"Something has happened to father!" cried Katherine. She clutched her aunt's thin shoulders. "Has something happened to father?" The old woman trembled all over, and tears started from her mild eyes. "Yes," she quavered. "But what is it?" Katherine asked frantically. "Is he very sick?" "It's--it's worse than that." "Please! What is it then?" "I haven't the heart to tell thee," she said piteously, and she sank into a chair and covered her face. Katherine caught her arm and fairly shook her in the intensity of her demand. "Tell me! I can't stand this another instant!" "There--there isn't going to be any celebration." "No celebration?" "Yesterday--thy father--was arrested." "Arrested!" "And indicted for accepting a bribe." Katherine shrank back. "Oh!" she whispered. "Oh!" Then her slender body tensed, and her dark eyes flashed fire. "Father accept a bribe! It's a lie! A lie!" "It hardly seems true to me, either." "It's a lie!" repeated Katherine. "But is he--is he locked up?" "They let me go his bail." Again Katherine caught her aunt's arm. "Come--tell me all about it!" "Please don't make me. I--I can't." "But I must know!" "It's in the newspapers--they're on the centre-table." Katherine turned to the table and seized a paper. At sight of the sheet she had picked up, the old woman hurried across to her in dismay. "Don't read that _Express_!" she cried, and she sought to draw the paper from Katherine's hands. "Read the _Clarion_. It's ever so much kinder." But Katherine had already seen the headline that ran across the top of the _Express_. It staggered her. She gasped at the blow, but she held on to the paper. "I'll read the worst they have to say," she said. Her aunt dropped into a chair and covered her eyes to avoid sight of the girl's suffering. The story, in its elements, was a commonplace to Katherine; in her work with the Municipal League she had every few days met with just such a tale as this. But that which is a commonplace when strangers are involved, becomes a tragedy when loved ones are its actors. So, as she read the old, old story, Katherine trembled as with mortal pain. But sickening as was the story in itself, it was made even more agonizing to her by the manner of the _Express's_ telling. Bruce's typewriter had never been more impassioned. The story was in heavy-faced type, the lines two columns wide; and in a "box" in the very centre of the first page was an editorial denouncing Doctor West and demanding for him such severe punishment as would make future traitors forever fear to sell their city. Article and editorial were rousing and vivid, brilliant and bitter--as mercilessly stinging as a salted whip-lash cutting into bare flesh. Katherine writhed with the pain of it. "Oh!" she cried. "It's brutal! Brutal! Who could have had the heart to write like that about father?" "The editor, Arnold Bruce," answered her aunt.