Katherine went up a gravelled walk toward a cottage that stood beneath the church's shadow. The house's front was covered with a wide-spreading rose vine, a tapestry of rich green which June would gorgeously embroider with sprays of heart-red roses. The cottage looked what Katherine knew it was, a bower of lovers. Her ring was answered by a fair, fragile young woman whose eyes were the colour of faith and loyalty. A faint colour crept into the young woman's pale cheeks. "Why--Katherine--why--why--I don't know what you think of us, but--but----" She could stammer out no more, but stood in the doorway in distressed uncertainty. Katherine's answer was to stretch out her arms. "Elsie!" Instantly the two old friends were in a close embrace. "I haven't slept, Katherine," sobbed Mrs. Sherman, "for thinking of what you would think----" "I think that, whatever has happened, I love you just the same." "Thank you for saying it, Katherine." Mrs. Sherman gazed at her in tearful gratitude. "I can't tell you how we have suffered over this--this affair. Oh, if you only knew!" It was instinctive with Katherine to soothe the pain of others, though suffering herself. "I am certain Doctor Sherman acted from the highest motives," she assured the young wife. "So say no more about it." They had entered the little sitting-room, hung with soft white muslin curtains. "But at the same time, Elsie, I cannot believe my father guilty," Katherine went on. "And though I honour your husband, why, even the noblest man can be mistaken. My hope of proving my father's innocence is based on the belief that Doctor Sherman may somehow have made a mistake. At any rate, I'd like to talk over his evidence with him." "He's trying to work on his sermon, though he's too worn to think. I'll bring him right in." She passed through a door into the study, and a moment later reentered with Doctor Sherman. The present meeting would have been painful to an ordinary person; doubly so was it to such a hyper-sensitive nature. The young clergyman stood hesitant just within the doorway, his usual pallor greatly deepened, his thin fingers intertwisted--in doubt how to greet Katherine till she stretched out her hand to him. "I want you to understand, Katherine dear," little Mrs. Sherman put in quickly, with a look of adoration at her husband, "that Edgar reached the decision to take the action he did only after days of agony. You know, Katherine, Doctor West was always as kind to me as another father, and I loved him almost like one. At first I begged Edgar not to do anything. Edgar walked the floor for nights--suffering!--oh, how you suffered, Edgar!" "Isn't it a little incongruous," said Doctor Sherman, smiling wanly at her, "for the instrument that struck the blow to complain, in the presence of the victim, of _his_ suffering?"