pausing, resuming again across the line of gun-vision its slow
advance--ah! tell me, if that slow-moving object crossing the
bridegroom's joyous aim were a pig,--a grunting, fat, conceited
pig,--arrogating to itself much of that street wherefrom one's
fellow-citizens had for a moment of grave courtesy withdrawn--tell me,
if you were a bridegroom, soon to be happy, and if you could do the
"double roll" with loaded guns and no danger to your bowels, and if
while so engaged you should see within easy range this black, sleek
pig, with its tail curled tightly, egotistically, contemptuously, over
its back, what, as a man, would you do? What, as a man, _could_ you
do in a case like that, in a land where there was no law, where never a
court had sat, where never such a thing as a case at law had been
known? Consider, what would be the abstract right and justice of this
matter, repeating that you were a bridegroom and twenty-three, and that
the air was molten wine and honey mingled, and that this pig--but then,
the matter is absurd! There is but one answer. It was right--indeed,
it was inevitable--that Curly should shoot the pig; because in the
first place it had intruded upon his pastime, and because in the second
place he felt like it.

And yet over this act, this simple, inevitable act of justice, arose
the first law case ever known in Heart's Desire, a cause which shook
that community to the centre of its being, and for a time threatened
its very continuance. Ah, well! perhaps the time had come. Perhaps
the sun was now to set over all the valleys of Heart's Desire. Perhaps
this was the beginning of the end. The law, they say, must have its
course. It had its course in Heart's Desire.

But not without protest, not without struggle. There were two factions
from the start. Strange to say, that most bitterly opposed to Curly