too shame."

And Lamoury paused to let this beautiful sentiment impress itself
upon the jurors. Mr. Peaslee listened with profound astonishment.

"Den he holler somet'ing Ah ain't hear, honly 'Canuck,' han' Ah
begins for get my mads up. Ah hain't do heem no harm, _hein_? Den he
fire hees gun,--poom!--an' more as twenty--prob'ly ten shot-buck
heet me on the head of it!"

Buckshot! "Them's the marble," thought Mr. Peaslee, "but there
wasn't but one!"

"Ah tol' you dey steeng lak bumbletybees. Ah t'ink me, dat weeked
leetly boy goin' for shoot more as once prob'ly--mebbe two, t'ree
tam. Ah drop queek in de grass, an' Ah run--run queek! An' when Ah
get home, Ah find two, t'ree, five, mebbe four hole in mah arm more
beeg as mah t'umb."

Pete stopped dramatically; his little sparkling black eyes traveled
quickly from one face to another to note the effect he had made. Mr.
Peaslee's spirits were rising; the grand jury could not believe such
a "passel of lies"--only, only was one of those holes "beeg as mah
t'umb" made, perchance, by a marble?

"That's a mighty moving narrative," commented Sampson, dryly. "Did I
understand you to say that you were hit in the head or the arm?"

"Bose of it," averred Pete, without winking.

"I didn't shoot any bag of marbles," whispered Mr. Peaslee to his
neighbor, who nodded. That he had the courage to address a remark to
any one shows how his spirits were rising.

"You said you were going along the short cut through Mr. Edwards's
orchard, didn't you?" the state's attorney now asked.

"Yes, seh," said Pete.

Paige stepped to a big blackboard, which he had had set up at the
end of the room, and rapidly sketched a plan of the Edwards' lot,
with the aid of a memorandum of measurements which he had secured.
A line across the upper left-hand corner represented the path
commonly used by the neighbors in going through the Edwards's
orchard.

"Now, Mr. Lamoury," resumed Paige, "I don't quite understand how, if
you were on the path there, you could have seen young Edwards, or he
you. The barn seems to be in the way until just at the right-hand
end, and when you get to that, you'd have to look through about ten
rows of apple-trees. Now weren't you a little off the line?"

"Dame!" exclaimed Pete, ingenuously. "Ah'll was got for be, since
Ah was shoot, ain't it? Ah'll can't remembler."

"Mr. Edwards told us," continued Paige, while Solomon's heart warmed
to him, "that he saw you fall out