smoking and whittling, and the witnesses the same, and so was the prisoner.  Well, the fact is, there warn’t any interest in a murder trial then, because the fellow was always brought in ‘not guilty,’ the jury expecting him to do as much for them some time; and, although the evidence was straight and square against this Spaniard, we knew we could not convict him without seeming to be rather high-handed and sort of reflecting on every gentleman in the community; for there warn’t any carriages and liveries then, and so the only ‘style’ there was, was to keep your private graveyard.  But that woman seemed to have her heart set on hanging that Spaniard; and you’d ought to have seen how she would glare on him a minute, and then look up at me in her pleading way, and then turn and for the next five minutes search the jury’s faces, and by and by drop her face in her hands for just a little while as if she was most ready to give up; but out she’d come again directly, and be as live and anxious as ever.  But when the jury announced the verdict—­Not Guilty—­and I told the prisoner he was acquitted and free to go, that woman rose up till she appeared to be as tall and grand as a seventy-four-gun ship, and says she: 

“’Judge, do I understand you to say that this man is not guilty that murdered my husband without any cause before my own eyes and my little children’s, and that all has been done to him that ever justice and the law can do?’

“‘The same,’ says I.

“And then what do you reckon she did?  Why, she turned on that smirking Spanish fool like a wildcat, and out with a ‘navy’ and shot him dead in open court!”

“That was spirited, I am willing to admit.”

“Wasn’t it, though?” said the judge admiringly.

“I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.  I adjourned court right on the spot, and we put on our coats and went out and took up a collection for her and her cubs, and sent them over the mountains to their friends.  Ah, she was a spirited wench!”

INFORMATION WANTED

“Washington, December 10, 1867.

“Could you give me any information respecting such islands, if any, as the government is going to purchase?”

It is an uncle of mine that wants to know.  He is an industrious man and well disposed, and wants to make a living in an honest, humble way, but more especially he wants to be quiet.  He wishes to settle down, and be quiet and unostentatious.  He has been to the new island St. Thomas, but he says he thinks things are unsettled there.  He went there early with an attache of the State Department, who was sent down with money to pay for the island.  My uncle had his money in the same box, and so when they went ashore, getting a receipt, the sailors broke open the box and took all the money, not making any distinction between government money, which was legitimate money to be stolen, and my uncle’s, which was