In all the crowd that looked bewildered on, Katherine was perhaps the only one who believed in Bruce’s cry of trickery. She saw that Blake, with Blind Charlie’s cunning back of him, had risked his all on one bold move that for a brief period had made him an object of universal hatred. She saw that Bruce had fallen into a trap cleverly baited for him, saw that he was the victim of an astute scheme to discredit him utterly and remove him from the way.
As Blake left the Court House Katherine heard a great cheer go up for him; and within an hour the evidence of eye and ear proved to her that he was more popular than ever. She saw the town crowd about him to make amends for the injustice it considered it had done him. And as for Bruce, as he was led by Sheriff Nichols from the Court House toward the jail, she heard him pursued by jeers and hisses.
Katherine walked homeward from the trial, completely dazed by this sudden capsizing of all of Bruce’s hopes—and of her own hopes as well, for during the last few days she had come to depend on Bruce for the clearing of her father. That evening, and most of the night, she spent in casting up accounts. As matters then stood, they looked desperate indeed. On the one hand, everything pointed to Blake’s election and the certain success of his plans. On the other hand, she had gained no clue whatever to the whereabouts of Doctor Sherman; nothing had as yet developed in the scheme she had built about Mr. Manning; as for Mr. Stone, she had expected nothing from him, and all he had turned in to her was that he suspected secret relations between Blake and Peck. Furthermore, the man she loved—for yes, she loved him still—was in jail, his candidacy collapsed, the cause for which he stood a ruin. And last of all, the city, to the music of its own applause, was about to be colossally swindled.
A dark prospect indeed. But as she sat alone in the night, the cheers for Blake floating in to her, she desperately determined to renew her fight. Five days still remained before election, and in five days one might do much; during those five days her ships might still come home from sea. She summoned her courage, and gripped it fiercely. “I’ll do my best! I’ll do my best!” she kept breathing throughout the night. And her determination grew in its intensity as she realized the sum of all the things for which she fought, and fought alone.
She was fighting to save her father, she was fighting to save the city, she was fighting to save the man she loved.
CHAPTER XXII
THE LAST STAND
The next morning Katherine, incited by the desperate need of action, was so bold as to request Mr. Manning to meet her at Old Hosie’s. She was fortunate enough to get into the office without being observed. The old lawyer, in preparation for the conference, had drawn his wrinkled, once green shade as far down as he dared without giving cause for suspicion, and before the window had placed a high-backed chair and thrown upon it a greenish, blackish, brownish veteran of a fall overcoat—thus balking any glances that might rove lazily upward to his office.