ed at first disloyal--but finally Edgar
decided that his duty to the city----"

"Please say no more, Elsie." Katherine turned to the pale young
minister. "Doctor Sherman, I have not come to utter one single word of
recrimination. I have come merely to ask you to tell me all you know
about the case."

"I shall be glad to do so."

"And could I also talk with Mr. Marcy, the agent?"

"He has left the city, and will not return till the trial."

Katherine was disappointed by this news. Doctor Sherman, though
obviously pained by the task, rehearsed in minutest detail the charges
he had made against Doctor West, which charges he would later have to
repeat upon the witness stand. Also he recounted Mr. Marcy's story.
Katherine scrutinized every point in these two stories for the loose
end, the loop-hole, the flaw, she had thought to find. But flaw there
was none. The stories were perfectly straightforward.

Katherine walked slowly away, still going over and over Doctor
Sherman's testimony. Doctor Sherman was telling the indubitable
truth--yet her father was indubitably innocent. It was a puzzling
case, this her first case--a puzzling, most puzzling case.

When she reached home she was told by her aunt that a gentleman was
waiting to see her. She entered the big, old-fashioned parlour, fresh
and tasteful despite the stiff black walnut that, in the days of her
mother's marriage, had been spread throughout the land as beauty by
the gentlemen who dealt conjointly in furniture and coffins.

From a chair there rose a youthful and somewhat corpulent presence,
with a chubby and very serious pink face that sat in a glossy high
collar as in a cup. He smiled with a blushful but ingratiating
dignity.

"Don't you remember me? I'm Charlie Horn."

"Oh!" And instinctively, as if to identify him by Charlie Horn's
well-remembered strawberry-marks, Katherine glanced at his hands. But
they were clean, and the warts were gone. She looked at him in doubt.
"You can't be Nellie Horn's little brother?"

"I'm not so little," he said, with some resentment. "Since you knew
me," he added a little grandiloquently, "I've graduated from
Bloomington."

"Please pardon me! It was kind of you to call, and so soon."

"Well, you see I came on business. I suppose you have seen this
afternoon's _Express_?"

She instinctively stiffened.

"I have not."

He drew out a copy of the _Express_, opened it, and pointed a plump,
pinkish forefinger at the be