"She knows what I mean," yelled Bill, turning on Amelia. "Ask your wife what she an' I was talkin' about when we was a-crossing the track that time. Ask her if she didn't say to me that I was the perfec'ly perportioned physical man, an' whether I didn't think that men an' women of sech perportions should mate; an' if she didn't make goo-goo eyes at me, ontil I stuck back my head to kiss her, an' whether she wasn't a-kissin' me when that freight come a pirootin' down an' run over her talkin' apparatus! Ask her if she didn't say she could die a-kissin' me, an' if she didn't come danged near doin' it!" "How perfectly horrid!" gasped the Bride. Well, Bob Fink was, from all accounts, perfectly flabbergasted. There stood Bill Williams in his old dogskin coat and a cap that reeked of the stables, and there stood the fair plaintiff, turning redder and redder and panting louder and louder as the enormity of the thing grew upon her. And then she turned loose. Amelia Whinnery Fink, defendant in error, and permanently dumb, turned loose. She began doubling up her fists and stamping her feet, and finally she burst forth into oratory of the most impassioned character. "Robert Fink!" she said, as quoted in the motion for a reopening of the case that Scales filed--"Robert Fink, will you stand by like a coward and see me insulted? That miserable tramp--a perfect--If you don't kill him, I will. _I_ kiss him? _I_ ask him such a thing? Bob Fink, do you expect me to go with you and leave such an insult unavenged? No, no, no, no--" "I don't blame her!" interjected the Bride. I guess she'd have gone on stringing negatives together as long as the depot would have held 'em, if Bob hadn't noticed Ike Witherspoon, the shorthand reporter, diligently taking down her speech and the names of those present. Then he twigged, and, hastily knocking Bill down, he boarded the train with Amelia. He wired me from Fremont that it was all off with the judgment, as they'd tormented Mrs. Fink into making a public speech. I answered, collect, bidding him be as happy as he could in view of the new-found liberty of speech and of the press, and I'd look after the judgment and the appeal. "Well," said the Groom, "of course you got licked in the Supreme Court. It was clear proof that she'd been shamming."