one has got to be done NOW! I don't want to see no
printers; I don't want ANYBODY to know I've been here but you. That's
why I kem here at night, and rode all the way from Sawyer's Station,
and wouldn't take the stage-coach. And when we've settled about the
advertisement, I'm going to mount my horse, out thar in the bushes, and
scoot outer the settlement."

"Very good," said the editor resignedly. "Of course I can deliver your
instructions to the foreman. And now--let me see--I suppose you wish to
intimate in a personal notice to your husband that you've returned."

"Nothin' o' the kind!" said Mrs. Dimmidge coolly. "I want to placard him
as he did me. I've got it all written out here. Sabe?"

She took from her pocket a folded paper, and spreading it out on the
editor's desk, with a certain pride of authorship read as follows:--

"Whereas my husband, Micah J. Dimmidge, having given out that I have
left his bed and board,--the same being a bunk in a log cabin and pork
and molasses three times a day,--and having advertised that he'd pay
no debts of MY contractin',--which, as thar ain't any, might be easier
collected than debts of his own contractin',--this is to certify that
unless he returns from Elktown Hill to his only home in Sonora in one
week from date, payin' the cost of this advertisement, I'll know the
reason why.--Eliza Jane Dimmidge."

"Thar," she added, drawing a long breath, "put that in a column of the
'Clarion,' same size as the last, and let it work, and that's all I want
of you."

"A column?" repeated the editor. "Do you know the cost is very
expensive, and I COULD put it in a single paragraph?"

"I reckon I kin pay the same as Mr. Dimmidge did for HIS," said the lady
complacently. "I didn't see your paper myself, but the paper as copied
it--one of them big New York dailies--said that it took up a whole
column."

The editor breathed more freely; she had not seen the infamous woodcut
which her husband had selected. At the same moment he was struck with a
sense of retribution, justice, and compensation.

"Would you," he asked hesitatingly,--"would you like it illustrated--by
a cut?"

"With which?"

"Wait a moment; I'll show you."

He went into the dark composing-room, lit a candle, and rummaging in a
drawer sacred to weather-beaten, old-fashioned electrotyped advertising
symbols of various trades, finally selected one and brought it to Mrs.
Dimmidge. It represented a bare and exceedingly stalw