just been made."

"What statement?" demanded the coroner.

"Against the aspersion," continued the cobbler, with an oratorical
flourish, "that has been cast upon a honorable calling."

"I don't understand you," said the coroner.

"Doctor Summers has insinuated that this murder was committed by a
butcher. Now a member of that honorable calling is sitting on this
jury----"

"You let me alone," growled the butcher.

"I will not let you alone," persisted the cobbler. "I desire----"

"Oh, shut up, Pope!" This was from the foreman, who, at the same
moment, reached out an enormous hairy hand with which he grabbed the
cobbler's coat-tails and brought him into a sitting posture with a
thump that shook the room.

But Mr. Pope, though seated, was not silenced. "I desire," he said,
"to have my protest put on record."

"I can't do that," said the coroner, "and I can't allow you to
interrupt the witnesses."

"I am acting," said Mr. Pope, "in the interests of my friend here and
the members of a honorable----"

But here the butcher turned on him savagely, and, in a hoarse
stage-whisper, exclaimed:

"Look here, Pope; you've got too much of what the cat licks----"

"Gentlemen! gentlemen!" the coroner protested sternly; "I cannot permit
this unseemly conduct. You are forgetting the solemnity of the
occasion and your own responsible positions. I must insist on more
decent and decorous behavior."

There was profound silence, in the midst of which the butcher concluded
in the same hoarse whisper:

"--licks 'er paws with."

The coroner cast a withering glance at him, and, turning to the
witness, resumed the examination.

"Can you tell us, Doctor, how long a time has elapsed since the death
of the deceased?"

"I should say not less than eighteen months, but probably more. How
much more it is impossible from inspection alone to say. The bones are
perfectly clean--that is, clean of all soft structures--and will remain
substantially in their present condition for many years."

"The evidence of the man who found the remains in the watercress-bed
suggests that they could not have been there for more than two years.
Do the appearances in your opinion agree with that view?"

"Yes; perfectly."

"There is one more point, Doctor; a very important one. Do you find
anything in any of the bones, or all of them together, which would
enable you to identify them as the bones of any particular individual?"

"No," replied