momentous words. But his answer was as
Old Hosie had predicted.

"In view of the fact that the defence has already had four months in
which to prepare its case," said he, "I shall have to deny the motion
and order the trial to proceed."

Katherine sat down. The hope of deferment was gone. There remained
only to fight.

A jury was quickly chosen; Katherine felt that her case would stand as
good a chance with any one selection of twelve men as with any other.
Kennedy then stepped forward. With an air that was a blend of his
pretentious--if rather raw-boned--dignity as a coming statesman, of
extreme deference toward Katherine's sex, and of the sense of his
personal belittlement in being pitted against such a legal weakling,
he outlined to the jury what he expected to prove. After which, he
called Mr. Marcy to the stand.

The agent of the filter company gave his evidence with that degree of
shame-facedness proper to the man, turned state's witness, who has
been an accomplice in the dishonourable proceedings he is relating. It
all sounded and looked so true--so very, very true!

When Katherine came to cross-examine him, she gazed at him steadily a
moment. She knew that he was lying, and she knew that he knew that she
knew he was lying. But he met her gaze with precisely the abashed,
guilty air appropriate to his role.

What she considered her greatest chance was now before her. Calling up
all her wits, she put to Mr. Marcy questions that held distant, hidden
traps. But when she led him along the devious, unsuspicious path that
conducted to the trap and then suddenly shot at him the question that
should have plunged him into it, he very quietly and nimbly walked
around the pitfall. Again and again she tried to involve him, but ever
with the same result. He was abashed, ready to answer--and always
elusive. At the end she had gained nothing from him, and for a minute
stood looking silently at him in baffled exasperation.

"Have you any further questions to ask the witness?" old Judge Kellog
prompted her, with a gentle impatience.

For a moment, stung by this witness's defeat of her, she had an
impulse to turn about, point her finger at Blake in the audience, and
cry out the truth to the court-room and announce what was her real
line of defence. But she realized the uproar that would follow if she
dared attack Blake without evidence, and she controlled herself.

"That is all, Your Honour," she said.

Mr. Marcy was