handing you over the money
as I did--suppose I'd got up on my hind legs and said, 'Look yer, Bill
Wethersbee, you're a d----d fool. If I give ye that twenty thousand
you'll throw it away in the first skin game in 'Frisco, and hand it
over to the first short card-sharp you'll meet. There's a
thousand--enough for you to fling away--take it and get!' Suppose what
I'd said to you was the frozen truth, and you knowed it, would that
have been the square thing to play on you?"

But here Wethersbee quickly pointed out the inefficiency of the
comparison by stating that he had won the money fairly with a stake.

"And how do you know," demanded Hamlin savagely, bending his black
eyes on the astonished casuist, "how do you know that the gal hezn't
put down a stake?"

The man stammered an unintelligible reply.

The gambler laid his white hand on Wethersbee's shoulder.

"Look yer, old man," he said, "every gal stakes her whole pile--you
can bet your life on that--whatever's her little game. If she took to
keerds instead of her feelings, if she'd put up chips instead o' body
and soul, she'd burst every bank 'twixt this and 'Frisco! You hear
me?"

Somewhat of this idea was conveyed, I fear not quite as sentimentally,
to Peggy Moffat herself. The best legal wisdom of San Francisco,
retained by the widow and relatives, took occasion, in a private
interview with Peggy, to point out that she stood in the
quasi-criminal attitude of having unlawfully practised upon the
affections of an insane elderly gentleman, with a view of getting
possession of his property; and suggested to her that no vestige of
her moral character would remain after the trial, if she persisted in
forcing her claims to that issue. It is said that Peggy, on hearing
this, stopt washing the plate she had in her hands, and twisting the
towel around her fingers, fixt her small pale blue eyes on the lawyer.

"And ez that the kind o' chirpin' these critters keep up?"

"I regret to say, my dear young lady," responded the lawyer, "that the
world is censorious. I must add," he continued, with engaging
frankness, "that we professional lawyers are apt to study the opinion
of the world, and that such will be the theory of--our side."

"Then," said Peggy stoutly, "ez I allow I've got to go into court to
defend my character, I might as well pack in them three millions
too."

There is hearsay evidence that Peg added to this speech a wish and
desire to "bust the crust" of h