* * * * *

"My God, chief!" exclaimed O'Brien at four o'clock. "There ain't a white
rooster to be had anywhere! Hens, yes! By the hundred! But roosters are
extinct! Tomorrow will be the twenty-first day of this prosecution and
not a witness sworn yet."

However, a poultryman was presently 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