"Eight months! Ten of 'em!" and he fell to counting on his fingers, as he turned to the crowd and continued right on up to July, with perfect confidence. The camp roared, and shouted, and danced, as never before. Why had it been so stupid as not to set this thing right from the first? It was the most penitent community that had ever been. The Widow was once more its patron saint. The Gopher stood up by the wall. "Are you all satisfied now?" Satisfied! They would never doubt any woman any more as long as they lived. He took his bowie-knife while the crowd turned to take a drink, and cut the date from the wall; and the only record, perhaps, of the first marriage in the Sierras was no more. The sharp-nosed man, one of those miserable men who never are satisfied unless they are either miserable or making some one else so, came up to the wall out of the crowd and began to look on the wall for the date, as if he thought there might have been some mistake, and he wanted to count it all over again. This man began to count on his fingers and to look along on the wall. Suddenly there was a something gleaming in his face like a flash of lightning. It was the Gopher's bowie-knife. It was within two inches of his throat. "Are you satisfied, my friend?" smiled the Gopher, with a smile that meant brimstone. "Perfectly satisfied," said the wretch in return, and at the same time he bowed and backed as fast as he could till he came to the door, and then he was seen no more. "Be it really all on the square, Judge?" asked Citizen Tim one day, timidly and in confidence. "Right?--didn't I marry 'em?" "But it warn't twelve months." "Twelve months! don't care ef it warn't six months. I married 'em, and I married 'em good and fast, and that's the end of it." Public opinion flows and ebbs like the tide of the sea. At one time this little camp was unanimous in the opinion that the mysterious little woman could be none other than Nancy Williams, and it would talk of little else. Then it would tire of this subject, change its opinion, and let the matter drop for months together. CHAPTER XXIV. THE JUDGE IS LONESOME. "In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love." This was the song of the fat little Judge, one fine morning, as he wandered down towards the Howling Wilderness, sniffing the glorious balm, the very breath of the forest, and glancing ever and anon over his shoulder towards the cabin of Captain Tommy. How new, and fresh and sweet, and fragrant the odors of the mighty, mossy woods that climbed and climbed and ever climbed as if to mount the summits, and push their tasselled tops against the indolent summer clouds that hovered like great white-winged birds above the peaks of snow. So new and fresh it seemed that summer morning, that the little Judge stopped on the hill-side and stood there to inhale its sweetness.