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"Yes." This was spoken feebly.

"And you twenty feet or more away?"

"I've got awful good eyes, an' I know what I see." whined the witness, apologetically.

Here Lincoln paused, and after regarding his uneasy victim for a quarter of a minute, thrust his hand into the tail-pocket of his blue coat and drew forth a small pamphlet in green covers. He turned the leaves of this with extreme deliberation, while the court-room was utterly silent. At last he fixed his thumb firmly at a certain place on a page, and turned his eyes to the judge.

"Now, your honor," he said to the court, "this witness," with a half-contemptuous gesture of his awkward left hand toward Sovine, "has sworn over and over again that he recognized the accused as the person who shot George Lockwood near the Union camp-meeting, on the night of the 9th of last August, and that he, the witness, was standing at the time twenty feet or more away, while the scene of the shooting was nearly a mile distant from the torches inside the circle of tents. So remarkably sharp are the witness's eyes that he even saw what kind of pistol the prisoner held in his hand, and how the barrel was hung to the stock, and he is able to identify this pistol of Grayson's as precisely like, and probably the identical weapon. All these details he saw and observed in the brief space of time preceding the fatal shot-saw and observed them at 10 o'clock at night by means of moonlight shining through the trees-beech trees in full leaf. That is a pretty hard story. How much light does even a full moon shed in a beech woods like that on the Union camp-ground? Not enough to see your way by, as everybody knows who has had to stumble through such woods." Lincoln paused here, and turned the leaves of his pamphlet. Then he began again: "But, may it please the court, before proceeding with the witness I would like to have the jury look at the almanac which I hold in my hand. They will here see that on the night of the 9th of last August, when this extraordinary witness"-with a sneer at Dave, who had sunk down on a chair in exhaustion-"saw the shape of a pistol at twenty feet away, at 10 o'clock by moonlight, the moon did not rise until half-past I in the morning."

Sovine had been gasping like a fish newly taken from

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the water, while Lincoln uttered these words, and he now began to mutter something.

"You may have a chance to explain when the jury get done looking at the almanac," said the lawyer to him. "For the present you'd better keep silence."

Lincoln walked slowly toward the jury-box and gave the almanac to the foreman, an intelligent farmer. One after another the jurymen satisfied themselves that on the night of the 9th, that is-on the morning of the 10th, the moon came up at half-past I o'clock. When the last one had examined the page, the counsel recovered his little book, and slowly laid it face downward on the table in front of him, open at the place of its testimony. The audience was utterly silent and expectant. The prosecuting attorney got half-way to his feet to object to Lincoln's course, but he thought better of it, and sat down again.

"Now, may it please the court," Lincoln went on, "I wish at this point to make a motion. I think the court will not regard it as out of order, as the case is very exceptional-a matter of life and death. This witness has solemnly sworn to a story that has manifestly not one word of truth in it. It is one unbroken falsehood. In order to take away the life of an innocent man he has invented this atrocious web of lies, to the falsity of which the very heavens above bear witness, as this almanac shows you. Now, why does David Sovine go to all this trouble to swear away the life of that young man who never did him any harm?" Lincoln stood still a moment and looked at the witness, who had grown ghastly pale about the lips. Then he went on, very slowly: "Because that witness shot and killed George Lockwood himself. I move, your honor, that David Sovine be arrested at once for murder."

These words, spoken with extreme deliberation and careful emphasis, shook the audience like an explosion. "This is at least a case of extraordinary perjury," said the judge. "Sheriff, arrest David Sovine! This matter I will have to be looked into."

The sheriff came down from his seat, and went up to the now stunned and bewildered Sovine.

"I arrest you," he said, taking him by the arm.

The day-and-night fear of detection in which Dave had lived for all these weeks had wrecked his control at last.

"God!" he muttered, dropping his head with a sort of shudder. "Tain't any use keeping it back any longer. I didn't mean to shoot him, an' I wouldn't 'a' come here against Tom if I could 'a' got away."

The Owl and the Bell

BY GEORGE MACDONALD.

"Bing, Bim, Bang, Bome!"

Sang the Bell to himself in his house at home.
Up in the tower, away and unseen,
In a twilight of ivy, cool and green;
With his Bing, Bim, Bang, Bome!

Singing bass to himself in his house at home.

Said the Owl to himself, as he sat below
On a window-ledge, like a ball of snow,
"Pest on that fellow, sitting up there,
Always calling the people to prayer!
With his Bing, Bim, Bang, Bome!
Mighty big in his house at home!

"I will move," said the Owl. "But it suits me well; And one may get used to it,-who can tell?"

So he slept in the day with all his might,

And rose and flapped out in the hush of night,
When the Bell was asleep in his tower at home,
Dreaming over his Bing, Bang, Bome!

For the Owl was born so poor and genteel,

He was forced from the first to pick and steal;
He scorned to work for honest bread-
"Better have never been hatched," he said.
So he slept all day; for he dared not roam
Till the night had silenced the Bing, Bang, Bome!

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When his six little darlings had chipped the egg,
He must steal the more; 'twas a shame to beg.
And they ate the more that they did not sleep well.
"It's their gizzards," said ma; said pa, "It's the Bell!
For they quiver like leaves in a wind-blown tome,
When the Bell bellows out his Bing, Bang, Bome!"

But the Bell began to throb with the fear
Of bringing the house about his one ear;
And his people were patching all day long,
And propping the walls to make them strong.
So a fortnight he sat, and felt like a mome,
For he dared not shout his Bing, Bang, Bome!

Said the Owl to himself, and hissed as he said,
"I do believe the old fool is dead.

Now, now, I vow, I shall never pounce twice
And stealing shall be all sugar and spice.
But I'll see the corpse, ere he's laid in the loam,
And shout in his ear Bing, Bim, Bang, Bome!

"Hoo! hoo!" he cried, as he entered the steeple,
"They've hanged him at last, the righteous people!
His swollen tongue lolls out of his head-
Hoo! hoo! at last the old brute is dead.
There let him hang, the shapeless gnome!
Choked, with his throat full of Bing, Bang, Bome!"

So he danced about him, singing Too-whoo!
And flapped the poor Bell and said, "Is that you?
Where is your voice with its wonderful tone,
Banging poor owls and making them groan?
A fig for you now, in your great hall-dome!
Too-whoo is better than Bing, Bang, Bome!"

So brave was the Owl, the downy and dapper,
That he flew inside, and sat on the clapper;
And he shouted Too-whoo! till the echo awoke
Like the sound of a ghostly clapper-stroke.
"Ah, ha!" quoth the Owl, "I am quite at home;
I will take your place with my Bing, Bang, Bome!"

The owl was uplifted with pride and self-wonder;
He hissed, and then called the echo thunder;

And he sat, the monarch of feathered fowl,
Till-Bang! went the Bell, and down went the owl,
Like an avalanche of feathers and foam,
Loosed by the booming Bing, Bang, Bome.

He sat where he fell, as if naught was the matter,
Though one of his eyebrows was certainly flatter.
Said the eldest owlet, "Pa you were wrong;
He's at it again with his vulgar song."

"Be still," said the Owl; "you're guilty of pride: I brought him to life by perching inside."

"But why, my dear?" said his pillowy wife; "You know he was always the plague of your life." "I have given him a lesson of good for evil; "Perhaps the old ruffian will now be civil." The Owl looked righteous, and raised his comb; But the Bell bawled on his Bing, Bang, Bome!

Kallundborg Church

BY JOHN G. WHITTIER.

"Build at Kallundborg by the sea
A church as stately as church may be,
And there shalt thou wed my daughter fair,"
Said the Lord of Nesvek to Esbern Snare.

And the Baron laughed. But Esbern said,
"Though I lose my soul, I will Helva wed!"
And off he strode, in his pride of will,
To the Troll who dwelt in Ulshoi hill.

"Build, O Troll, a church for me
At Kallundborg by the mighty sea;
Build it stately, and build it fair,
Build it quickly," said Esbern Snare.

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