y and logically, and
ended with a strong and eloquent plea for her father. As she sat down,
there was a profound hush in the court-room.

Her father squeezed her hand. Tears stood in his eyes.

"Whatever happens," he whispered, "I'm proud of my daughter."

Kennedy's address was brief and perfunctory, for the case seemed too
easy to warrant his exertion. Still stimulated by the emotion aroused
by her own speech and the sense of the righteousness of her cause,
Katherine watched the jury go out with a fluttering hope. She still
clung to hope when, after a short absence, the jury filed back in. She
rose and held her breath while they took their seats.

"You have reached a verdict, gentlemen?" asked Judge Kellog.

"We have," answered the foreman.

"What is it?"

"We find the defendant guilty."

Doctor West let out a little moan, and his head fell forward into his
arms. Katherine bent over him and whispered a word of comfort into his
ear; then rose and made a motion for a new trial. Judge Kellog denied
the motion, and haltingly asked Doctor West to step forward to the
bar. Doctor West did so, and the two old men, who had been friends
since childhood, looked at each other for a space. Then in a husky
voice Judge Kellog pronounced sentence: One thousand dollars fine and
six months in the county jail.

It was a light sentence--but enough to blacken an honest name for
life, enough to break a sensitive heart like Doctor West's.

A little later Katherine, holding an arm of her father tightly within
her own, walked with him and fat, good-natured Sheriff Nichols over to
the old brick county jail. And yet a little later, erect, eyes
straight before her, she came down the jail steps and started
homeward.

As she was passing along the Square, immediately before her Harrison
Blake came out of his stairway and started across the sidewalk to his
waiting car. Discretion urged her to silence; but passion was the
stronger. She stepped squarely up before him and flashed him a blazing
look.

"Well--and so you think you've won!" she cried in a low voice.

His colour changed, but instantly he was master of himself.

"What, Katherine, you still persist in that absurd idea of yesterday."

"Oh, drop that pretence! We know each other too well for that!" She
moved nearer and, trembling from head to foot, her passionate defiance
burst all bounds. "You think you have won, don't you!" she hotly
cried. "Well, let me tell you that this a