common sexise, in a case before the court laid down the law in such a manner as to call in question the ability of the unlearned judge to deal fair justice. The judge retorted in terms neither mild nor refined. The lawyer then declared that the judge took advantage of his position to insult him, and that if he would walk ten steps from the sacred precincts of the court he would give him a sound beating. Whereat the judge laughed inwardly, for of such was his strong suit, as he termed it; and rising immediately from his bench, and wringing the lawyer's nose by way of stimulant, as he passed out he punished the attorney until the latter was glad to go back and continue the case. And never again did that lawyer impeach the integrity or ability of a Stanislaus judge.
The alcalde of Badger hill was unwell; yet justice was healthful in his hands, and never slept. He had been elected by the miners and boarded at the Cherokee house. The court-room was wherever he happened to be. If working his claim, the nearest log or stump afforded a judicial bench; and any case which happened to come before him was disposed of with a disregard of forms and precedents worthy of Solomon.
He to whom the wronged of Badj^er hill looked for redress was an invalid. He sat up in his bunk to hear the case, while round his head was tied a red bandana. Green was the culprit; a large powerful man, and as cowardly as he was strong. He had borrowed forty dollars of little Shortey, borrowed it in the dead of winter when he lacked a pinch of golddust with which to buy a loaf of bread; and though he had a good claim, and was now taking out quantities of the yellow metal, he would not pay it. All the muscles in Shortey's body ached to angrily embrace the lubberly ingrate; but since the miners of Badger hill had a judge of their own creation, it was no longer deemed exactly the thing to ignore his office and
