izens 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