Meantime Clerk McGuire was handed the hatchet, and approached the coop with obvious misgivings.  Ah Fong had already given a dubious approval to the sex and quality of the fowls inside and naught remained but to submit the proper oath and remove the head of the unfortunate victim.  A large crowd of policemen, witnesses, reporters, loafers, truckmen and others drawn by the unusual character of the proceedings had assembled and now proceeded without regard for the requirements of judicial dignity to encourage McGuire in his capacity of executioner, by profane shouts and jeers, to do his deadly deed.

But the clerk had had no experience with chickens and in bashfully groping for the selected rooster allowed several other occupants of the crate to escape.  Instantly the air was filled with fluttering, squawking fowls while fifty frenzied police officers and Chinamen attempted vainly to reduce them to captivity again.  In the midst of the melee McGuire caught his rooster, and fearful lest it should escape him managed somehow to decapitate it.  The body, however, had been flopping around spasmodically several seconds upon the floor before he realized that the oath had not been administered, and his voice suddenly rose above the pandemonium in an excited brogue.

“Hold up your hands, you!  You do solemnly swear that in the case of The People against Mock Hen you will tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you God!”

But the interpreter was at that moment engaged in clasping to his bosom a struggling rooster and was totally unable to fulfill his functions.  Meantime the jury, highly edified at this illustration of the administration of justice, gazed down upon the spectacle from the stairs.

“This farce has gone far enough!” declared Judge Bender disgustedly.  “We will return to the court room.  Put those roosters back where they belong!”

Once more the participants ascended to Part IX and Ah Fong took his seat in the witness chair.  The interpreter’s blouse was covered with pin-feathers and one of his thumbs was bleeding profusely.

“Ask the witness if the oath that he has now taken will bind his conscience?” directed the court.

Again the interpreter and Ah Fong held converse.

“He says,” translated that official calmly, “that the chicken oath is all right in China, but that it is no good in United States, and that anyway the proper form of words was not used.”

“Good Lord!” ejaculated O’Brien.  “Where am I?”

“Me tell truth, all light,” suddenly announced Ah Fong in English.  “Go ahead!  Shoot!” And he smiled an inscrutable age-long Oriental smile.

The jury burst into laughter.

“He’s stringing you!” the foreman kindly informed O’Brien, who cursed silently.

“Go on, Mister District Attorney, examine the witness,” directed the judge.  “I shall permit no further variations upon the established forms of procedure.”