city. And the town, for all its hatred, for all the stain
upon his name, as it watched this slight, white-haired man go so
swiftly and gently and efficiently about his work, began to feel for
him something akin to awe--began dimly to feel that this old figure
whom it had been their habit to scorn for near a generation was
perhaps their greatest man.

While Katherine watched this fight against the fever with her father
as its central figure, while she awaited in suspense some results of
her advertising campaign, and while she tried to press forward the
other details of her search for evidence, she could but keep her eyes
upon the mayoralty campaign--for it was mounting to an ever higher
climax of excitement. Bruce was fighting like a fury. The sensation
created by his announcement of Blind Charlie's threatened treachery
was a mere nothing compared to the uproar created when he informed the
people, not directly, but by careful insinuation, that Blake was
responsible for the epidemic.

Blake denied the charge with desperate energy and with all his power
of eloquence; he declared that the epidemic was but another
consequence of that supremest folly of mankind, public ownership. He
was angrily supported by his party, his friends and his followers--but
those followers were not so many as a few short weeks before. Passion
was at its highest--so high that trustworthy forecasts of the election
were impossible. But ten days before election it was freely talked
about the streets, and even privately admitted by some of Blake's best
friends, that nothing but a miracle could save him from defeat.

In these days of promise Bruce seemed to pour forth an even greater
energy; and in his efforts he was now aided by Mr. Wilson, the
Indianapolis lawyer, who was spending his entire time in Westville.
Katherine caught in Bruce's face, when they passed upon the street, a
gleam of triumph which he could not wholly suppress. She wondered,
with a pang of jealousy, if he and Mr. Wilson were succeeding where
she had failed--if all her efforts were to come to nothing--if her
ambition to demonstrate to Bruce that she could do things was to prove
a mere dream?

Toward noon one day, as she was walking along the Square homeward
bound from Elsie Sherman's, she passed Bruce and Mr. Wilson headed for
the stairway of the _Express_ Building. Both bowed to her, then
Katherine overheard Bruce say, "I'll be with you in a minute, Wilson,"
and the next insta