When it was fairly known that Mrs. Tretherick had run away, taking Mr. Tretherick’s own child with her, there was some excitement and much diversity of opinion, in Fiddletown.  The Dutch flat intelligencer openly alluded to the “forcible abduction” of the child with the same freedom, and it is to be feared the same prejudice, with which it had criticized the abductor’s poetry.  All of Mrs. Tretherick’s own sex, and perhaps a few of the opposite sex, whose distinctive quality was not, however, very strongly indicated, fully coincided in the views of the intelligencer.  The majority, however, evaded the moral issue; that Mrs. Tretherick had shaken the red dust of Fiddletown from her dainty slippers was enough for them to know.  They mourned the loss of the fair abductor more than her offense.  They promptly rejected Tretherick as an injured husband and disconsolate father, and even went so far as to openly cast discredit on the sincerity of his grief.  They reserved an ironical condolence for Colonel Starbottle, overbearing that excellent man with untimely and demonstrative sympathy in barrooms, saloons, and other localities not generally deemed favorable to the display of sentiment.  “She was alliz a skittish thing, Kernel,” said one sympathizer, with a fine affectation of gloomy concern and great readiness of illustration; “and it’s kinder nat’ril thet she’d get away someday, and stampede that theer colt:  but thet she should shake you, Kernel, diet she should jist shake you—­is what gits me.  And they do say thet you jist hung around thet hotel all night, and payrolled them corriders, and histed yourself up and down them stairs, and meandered in and out o’ thet piazzy, and all for nothing?” It was another generous and tenderly commiserating spirit that poured additional oil and wine on the colonel’s wounds.  “The boys yer let on thet Mrs. Tretherick prevailed on ye to pack her trunk and a baby over from the house to the stage offis, and that the chap ez did go off with her thanked you, and offered you two short bits, and sed ez how he liked your looks, and ud employ you agin—­and now you say it ain’t so?  Well, I’ll tell the boys it ain’t so, and I’m glad I met you, for stories do get round.”

Happily for Mrs. Tretherick’s reputation, however, the Chinaman in Tretherick’s employment, who was the only eyewitness of her flight, stated that she was unaccompanied, except by the child.  He further deposed that, obeying her orders, he had stopped the Sacramento coach, and secured a passage for herself and child to San Francisco.  It was true that Ah Fe’s testimony was of no legal value.  But nobody doubted it.  Even those who were skeptical of the pagan’s ability to recognize the sacredness of the truth admitted his passionless, unprejudiced unconcern.  But it would appear, from a hitherto unrecorded passage of this veracious chronicle, that herein they were mistaken.