oters
crowded to the polls in their eagerness to vote for Bruce, and he gave
with a tremendous exultation an estimate of Bruce's majority, which
was so great as to be an almost unanimous election. Also he told how
Blind Charlie Peck had prudently caught last night's eleven o'clock
express and was now believed to be repairing his health down at Hot
Springs, Arkansas. Also he gave a deal of inside history: told how
the extra had been gotten out the night before, with the Blake
mass-meeting going on beneath the _Express's_ windows; told of the
scene at the home of Blake, and Blake's strange march to jail; and,
freed from the restraint of Katherine's presence, who would have
forbidden him, he told with a world of praise the story of how she had
worked up the case.

The election extra finished, Bruce spread open the extra of the night
before, the paper that had transferred him from a prison cell to the
mayor's office, and read the mass of Katherine's evidence that Billy
had so stirringly set forth. Then the head of the editor of the
_Express_, of the mayor of Westville, sank forward into his folded
arms and he sat bowed, motionless, upon the judge's desk.

A great outburst of cheering from the crowd, though louder far than
those that had preceded it, did not disturb him; and he did not look
up until he heard the door of the court room open. Then he saw that
Old Hosie had entered, and with him Katherine.

"I'll just leave you two for a minute," Old Hosie said rapidly, "while
I go out and start things going by introducing the Honourable Hiram
Cogshell."

With that the old man took the arm of Katherine's father, who had been
standing just behind, slipped through the door and was gone. A moment
later, from in front, there arose a succession of cheers for Doctor
West.

Bruce came slowly down from behind the railing of Judge Kellog's desk
and paused before Katherine. She was very white, her breath came with
a tremulous irregularity, and she looked at him with wide, wondering,
half-fearful eyes.

At first Bruce could not get out a word, such a choking was there in
his throat, such a throbbing and whirling through all his being. He
dizzily supported himself with a hand upon the back of a bench, and
stood and gazed at her.

It was she that broke the silence.

"Mr. Hollingsworth did not tell me--you were here. I'd better go." And
she started for the door.

"No--no--don't!" he said. He drew a step nearer her. "I've just
r