and an awfully long one, and the witnesses were tedious. None of us took

any interest in the trial except that nervous, uneasy devil of a Mexican

woman--because you know how they love and how they hate, and this one had

loved her husband with all her might, and now she had boiled it all down

into hate, and stood here spitting it at that Spaniard with her eyes;

and I tell you she would stir me up, too, with a little of her summer

lightning, occasionally. Well, I had my coat off and my heels up,

lolling and sweating, and smoking one of those cabbage cigars the San

Francisco people used to think were good enough for us in those times;

and the lawyers they all had their coats off, and were smoking and

whittling, and the witnesses the same, and so was the prisoner. Well,

the fact is, there warn't any interest in a murder trial then, because

the fellow was always brought in 'not guilty,' the jury expecting him to

do as much for them some time; and, although the evidence was straight

and square against this Spaniard, we knew we could not convict him

without seeming to be rather high-handed and sort of reflecting on every

gentleman in the community; for there warn't any carriages and liveries

then, and so the only 'style' there was, was to keep your private

graveyard. But that woman seemed to have her heart set on hanging that

Spaniard; and you'd ought to have seen how she would glare on him a

minute, and then look up at me in her pleading way, and then turn and for

the next five minutes search the jury's faces, and by and by drop her

face in her hands for just a little while as if she was most ready to

give up; but out she'd come again directly, and be as live and anxious as

ever. But when the jury announced the verdict--Not Guilty--and I told

the prisoner he was acquitted and free to go, that woman rose up till she

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