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 mêlée
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 interpreter's blouse was covered with
pin-feathers and one of his thumbs was bleeding profusely.

"Ask the witness if the oath that he has now taken will bind his
conscience?" directed the court.