CANAL ZONE V. COOPER.

Appeal by defendant from the Circuit Court of the Second Judicial Circuit of the Canal Zone; Hon. Wesley M. Owen, Judge.
The facts appear in the opinion.
Carrington and Todd, for appellant. G. M. Shontz for the Canal Zone.
LORIN C. COLLINS, J. On the morning of the 24th of November, 1908, Andrew James McFarlane arose from his couch in the village of Culebra and asked his wife for all the money she had, as he wislhed to go Chepo, in the interior of Panama, to purchase supplies.
Some remonstrance was made but she gave him from their mutual store, the exact sum of $315 United States currency. Whether he had other money or not does not appear from the evidence. He then proceeded to the railroad station at Culebra, where, when engaged in conversation with one Benjamin Grant, he espied a woman with a hand sewing machine and six fowls in a basket. At this point he excused himself from Grant and walked over and gave to this woman, whose name was Mary Cooper, the appellant, a roll of money which she says contained $63.50, and he says amounted to $315, which Grant says was a pile of American green bills, among which he recognized a twenty-dollar bill, and asked her to keep it for him until his return from Chepo. He says, and so does Grant, that the woman asked when she should return this deposit and McFarlane said, on the 12th of December. McFarlane testifies that this woman and he were not intimate friends; that he had once, in the discharge of his duty, caused her arrest and conviction. There is no claim made that the woman solicited McFarlane and that he acted other than under his own will. He had for some years been a member of the Zone police force and had retired, or been retired therefrom.
The conversation at the station in making this bailment, does not seem to have consumed any time. It was suddenly done and might have been the result of a prior plan; but this is true, that McFarlane and his money, the eyewitness Grant, and the woman with the hand sewing machine and the basket with the six fowls arrived at the station about six or seven minutes before the train which was to take McFarlane on his way to Chepo. Why should McFarlane so suddenly have decided to make Mary Cooper the custodian of his wealth? He told his wife that he needed this
MR 363367--2

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