to begin a
cotillion.

The woodpecker flew away, and the mice were heard no more that day, for
the men shouted their approval till they were hoarse-voiced as mules.

Deboon had been sitting there all the time, half doubled over a bench.
He perhaps was thinking of the first wedding, for he kept looking
straight across the room to the pine-logs on the other side, and then he
seemed to fix his eyes on some object there, and to fall to thinking
very generally. At last he began to count on his fingers. Then suddenly
he fairly laughed with delight. He sprang up, stepped across the room,
put his finger on the spot where Limber Tim had stood scrawling with his
big pencil the day he was so embarrassed at Sandy's wedding, and shouted
out--

"Look here! There it is. That's the date. That's the day they was
married--September eighteen hundred and fifty!"

"Just eight months!" roared a man in the crowd.

"Eight months! Ten of 'em!" and he fell to counting on his fingers, as
he turned to the crowd and continued right on up to July, with perfect
confidence.

The camp roared, and shouted, and danced, as never before. Why had it
been so stupid as not to set this thing right from the first? It was the
most penitent community that had ever been. The Widow was once more its
patron saint.

The Gopher stood up by the wall.

"Are you all satisfied now?"

Satisfied! They would never doubt any woman any more as long as they
lived.

He took his bowie-knife while the crowd turned to take a drink, and cut
the date from the wall; and the only record, perhaps, of the first
marriage in the Sierras was no more.

The sharp-nosed man, one of those miserable men who never are satisfied
unless they are either miserable or making some one else so, came up to
the wall out of the crowd and began to look on the wall for the date, as
if he thought there might have been some mistake, and he wanted to count
it all over again.

This man began to count on his fingers and to look along on the wall.
Suddenly there was a something gleaming in his face like a flash of
lightning.

It was the Gopher's bowie-knife. It was within two inches of his
throat.

"Are you satisfied, my friend?" smiled the Gopher, with a smile that
meant brimstone.

"Perfectly satisfied," said the wretch in return, and at the same time
he bowed and backed as fast as he could till he came to the door, and
then he was seen no more.

"Be it really all on the square, Judge?"