if they had
been pushing cotton bales, they opened a line, and down that line a
beautiful woman with her eyes to the ground and a baby in her arms moved
on till she came and stood by the side of the little hunch-back, still
silent, and looking with the old look of sad, sweet tranquility upon the
ground.

It was really too much for the little man, who had opened his bosom, and
who all the time had stood there with his books under his arm, perfectly
cool, and perfect master of the situation. Now he was all of a heap. He
had been acting with a sort of condescension toward the two
half-children who had come before him that day, and had even prepared a
sort of patronizing, half-missionary, half-reformatory sermon, but now,
and all suddenly, he was utterly overthrown. He began to perspire and
choke on the spot.

The silence was painful. The woodpecker pounded as if he would knock the
house down, and the mice rasped at their old boots and rattled away like
men sawing wood.

The Judge began to hear himself breathe. In this moment of crisis he
caught a book from his side and proceeded to read. He read from "An Act
to amend an Act entitled an Act for the improvement of the breed of
sheep in the State of California." Back in the saloon there were men who
began to giggle. These were some men not from Missouri. They were of the
hatchet-faced order, men who spoke through their noses, "idecated men,"
the camp called them, and men that, above all others, had put the little
Judge in terror.

When he heard the men laugh, then he knew he had opened his book at the
wrong place, and his face grew red as fire. He could not see to read to
the end, nor could he now be heard. He suddenly closed the book and
said, "Then by virtue of the authority in me vested, and under the laws
of the State of California in such cases made and provided, I pronounce
you man and wife."

Then the little Judge came up, shook them both by the hand, and his
voice was suddenly clear as a bell, and he felt that he could now go on
and speak by the hour.

The Widow bowed down above her baby and kissed the new-made bride
silently and tenderly as if she had been her sister, and then with the
same sweet, half sad smile she turned to the door, her face still to the
ground, and covering up the little sleeper in her arms and looking
neither right nor left, went back alone to her cabin.

The dark day was over. At the play, whenever you see the whole force of
the compa