Well, I did the nigger slave business,—­never stirring out o’ the settlement, never seein’ a town or a crowd o’ decent people,—­and he did the lord and master!  We played that game for two years, and I got tired.  But when at last he allowed he’d go up to Elktown Hill, where there was a passel o’ his countrymen at work, with never a sign o’ any other folks, and leave me alone at Red Dog until he fixed up a place for me at Elktown Hill,—­I kicked!  I gave him fair warning!  I did as other nigger slaves did,—­I ran away!”

A recollection of the wretched woodcut which Mr. Dimmidge had selected to personify his wife flashed upon the editor with a new meaning.  Yet perhaps she had not seen it, and had only read a copy of the advertisement.  What could she want?  The “Calaveras Clarion,” although a “Palladium” and a “Sentinel upon the Heights of Freedom” in reference to wagon roads, was not a redresser of domestic wrongs,—­except through its advertising columns!  Her next words intensified that suggestion.

“I’ve come here to put an advertisement in your paper.”

The editor heaved a sigh of relief, as once before.  “Certainly,” he said briskly.  “But that’s another department of the paper, and the printers have gone home.  Come to-morrow morning early.”

“To-morrow morning I shall be miles away,” she said decisively, “and what I want done has got to be done now!  I don’t want to see no printers; I don’t want anybody to know I’ve been here but you.  That’s why I kem here at night, and rode all the way from Sawyer’s Station, and wouldn’t take the stage-coach.  And when we’ve settled about the advertisement, I’m going to mount my horse, out thar in the bushes, and scoot outer the settlement.”

“Very good,” said the editor resignedly.  “Of course I can deliver your instructions to the foreman.  And now—­let me see—­I suppose you wish to intimate in a personal notice to your husband that you’ve returned.”

“Nothin’ o’ the kind!” said Mrs. Dimmidge coolly.  “I want to placard him as he did me.  I’ve got it all written out here.  Sabe?”

She took from her pocket a folded paper, and spreading it out on the editor’s desk, with a certain pride of authorship read as follows:—­

“Whereas my husband, Micah J. Dimmidge, having given out that I have left his bed and board,—­the same being a bunk in a log cabin and pork and molasses three times a day,—­and having advertised that he’d pay no debts of my contractin’,—­which, as thar ain’t any, might be easier collected than debts of his own contractin’,—­this is to certify that unless he returns from Elktown Hill to his only home in Sonora in one week from date, payin’ the cost of this advertisement, I’ll know the reason why.—­Eliza Jane Dimmidge.”

“Thar,” she added, drawing a long breath, “put that in a column of the ‘Clarion,’ same size as the last, and let it work, and that’s all I want of you.”