I 



THE JUDGE'S "SPIRITED WOMAN." 



WAS sitting here," said the jijdge, " in this old pulpit, holding court, and we 

 were trying a big, wicked-looking Spanish desperado for killing the husband 

 of a bright, pretty Mexican woman. It was a lazy summer day, 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 

 ftiight, 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 



