atherine saw, built against the Court House and
brilliantly festooned with vari-coloured electric bulbs, the speakers'
stand from which Blake and others of his party were later to address
the final mass-meeting of the campaign.

The carriage turned past the jail into Wabash Avenue, and a minute
afterward drew up beside the Sherman cottage. Pulsing with the double
suspense of her conjecture and of her concern for Elsie's life,
Katherine followed her father into the sick chamber. As they entered
the hushed room the spare figure of Miss Sherman rose from a rocker
beside the bed, greeted them with a silent nod, and drew back to give
place to Doctor West.

Katherine moved slowly to the foot of the bed and gazed down. For a
space, one cause of her suspense was swept out of her being, and all
her concern was for the flickering life before her. Elsie lay with
eyes closed, and breathing so faintly that she seemed scarcely to
breathe at all. So pale, so wasted, so almost wraithlike was she as to
suggest that when her spirit fled, if flee it must, nothing could be
left remaining between the sheets.

As she gazed down upon her friend, hovering uncertainly upon life's
threshold, a tingling chill pervaded Katherine's body. Since her
mother's loss in unremembering childhood, Death had been kind to her;
no one so dear had been thus carried up to the very brink of the
grave. All that had been sweet and strong in her friendship with Elsie
now flooded in upon her in a mighty wave of undefined emotion. She was
immediately conscious only of the wasted figure before her, and its
peril, but back of consciousness were unformed memories of their
girlhood together, of the inseparable intimacy of their young
womanhood, and of that shy and tender time when she had been the
confidante of Elsie's courtship.

There was a choking at her throat, tears slipped down her cheeks, and
there surged up a wild, wild wish, a rebellious demand, that Elsie
might come safely through her danger.

But, presently, her mind reverted to the special purpose that had
brought her hither. She studied the face of Miss Sherman, seeking
confirmation of the conjecture that had so aroused her--studying also
for some method of approaching Miss Sherman, of breaking down her
guard, and gaining the information she desired. But she learned
nothing from the expression of those spare, self-contained features;
and she realized that the lips of the Sphinx would be easier to unlock