“Yes, Katherine West!” he burst out in triumphant joy, his words tumbling over one another. “She did it all—every bit of it! And that mob out in front is there to celebrate your election. We knew how things were going to turn out, so we were safe in getting this thing ready in advance. And I don’t mind telling you, young fellow, that this celebration is just as much for her as it is for you. The town has simply gone crazy about her and is looking for a chance to kiss her feet. She said she wouldn’t come to-night, but we all insisted. I promised to bring her, and I’ve got to be off. So good-by!”
Bruce caught his arm.
“Wait, Hosie! Tell me what she did! Tell me the rest!”
“Read that paper I gave you! And here, I brought this for you, too.” He took from his inside pocket a copy of the extra Katherine and Billy Harper had got out the night before. “Those two papers will tell you all there is to tell. And now,” he continued, opening a door and pushing Bruce through it, “you just wait in there so I’ll know where to find you when I want you. I’ve got to hustle for a while, for I’m master of ceremonies of this show. How’s that for your old uncle? It’s the first time I’ve ever been connected with a popular movement in my life except to throw bricks at it, and I ain’t so sure I can stand popularity for one whole night.”
With that he was gone. Bruce recognized the room into which he had been thrust as the court room in which he had been tried and sentenced, in which Katherine had pleaded her father’s case. Over the judge’s desk, as though in expectation of his coming, a green-shaded drop lamp shed its cone of light. Bruce stumbled forward to the desk, sank into the judge’s chair, and began feverishly to devour the two copies of his paper.
Billy Harper, penitently sober and sworn to sobriety for all his days, had outdone himself on that day’s issue. He told how the voters crowded to the polls in their eagerness to vote for Bruce, and he gave with a tremendous exultation an estimate of Bruce’s majority, which was so great as to be an almost unanimous election. Also he told how Blind Charlie Peck had prudently caught last night’s eleven o’clock express and was now believed to be repairing his health down at Hot Springs, Arkansas. Also he gave a deal of inside history: told how the extra had been gotten out the night before, with the Blake mass-meeting going on beneath the Express’s windows; told of the scene at the home of Blake, and Blake’s strange march to jail; and, freed from the restraint of Katherine’s presence, who would have forbidden him, he told with a world of praise the story of how she had worked up the case.
The election extra finished, Bruce spread open the extra of the night before, the paper that had transferred him from a prison cell to the mayor’s office, and read the mass of Katherine’s evidence that Billy had so stirringly set forth. Then the head of the editor of the Express, of the mayor of Westville, sank forward into his folded arms and he sat bowed, motionless, upon the judge’s desk.
A great outburst of cheering from the crowd, though louder far than those that had preceded it, did not disturb him; and he did not look up until he heard the door of the court room open. Then he saw that Old Hosie had entered, and with him Katherine.
“I’ll just leave you two for a minute,” Old Hosie said rapidly, “while I go out and start things going by introducing the Honourable Hiram Cogshell.”
With that the old man took the arm of Katherine’s father, who had been standing just behind, slipped through the door and was gone. A moment later, from in front, there arose a succession of cheers for Doctor West.