er traducers, and remarking that "that
was the kind of hair-pin" she was, closed the conversation with an
unfortunate accident to the plate, that left a severe contusion on the
legal brow of her companion. But this story, popular in the bar-rooms
and gulches, lacked confirmation in higher circles....

The case came to trial. Everybody remembers it--how for six weeks it
was the daily food of Calaveras County; how for six weeks the
intellectual and moral and spiritual competency of Mr. James Byways to
dispose of his property was discust with learned and formal obscurity
in the court, and with unlettered and independent prejudice by
camp-fires and in bar-rooms. At the end of that time, when it was
logically established that at least nine-tenths of the population of
Calaveras were harmless lunatics, and everybody else's reason seemed
to totter on its throne, an exhausted jury succumbed one day to the
presence of Peg in the courtroom. It was not a prepossessing presence
at any time; but the excitement, and an injudicious attempt to
ornament herself, brought her defects into a glaring relief that was
almost unreal. Every freckle on her face stood out and asserted itself
singly; her pale blue eyes, that gave no indication of her force of
character, were weak and wandering, or stared blankly at the judge;
her over-sized head, broad at the base, terminating in the scantiest
possible light colored braid in the middle of her narrow shoulders,
was as hard and uninteresting as the wooden spheres that topt the
railing against which she sat. The jury, who for six weeks had had
her described to them by the plaintiffs as an arch, wily enchantress,
who had sapped the failing reason of Jim Byways, revolted to a man.
There was something so appallingly gratuitous in her plainness that it
was felt that three millions was scarcely a compensation for it. "Ef
that money was give to her, she earned it sure, boys; it wasn't no
softness of the old man," said the foreman. When the jury retired, it
was felt that she had cleared her character; when they reentered the
room with their verdict, it was known that she had been awarded three
millions damages for its defamation.

She got the money. But those who had confidently expected to see her
squander it were disappointed: on the contrary, it was presently
whispered that she was exceeding penurious. That admirable woman Mrs.
Stiver of Red Dog, who accompanied her to San Francisco to assist her
in mak