established a claim to respectful attention:

"Pardner, couldn't ye interdooce a fel'r's wants tknow'er?"
"Impossible; I have not the honour of her acquaintance." A look of
distrust crept into his face, and finally settled into a savage
scowl about his eyes. "Sed ye knew 'er!" he faltered, menacingly.
"So I do, but I am not upon speaking terms with her, and-in fact she
declines to recognise me." The soul of the honest miner flamed out;
he laid his hand threateningly upon his pistol, jerked himself
stiff, glared a moment at me with the look of a tiger, and hurled
this question at my head as if it had been an iron interrogation
point: "W'at a' yer ben adoin' to that gurl?"

I fled, and the last I saw of the chivalrous gold-hunter, he had his
arm about Pandora's stony waist and was endeavouring to soothe her
supposed agitation by stroking her granite head. The Head of the
Family.

Our story begins with the death of our hero. The manner of it was
decapitation, the instrument a mowing machine. A young son of the
deceased, dumb with horror, seized the paternal head and ran with it
to the house.

"There!" ejaculated the young man, bowling the gory pate across the
threshold at his mother's feet, "look at that, will you?"

The old lady adjusted her spectacles, lifted the dripping head into
her lap, wiped the face of it with her apron, and gazed into its
fishy eyes with tender curiosity. "John," said she, thoughtfully,
"is this yours?"