half an hour, he stumbled out the door, and on his hands and knees, made his way back to the consulate across the street from the Rochester. McCook stated his version of events in a letter to Washington claiming he was framed by an anarchist editor. He had not crawled on hands and knees, he claimed, he had merely slipped on the ice and quickly returned to his feet. That might have been the end of it, but he reported the loss of his watch and chain to Sam Steele of the Mounted Police. Steele was able to recover the watch from the bookkeeper at the Phoenix, who had kindly held it in safekeeping. The watch chain was never recovered. In a scathing editorial, titled, "Eagle's Drooped Wings", the Nugget stated that the consul had brought shame on his flag and his country and should step down from his position. McCook retaliated by filing a charge of defamatory libel against the Nugget, which responded April 19 with a cartoon of a still drunken, pointy-eared, consul lying amongst the garbage on the Yukon River ice, awaiting spring break-up. In subsequent issues, the Nugget continued to campaign for McCook's removal from office. The libel case went before a judge and jury and was gleefully reported upon in lengthy detail in the June 3 edition by the Nugget, which won the case. Having already been embarrassed several times by the newspaper, Consul McCook was again exposed to ridicule before a packed courtroom as