pliment, but really"--

"When I tell you I've come three thousand miles from Kansas straight
here without stopping, ye kin reckon it's so," she replied firmly.

"Three thousand miles!" echoed the editor wonderingly.

"Yes. Three thousand miles from my own folks' home in Kansas, where six
years ago I married Mr. Dimmidge,--a British furriner as could scarcely
make himself understood in any Christian language! Well, he got round
me and dad, allowin' he was a reg'lar out-and-out profeshnal miner,--had
lived in mines ever since he was a boy; and so, not knowin' what kind o'
mines, and dad just bilin' over with the gold fever, we were married and
kem across the plains to Californy. He was a good enough man to look at,
but it warn't three months before I discovered that he allowed a wife
was no better nor a nigger slave, and he the master. That made me open
my eyes; but then, as he didn't drink, and didn't gamble, and didn't
swear, and was a good provider and laid by money, why I shifted along
with him as best I could. We drifted down the first year to Sonora, at
Red Dog, where there wasn't another woman. Well, I did the nigger slave
business,--never stirring out o' the settlement, never seein' a town
or a crowd o' decent people,--and he did the lord and master! We played
that game for two years, and I got tired. But when at last he allowed
he'd go up to Elktown Hill, where there was a passel o' his countrymen
at work, with never a sign o' any other folks, and leave me alone at Red
Dog until he fixed up a place for me at Elktown Hill,--I kicked! I gave
him fair warning! I did as other nigger slaves did,--I ran away!"

A recollection of the wretched woodcut which Mr. Dimmidge had selected
to personify his wife flashed upon the editor with a new meaning.
Yet perhaps she had not seen it, and had only read a copy of the
advertisement. What could she want? The "Calaveras Clarion," although a
"Palladium" and a "Sentinel upon the Heights of Freedom" in reference to
wagon roads, was not a redresser of domestic wrongs,--except through its
advertising columns! Her next words intensified that suggestion.

"I've come here to put an advertisement in your paper."

The editor heaved a sigh of relief, as once before. "Certainly," he said
briskly. "But that's another department of the paper, and the printers
have gone home. Come to-morrow morning early."

"To-morrow morning I shall be miles away," she said decisively,
"and what I want d