To own this little world, to live free of touch or taint of control or guidance, to be brother to the mountains, cousin of the free sky--to live in Heart's Desire and be a man--ah! would that were possible for all of us to-day! Were it so, then assuredly we should exult and take unto ourselves all the privileges of the domain, perhaps even to the extent of attempting the "double roll." Curly's wooing of the Littlest Girl, sped apace by his unrighteous appropriation of our can of oysters, in which he had held no fee simple, but only an individual and indeterminate interest, had prospered beyond all just deserts of a red-headed cow puncher with a salary of forty-five dollars a month.

He had already, less than two months after the installation of the new postmaster, announced to his friends his forthcoming nuptials, and ever since the setting of the happy date had comported himself with an air of ownership of the town and a mere tolerance of its inhabitants.
Perhaps, if we were each and every one of us a prospective bridegroom, as was Curly upon this morning in question, we should be all the more persuaded to execute the "double roll" in mid-street, as proof to the public that all was well.

Perhaps, also, if there should thus appear to any of us, adown street upon either hand, an object moving slowly, pausing, resuming again across the line of gun-vision its slow advance--ah! tell me, if that slow-moving object crossing the bridegroom's joyous aim were a pig,--a grunting, fat, conceited pig,--arrogating to itself much of that street wherefrom one's fellow-citizens had for a moment of grave courtesy withdrawn--tell me, if you were a bridegroom, soon to be happy, and if you could do the "double roll" with loaded guns and no danger to your bowels, and if while so engaged you should see within easy range this black, sleek pig, with its tail curled tightly, egotistically, contemptuously, over its back, what, as a man, would you do?
What, as a man, _could_ you do in a case like that, in a land where there was no law, where never a court had sat, where never such a thing as a case at law had been known?
Consider, what would be the abstract right and justice of this matter, repeating that you were a bridegroom and twenty-three, and that the air was molten wine and honey mingled, and that this pig--but then, the matter is absurd! There is but one answer.

It was right--indeed, it was inevitable--that Curly should shoot the pig; because in the first place it had intruded upon his pastime, and because in the second place he felt like it.
And yet over this act, this simple, inevitable act of justice, arose the first law case ever known in Heart's Desire, a cause which shook that community to the centre of its being, and for a time threatened its very continuance.

Ah, well! perhaps the time had come.