gging the
struggling Bruce back into his chair. More shouts and hammering of
gavels by the judge and clerk had partially restored to order the
chaos begotten by this scene, when a bit of paper was slipped from
behind into Bruce's hand. He unfolded it with trembling fingers, and
read in a disguised, back-hand scrawl:

"There's still enough left of me to know what's happened."

That was all. But Bruce understood. Here was the handiwork and
vengeance of Blind Charlie Peck. He sprang up again and turned his
ireful face to where, in the crowd, sat the old politician.

"You--you----" he began.

But before he got further he was again dragged down into his seat. And
almost before the crowd had had time fairly to regain its breath, the
jury had filed out, had filed back in again, had returned its verdict
of guilty, and Judge Kellog had imposed a sentence of five hundred
dollars fine and sixty days in the county jail.

In all the crowd that looked bewildered on, Katherine was perhaps the
only one who believed in Bruce's cry of trickery. She saw that Blake,
with Blind Charlie's cunning back of him, had risked his all on one
bold move that for a brief period had made him an object of universal
hatred. She saw that Bruce had fallen into a trap cleverly baited for
him, saw that he was the victim of an astute scheme to discredit him
utterly and remove him from the way.

As Blake left the Court House Katherine heard a great cheer go up for
him; and within an hour the evidence of eye and ear proved to her that
he was more popular than ever. She saw the town crowd about him to
make amends for the injustice it considered it had done him. And as
for Bruce, as he was led by Sheriff Nichols from the Court House
toward the jail, she heard him pursued by jeers and hisses.

Katherine walked homeward from the trial, completely dazed by this
sudden capsizing of all of Bruce's hopes--and of her own hopes as
well, for during the last few days she had come to depend on Bruce for
the clearing of her father. That evening, and most of the night, she
spent in casting up accounts. As matters then stood, they looked
desperate indeed. On the one hand, everything pointed to Blake's
election and the certain success of his plans. On the other hand, she
had gained no clue whatever to the whereabouts of Doctor Sherman;
nothing had as yet developed in the scheme she had built about Mr.
Manning; as for Mr. Stone, she had expected nothing from him, an