“He did not try to crowd her down people’s throats—­they might let her alone if they wished, and they mostly did, I believe—­but they were made to understand that they had to treat her and speak of her with respect.

“He bought a big ranch a little way out of town, and there they lived from that time on.  As far as I can find out, the woman lived a straight, respectable kind of life for a dozen years or more, and then she died.

“But all her badness seems to have descended to the boy.  It’s one of the oddest studies in heredity I ever came across.  The people here all tell me that until he was thirteen or fourteen years old he was a manly sort of a lad, and gave promise of being something like his father as he grew up.  But about that time the evil in him began to show itself, and the older he grew the less moral principle he seemed to possess.  He was courageous, they say, and that was the only good quality he had.  It was a sort of dare-devil bravery, and along with it he was cruel, thieving, untruthful, and—­well, about as near thoroughly bad as they make ’em.  At least, that’s the sum of the account of him the people here have given me.

“The old man was universally known to be so honest and square in all his dealings, and so upright and honorable in every way, that the son’s depravity seemed all the blacker by contrast.  He has stood by the young fellow from the first of his wickedness, so everybody says, and has always shown toward him not only steadfast affection, but just the same sort of spirit that he did toward the boy’s mother.

“He has never intimated even to his best friend that the young man was anything but the best and most dutiful son that ever lived.  He has kept him supplied with money, so that the fellow’s only reason for the petty thievery he did was pure love of stealing.  He has paid his fines when he has been arrested, and shielded him from public contempt, and done everything possible to make it easy for him to be honest and respectable.

“But the boy has steadily gone on, they say, from bad to worse; and now he has capped it all with this crime, which, in wilful and unprovoked brutality, was worthy of a criminal hardened by twice his years and experience.

“He and another young blade about as bad as he is (though this one seems to have been the one who planned it and led in its execution), went to the house of an old man, who lived alone a little farther up in the foothills toward the Yosemite Valley, and asked to be allowed to stay all night.  The old man took them in, got supper for them, and made them as comfortable as he could.  In the night they got up and murdered him, stole all his money—­he had just sold some horses and cattle to the prisoner’s father—­and were preparing to skip the country and go to Australia, when they were arrested.

“The thing ’s not been absolutely proved on young Hopkins yet, but the circumstantial evidence is so plain that, even if there is nothing else, I don’t see how he ’s going to escape the rope.  I ’ve just heard a rumor, though, that there ’s to be some new evidence this afternoon that will settle the matter without a doubt.”