Nevertheless, she seemed to be as regardless of public opinion as she
had been before the trial; took a small house, in which she lived with
an old woman who had once been a fellow-servant, on apparently terms of
perfect equality, and looked after her money. I wish I could say that
she did this discreetly; but the fact is, she blundered. The same dogged
persistency she had displayed in claiming her rights was visible in
her unsuccessful ventures. She sunk two hundred thousand dollars in
a worn-out shaft originally projected by the deceased testator; she
prolonged the miserable existence of "The Rockville Vanguard" long after
it had ceased to interest even its enemies; she kept the doors of
the Rockville Hotel open when its custom had departed; she lost the
co-operation and favor of a fellow-capitalist through a trifling
misunderstanding in which she was derelict and impenitent; she had three
lawsuits on her hands that could have been settled for a trifle. I note
these defects to show that she was by no means a heroine. I quote her
affair with Jack Folinsbee to show she was scarcely the average woman.

That handsome, graceless vagabond had struck the outskirts of Red Dog
in a cyclone of dissipation which left him a stranded but still rather
interesting wreck in a ruinous cabin not far from Peg Moffat's virgin
bower. Pale, crippled from excesses, with a voice quite tremulous from
sympathetic emotion more or less developed by stimulants, he lingered
languidly, with much time on his hands, and only a few neighbors. In
this fascinating kind of general deshabille of morals, dress, and the
emotions, he appeared before Peg Moffat. More than that, he occasionally
limped with her through the settlement. The critical eye of Red Dog took
in the singular pair,--Jack, voluble, suffering, apparently overcome by
remorse, conscience, vituperation, and disease; and Peg, open-mouthed,
high-colored, awkward, yet delighted; and the critical eye of Red Dog,
seeing this, winked meaningly at Rockville. No one knew what passed