r than was necessary. Being partial to
women--"

"That will do, Mr. Bishop," interrupted the chairman, who, from
profitless watching of Frona's immobile face, had turned to her hand,
the nervous twitching and clinching of which revealed what her face had
hidden. "That will do, Mr. Bishop. I think we have had enough of
squaws."

"Pray do not temper the testimony," Frona chirruped, sweetly. "It
seems very important."

"Do you know what I am going to say next?" Del demanded hotly of the
chairman. "You don't, eh? Then shut up. I'm running this particular
sideshow."

Bill Brown sprang in to avert hostilities, but the chairman restrained
himself, and Bishop went on.

"I'd been done with the whole shooting-match, squaws and all, if you
hadn't broke me off. Well, as I said, he had it in for me, and the
first thing I didn't know, he'd hit me on the head with a rifle-stock,
bundled the squaw into the canoe, and pulled out. You all know what
the Yukon country was in '84. And there I was, without an outfit, left
alone, a thousand miles from anywhere. I got out all right, though
there's no need of telling how, and so did he. You've all heard of his
adventures in Siberia. Well," with an impressive pause, "I happen to
know a thing or two myself."

He shoved a hand into the big pocket of his mackinaw jacket and pulled
out a dingy leather-bound volume of venerable appearance.

"I got this from Pete Whipple's old woman,--Whipple of Eldorado. It
concerns her grand-uncle or great-grand-uncle, I don't know which; and
if there's anybody here can read Russian, why, it'll go into the
details of that Siberian trip. But as there's no one here that can--"

"Courbertin! He can read it!" some one called in the crowd.

A way was made for the Frenchman forthwith, and he was pushed and
shoved, protestingly, to the front.

"Savve the lingo?" Del demanded.

"Yes; but so poorly, so miserable," Courbertin demurred. "It is a long
time. I forget."

"Go ahead. We won't criticise."

"No, but--"

"Go ahead!" the chairman commanded.

Del thrust the book into his hands, opened at the yellow title-page.
"I've been itching to get my paws on some buck like you for months and
months," he assured him, gleefully. "And now I've got you, you can't
shake me, Charley. So fire away."

Courbertin began hesitatingly: "'_The Journal of Father Yakontsk,
Comprising an Account in Brief of his Life in the Benedictine Monastery
at Obidor