investigation, it was found that the poor woman had been ill some
time, had lost her bloom and freshness; and what becomes of a woman of
this kind, who has no money, when she has lost her bloom and strength?
never had much money, always gave it away to the needy as fast as she
got it, and so had nothing to fight the world with when she fell ill.

Then the man with the rent, the lord of the log cabin--a cross between a
Shylock-Jew and a flint-faced Yankee--took her rings and jewels, one by
one. The baker grew exacting, and finally the butcher refused to bring
her meat. And that was all there was of it. That was the end.

That butcher never succeeded there after that. Some one wrote "Small
Pox" over his shop every night for a month, and it was shunned like a
pest-house. But all that did not bring poor Dolores back to life. The
ring was an antique gold, with a costly stone, and a Spanish name, which
showed her to have been of good family. A wedding ring.

But this woman, however, was an exception, and at best, when in health,
save her generous and sympathetic nature, was probably no angel.

One of these meddlesome men, a hungry, lean, unsatisfied fellow; a man
with a nose sharp and inquisitive enough to open a cast-iron cannon
ball, said one night to a knot of men at the Howling Wilderness saloon:

"Why widder? why call her the widder? who knows that she was ever
married at all?"

A man silently and slowly arose at this, and firmly doubled up his fist.
He stood there towering above that fellow, and looking down upon that
sharp inquisitive nose as if he wanted to drive it back into the middle
of his head.

"But maybe she's a maid," answered the terrified nose in haste and fear.

The other sat down, slowly and silently, as he had risen, and perfectly
satisfied that no insult had been intended. This was Sandy.

The Judge was there, and as the conversation had fallen through by this
man's remark, he felt called upon to resume it in a friendly sort of a
way, and said:

"No, no, she's not a maid, I reckon, not an old maid." He scratched his
bald head above his ear and went on, for the big man at his side began
to double up his knuckles. "I should say she's a widder. You see, the
maids never gits this far. They seem to spile first."

The Judge spoke as if talking of a sort of pickled oyster or smoked
ham.

CHAPTER IV.

SUNDAY IN THE SIERRAS.

Never did the press feed on a political war, or a calumniated po