You dear old
father, you!"

She drew him to his desk, which was strewn with a half-finished
manuscript on the typhoid bacillus, and upon which stood a faded
photograph of a young woman, near Katherine's years and made in her
image, dressed in the tight-fitting "basque" of the early eighties.
Westville knew that Doctor West had loved his wife dearly, but the
town had never surmised a tenth of the grief that had closed darkly in
upon him when typhoid fever had carried her away while her young
womanhood was in its freshest bloom.

Katherine pressed him down into his chair at the desk, sat down in one
beside it, and took his hand.

"Now, father, tell me just how things stand."

"You know everything already," said he.

"Not everything. I know the charges of the other side, and I know your
innocence. But I do not know your explanation of the affair."

He ran his free hand through his silver hair, and his face grew
troubled.

"My explanation agrees with what you have read, except that I did not
know I was being bribed."

"H'm!" Her brow wrinkled thoughtfully and she was silent for a moment.
"Suppose we go back to the very beginning, father, and run over the
whole affair. Try to remember. In the early stages of negotiations,
did the agent say anything to you about money?"

He did not speak for a minute or more.

"Now that I think it over, he did say something about its being worth
my while if his filter was accepted."

"That was an overture to bribe you. And what did you say to him?"

"I don't remember. You see, at the time, his offer, if it was one, did
not make any impression on me. I believe I didn't say anything to him
at all."

"But you approved his filter?"

"Yes."

"Mr. Marcy says in the _Express_, and you admit it, that he offered
you a bribe. You approved his filter. On the face of it, speaking
legally, that looks bad, father."

"But how could I honestly keep from approving his filter, when it was
the very best on the market for our water?" demanded Doctor West.

"Then how did you come to accept that money?"

The old man's face cleared.

"I can explain that easily. Some time ago the agent said something
about the Acme Filter Company wishing to make a little donation to our
hospital. I'm one of the directors, you know. So, when he handed me
that envelope, I supposed it was the contribution to the
hospital--perhaps twenty-five or fifty dollars."

"And that is all?"

"That's the whole truth.