ay, been
relieved alike of his wife and property, and was living alone
at Rockville fifty miles away, and editing a newspaper. But that
originality he had displayed when dealing with the problems of his own
private life, when applied to politics in the columns of "The Rockville
Vanguard" was singularly unsuccessful. An amusing exaggeration,
purporting to be an exact account of the manner in which the opposing
candidate had murdered his Chinese laundryman, was, I regret to
say, answered only by assault and battery. A gratuitous and purely
imaginative description of a great religious revival in Calaveras, in
which the sheriff of the county--a notoriously profane sceptic--was
alleged to have been the chief exhorter, resulted only in the withdrawal
of the county advertising from the paper. In the midst of this practical
confusion he suddenly died. It was then discovered, as a crowning
proof of his absurdity, that he had left a will, bequeathing his entire
effects to a freckle-faced maid-servant at the Rockville Hotel. But that
absurdity became serious when it was also discovered that among these
effects were a thousand shares in the Rising Sun Mining Company, which a
day or two after his demise, and while people were still laughing at
his grotesque benefaction, suddenly sprang into opulence and celebrity.
Three millions of dollars was roughly estimated as the value of the
estate thus wantonly sacrificed. For it is only fair to state, as a
just tribute to the enterprise and energy of that young and thriving
settlement, that there was not probably a single citizen who did not
feel himself better able to control the deceased humorist's property.
Some had expressed a doubt of their ability to support a family; others
had felt perhaps too keenly the deep responsibility resting upon them
when chosen from the panel as jurors, and had evaded their public
duties; a few had declined office and a low salary: but no one shrank
from the possibility of having been called upon to assume the functions
of Peggy Moffat, the heiress.

The will was contested,--first by the widow, who it now appeared had
never been legally divorced from the deceased; next by four of his
cousins, who awoke, only too late, to a consciousness of his moral
and pecuniary worth. But the humble legatee--a singularly plain,
unpretending, uneducated Western girl--exhibited a dogged pertinacity
in claiming her rights. She rejected all compromises. A rough sense of
justi