly," and she stepped aside.

"I didn't know."

He bowed and entered the parlour and stood rather stiffly in the centre of the room.

"My reason for daring to violate your prohibition of three days ago, and enter this house, is that I have something to tell you that may prove to have some bearing upon your father's case."

"Please sit down. When I apologized to you I considered the apology as equivalent to removing all signs against trespassing."

They sat down, and for a moment they gazed at each other, still feeling themselves antagonists, though allies—she smilingly at her ease, he grimly serious.

"Now, please, what is it?" she asked.

Bruce, speaking reservedly at first, told her of Blind Charlie's offer. As he spoke he warmed up and was quite excited when he ended. "And now," he cried, "don't you see how this works in with the fight to clear your father? It's a great opportunity—haven't thought out yet just how we can use it—that will depend upon developments, perhaps—but it's a great opportunity! We'll sweep Blake completely and utterly from power, reinstate your father in position and honour, and make Westville the finest city of the Middle West!"

But she did not seem to be fired by the torch of his enthusiasm. In fact, there was a thoughtful, questioning look upon her face.

"Well, what do you think of it?" he demanded.

"I have been given to understand," she said pleasantly, "that it is unwomanly to have opinions upon politics."

He winced.

"This is hardly the time for sarcasm. What do you think?"

"If you want my frank opinion, I am rather inclined to beware of Greeks bearing gifts," she replied.

"What do you mean?"

"When a political boss, and a boss notoriously corrupt, offers an office to a good man, I think the good man should be very, very suspicious."

"You think Peck has some secret corrupt purpose? I've been scrutinizing the offer for two hours. I know the ins and outs of the local political situation from A to Z. I know all Peck's tricks. But I have not found the least trace of a hidden motive."

"Perhaps you haven't found it because it's hidden so shrewdly, so deeply, that it can't be seen."

"I haven't found it because it's not there to find!" retorted Bruce. "Peck's motive is just what he told me; I'm convinced he was telling the truth. It's a plain case, and not an uncommon case, of a politician preferring the chance of victory with a good ticket, to certain defeat with a ticket more to his liking."

"I judge, then, that you are inclined to accept."

"I have accepted," said Bruce.

"I hope it will turn out better than worst suspicion might make us fear."

"Oh, it will!" he declared. "And mark me, it's going to turn out a far bigger thing for your father than you seem to realize."

"I hope that more fervently than do you!"

"I suppose you are going to keep up your fight for your father?"

"I expect to do what I can," she answered calmly.

"What are you going to do?"

She smiled sweetly, apologetically.

"You forget only one day has passed since the trial. You can hardly expect a woman's mind to lay new plans as quickly as a man's."

Bruce looked at her sharply, as though there might be irony in this; but her face was without guile. She glanced at her watch.

"Pardon me," he said, noticing this action and standing up. "You have your hat on; you were going out?"

"Yes. And I'm afraid I must ask you to excuse me." She gave him her hand. "I hope you don't mind my saying it, but if I were you I'd keep all the eyes I've got on Mr. Peck."

"Oh, I'll not let him fool me!" he answered confidently.

As he walked out of the yard he was somewhat surprised to see the ancient equipage of Mr. Huggins waiting beside the curb. And he was rather more surprised when a few minutes later, as he neared his home, Mr. Huggins drove past him toward the station, with Katherine in the seat behind him. In response to her possessed little nod he amazedly lifted his hat. "Now what the devil is she up to?" he ejaculated, and stared after her till the old carriage turned in beside the station platform. As he reached his gate the eastbound Limited came roaring into the station. The truth dawned upon him. "By God," he cried, "if she isn't going back to New York!"



CHAPTER XIII

THE DESERTER

Bruce was incensed at the cool manner in which Katherine had taken leave of him without so much as hinting at her purpose. In offering her aid and telling her his plans he had made certain advances. She had responded to these overtures by telling nothing. He felt he had been snubbed, and he resented such treatment all the more from a woman toward whom he had somewhat relaxed his dignity and his principles.

As he sat alone on his porch that night he breathed out along with his smoke an accompanying fire of profanity; but for all his wrath, he could not keep the questions from arising. Why had she gone? What was she going to do? Was she coming back? Had she given up her father's case, and had she been silent to him that afternoon about her going for the simple reason that she had been ashamed to acknowledge her retreat?

He waited impatiently for the return of his uncle, who had been absent that evening from supper. He thought that Hosie might answer these questions since he knew the old man to be on friendly terms with Katherine. But when Old Hosie did shuffle up the gravel walk, he was almost as much at a loss as his nephew. True, a note from Katherine had been thrust under his door telling him she wished to talk with him that afternoon; but he had spent the day looking at farms and had not found the note till his return from the country half an hour before.

Bruce flung away his cigar in exasperation, and the dry night air was vibrant with half-whispered but perfervid curses. She was irritating, erratic, irrational, irresponsible—preposterous, simply preposterous—damn that kind of women anyhow! They pretended to be a lot, but there wasn't a damned thing to them!

But he could not subdue his curiosity, though he fervently informed himself of the thousand and one kinds of an unblessed fool he was for bothering his head about her. Nor could he banish her image. Her figure kept rising before him out of the hot, dusty blackness: as she had appeared before the jury yesterday, slender, spirited, clever—yes, she had spoken cleverly, he would admit that; as she had appeared in her parlour that afternoon, a graceful, courteous, self-possessed home person; as he had seen her in Mr. Huggins's old surrey, with her exasperating, non-committal, cool little nod. But why, oh, why, in the name of the flaming rendezvous of lost and sizzling souls couldn't a woman with her qualities also have just one grain—only one single little grain!—of the commonest common-sense?

The next morning Bruce sent young Harper to inquire from Doctor West in the jail, and after that from Katherine's aunt, why Katherine had gone to New York, whether she had abandoned the case, and whether she had gone for good. But if these old people knew anything, they did not tell it to Billy Harper.

Westville buzzed over Katherine's disappearance. The piazzas, the soda-water fountains, the dry goods counters, the Ladies' Aid, were at no loss for an explanation of her departure. She had lost her case—she had discovered that she was a failure as a lawyer—she had learned what Westville thought of her—so what other course was open to her but to slip out of town as quietly as she could and return to the place from which she had come?

The Women's Club in particular rejoiced at her withdrawal. Thank God, a pernicious example to the rising young womanhood of the town was at last removed! Perhaps woman's righteous disapproval of Katherine had a deeper reason than was expressed—for what most self-searching person truly knows the exact motives that prompt his actions? Perhaps, far down within these righteously indignant bosoms, was unconsciously but potently this question: if that type of woman succeeds and wins man's approval, then what is going to become of us who have been built upon man's former taste? At any rate, feminine Westville declared it a blessing that "that terrible thing" was gone.

Westville continued to buzz, but it soon had matters more worth its buzzing. Pressing the heels of one another there came two amazing surprises. The city had taken for granted the nomination of Kennedy for mayor, but the convention's second ballot declared Blake the nominee. Blake had given heed to Mr. Brown's advice and had decided to take no slightest risk; but to the people he let it be known that he had accepted the nomination to help the city out of its water-works predicament, and Westville, recognizing his personal sacrifice, rang with applause of his public spirit. The respectable element looked forward with self-congratulation to him as the next chief of the city—for he would have an easy victory over any low politician who would consent to be Blind Charlie's candidate.

Then, without warning, came Bruce's nomination, with a splendid list of lesser candidates, and upon a most progressive platform. Westville gasped again. Then recovering from its amazement, it was inclined to take this nomination as a joke. But Bruce soon checked their jocularity. That he was fighting for an apparently defunct cause seemed to make no difference to him. Perhaps Old Hosie had spoken more wisely than he had intended when he had once sarcastically remarked that Bruce was "a cross between a bulldog and Don Quixote." Certainly the qualities of both strains were now in evidence. He sprang instantly into the campaign, and by the power and energy of his speeches and of his editorials in the Express, he fairly raised his issue from the dead. Bruce did not have a show, declared the people—not the ghost of a show—but if he maintained the ferocious earnestness with which he was starting out, this certainly was going to be the hottest campaign which Westville had seen since Blake had overthrown Blind Charlie Peck.

People recalled Katherine now and then to wonder what she was doing and how mortified she must feel over her fiasco, and to laugh good-naturedly or sarcastically at the pricked soap-bubble of her pretensions. But the newer and present excitement of the campaign was forcing her into the comparative insignificance of all receding phenomena—when, one late September Sunday morning, Westville, or that select portion of Westville which attended the Wabash Avenue Church, was astonished by the sight of Katherine West walking very composedly up the church's left aisle, looking in exceedingly good health and particularly stunning in a tailor-made gown of rich brown corduroy.

She quietly entered a vacant pew and slipped to a position which allowed her an unobstructed view of Doctor Sherman, and which allowed Doctor Sherman an equally unobstructed view of her. Worshippers who stared her way noticed that she seemed never to take her gaze from the figure in the pulpit; and it was remarked, after the service was over, that though Doctor Sherman's discourses had been falling off of late—poor man, his health was failing so!—to-day's was quite the poorest sermon he had ever preached.

The service ended, Katherine went quietly out of the church, smiling and bowing to such as met her eyes, and leaving an active tongue in every mouth behind her. So she had come back! Well, of all the nerve! Did you ever! Was she going to stay? What did she think she was going to do? And so on all the way home, to where awaited the heavy Sunday dinner on which Westville gorged itself python-like—if it be not sacrilege to compare communicants with such heathen beasts—till they could scarcely move; till, toward three o'clock, the church paper sank down upon the distended stomachs of middle age, and there arose from all the easy chairs of Westville an unrehearsed and somewhat inarticulate, but very hearty, hymnal in praise of the bounty of the Creator.

At about the time Westville was starting up this chorus, Old Hosie Hollingsworth, in Katherine's parlour, deposited his rusty silk hat upon the square mahogany piano that had been Doctor West's wedding gift to his wife. The old lawyer lowered himself into a rocker, crossed his attenuated legs, and shook his head.

"Land sakes—I certainly was surprised to get your note!" he repeated. "When did you get back?"

"Late last night."

He stared admiringly at her fresh young figure.

"I must say, you don't look much like a lawyer who has lost her first case and has sneaked out of town to hide her mortification!"

"Is that what people have been saying?" she smiled. "Well, I don't feel like one!"

"Then you haven't given up?"

"Given up?" She lifted her eyebrows. "I've just begun. It's still a hard case, perhaps a long case; but at last I have a start. And I have some great plans. It was to ask your advice about these plans that I sent for you."

"My advice! Huh! I ain't ever been married—not even so much as once," he commented dryly, "but I've been told by unfortunates that have that it's the female way to do a thing and then ask whether she should do it or not."

"Now, don't be cynical!" laughed Katherine. "You know I tried to consult you before I went away. But it still is not too late for your advice. I'll put my plans before you, and if your masculine wisdom, whose superiority you have proved by keeping yourself unmarried, can show me wherein I'm wrong, I'll change them or drop them altogether."

"Fire away," he said, half grumbling. "What are your plans?"

"They're on a rather big scale. First, I shall put a detective on the case."

"That's all right, but don't you underestimate Harrison Blake," warned Old Hosie. "Since you've come back Blake will be sure you're after him. He will be on his guard against you; he will expect you to use a detective; he will watch out for him, perhaps try to have his every move shadowed. I suppose you never thought of that?" he demanded triumphantly.

"Oh, yes I did," Katherine returned. "That's why I'm going to hire two detectives."

The old man raised his eyebrows.

"Two detectives?"

"Yes. One for Mr. Blake to watch. One to do the real work."

"Oh!" It was an ejaculation of dawning comprehension.

"The first detective will be a mere blind; a decoy to engage Mr. Blake's attention. He must be a little obvious, rather blundering—so that Mr. Blake can't miss him. He will know nothing about my real scheme at all. While Mr. Blake's attention and suspicion are fixed on the first man, the second man, who is to be a real detective with real brains in his head, will get in the real work."

"Splendid! Splendid!" cried Old Hosie, looking at her enthusiastically. "And yet that pup of a nephew of mine sniffs out, 'Her a lawyer? Nothing! She's only a woman!'"

Katherine flushed. "That's what I want Mr. Blake to think."

"To underestimate you—yes, I see. Have you got your first man?"

"No. I thought you might help me find him, for a local man, or a state man, will be best; it will be easiest for him to be found out to be a detective."

"I've got just the article for you," cried Old Hosie. "You know Elijah Stone?"

"No. But, of course, I've seen him."

"He's Westville's best and only. He thinks he's something terrible as a detective—what you might call a hyper-super-ultra detective. Detective sticks out big all over him—like a sort of universal mumps. He never looks except when he looks cautiously out of the corner of his eye; he walks on his tiptoes; he talks in whispers; he simply oozes mystery. Fat head?—why, Lige Stone wears his hat on a can of lard!"

"Come, I'm not engaging a low comedian for a comic opera."

"Oh, he's not so bad as I said. He's really got a reputation. He's just the kind of a detective that an inexperienced girl might pick up. Blake will soon find out you've hired him, he'll believe it a bona fide arrangement on your part, and will have a lot of quiet laughs at your simplicity. God made Lige especially for you."

"All right. I'll see him to-morrow."

"Have you thought about the other detective?"

"Yes. One reason I went to New York was to try to get a particular person—Mr. Manning, with whom I've worked on some cases for the Municipal League. He has six children, and is very much in love with his wife. The last thing he looks like is a detective. He might pass for a superintendent of a store, or a broker. But he's very, very competent and clever, and is always master of himself."

"And you got him?"

"Yes. But he can't come for a couple of weeks. He is finishing up a case for the Municipal League."

"How are you going to use him?"

"I don't just know yet. Perhaps I can fit him into a second scheme of mine. You've heard of Mr. Seymour, of Seymour & Burnett?"

"The big bankers and brokers?"

"Yes. I knew Elinor Seymour at Vassar, and I visited her several times; and as Mr. Seymour is president of the Municipal League, altogether I saw him quite a great deal. I don't mean to be conceited, but I really believe Mr. Seymour has a lot of confidence in me."

"That's a fine compliment to his sense," Old Hosie put in.

"He's about the most decent of the big capitalists," she went on. "He was my second reason for going to New York. When I got there he had just left to spend a week-end in Paris, or something of the sort. I had to wait till he came back; that's why I was gone so long. I went to him with a plain business proposition. I gave him a hint of the situation out here, told him there was a chance the water-works might be sold, and asked authority to buy the system in for him."

"And how did he take it?" Old Hosie asked eagerly.

"You behold in me an accredited agent of Seymour & Burnett. I don't know yet how I shall use that authority, but if I can't do anything better, and if the worst comes to the very worst, I'll buy in the plant, defeat Mr. Blake, and see that the city gets something like a fair price for its property."

Old Hosie stared at her in open admiration. "Well, if you don't beat the band!" he exclaimed.

"In the meantime, I shall busy myself with trying to get my father's case appealed. But that is really only a blind; behind that I shall every minute be watching Mr. Blake. Now, what do you think of my plans? You know I called you in for your advice."

"Advice! You need advice about as much as an angel needs a hat pin!"

"But I'm willing to change my plans if you have any suggestions."

"I was a conceited old idiot when I was a little sore awhile ago because you had called me in for my opinion after you had settled everything. Go right ahead. It's fine. Fine, I tell you!" He chuckled. "And to think that Harrison Blake thinks he's bucking up against only a woman. Just a simple, inexperienced, dear, bustling, blundering woman! What a jar he's got coming to him!"

"We mustn't be too hopeful," warned Katherine. "There's a long, hard fight ahead. Perhaps my plan may not work out. And remember that, after all, I am only a woman."

"But if you do win!" His old eyes glowed excitedly. "Your father cleared, the idol of the town upset, the water-works saved—think what a noise all that will make!"

A new thought slowly dawned into his face. "H'm—this old town hasn't been, well, exactly hospitable to you; has laughed at you—sneered at you—given you the cold shoulder."

"Has it? What do I care!"

"It would be sort of nice, now wouldn't it," he continued slowly, keenly, with his subdued excitement, "sort of heaping coals of fire on Westville's roofs, if the town, after having cut you dead, should find that it had been saved by you. I suppose you've never thought of that aspect of the case—eh? I suppose it has never occurred to you that in saving your father you'll also save the town?"

She flushed—and smiled a little.

"Oh, so we've already thought of that, have we. I see I can't suggest anything new to you. Let the old town jeer all it wants to now, we'll show 'em in the end!—is that it?"

She smiled again, but did not answer him.

"Now you'll excuse me, won't you, for I promised to call on father this afternoon?"

"Certainly." He rose. "How is your father—or haven't you seen him yet?"

"I called at the jail first thing this morning. He's very cheerful."

"That's good. Well, good-by."

Old Hosie was reaching for his hat, but just then a firm step sounded on the porch and there was a ring of the bell. Katherine crossed the parlour and swung open the screen. Standing without the door was Bruce, a challenging, defiant look upon his face.

"Why, Mr. Bruce," she exclaimed, smiling pleasantly. "Won't you please come in?"

"Thank you," he said shortly.

He bowed and entered, but stopped short at sight of his uncle.

"Hello! You here?"

"Just to give an off-hand opinion, I should say I am." Old Hosie smiled sweetly, put his hat back upon the piano and sank into his chair. "I just dropped in to tell Miss Katherine some of those very clever and cutting things you've said to me about the idea of a woman being a lawyer. I've been expostulating with her—trying to show her the error of her ways—trying to prove to her that she wasn't really clever and didn't have the first qualification for law."

"You please let me speak for myself!" retorted Bruce. "How long are you going to stay here?"

Old Hosie recrossed his long legs and settled back with the air of the rock of ages.

"Why, I was expecting Miss Katherine was going to invite me to stay to supper."

"Well, I guess you won't. You please remember this is your month to look after Jim. Now you trot along home and see that he don't fry the steak to a shingle the way you let him do it last night."

"Last night I was reading your editorial on the prospects of the corn crop and I got so worked up as to how it was coming out that I forgot all about that wooden-headed nigger. I tell you, Arn, that editorial was one of the most exciting, stirring, nerve-racking, hair-breadth——"

"Come, get along with you!" Bruce interrupted impatiently. "I want to talk some business with Miss West!"

Old Hosie rose.

"You see how he treats me," he said plaintively to Katherine. "I haven't had one kind word from that young pup since, when he was in high-school, he got so stuck on himself because he imagined every girl in town was in love with him."

Bruce took Old Hosie's silk hat from the piano and held it out to him.

"You certainly won't get a kind word from me to-night if that steak is burnt!"

Katherine followed Hosie out upon the porch.

"He's a great boy," whispered the old man proudly—"if only I can lick his infernal conceit out of him!" He gripped her hand. "Good-by, and luck with you!"

She watched the bent, spare figure down the walk, then went in to Bruce. The editor was standing stiffly in the middle of the parlour.

"I trust that my call is not inopportune?"

"I'm glad to see you, but it does so happen that I promised father to call at five o'clock. And it's now twenty minutes to."

"Perhaps you will allow me to walk there with you?"

"But wouldn't that be, ah—a little dangerous?"

"Dangerous?"

"Yes. Perhaps you forget that Westville disapproves of me. It might not be a very politic thing for a candidate for mayor to be seen upon the street with so unpopular a person. It might cost votes, you know."

He flushed.

"If the people in this town don't like what I do, they can vote for Harrison Blake!" He swung open the door. "If you want to get there on time, we must start at once."

Two minutes later they were out in the street together. People whom they passed paused and stared back at them; groups of young men and women, courting collectively on front lawns, ceased their flirtatious chaffing and their bombardments with handfuls of loose grass, and nudged one another and sat with eyes fixed on the passing pair; and many a solid burgher, out on his piazza, waking from his devotional and digestive nap, blinked his eyes unbelievingly at the sight of a candidate for mayor walking along the street with that discredited lady lawyer who had fled the town in chagrin after losing her first case.

At the start Katherine kept the conversation upon Bruce's candidacy. He told her that matters were going even better than he had hoped; and informed her, with an air of triumph he did not try to conceal, that Blind Charlie Peck had been giving him an absolutely free rein, and that he was more than ever convinced that he had correctly judged that politician's motives. Katherine meekly accepted this implicit rebuke of her presumption, and congratulated him upon the vindication of his judgment.

"But I came to you to talk about your affairs, not mine," he said as they turned into Main Street. "I half thought, when you left, that you had gone for good. But your coming back proves you haven't given up. May I ask what your plans are, and how they are developing?"

Her eyes dropped to the sidewalk, and she seemed to be embarrassed for words. It was not wholly his fault that he interpreted her as crest-fallen, for Katherine was not lacking in the wiles of Eve.

"Your plans have not been prospering very well, then?" he asked, after a pause.

"Oh, don't think that; I still have hopes," she answered hurriedly. "I am going to keep right on at the case—keep at it hard."

"Were you successful in what you went to New York for?"

"I can't tell yet. It's too early. But I hope something will come of it."

He tried to get a glimpse of her face, but she kept it fixed upon the ground—to hide her discomfiture, he thought.

"Now listen to me," he said kindly, with the kindness of the superior mind. "Here's what I came to tell you, and I hope you won't take it amiss. I admire you for the way you took your father's case when no other lawyer would touch it. You have done your best. But now, I judge, you are at a standstill. At this particular moment it is highly imperative that the case go forward with highest speed. You understand me?"

"I think I do," she said meekly. "You mean that a man could do much better with the case than a woman?"

"Frankly, yes—still meaning no offense to you. You see how much hangs upon your father's case besides his own honour. There is the election, the whole future of the city. You see we are really facing a crisis. We have got to have quick action. In this crisis, being in the dark as to what you were doing, and feeling a personal responsibility in the matter, I have presumed to hint at the outlines of the case to a lawyer friend of mine in Indianapolis; and I have engaged him, subject to your approval, to take charge of the matter."

"Of course," said Katherine, her eyes still upon the sidewalk, "this man lawyer would expect to be the chief counsel?"

"Being older, and more experienced——"

"And being a man," Katherine softly supplied.

"He of course would expect to have full charge—naturally," Bruce concluded.

"Naturally," echoed Katherine.

"Of course you would agree to that?"

"I was just trying to think what a man would do," she said meditatively, in the same soft tone. "But I suppose a man, after he had taken a case when no one else would take it, when it was hopeless—after he had spent months upon it, made himself unpopular by representing an unpopular cause, and finally worked out a line of defense that, when the evidence is gained, will not only clear his client but astound the city—after he had triumph and reputation almost within his grasp, I suppose a man would be quite willing to step down and out and hand over the glory to a newcomer."

He looked at her sharply. But her face, or what he saw of it, showed no dissembling.

"But you are not stating the matter fairly," he said. "You should consider the fact that you are at the end of your rope!"

"Yes, I suppose I should consider that," she said slowly.

They were passing the Court House now. He tried to study her face, but it continued bent upon the sidewalk, as if in thought. They reached the jail, and she mounted the first step.

"Well, what do you say?" he asked.

She slowly raised her eyes and looked down on him guilelessly.

"You've been most thoughtful and kind—but if it's just the same to you, I'd like to keep on with the case a little longer alone."

"What!" he ejaculated. He stared at her. "I don't know what to make of you!" he cried in exasperation.

"Oh, yes you do," she assured him sweetly, "for you've been trying to make very little of me."

"Eh! See here, I half believe you don't want my aid!" he blurted out.

Standing there above him, smiling down upon him, she could hardly resist telling him the truth—that sooner would she allow her right hand to be burnt off than to accept aid from a man who had flaunted and jeered at her lawyership—that it was her changeless determination not to tell him one single word about her plans—that it was her purpose to go silently ahead and let her success, should she succeed, be her reply to his unbelief. But she checked the impulse to fling the truth in his face—and instead continued to smile inscrutably down upon him.

"I hope that you will do all for my father, for the city, for your own election, that you can," she said. "All I ask is that for the present I be allowed to handle the case by myself."

The Court House tower tolled five. She held out to him a gloved hand.

"Good-by. I'm sorry I can't invite you in," she said lightly, and turned away.

He watched the slender figure go up the steps and into the jail, then turned and walked down the street—exasperated, puzzled, in profound thought.



CHAPTER XIV

THE NIGHT WATCH

The next morning Elijah Stone appeared in Katherine's office as per request. He was a thickly, if not solidly, built gentleman, in imminent danger of a double chin, and with that submerged blackness of the complexion which is the result of a fresh-shaven heavy beard. He kept his jaw clinched to give an appearance of power, and his black eyebrows lowered to diffuse a sense of deeply pondered mystery. His wife considered him a rarely handsome specimen of his sex, and he permitted art to supplement the acknowledged gifts of nature so far as to perfume his glossy black hair, to wear a couple of large diamond rings, and to carry upon the watch chain that clanked heavily across the broad and arching acreage of his waistcoat a begemmed lodge emblem in size a trifle smaller than a paper weight.

He was an affable, if somewhat superior, being, and he listened to Katherine with a still further lowering of his impressive brows. She informed him, in a perplexed, helpless, womanly way, that she was inclined to believe that her father was "the victim of foul play"—the black brows sank yet another degree—and that she wished him privately to investigate the matter. He of course would know far, far better what to do than she, but she would suggest that he keep an eye upon Blake. At first Mr. Stone appeared somewhat sceptical and hesitant, but after peering darkly out for a long and ruminative period at the dusty foliage of the Court House elms, and after hearing the comfortable fee Katherine was willing to pay, he consented to accept the case. As he left he kindly assured her, with manly pity for her woman's helplessness, that if there was anything in her suspicion she "needn't waste no sleep now about gettin' the goods."

In the days that followed, Katherine saw her Monsieur Lecoque shadowing the movements of Blake with the lightness and general unobtrusiveness of a mahogany bedstead ambling about upon its castors. She soon guessed that Blake perceived that he was being watched, and she imagined how he must be smiling up his sleeve at her simplicity. Had the matters at stake not been so grave, had she been more certain of the issue, she might have put her own sleeve to a similar purpose.

In the meantime, as far as she could do so without exciting suspicion, she kept close watch upon Blake. It had occurred to her that there was a chance that he had an unknown accomplice whose discovery would make the gaining of the rest of the evidence a simple matter. There was a chance that he might let slip some revealing action. At any rate, till Mr. Manning came, her role was to watch with unsleeping eye for developments. Her office window commanded the entrance to Blake's suite of rooms, and no one went up by day whom she did not see. Her bedroom commanded Blake's house and grounds, and every night she sat at her darkened window till the small hours and watched for possible suspicious visitors, or possible suspicious movements on the part of Blake.

Also she did not forget Doctor Sherman. On the day of her departure for New York, she had called upon Doctor Sherman, and in the privacy of his study had charged him with playing a guilty part in Blake's conspiracy. She had been urged to this course by the slender chance that, when directly accused as she had dared not accuse him in the court-room, he might break down and confess. But Doctor Sherman had denied her charge and had clung to the story he had told upon the witness stand. Since Katherine had counted but little on this chance, she had gone away but little disappointed.

But she did not now let up upon the young minister. Regular attendance at church had of late years not been one of Katherine's virtues, but after her return it was remarked that she did not miss a single service at which Doctor Sherman spoke. She always tried to sit in the very centre of his vision, seeking to keep ever before his mind, while he preached God's word, the sin he had committed against God's law and man's. He visibly grew more pale, more thin, more distraught. The changes inspired his congregation with concern; they began to talk of overwork, of the danger of a breakdown; and seeing the dire possibility of losing so popular and pew-filling a pastor, they began to urge upon him the need of a long vacation.

Katherine could not but also give attention to the campaign, since it was daily growing more sensational, and was completely engrossing the town. Blake, in his speeches, stood for a continuance of the rule that had made Westville so prosperous, and dwelt especially upon an improvement in the service of the water-works, though as to the nature of the improvements he confined himself to language that was somewhat vague. Katherine heard him often. He was always eloquent, clever, forceful, with a manly grace of presence upon the platform—just what she, and just what the town, expected him to be.

But the surprise of the campaign, to Katherine and to Westville, was Arnold Bruce. Katherine had known Bruce to be a man of energy; now, in her mind, a forceful if not altogether elegant phrase of Carlyle attached itself to him—"A steam-engine in pants." He was never clever, never polished, he never charmed with the physical grace of his opponent, but he spoke with a power, an earnestness, and an energy that were tremendous. By the main strength of his ideas and his personality he seemed to bear down the prejudice against the principle for which he stood. He seemed to stand out in the mid-current of hostile opinion and by main strength hurl it back into its former course. The man's efforts were nothing less than herculean. He was a bigger man, a more powerful man, than Westville had ever dreamed; and his spirited battle against such apparently hopeless odds had a compelling fascination. Despite her defiantly critical attitude, Katherine was profoundly impressed; and she heard it whispered about that, notwithstanding Blake's great popularity, his party's certainty of success was becoming very much disturbed.

Both Katherine and Bruce were fond of horseback riding—Doctor West's single luxury, his saddle horse, was ever at Katherine's disposal—and at the end of one afternoon they met by chance out along the winding River Road, with its border of bowing willows and mottled sycamores, between whose browned foliage could be glimpsed long reaches of the broad and polished river, steel-gray in the shadows, a flaming copper where the low sun poured over it its parting fire. Little by little Bruce began to talk of his ideals. Presently he was speaking with a simplicity and openness that he had not yet used with Katherine. She perceived, more clearly than before, that whereas he was dogmatic in his ideas and brutally direct in their expression, he was a hot-souled idealist, overflowing with a passionate, even desperate, love of democracy, which he feared was in danger of dying out in the land—quietly and painlessly suffocated by a narrowing oligarchy which sought to blind the people to its rule by allowing them the exercise of democracy's dead forms.

His square, rude face, which she watched with a rising fascination, was no longer repellent. It had that compelling beauty, superior to mere tint and moulding of the flesh, which is born of great and glowing ideas. She saw that there was sweetness in his nature, that beneath his rough exterior was a violent, all-inclusive tenderness.

Now and then she put in a word of discriminating approval, now and then a word of well-reasoned dissent.

"I believe you are even more radical than I am!" he exclaimed, looking at her keenly.

"A woman, if she is really radical, has got to be more radical than a man. She sees all the evils and dangers that he sees, and in addition she suffers from injustices and restrictions from which man is wholly free."

He was too absorbed in the afterglow of what he had been saying to take in all the meanings implicated in her last phrase.

"Do you know," he said, as they neared the town, "you are the first woman I have met in Westville to whom one could talk about real things and who could talk back with real sense."

A very sly and pat remark upon his inconsistency was at her tongue's tip. But she realized that he had spoken impulsively, unguardedly, and she felt that it would be little short of sacrilege to be even gently sarcastic after the exalted revelation he had made of himself.

"Thank you," she said quietly, and turned her face and smiled at the now steel-blue reaches of the river.

He dropped in several evenings to see her. When he was in an idealistic mood she was warmly responsive. When he was arbitrary and opinionated, she met him with chaffing and raillery, and at such times she was as elusive, as baffling, as exasperating as a sprite. On occasions when he rather insistently asked her plans and her progress in her father's case, she evaded him and held him at bay. She felt that he admired her, but with a grudging, unwilling admiration that left his fundamental disapproval of her quite unshaken.

The more she saw of this dogmatic dreamer, this erratic man of action, the more she liked him, the more she found really admirable in him. But mixed with her admiration was an alert and pugnacious fear, so big was he, so powerful, so violently hostile to all the principles involved in her belief that the whole wide world of action should in justice lie as much open to woman to choose from as to man.

Without cessation Katherine kept eyes and mind on Blake. She searched out and pondered over the thousand possible details and ramifications his conspiracy might have. No human plan was a perfect plan. By patiently watching and studying every point there was a chance that she might discover one detail, one slip, one oversight, that would give her the key to the case.

One of the thousand possibilities was that he had an active partner in his scheme. Since no such partner was visible in the open, it was likely that his associate was a man with whom Blake wished to have seemingly no relations. Were this conjecture true, then naturally he would meet this confederate in secret. She began to think upon all possible means and places of holding secret conferences. Such a meeting might be held there in Westville in the dead of night. It might be held in any large city in which individuals might lose themselves—Indianapolis, Louisville, Cincinnati, Chicago. It might be held at any appointed spot within the radius of an automobile journey.

Katherine analyzed every possible place of this last possibility. She began to watch, as she watched other possibilities, the comings and goings of the Blake automobile. It occurred to her that, if anything were in this conjecture, the meeting would be held at night; and then, a little later, it occurred to her to make a certain regular observation. The Blake garage and the West stable stood side by side and opened into the same alley. Every evening while Blake's car was being cleaned—if it had been in use during the day—Katherine went out to say good night to her saddle horse, and as she was on friendly terms with Blake's man she contrived, while exchanging a word with him, to read the mileage record of the speedometer. This observation she carried on with no higher hope of anything resulting from it than from any of a score of other measures. It was merely one detail of her all-embracing vigilance.

Every night she sat on watch—the evening's earlier half usually in the rustic summer-house in the backyard, the latter part at her bedroom window. One night after most of Westville was in bed, her long, patient vigil was rewarded by seeing the Blake automobile slip out with a single vague figure at the wheel and turn into the back streets of the town.

Hours passed, and still she sat wide-eyed at her window. It was not till raucous old muzzains of roosters raised from the watch-towers of their various coops their concatenated prophecy of the dawn, that she saw the machine return with its single passenger. The next morning, as soon as she saw Blake's man stirring about his work, she slipped out to her stable. Watching her chance, she got a glimpse of Blake's speedometer. Then she quickly slipped back to her room and sat there in excited thought.

The evening before the mileage had read 1437; this morning the reading was 1459. Blake, in his furtive midnight journey, had travelled twenty-two miles. If he had slipped forth to meet a secret ally, then evidently their place of meeting was half of twenty-two miles distant. Where was this rendezvous?

Almost instantly she thought of The Sycamores. That fitted the requirements exactly. It was eleven miles distant—Blake had a cabin there—the place was deserted at this season of the year. Nothing could be safer than for two men, coming in different vehicles, from different points perhaps, to meet at that retired spot at such an eyeless hour.

Perhaps there was no confederate. Perhaps Blake's night trip was not to a secret conference. Perhaps The Sycamores was not the rendezvous. But there was a chance that all three of these conjectures were correct. And if so, there was a chance,—aye, more, a probability—that there would be further midnight trysts.

Bruce had fallen into the habit of dropping in occasionally for a few minutes at the end of an evening's speaking to tell Katherine how matters seemed to be progressing. When he called that night toward ten he was surprised to be directed around to the summer-house. His surprise was all the more because the three months' drought had that afternoon been broken, and the rain was now driving down in gusts and there was a far rumbling of thunder that threatened a nearer and a fiercer cannonading.

Crouching beneath his umbrella, he made his way through the blackness to the summer-house, in which he saw sitting a dim, solitary figure.

"In mercy's name, what are you doing out here?" he demanded as he entered.

"Watching the rain. I love to be out in a storm." Every clap of thunder sent a shiver through her.

"You must go right into the house!" he commanded. "You'll get wet. I'll bet you're soaked already!"

"Oh, no. I have a raincoat on," she answered calmly. "I'm going to stay and watch the storm a little longer."

He expostulated, spoke movingly of colds and pneumonia. But she kept her seat and sweetly suggested that he avoid his vividly pictured dangers of a premature death by following his own advice. He jerked a rustic chair up beside her, growled a bit in faint imitation of the thunder, then ran off into the wonted subject of the campaign.

As the situation now stood he had a chance of winning, so successful had been his fight to turn back public opinion; and if only he had and could use the evidence Katherine was seeking, an overwhelming victory would be his beyond a doubt. He plainly was chafing at her delays, and as plainly made it evident that he was sceptical of her gaining proof. But she did not let herself be ruffled. She evaded all his questions, and when she spoke she spoke calmly and with good-nature.

Presently, sounding dimly through a lull in the rising tumult of the night, they heard the Court House clock strike eleven. Soon after, Katherine's ear, alert for a certain sound, caught a muffled throbbing that was not distinguishable to Bruce from the other noises of the storm.

She sprang up.

"You must go now—good night!" she said breathlessly, and darted out of the summer-house.

"Wait! Where are you going?" he cried, and tried to seize her, but she was gone.

He stumbled amazedly after her vague figure, which was running through the grape-arbour swiftly toward the stable. The blackness, his unfamiliarity with the way, made him half a minute behind Katherine in entering the barn.

"Miss West!" he called. "Miss West!"

There was no answer and no sound within the stable. Just then a flash of lightning showed him that the rear door was open. As he felt his way through this he heard Katherine say, "Whoa, Nelly! Whoa, Nelly!" and saw her swing into the saddle.

He sprang forward and caught the bridle rein.

"What are you going to do?" he cried.

"Going out for a little gallop," she answered with an excited laugh.

"What?" A light broke in upon him. "You've been sitting there all evening in your riding habit! Your horse has been standing saddled and bridled in the stall! Tell me—where are you going?"

"For a little ride, I said. Now let loose my rein."

"Why—why—" he gasped in amazement. Then he cried out fiercely: "You shall not go! It's madness to go out in a storm like this!"

"Mr. Bruce, let go that rein this instant!" she said peremptorily.

"I shall do nothing of the sort! I shall not let you make an insane fool of yourself!"

She bent downward. Though in the darkness he could not see her face, the tensity of her tone told him her eyes were flashing.

"Mr. Bruce," she said with slow emphasis, "if you do not loosen that rein, this second, I give you my word I shall never see you, never speak to you again."

"All right, but I shall not let you make a fool of yourself," he cried with fierce dominance. "You've got to yield to sense, even though I use force on you."

She did not answer. Swiftly she reversed her riding crop and with all her strength brought its heavy end down upon his wrist.

"Nelly!" she ordered sharply, and in the same instant struck the horse. The animal lunged free from Bruce's benumbed grasp, and sprang forward into a gallop.

"Good night!" she called back to him.

He shouted a reply; his voice came to her faintly, wrathful and defiant, but his words were whirled away upon the storm.



CHAPTER XV

POLITICS MAKE STRANGE BED-FELLOWS

She quieted Nelly into a canter, made her way through the soundly sleeping back streets, and at length emerged from the city and descended into the River Road, which was slightly shorter than Grayson's Pike which led over the high back country to The Sycamores. She knew what Nelly could do, and she settled the mare down into the fastest pace she could hold for the eleven miles before her.

Katherine was aquiver with suspense, one moment with hopeful expectation, the next with fear that her deductions were all awry. Perhaps Blake had not gone out to meet a confederate. And if he had, perhaps The Sycamores was not the rendezvous. But if her deductions were correct, who was this secret ally? Would she be able to approach them near enough to discover his identity? And would she be able to learn the exact outlines of the plot that was afoot? If so, what would it all prove to be?

Such questions and doubts galloped madly through her mind. The storm grew momently in fierceness. The water and fury of three months of withheld storms were spending themselves upon the earth in one violent outburst. The wind cracked her skirt like a whip-lash, and whined and snarled and roared among the trees. The rain drove at her in maddened sheets, found every opening in her raincoat, and soon she was as wet as though dropped in the river yonder. The night was as black as the interior of a camera, save when—as by the opening of a snapshot shutter—an instantaneous view of the valley was fixed on Katherine's startled brain by the lightning ripping in fiery fissures down the sky. Then she saw the willows bending and whipping in the wind, saw the gnarled old sycamores wrestling with knotted muscles, saw the broad river writhing and tossing its swollen and yellow waters. Then, blackness again—and, like the closing click of this world-wide camera, there followed a world-shaking crash of thunder.

Katherine would have been terrified but for the stimulant within. She crouched low upon her horse, held a close rein, petted Nelly, talked to her and kept her going at her best—onward—onward—onward—through the covered wooden bridge that spanned Buck Creek—through the little old village of Sleepy Eye—up Red Man's Ridge—and at last, battered, buffeted, half-drowned, she and Nelly drew up at the familiar stone gateway of The Sycamores.

She dismounted, led Nelly in and tied her among the beeches away from the drive. Then cautiously, palpitantly, she groped her way in the direction of the Blake cabin, avoiding the open lest the lightning should betray her presence. At length she came to the edge of a cleared space in which she knew the cabin stood. But she could see nothing. The cabin was just a cube of blackness imbedded in this great blackness which was the night. She peered intently for a lighted window; she listened for the lesser thunder of a waiting automobile. But she could see nothing but the dark, hear nothing but the dash of the rain, the rumble of the thunder, the lashing and shrieking of the wind.

Her heart sank. No one was here. Her guesses all were wrong.

But she crept toward the house, following the drive. Suddenly, she almost collided with a big, low object. She reached forth a hand. It fell upon the tire of an automobile. She peered forward and seemed to see another low shape. She went toward it and felt. It was a second car.

She dashed back among the trees, and thus sheltered from the revealing glare of the lightning, almost choking with excitement, she began to circle the house for signs which would locate in what room were the men within. She paused before each side and peered closely at it, but each side in turn presented only blackness, till she came to the lee of the house.

This, too, was dark for the first moment. Then in a lower window, which she knew to be the window of Blake's den, two dull red points of light appeared—glowed—subsided—glowed again—then vanished. A minute later one reappeared, then the other; and after the slow rise and fall and rise of the glow, once more went out. She stood rigid, wondering at the phenomenon. Then suddenly she realized that within were two lighted cigars.

Bending low, she scurried across the open space and crouched beside the window. Luckily it had been opened to let some fresh air into the long-closed room. And luckily this was the lee of the house and the beat of the storm sounded less loudly here, so that their voices floated dimly out to her. This lee was also a minor blessing, for Katherine's poor, wet, shivering body now had its first protection from the storm.