"Mercy on us!" cried Mrs. Crankett.

"The Lord bless and prosper him!" earnestly exclaimed the deacon.

"Well," said Miss Peekin, with a disgusted look, "I s'pose He will, from
the looks o' things; fur Eben sez that when Weasel told the fellers how
it all wuz, they went to work an' put gold dust in a box fur Jim till
ther wus more than he giv fur Brown, an' fellers from all round's been
sendin' him dust ever since. He's mighty sight the richest man anywhere
near this town."

"Good--bless the Lord!" said the deacon, with delight.

"Ye hain't heerd all of it, though," continued Miss Peekin, with a
funereal countenance. "They're going to be married."

"Sakes alive '" gasps Mrs. Crankett.

"It's so," said Miss Peekin; "an' they say she sent for him, by way of
the Isthmus, an' he come back that way. Bad enough to marry him, when
poor Brown hain't been dead six months, but to _send_ for him--"

"Wuz a real noble, big-hearted, womanly thing to do," declared Mrs.
Crankett, snatching off her spectacles; "an' I'd hev done it myself ef
I'd been her."

The deacon gave his old wife an enthusiastic hug; upon seeing which Miss
Peekin hastily departed, with a severely shocked expression of
countenance and a nose aspiring heavenward.

MAKING HIS MARK.

Black Hat was, in 1851, about as peaceful and well-regulated a village
as could be found in the United States.

It was not on the road to any place, so it grew but little; the dirt
paid steadily and well, so but few of the original settlers went away.

The march of civilization, with its churches and circuses, had not yet
reached Black Hat; marriages never convulsed the settlement with the pet
excitement of villages generally, and the inhabitants were never arrayed
at swords' point by either religion, politics or newspapers.

To be sure, the boys gambled every evening and all day Sunday; but a
famous player, who once passed that way on a prospecting-trip, declared
that even a preacher would get sick of such playing; for, as everybody
knew everybody else's game, and as all men who played other than
squarely had long since been required to leave, there was an utter
absence of pistols at the tables.

Occasional disagreements took place, to be sure--they have been taking
place, even among the best people, since the days of Cain and Abel; but
all difficulties at Black Hat which did not succumb to force of jaw were
quietly locked in the bosoms of the disputants until th