ow you, my man."

"Don't you man me!" Del shouted, hotly.

But St. Vincent ignored him, turning to the crowd.

"I never saw the fellow but once before, and then for a few brief
moments in Dawson."

"You'll remember before I'm done," Del sneered; "so hold your hush and
let me say my little say. I come into the country with him way back in
'84."

St. Vincent regarded him with sudden interest.

"Yep, Mr. Gregory St. Vincent. I see you begin to recollect. I
sported whiskers and my name was Brown, Joe Brown, in them days."

He grinned vindictively, and the correspondent seemed to lose all
interest.

"Is it true, Gregory?" Frona whispered.

"I begin to recognize," he muttered, slowly. "I don't know . . . no,
folly! The man must have died."

"You say in '84, Mr. Bishop?" Bill Brown prompted.

"Yep, in '84. He was a newspaper-man, bound round the world by way of
Alaska and Siberia. I'd run away from a whaler at Sitka,--that squares
it with Brown,--and I engaged with him for forty a month and found.
Well, he quarrelled with me--"

A snicker, beginning from nowhere in particular, but passing on from
man to man and swelling in volume, greeted this statement. Even Frona
and Del himself were forced to smile, and the only sober face was the
prisoner's.

"But he quarrelled with Old Andy at Dyea, and with Chief George of the
Chilcoots, and the Factor at Pelly, and so on down the line. He got us
into no end of trouble, and 'specially woman-trouble. He was always
monkeying around--"

"Mr. Chairman, I object." Frona stood up, her face quite calm and
blood under control. "There is no necessity for bringing in the amours
of Mr. St. Vincent. They have no bearing whatsoever upon the case;
and, further, none of the men of this meeting are clean enough to be
prompted by the right motive in conducting such an inquiry. So I
demand that the prosecution at least confine itself to relevant
testimony."

Bill Brown came up smugly complacent and smiling. "Mr. Chairman, we
willingly accede to the request made by the defence. Whatever we have
brought out has been relevant and material. Whatever we intend to
bring out shall be relevant and material. Mr. Bishop is our star
witness, and his testimony is to the point. It must be taken into
consideration that we nave no direct evidence as to the murder of John
Borg. We can bring no eye-witnesses into court. Whatever we have is
circumstantial. It is incumbent upon us