engineer, and every member of his corps were called on the stand to testify to the setting of the stakes, through Pickett’s Gap, on the afternoon of September twenty-seventh. No amount or severity of cross-examination could shake the testimony of any of them on that point. Nor could any of them explain why the stakes were not still in position (if they were not) when Pickett made his survey some six or eight hours later. Nicholson declared, however, in answer to a question on direct examination, that the surreptitious removal of the stakes would benefit no one unless it might be the T. & W. Railroad Company. But this objectionable answer was, on motion of counsel for the T. & W., stricken from the record. Templeton, the Philadelphia lawyer, took up the cross-examination. “It appears,” he said to Nicholson, “from this map which I have before me, that you located your route directly through the Pickett graveyard. Is that true?” “It is.” “And in making your relocation did you again pass through the graveyard?” “We did.” “Is there any other practicable route by which to reach the entrance to the gap except the one occupied by the Tidewater and Western running to the south side of the brook?” “There is no other.” “If then it should turn out that your company has no legal right to occupy this graveyard as a site for a railroad, you would find it difficult to effect an entrance to the gap from the west?” “Yes, sir, practically impossible.” “And did you not know, when you projected your line across that graveyard, that your company, by virtue of the laws of Pennsylvania, had no right to occupy it with a railroad?” “I knew that we had no right without the consent of the owner. That consent, however, has been obtained.” “In what way?” “By fraud!” It was not the witness who made this answer; it was Abner Pickett. Seated on the front row of benches, within easy distance of the witness stand, he had absorbed the testimony with intense interest, holding himself in check with remarkable self-restraint until Templeton’s question gave him an opportunity for a verbal shot which he had not the power to repress. Every eye in the court room was turned on him, but he cared little for that. A tipstaff came up and warned him not to repeat the offence, and then the examination of witnesses was resumed.