ing blackberry
bushes beside the door attracted his attention. It was followed by a
light tapping against the side of the house. The editor started and
turned quickly towards the open door. Two outside steps led to the
ground. Standing upon the lower one was a woman. The upper part of her
figure, illuminated by the light from the door, was thrown into greater
relief by the dark background of the pines. Her face was unknown to
him, but it was a pleasant one, marked by a certain good-humored
determination.

"May I come in?" she said confidently.

"Certainly," said the editor. "I am working here alone because it is
so quiet." He thought he would precipitate some explanation from her by
excusing himself.

"That's the reason why I came," she said, with a quiet smile.

She came up the next step and entered the room. She was plainly but
neatly dressed, and now that her figure was revealed he saw that she was
wearing a linsey-woolsey riding-skirt, and carried a serviceable rawhide
whip in her cotton-gauntleted hand. She took the chair he offered her
and sat down sideways on it, her whip hand now also holding up her
skirt, and permitting a hem of clean white petticoat and a smart,
well-shaped boot to be seen.

"I don't remember to have had the pleasure of seeing you in Calaveras
before," said the editor tentatively.

"No. I never was here before," she said composedly, "but you've heard
enough of me, I reckon. I'm Mrs. Dimmidge." She threw one hand over
the back of the chair, and with the other tapped her riding-whip on the
floor.

The editor started. Mrs. Dimmidge! Then she was not a myth. An absurd
similarity between her attitude with the whip and her husband's entrance
with his gun six weeks before forced itself upon him and made her an
invincible presence.

"Then you have returned to your husband?" he said hesitatingly.

"Not much!" she returned, with a slight curl of her lip.

"But you read his advertisement?"

"I saw that column of fool nonsense he put in your paper--ef that's
what you mean," she said with decision, "but I didn't come here to see
HIM--but YOU."

The editor looked at her with a forced smile, but a vague misgiving. He
was alone at night in a deserted part of the settlement, with a plump,
self-possessed woman who had a contralto voice, a horsewhip, and--he
could not help feeling--an evident grievance.

"To see me?" he repeated, with a faint attempt at gallantry. "You are
paying me a great com