nt he was at her side.

"Excuse me, Miss West," he said. "But we have just unearthed something
which I think you should be the first person to learn."

"I shall be glad to hear it," she said in the cold, polite tone they
reserved for one another.

"Let's go over into the Court House yard."

They silently crossed the street and entered the comparative seclusion
of the yard.

"I suppose it is something very significant?" she asked.

"So significant," he burst out, "that the minute the _Express_ appears
this afternoon Harrison Blake is a has-been!"

She looked at him quickly. The triumph she had of late seen gleaming
in his face was now openly blazing there.

"You mean----"

"I mean that I've got the goods on him!"

"You--you have evidence?"

"The best sort of evidence!"

"That will clear my father?"

"Perhaps not directly. Indirectly, yes. But it will smash Blake to
smithereens!"

She was happy on Bruce's account, on her father's, on the city's, but
for the moment she was sick upon her own.

"Is the nature of the evidence a secret?"

"The whole town will know it this afternoon. I asked you over here to
tell you first. I have just secured a full confession from two of
Blake's accomplices."

"Then you've discovered Doctor Sherman?" she exclaimed.

"Doctor Sherman?" He stared at her. "I don't know what you mean. The
two men are the assistant superintendent of the water-works and the
engineer at the pumping-plant."

"How did you get at them?"

"Wilson and I started out to cross-examine everybody who might be in
the remotest way connected with the case. My suspicion against the two
men was first aroused by their strained behaviour. I went----"

"Then it was you who made this discovery, not that--that other
lawyer?"

"Yes, I was the first to tackle the pair, though Wilson has helped me.
He's a great lawyer, Wilson. We've gone at them relentlessly--with
accusation, cross-examination, appeal; with the result that this
morning both of them broke down and confessed that Blake had secretly
paid them to do all that lay within their power to make the
water-works a failure."

They followed the path in silence for several moments, Katherine's
eyes upon the ground. At length she looked up. In Bruce's face she
plainly read what she had guessed to be an extra motive with him all
along, a glowering determination to crush her, humiliate her, a
determination to cut the ground from beneath her ambition by
overt