arked
that Bruce was "a cross between a bulldog and Don Quixote." Certainly
the qualities of both strains were now in evidence. He sprang
instantly into the campaign, and by the power and energy of his
speeches and of his editorials in the _Express_, he fairly raised his
issue from the dead. Bruce did not have a show, declared the
people--not the ghost of a show--but if he maintained the ferocious
earnestness with which he was starting out, this certainly was going
to be the hottest campaign which Westville had seen since Blake had
overthrown Blind Charlie Peck.

People recalled Katherine now and then to wonder what she was doing
and how mortified she must feel over her fiasco, and to laugh
good-naturedly or sarcastically at the pricked soap-bubble of her
pretensions. But the newer and present excitement of the campaign was
forcing her into the comparative insignificance of all receding
phenomena--when, one late September Sunday morning, Westville, or
that select portion of Westville which attended the Wabash Avenue
Church, was astonished by the sight of Katherine West walking very
composedly up the church's left aisle, looking in exceedingly good
health and particularly stunning in a tailor-made gown of rich brown
corduroy.

She quietly entered a vacant pew and slipped to a position which
allowed her an unobstructed view of Doctor Sherman, and which allowed
Doctor Sherman an equally unobstructed view of her. Worshippers who
stared her way noticed that she seemed never to take her gaze from the
figure in the pulpit; and it was remarked, after the service was over,
that though Doctor Sherman's discourses had been falling off of
late--poor man, his health was failing so!--to-day's was quite the
poorest sermon he had ever preached.

The service ended, Katherine went quietly out of the church, smiling
and bowing to such as met her eyes, and leaving an active tongue in
every mouth behind her. So she had come back! Well, of all the nerve!
Did you ever! Was she going to stay? What did she think she was going
to do? And so on all the way home, to where awaited the heavy Sunday
dinner on which Westville gorged itself python-like--if it be not
sacrilege to compare communicants with such heathen beasts--till they
could scarcely move; till, toward three o'clock, the church paper
sank down upon the distended stomachs of middle age, and there arose
from all the easy chairs of Westville an unrehearsed and somewhat
inarticulate, b