ently discovered who agreed simply for
what advertising there was in it to furnish a crate of white roosters,
a hatchet and a headsman's block, and to have them in the basement of
the building promptly at ten o'clock.

Accordingly, at that hour Judge Bender convened Part IX of the General
Sessions in the court room and then adjourned downstairs, where all the
prospective witnesses for the prosecution were lined up in a body and
told to raise their right hands.

Meantime Clerk McGuire was handed the hatchet, and approached the coop
with obvious misgivings. Ah Fong had already given a dubious approval to
the sex and quality of the fowls inside and naught remained but to
submit the proper oath and remove the head of the unfortunate victim. A
large crowd of policemen, witnesses, reporters, loafers, truckmen and
others drawn by the unusual character of the proceedings had assembled
and now proceeded without regard for the requirements of judicial
dignity to encourage McGuire in his capacity of executioner, by profane
shouts and jeers, to do his deadly deed.

But the clerk had had no experience with chickens and in bashfully
groping for the selected rooster allowed several other occupants of the
crate to escape. Instantly the air was filled with fluttering, squawking
fowls while fifty frenzied police officers and Chinamen attempted
vainly to reduce them to captivity again. In the midst of the melee
McGuire caught his rooster, and fearful lest it should escape him
managed somehow to decapitate it. The body, however, had been flopping
around spasmodically several seconds upon the floor before he realized
that the oath had not been administered, and his voice suddenly rose
above the pandemonium in an excited brogue.

"Hold up your hands, you! You do solemnly swear that in the case of The
People against Mock Hen you will tell the truth, the whole truth and
nothing but the truth so help you God!"

But the interpreter was at that moment engaged in clasping to his bosom
a struggling rooster and was totally unable to fulfill his functions.
Meantime the jury, highly edified at this illustration of the
administration of justice, gazed down upon the spectacle from the
stairs.

"This farce has gone far enough!" declared Judge Bender disgustedly. "We
will return to the court room. Put those roosters back where they
belong!"

Once more the participants ascended to Part IX and Ah Fong took his seat
in the witness chair. The interpr