ten nails,
and made those wicked men stop and go home?"

"Amanda, I believe I recognize myself."

"I should think you did, Judge Campbell. And now they've caught the
other one, and he'll be up with the sheriff on to-night's train, and I
suppose they'll lynch _him_ now!"

"There's not the slightest danger," said the judge. "The town wants them
to have a fair trial. It was natural that immediately after such an
atrocious act--"

"Those poor boys had never murdered anybody before in their lives,"
interrupted Amanda.

"But they did murder Montgomery, you will admit."

"Oh yes!" said Mrs. Campbell, with impatience. "I saw the hole in his
back. You needn't tell me all that again. If he'd thrown out the express
box quicker they wouldn't have hurt a hair of his head. Wells and
Fargo's messengers know that perfectly. It was his own fault. Those boys
had no employment, and they only wanted money. They did not seek human
blood, and you needn't tell me they did."

"They shed it, however, Amanda. Quite a lot of it. Stage-driver and a
passenger too."

"Yes, you keep going back to that as if they'd all been murdered instead
of only one, and you don't care about those two poor boys locked in a
dungeon, and their gray-haired father down in Fresno County who never
did anything wrong at all, and he sixty-one in December."

"The county isn't thinking of hanging the old gentleman," said the
judge.

"That will do, Judge Campbell," said his lady, rising. "I shall say no
more. Total silence for the present is best for you and best for me.
Much best. I will leave you to think of your speech, which was by no
means silver. Not even life with you for twenty-five years this coming
10th of July has inured me to insult. I am capable of understanding whom
they think of hanging, and your speaking to me as if I did not does you
little credit; for it was a mere refuge from a woman's just accusation
of heartlessness which you felt, and like a man would not acknowledge;
and therefore it is that I say no more but leave you to go down the
street to the Ladies' Lyceum where I shall find companions with some
spark of humanity in their bosoms and milk of human kindness for those
whose hasty youth has plunged them in misery and delivered them to the
hands of those who treat them as if they were stones and sticks full of
nothing but monstrosity instead of breathing men like themselves to be
shielded by brotherhood and hope and not dashed down by crue