IT was the first Monday of July, and the grand inquisitors of the county of McDowell were in laborious session. It was hot in Welch,--so hot that the sheriff had purchased a linen coat and departed for Atlantic City on a ten-dollar excursion, leaving the deputy, Salathiel Jenkins, to swelter with the grand jury. So hot that J. E. B. Huron, prosecuting attorney by selection of the Commonwealth, resorted to expressions not quite profane but nipping close to the border. So hot that the foreman from Charity Fork made continual odious reference to that historic locality over which Lazarus passed in the bosom of Abraham. The grand jury was a body mightily out of harmony with its inquisitorial affairs, especially on this sweltering Monday when the mercury was mounting heavenward. The members of the grand jury had removed their coats, they had unbuttoned their shirts, they had rolled up their sleeves to the limit over their great brown arms. It was hot--this grand jury. But it was jovial and good-natured, sixteen freeholders of the bailiwick turning aside for a day to bolster up the peace and dignity of the State. The characteristic apparel of the farmer, the hunter, and the miner was on this grand jury, but there were no collars; not even the “biled shirt” of notorious report. If one had spoken of a haberdasher or essayed to enumerate his wares in the land south of Tug River, he would have been regarded as a purveyor of “green furrin jabber,” or been pitied as a hopeless victim of idiot mutterings. Thus do men hoot the customs of their fellows when in conflict with their own. One looking at this grand jury as an exhibit would have gone away regretting that the chief fad of Delilah had not been handed down in the county of McDowell, just as the jury would have wondered why the funny little man divided his hair in the middle like a woman and wore a tight band around his neck and a stiff breastplate of cloth and starch over his ribs, when he could dress like a Christian, and be comfortable. At two o'clock the sage body had concluded its inquisition, and was resting ponderously while the foreman. Abe Collister, of Charity Fork, was slowly and with infinite pain affixing his signature to the indictments. It was no small labor for one whose fingers were thick and broad and accustomed to implements little slighter in proportion than the handle of an axe or the stock of a Winchester. The facial contortions of this good freeholder as he strove in a clerical capacity would have won for him applause and fortune and wide repute in the cast of a comedy. It was Fate's way, better than genius could imitate, but no audience to see.