overflowed and fell on the ground, and he was obliged to pick them up and replace them. One of them was a baby's shirt--so small it filled the great hand that grasped it. In Gabriel's emigrant experience, as the frequent custodian and nurse of the incomplete human animal, he was somewhat familiar with those sacred, mummy-like enwrappings usually unknown to childless men, and he recognised it at once. He did not replace it in the basket, but, with a suffused cheek and an increased sense of his usual awkwardness, stuffed it into the pocket of his blouse. Nor did he send the basket to Lawyer Maxwell, as he had intended, and in fact omitted any allusion to it in his usual account to Olly of his daily experience. For the next two days he was peculiarly silent and thoughtful, and was sharply reprimanded by Olly for general idiocy and an especial evasion of some practical duties. "Yer's them lawyers hez been huntin' ye to come over and examine that there Chinaman, Ah Fe, ez is jest turned up ag'in, and you ain't no whar to be found; and Lawyer Maxwell sez it's a most important witness. And whar' bouts was ye found? Down in the Gulch, chirpin' and gossipin' with that Arkansas family, and totin' round Mrs. Welch's baby. And you a growed man, with a fammerly of yer own to look after. I wonder ye ain't got more _sabe_!--prancin' round in this yer shiftless way, and you on trial, and accused o' killin' folks. Yer a high ole Gabe--rentin' yerself out fur a dry nuss for nothin'!" Gabriel (colouring and hastily endeavouring to awaken Olly's feminine sympathies): "It waz the powerfullest, smallest baby--ye oughter get to see it, Olly! 'Tain't bigger nor a squirrel--on'y two weeks old yesterday!" Olly (outwardly scornful, but inwardly resolving to visit the phenomenon next week): "Don't stand yawpin' here, but waltz down to Lawyer Maxwell and see that Chinaman." Gabriel reached the office of Lawyer Maxwell just as that gentleman and Arthur Poinsett were rising from a long, hopeless, and unsatisfactory examination of Ah Fe. The lawyers had hoped to be able to establish the fact of Gabriel's remoteness from the scene of the murder by some corroborating incident or individual that Ah Fe could furnish in support of the detailed narrative he had already given. But it did not appear that any Caucasian had been encountered or met by Ah Fe at the time of his errand. And Ah Fe's memory of the details he had already described was apparently beginning to be defective; it was evident nothing was to be gained from him even if he had been constituted a legal witness. And then, more than all, he was becoming sullen! "We are afraid that we haven't made much out of your friend, Ah Fe," said Arthur, taking Gabriel's hand. "You might try if _you_ can revive his memory, but it looks doubtful."