athed.

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