the thing got into the supreme court, and there it
stuck for twenty years. But last summer, even the supreme court managed
to arrive at a decision at last. Once more the original verdict was
sustained. Christian then said he was satisfied; but Stavely was
present, and whispered to him and to his lawyer, suggesting, "as a mere
form," that the original law be exhibited, in order to make sure that it
still existed. It seemed an odd idea, but an ingenious one. So the
demand was made. A messenger was sent to the magistrate's house; he
presently returned with the tidings that it had disappeared from among
the state archives.

The court now pronounced its late decision void, since it had been made
under a law which had no actual existence.

Great excitement ensued immediately. The news swept abroad over the
whole island that the palladium of the public liberties was lost--maybe
treasonably destroyed. Within thirty minutes almost the entire nation
were in the court-room--that is to say, the church. The impeachment of
the chief magistrate followed, upon Stavely's motion. The accused met
his misfortune with the dignity which became his great office. He did
not plead, or even argue; he offered the simple defense that he had not
meddled with the missing law; that he had kept the state archives in the
same candle-box that had been used as their depository from the
beginning; and that he was innocent of the removal or destruction of the
lost document.

But nothing could save him; he was found guilty of misprision of treason,
and degraded from his office, and all his property was confiscated.

The lamest part of the whole shameful matter was the reason suggested by
his enemies for his destruction of the law, to wit: that he did it to
favor Christian, because Christian was his cousin! Whereas Stavely was
the only individual in the entire nation who was not his cousin. The
reader must remember that all these people are the descendants of half a
dozen men; that the first children intermarried together and bore
grandchildren to the mutineers; that these grandchildren intermarried;
after them, great and great-great-grandchildren intermarried; so that
to-day everybody is blood kin to everybody. Moreover, the relationships
are wonderfully, even astoundingly, mixed up and complicated. A
stranger, for instance, says to an islander:

"You speak of that young woman as your cousin; a while ago you called her
your aunt."

"W