of
that d----d sneak was worth; and more than that--the longer you keep on
paying you are helping to give color to their claim and estopping your
own defense. And Gad, sir, you're making a precedent for this sort of
thing! you are offering a premium to widows and orphans. A gentleman
won't be able to exchange shots with another without making himself
liable for damages. I am willing to admit that your feelings--though, in
my opinion--er--exaggerated--do you credit; but I am satisfied that they
are utterly misunderstood--sir."

"Not by all of them," said Corbin darkly.

"Eh?" returned the Colonel quickly.

"There was another letter here which I didn't particularly point out
to you," said Corbin, taking up the letters again, "for I reckoned
it wasn't evidence, so to speak, being from HIS COUSIN, a girl,--and
calculated you'd read it when I was out."

The Colonel coughed hastily. "I was in fact--er--just about to glance
over it when you came in."

"It was written," continued Corbin, selecting a letter more bethumbed
than the others, "after the old woman had threatened me. This here young
woman allows that she is sorry that her aunt has to take money of me on
account of her cousin being killed, and she is still sorrier that she is
so bitter against me. She says she hadn't seen her cousin since he was
a boy, and used to play with her, and that she finds it hard to believe
that he should ever grow up to change his name and act so as to provoke
anybody to lift a hand against him. She says she supposed it must be
something in that dreadful California that alters people and makes
everybody so reckless. I reckon her head's level there, ain't it?"

There was such a sudden and unexpected lightening of the man's face as
he said it, such a momentary relief to his persistent gloom, that the
Colonel, albeit inwardly dissenting from both letter and comment, smiled
condescendingly.

"She's no slouch of a scribe neither," continued Corbin animatedly.
"Read that."

He handed his companion the letter, pointing to a passage with his
finger. The Colonel took it with, I fear, a somewhat lowered opinion of
his client, and a new theory of the case. It was evident that this weak
submission to the aunt's conspiracy was only the result of a greater
weakness for the niece. Colonel Starbottle had a wholesome distrust of
the sex as a business or political factor. He began to look over the
letter, but was evidently slurring it with superficia