“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.”
“A column?” repeated the editor. “Do you know the cost is very expensive, and I COULD put it in a single paragraph?”
“I reckon I kin pay the same as Mr. Dimmidge did for HIS,” said the lady complacently. “I didn't see your paper myself, but the paper as copied it—one of them big New York dailies—said that it took up a whole column.”
The editor breathed more freely; she had not seen the infamous woodcut which her husband had selected. At the same moment he was struck with a sense of retribution, justice, and compensation.
“Would you,” he asked hesitatingly,—“would you like it illustrated—by a cut?”