"Look yer," said Gabriel, with gentle persuasiveness, "ef it's the same to ye, you'd be doin' me a heap o' good ef you'd let on whar thet July--thet Mrs. Conroy ez. Bein' a man ez in his blindness bows down to wood and stun, ye ain't supposed to allow fur a Christian's feelings. But I put to ye ez a far-minded brethren--a true man and a man whatsoever his colour that it's a square thing fur ye to allow to me whar thet woman ez ez my relation by marriage ez hidin'! Allowin' it's one o' my idols--I axes you as a brother Pagan--whar ez she?" A faint, flickering smile of pathetic abstraction and simplicity, as of one listening to far-off but incomprehensible music stole over Ah Fe's face. Then he said kindly, gently, but somewhat vaguely and unsatisfactorily-- "Me no shabbee Melican man. Me washee shirtee! dollah and hap dozen!" CHAPTER V. THE PEOPLE _V._ JOHN DOE _alias_ GABRIEL CONROY, AND JANE ROE _alias_ JULIE CONROY. BEFORE BOOMPOINTER, J. The day of the trial was one of exacting and absorbing interest to One Horse Gulch. Long before ten o'clock the Court-room, and even the halls and corridors of the lately rehabilitated Court House, were thronged with spectators. It is only fair to say that by this time the main points at issue were forgotten. It was only remembered that some of the first notabilities of the State had come up from Sacramento to attend the trial; that one of the most eminent lawyers in San Francisco had been engaged for the prisoner at a fee variously estimated from fifty to one hundred thousand dollars, and that the celebrated Colonel Starbottle of Siskiyou was to assist in the prosecution; that a brisk duel of words, and it was confidently hoped, a later one of pistols, would grow out of this forensic encounter; that certain disclosures affecting men and women of high social standing were to be expected; and, finally, that in some mysterious way a great political and sectional principle (Colonel Starbottle was from the South and Mr. Poinsett from the North) was to be evolved and upheld during the trial--these were the absorbing fascinations to One Horse Gulch.