ce in the community, while doubting her ability to take care of the
whole fortune, suggested that she ought to be content with three hundred
thousand dollars. "She's bound to throw even THAT away on some derned
skunk of a man, natoorally; but three millions is too much to give a
chap for makin' her onhappy. It's offerin' a temptation to cussedness."
The only opposing voice to this counsel came from the sardonic lips of
Mr. Jack Hamlin. "Suppose," suggested that gentleman, turning abruptly
on the speaker,--"suppose, when you won twenty thousand dollars of me
last Friday night--suppose that, instead of handing you over the money
as I did--suppose I'd got up on my hind-legs, and said, 'Look yer, Bill
Wethersbee, you're a d----d fool. If I give ye that twenty thousand,
you'll throw it away in the first skin-game in 'Frisco, and hand it over
to the first short-card sharp you'll meet. There's a thousand,--enough
for you to fling away,--take it and get!' Suppose what I'd said to you
was the frozen truth, and you know'd it, would that have been the square
thing to play on you?" But here Wethersbee quickly pointed out the
inefficiency of the comparison by stating that HE had won the money
fairly with a STAKE. "And how do you know," demanded Hamlin savagely,
bending his black eyes on the astounded casuist,--"how do you know that
the gal hezn't put down a stake?" The man stammered an unintelligible
reply. The gambler laid his white hand on Wethersbee's shoulder. "Look
yer, old man," he said, "every gal stakes her WHOLE pile,--you can bet
your life on that,--whatever's her little game. If she took to keerds
instead of her feelings, if she'd put up 'chips' instead o' body and
soul, she'd bust every bank 'twixt this and 'Frisco! You hear me?"

Somewhat of this idea was conveyed, I fear not quite as sentimentally,
to Peggy Moffat herself. The best legal wisdom of San Francisco,
retained by the widow and relatives, took occasion, in a private
interview with Peggy, to point out that she stood in the quasi-criminal
attitude of having unlawfully practised upon the affections of an insane
elderly gentleman, with a view of getting possession of his property,
and suggested to her that no vestige of her moral character would remain
after the trial, if she persisted in forcing her claims to that issue.
It is said that Peggy, on hearing this, stopped washing the plate she
had in her hands, and, twisting the towel around her fingers, fixed her
sm