“‘Your Supreme Highness,’ I began, ‘I have heard of your great prowess as a sportsman, and so I wanted to pay my respects. I, too, am a shootist--an American shootist.’ Here I launched out on our big game (I had been six months in the Rockies before I came abroad, and knew what I was talking about). He was wide awake by this time and was listening. Dropping into the chair which he had drawn up for me, I told him of our elk--‘As big as horses, your Honor’; of our mountain lions--savage beasts that could climb trees and fall upon the defenseless; of our catamounts, deer, wolves, bears, foxes--all these we killed without molestation from anybody; I told him how all American sportsmen were like the Nimrods of old. How galling, then, for a true shootist to be misunderstood, decried, denounced, and arrested for so insignificant a beastie as a rabbit! This indignity my very dear friend, Herr Wilhelm Fuedels-Shimmer, had suffered--a most estimable young man--careless, perhaps, in his interpretation of the law, but who would not be--that is, what sportsman would not be? I had in Wilhelm’s defense not only backed up his story, but I had gone so far as to hazard the opinion to the officer of that law, that it was not on some uncertain Tuesday or Friday or Saturday, but on that very Wednesday, that his Supreme Highness had been wont to follow with his four accomplished dogs the tracks of the nimble cotton-tail. Would his Highness, therefore, be good enough to concentrate his giant brain on his past life and fish from out his memory the exact day on which he last hunted? While that was going on I would excuse myself long enough to bring in the alleged criminal. “Fiddles stepped in with the easy grace of a courtier accustomed to meeting a Mayor every day of his life, and, after a confirmatory wink from me, boldly asserted that he had followed behind his Honor--had really assisted in driving the game his way. His Honor might not remember his face, but he surely must remember that his Honorable Honor had extraordinarily good luck that day. The rabbit in controversy--a very small, quite a baby rabbit--was really one his Honorable and Most Supreme Highness had himself wounded, and which he, Fiddles, had finished. He was bringing it to his Honor when the estimable gendarme had stopped him. “‘And what day was that?’ interrupted the Mayor. “‘On last Wednesday.’ “‘The cobbler said it was Tuesday,’ insisted Cocked Hat. ‘On this point hangs the case. Now on which day did your Honor take the field with your dogs?’