"First, I shall talk it over with Mr. Blake. You know he told me to come to him if I ever wished his advice. He knows the situation here--he has the interests of Westville at heart--and I know he will help us. I'm not going to lose a second, so I'm off to see him now." She rushed downstairs. But she did have to lose a second, and many of them, for when she called up Mr. Blake's office on the telephone, the answer came back that Mr. Blake was in the capital and would not return till the following day on the one forty-five. It occurred to Katherine to advise with old Hosie Hollingsworth, for during the long summer her blind, childish shrinking had changed to warm liking of the dry old lawyer; and she had discovered, too, that the heresies it had been his delight to utter a generation before--and on which he still prided himself--were now a part of the belief of many an orthodox divine. But she decided against conferring with Old Hosie. Her adviser and leader must be a man more actively in the current of modern affairs. No, Blake was her great hope, and precious and few as were the hours before the trial, there was nothing for it but to wait for his return. She went up to her room, and her excited mind, now half inspired, went feverishly over the situation and all who were in any wise concerned in it. She thought of the fifty dollar check from the Acme Filter Company. With her new viewpoint she now understood the whole bewildering business of that check. The company, or at least one of its officers, was somehow in on the deal, and there had been some careful scheming behind the sending of that fifty dollars. The company had been confronted with two obvious difficulties. First, it had to make certain that the check would not be received until after the two thousand dollars was in the hands of her father. Second, the date of the check and the date of the Westville postmark must be earlier than the day the two thousand dollars was delivered--else Doctor West could produce check and envelope to prove that the check had not arrived until after he had already accepted what he thought was the donation, and thus perhaps ruin the whole scheme. What had been done, Katherine now clearly perceived, was that some one, most probably an assistant of her father, had been bought over to look out for the arrival of the letter, to hold it back until the critical day had passed, and then slip it into her father's neglected mail. Her mind raced on to further matters, further persons, connected with the situation. When she came to Bruce her hands clenched the arms of her wicker rocking chair. In a flash the whole man was plain to her, and her second great discovery of the day was made. Bruce was an agent of the hidden corporation!