urderer
here--and so, of course, he was, if he consented.

At the time when this conversation took place in Judge Stone's office,
the Bunkers were in the heyday of their bad eminence, and while they
were operating a good way off, there was some terror at the mention of
their name. The judge looked me over for a minute when Henderson L.
suggested me for the second time as a good man for his body-guard.

"Will you go, Jake?" he asked. "Or are you scared of the Bunkers?"

Now, as a general rule, I should have had to take half an hour or so to
decide a thing like that; but when he asked me if I was scared of the
Bunkers, it nettled me; and after looking from him to Henderson L. for
about five minutes, I said I'd go. I was not invited to the party, of
course; for it was an affair of the big bugs; but I never thought that
an invitation was called for. I felt just as good as any one, but I was
a little wamble-cropped when I thought that I shouldn't know how
to behave.

"How you going, Judge?" asked Henderson L.

"In my family carriage," said the judge.

"The only family carriage I ever saw you have," said Henderson L., "is
that old buckboard."

"I traded that off," answered the judge, "to a fellow driving through to
the Fort Dodge country. I got a two-seated covered carriage. When it was
new it was about such a rig as Buck Gowdy's."

"That's style," said Burns. "Who's going with you--of course there's you
and your wife and now you have Jake; but you've got room for one more."

"My wife," said the judge, "is going to take the preacher's adopted
daughter. The preacher's wife thought there might be worldly doings that
it might be better for her and the elder to steer clear of, but the girl
is going with us."

"Well, Jake," said Henderson L., "you're in luck. You'll ride to the
party with your old flame, in a carriage. My wife and I are going on a
load of hay. Jim Boyd is the only other man here that's got a rig with
springs under it. The aristocracy of Monterey County, a lot of it, will
ride plugs or shank's mares. You're getting up among 'em, Jakey, my boy.
Never thought of this when you were in jail, did you?"

Nobody can realize how this talk made me suffer; and yet I kind of liked
it. I suffered more than ever, because I had not seen Virginia for a
long time for several reasons. I quit singing in the choir in the fall,
when it was hard getting back and forth with no horses, and the heavy
snow of the winter of 185