"Thet's it!" said Yuba Bill; "I can't ezactly say; partikly, though, a
she devil! generally, the wife of half a dozen other men."

Accustomed, apparently, to have his conjugal infelicities a theme of
mirth among men, and seeing no trace of amusement on Islington's grave
face, his dogged, reckless manner softened, and, drawing his chair
closer to Islington, he went on: "It all began outer this: we was coming
down Watson's grade one night pretty free, when the expressman turns to
me and sez, 'There's a row inside, and you'd better pull up!' I pulls
up, and out hops, first a woman, and then two or three chaps swearing
and cursin', and tryin' to drag some one arter them. Then it 'pear'd,
Tommy, thet it was this woman's drunken husband they was going to put
out for abusin' her, and strikin' her in the coach; and if it hadn't
been for me, my boy, they'd hev left that chap thar in the road. But I
fixes matters up by putting her alongside o' me on the box, and we drove
on. She was very white, Tommy,--for the matter o' that, she was always
one o' these very white women, that never got red in the face,--but she
never cried a whimper. Most wimin would have cried. It was queer, but
she never cried. I thought so at the time.

"She was very tall, with a lot o' light hair meandering down the back of
her head, as long as a deer-skin whip-lash, and about the color. She hed
eyes thet'd bore you through at fifty yards, and pooty hands and feet.
And when she kinder got out o' that stiff, narvous state she was in, and
warmed up a little, and got chipper, by G-d, sir, she was handsome,--she
was that!"

A little flushed and embarrassed at his own enthusiasm, he stopped, and
then said, carelessly, "They got off at Murphy's."