opportunity for a jest rather clever than elegant concerning Judge
Welsh's well-known fondness in life for watching the progress of
criminal cases. Of her husband, the late Mr. Sampson, there was very
little said, and not much was known beyond the fact that having run
away from school to marry him, Amanda had shared a shady and it was
whispered rather disreputable existence for three years, at the end of
which she was fortunately relieved from the matrimonial net by his
timely decease; an event of which she sometimes spoke to her more
intimate male friends with undisguised satisfaction.

It might not have been easy to tell how far Mrs. Sampson's subsequent
career was forced upon her by circumstances, and how far it was the
result of her own choice. She always represented herself as the victim
of a hard fate: but her relatives, one of whom was Mr. Staggchase,
declared that Amanda had no capabilities of respectability in her
composition. Mrs. Staggchase, upon whom marriage had conferred the
privilege of expressing her mind with the freedom of one of the family,
while it happily spared her from the responsibility of an actual
relative, declared that everything had been done to keep Mrs. Sampson
within the bounds of propriety, but all in vain. The income from the
estate of the late Judge Welsh was not large, and as Mrs. Sampson's
tastes, especially in dress, were somewhat expensive, it followed that
she was often reduced to devices for increasing her bank account which
were generally adroit and curious, but often not of a character to be
openly boasted of. She had had some business transactions already with
Irons, who was at this moment laying out the plan of work in a fresh
operation where she might make herself useful.

"Of course," he said, "all the men from Wachusett way are on our side,
and the men from the other part of the county will be against us."