Ah Sam following up his love, and discovering in me an old friend, who had endured and survived a whole winter of his cookery at Swett’s Bar, told me his troubles; and I, resolving to repay evil with good, communicated the distressed Mongolian’s story to my chosen and particular companion, a lean and cadaverous attorney, with whom fees had ceased to be angels’ visits, and who was then oscillating and hovering between two plans--one to run for the next State Legislature; the other to migrate to Central America, and found a new republic. Attorney, Spoke on hearing Ah Sam’s case, offered to find the maid, rescue her from her captors, and marry her to him permanently and forever in consideration of thirty American dollars; to which terms the Mongolian assenting, Spoke and myself, buckling on our arms and armor, proceeded to beat up the filthy purlieus of “Chinatown;” and about midnight we found the passive Hi Sing hidden away in a hen-coop, whither she had been conveyed by the confederates of Ching Loo. We bore Hi Sing--who was considerably alarmed, neither understanding our language nor our purpose--to Spoke’s office, and then it being necessary to secure the services of a magistrate in uniting the couple, I departed to seek the Justice of the Peace, who was still awake--for Justice rarely slept in camp at that hour, but was commonly engaged at the Bella Union playing poker, whilst Spoke sought after the groom, Ah Sam, whom he found in a Chinese den stupidly drunk from smoking opium, having taken such means to wear the edge off his suspense while we were rescuing his affianced. Not only was he stupidly but perversely drunk; but he declared in imperfect English that he had concluded not to marry that night, to which observation Attorney Spoke, becoming profane, jerked him from the cot whereon he lay, and grasping him about the neck with a strangulating hold, bore him into the street and toward his office, intimating loudly that this business had been proceeded with too far to be receded from, and that the marriage must be consummated that night with or without the consent of the principals. Ah Sam resigned himself to matrimony. The office was reached, the door opened and out in the darkness bolted the bride, for she knew not what these preparations meant, or whether she had fallen among friends or enemies. After a lively chase we cornered and caught her; and having thus at last brought this refractory couple together we placed them in position, and the Justice commenced the ceremony by asking Hi Sing if she took that man for her lawful wedded husband, which interrogatory being Chaldaic to her, she replied only by an unmeaning and unspeculative stare. Spoke, who seemed destined to be the soul and mainspring of this whole affair, now threw light on the Mongolian intellect by bringing into play his stock of Chinese English, and translating to her the language of the Justice thus: “You like ’um he, pretty good?” Upon which her face