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        Pudd'nhead Wilson
        A Tale
        by Mark Twain

        <A Whisper to the Reader>

        There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be
destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless.  Observe the ass,
for instance; his character is about perfect, he is the choicest
spirit among all the humbler animals, yet see what ridicule has
brought him to.  Instead of feeling complimented when we are called
an ass, we are left in doubt.
        -- <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

         A person who is ignorant of legal matters is always liable
to make mistakes when he tries to photograph a court scene with his
pen; and so I was not willing to let the law chapters in this book go
to press without first subjecting them to rigid and exhausting
revision and correction by a trained barrister -- if that is what
they are called.  These chapters are right, now, in every detail, for
they were rewritten under the immediate eye of William Hicks, who
studied law part of a while in southwest Missouri thirty-five years
ago and then came over here to Florence for his health and is still
helping for exercise and board in Macaroni Vermicelli's horse-feed
shed which is up the back alley as you turn around the corner out of
the Piazza del Duomo just beyond the house where that stone that
Dante used to sit on six hundred years ago is let into the wall when
he let on to be watching them build Giotto's campanile and yet always
got tired looking as soon as Beatrice passed along on her way to get
a chunk of chestnut cake to defend herself with in case of a
Ghibelline outbreak before she got to school, at the same old stand
where they sell the same old cake to this day and it is just as light
and good as it was then, too, and this is not flattery, far from it.
He was a little rusty on his law, but he rubbed up for this book, and
those two or three legal chapters are right and straight, now.  He
told me so himself.

        Given under my hand this second day of January, 1893, at the
Villa Viviani, village of Settignano, three miles back of Florence,
on the hills -- the same certainly affording the most charming view
to be found on this planet, and with it the most dream-like and
enchanting sunsets to be found in any planet or even in any solar
system -- and given, too, in the swell room of the house, with the
busts of Cerretani senators and other grandees of this line looking
approvingly down upon me as they used to look down upon Dante and
mutely asking me to adopt them into my family, which I do with
pleasure, for my remotest ancestors are but spring chickens compared
with these robed and stately antiques, and it will be a great and
satisfying lift for me, that six hundred years will.

        I

        Tell the truth or trump -- but get the trick.
        -- <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

        The scene of this chronicle is the town of Dawson's Landing, on
the Missouri side of the Mississippi, half a day's journey, per
steamboat, below St. Louis.

        In 1830 it was a snug little collection of modest one- and
two-story frame dwellings whose whitewashed exteriors were almost
concealed from sight by climbing tangles of rose vines, honeysuckles
and morning-glories.  Each of these pretty homes had a garden in
front fenced with white palings and opulently stocked with
hollyhocks, marigolds, touch-me-nots, prince's-feathers and other
old-fashioned flowers; while on the window-sills of the houses stood
wooden boxes containing moss-rose plants and terra-cotta pots in
which grew a breed of geranium whose spread of intensely red blossoms
accented the prevailing pink tint of the rose-clad house-front like
an explosion of flame.  When there was room on the ledge outside of
the pots and boxes for a cat, the cat was there -- in sunny weather
-- stretched at full length, asleep and blissful, with her furry
belly to the sun and a paw curved over her nose.  Then that house was
complete, and its contentment and peace were made manifest to the
world by this symbol, whose testimony is infallible.  A home without
a cat -- and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat -- may
be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?

        All along the streets, on both sides, at the outer edge of the
brick sidewalks, stood locust-trees with trunks protected by wooden
boxing, and these furnished shade for summer and a sweet fragrance in
spring when the clusters of buds came forth.  The main street, one
block back from the river, and running parallel with it, was the sole
business street.  It was six blocks long, and in each block two or
three brick stores three stories high towered above interjected
bunches of little frame shops.  Swinging signs creaked in the wind,
the street's whole length.  The candy-striped pole which indicates
nobility proud and ancient along the palace-bordered canals of
Venice, indicated merely the humble barber-shop along the main street
of Dawson's Landing.  On a chief corner stood a lofty unpainted pole
wreathed from top to bottom with tin pots and pans and cups, the
chief tinmonger's noisy notice to the world (when the wind blew) that
his shop was on hand for business at that corner.

        The hamlet's front was washed by the clear waters of the great
river; its body stretched itself rearward up a gentle incline; its
most rearward border fringed itself out and scattered its houses
about the base-line of the hills; the hills rose high, inclosing the
town in a half-moon curve, clothed with forests from foot to summit.

        Steamboats passed up and down every hour or so.  Those
belonging to the little Cairo line and the little Memphis line always
stopped; the big Orleans liners stopped for hails only, or to land
passengers or freight; and this was the case also with the great
flotilla of "transients." These latter came out of a dozen rivers --
the Illinois, the Missouri, the Upper Mississippi, the Ohio, the
Monongahela, the Tennessee, the Red River, the White River, and so
on; and were bound every whither and stocked with every imaginable
comfort or necessity which the Mississippi's communities could want,
from the frosty Falls of St. Anthony down through nine climates to
torrid New Orleans.

        Dawson's Landing was a slaveholding town, with a rich
slave-worked grain and pork country back of it.  The town was sleepy
and comfortable and contented.  It was fifty years old, and was
growing slowly -- very slowly, in fact, but still it was growing.

        The chief citizen was York Leicester Driscoll, about forty
years old, judge of the county court.  He was very proud of his old
Virginian ancestry, and in his hospitalities and his rather formal
and stately manners he kept up its traditions.  He was fine and just
and generous.  To be a gentleman -- a gentleman without stain or
blemish -- was his only religion, and to it he was always faithful.
He was respected, esteemed and beloved by all the community.  He was
well off, and was gradually adding to his store.  He and his wife
were very nearly happy, but not quite, for they had no children.  The
longing for the treasure of a child had grown stronger and stronger
as the years slipped away, but the blessing never came -- and was
never to come.

        With this pair lived the Judge's widowed sister, Mrs. Rachel
Pratt, and she also was childless -- childless, and sorrowful for
that reason, and not to be comforted.  The women were good and
commonplace people, and did their duty and had their reward in clear
consciences and the community's approbation.  They were
Presbyterians, the Judge was a free-thinker.

        Pembroke Howard, lawyer and bachelor, aged about forty, was
another old Virginian grandee with proved descent from the First
Families.  He was a fine, brave, majestic creature, a gentleman
according to the nicest requirements of the Virginian rule, a devoted
Presbyterian, an authority on the "code," and a man always
courteously ready to stand up before you in the field if any act or
word of his had seemed doubtful or suspicious to you, and explain it
with any weapon you might prefer from brad-awls to artillery.  He was
very popular with the people, and was the Judge's dearest friend.

        Then there was Colonel Cecil Burleigh Essex, another F. F. V.
of formidable caliber -- however, with him we have no concern.

        Percy Northumberland Driscoll, brother to the Judge, and
younger than he by five years, was a married man, and had had
children around his hearthstone; but they were attacked in detail by
measles, croup and scarlet fever, and this had given the doctor a
chance with his effective antediluvian methods; so the cradles were
empty.  He was a prosperous man, with a good head for speculations,
and his fortune was growing.  On the 1st of February, 1830, two boy
babes were born in his house: one to him, the other to one of his
slave girls, Roxana by name.  Roxana was twenty years old.  She was
up and around the same day, with her hands full, for she was tending
both babies.

        Mrs. Percy Driscoll died within the week.  Roxy remained in
charge of the children.  She had her own way, for Mr. Driscoll soon
absorbed himself in his speculations and left her to her own devices.


        In that same month of February, Dawson's Landing gained a new
citizen.  This was Mr. David Wilson, a young fellow of Scotch
parentage.  He had wandered to this remote region from his birthplace
in the interior of the State of New York, to seek his fortune.  He
was twenty-five years old, college-bred, and had finished a
post-college course in an Eastern law school a couple of years
before.

        He was a homely, freckled, sandy-haired young fellow, with an
intelligent blue eye that had frankness and comradeship in it and a
covert twinkle of a pleasant sort.  But for an unfortunate remark of
his, he would no doubt have entered at once upon a successful career
at Dawson's Landing.  But he made his fatal remark the first day he
spent in the village, and it "gaged" him.  He had just made the
acquaintance of a group of citizens when an invisible dog began to
yelp and snarl and howl and make himself very comprehensively
disagreeable, whereupon young Wilson said, much as one who is
thinking aloud --

        "I wished I owned half of that dog."

        "Why?" somebody asked.

        "Because I would kill my half."

        The group searched his face with curiosity, with anxiety even,
but found no light there, no expression that they could read.  They
fell away from him as from something uncanny, and went into privacy
to discuss him.  One said:

        "'Pears to be a fool."

        "'Pears?" said another.  "<Is>, I reckon you better say."

        "Said he wished he owned <half> of the dog, the idiot," said a
third.  "What did he reckon would become of the other half if he
killed his half?  Do you reckon he thought it would live?"

        "Why, he must have thought it, unless he <is> the downrightest
fool in the world; because if he had n't thought it, he would have
wanted to own the whole dog, knowing that if he killed his half and
the other half died, he would be responsible for that half just the
same as if he had killed that half instead of his own.  Don't it look
that way to you, gents?"

        "Yes, it does.  If he owned one half of the general dog, it
would be so; if he owned one end of the dog and another person owned
the other end, it would be so, just the same; particularly in the
first case, because if you kill one half of a general dog, there
ain't any man that can tell whose half it was, but if he owned one
end of the dog, maybe he could kill his end of it and -- "

        "No, he could n't, either: he could n't and not be responsible
if the other end died, which it would.  In my opinion the man ain't
in his right mind."

        "In my opinion he hain't <got> any mind."

        No. 3 said: "Well, he 's a lummox, anyway."

        "That 's what he is," said No. 4, "he 's a labrick -- just a
Simon-pure labrick, if ever there was one."

        "Yes, sir, he 's a dam fool, that 's the way I put him up,"
said No. 5.  "Anybody can think different that wants to, but those
are my sentiments."

        "I 'm with you, gentlemen," said No. 6.  "Perfect jackass --
yes, and it ain't going too far to say he is a pudd'nhead.  If he
ain't a pudd'nhead, I ain't no judge, that 's all."

        Mr. Wilson stood elected.  The incident was told all over the
town, and gravely discussed by everybody.  Within a week he had lost
his first name; Pudd'nhead took its place.  In time he came to be
liked, and well liked too; but by that time the nickname had got well
stuck on, and it stayed.  That first day's verdict made him a fool,
and he was not able to get it set aside, or even modified.  The
nickname soon ceased to carry any harsh or unfriendly feeling with
it, but it held its place, and was to continue to hold its place for
twenty long years.

        II

        Adam was but human -- this explains it all.  He did not want
the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was
forbidden.  The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he
would have eaten the serpent.
        -- <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

        Pudd'nhead Wilson had a trifle of money when he arrived, and he
bought a small house on the extreme western verge of the town.
Between it and Judge Driscoll's house there was only a grassy yard,
with a paling fence dividing the properties in the middle.  He hired
a small office down in the town and hung out a tin sign with these
words on it:

        DAVID WILSON.
        ATTORNEY AND COUNSELOR-AT-LAW.
        SURVEYING, CONVEYANCING, ETC.

        But his deadly remark had ruined his chance -- at least in the
law.  No clients came.  He took down his sign, after a while, and put
it up on his own house with the law features knocked out of it.  It
offered his services now in the humble capacities of land-surveyor
and expert accountant.  Now and then he got a job of surveying to do,
and now and then a merchant got him to straighten out his books.
With Scotch patience and pluck he resolved to live down his
reputation and work his way into the legal field yet.  Poor fellow,
he could not foresee that it was going to take him such a weary long
time to do it.

        He had a rich abundance of idle time, but it never hung heavy
on his hands, for he interested himself in every new thing that was
born into the universe of ideas, and studied it and experimented upon
it at his house.  One of his pet fads was palmistry.  To another one
he gave no name, neither would he explain to anybody what its purpose
was, but merely said it was an amusement.  In fact he had found that
his fads added to his reputation as a pudd'nhead; therefore he was
growing chary of being too communicative about them.  The fad without
a name was one which dealt with people's finger-marks.  He carried in
his coat pocket a shallow box with grooves in it, and in the grooves
strips of glass five inches long and three inches wide.  Along the
lower edge of each strip was pasted a slip of white paper.  He asked
people to pass their hands through their hair (thus collecting upon
them a thin coating of the natural oil) and then make a thumb-mark on
a glass strip, following it with the mark of the ball of each finger
in succession.  Under this row of faint grease-prints he would write
a record on the strip of white paper -- thus:

        JOHN SMITH, <right hand> --

        and add the day of the month and the year, then take Smith's
left hand on another glass strip, and add name and date and the words
"left hand." The strips were now returned to the grooved box, and
took their place among what Wilson called his "records."

        He often studied his records, examining and poring over them
with absorbing interest until far into the night; but what he found
there -- if he found anything -- he revealed to no one.  Sometimes he
copied on paper the involved and delicate pattern left by the ball of
a finger, and then vastly enlarged it with a pantograph so that he
could examine its web of curving lines with ease and convenience.

        One sweltering afternoon -- it was the first day of July, 1830
-- he was at work over a set of tangled account-books in his
workroom, which looked westward over a stretch of vacant lots, when a
conversation outside disturbed him.  It was carried on in yells,
which showed that the people engaged in it were not close together:

        "Say, Roxy, how does yo' baby come on?" This from the distant
voice.

        "Fust-rate; how does <you> come on, Jasper?" This yell was from
close by.

        "Oh.  I 's middlin'; hain't got noth'n' to complain of.  I 's
gwine to come a-court'n' you bimeby, Roxy."

        "<You> is, you black mud-cat!  Yah -- yah -- yah!  I got
somep'n' better to do den 'sociat'n' wid niggers as black as you is.
Is ole Miss Cooper's Nancy done give you de mitten?" Roxy followed
this sally with another discharge of care-free laughter.

        "You 's jealous, Roxy, dat 's what 's de matter wid <you>, you
hussy -- yah -- yah -- yah!  Dat 's de time I got you!"

        "Oh, yes, <you> got me, hain't you.  'Clah to goodness if dat
conceit o' yo'n strikes in, Jasper, it gwine to kill you sho'.  If
you b'longed to me I 'd sell you down de river 'fo' you git too fur
gone.  Fust time I runs acrost yo' marster, I 's gwine to tell him
so."

        This idle and aimless jabber went on and on, both parties
enjoying the friendly duel and each well satisfied with his own share
of the wit exchanged -- for wit they considered it.

        Wilson stepped to the window to observe the combatants; he
could not work while their chatter continued.  Over in the vacant
lots was Jasper, young, coal-black and of magnificent build, sitting
on a wheelbarrow in the pelting sun -- at work, supposably, whereas
he was in fact only preparing for it by taking an hour's rest before
beginning.  In front of Wilson's porch stood Roxy, with a local
hand-made baby-wagon, in which sat her two charges -- one at each end
and facing each other.  From Roxy's manner of speech, a stranger
would have expected her to be black, but she was not.  Only one
sixteenth of her was black, and that sixteenth did not show.  She was
of majestic form and stature, her attitudes were imposing and
statuesque, and her gestures and movements distinguished by a noble
and stately grace.  Her complexion was very fair, with the rosy glow
of vigorous health in the cheeks, her face was full of character and
expression, her eyes were brown and liquid, and she had a heavy suit
of fine soft hair which was also brown, but the fact was not apparent
because her head was bound about with a checkered handkerchief and
the hair was concealed under it.  Her face was shapely, intelligent
and comely -- even beautiful.  She had an easy, independent carriage
-- when she was among her own caste -- and a high and "sassy" way,
withal; but of course she was meek and humble enough where white
people were.

        To all intents and purposes Roxy was as white as anybody, but
the one sixteenth of her which was black outvoted the other fifteen
parts and made her a negro.  She was a slave, and salable as such.
Her child was thirty-one parts white, and he, too, was a slave, and
by a fiction of law and custom a negro.  He had blue eyes and flaxen
curls like his white comrade, but even the father of the white child
was able to tell the children apart -- little as he had commerce with
them -- by their clothes: for the white babe wore ruffled soft muslin
and a coral necklace, while the other wore merely a coarse tow-linen
shirt which barely reached to its knees, and no jewelry.

        The white child's name was Thomas ;aga Becket Driscoll, the
other's name was Valet de Chambre: no surname -- slaves had n't the
privilege.  Roxana had heard that phrase somewhere, the fine sound of
it had pleased her ear, and as she had supposed it was a name, she
loaded it on to her darling.  It soon got shortened to "Chambers," of
course.

        Wilson knew Roxy by sight, and when the duel of wit began to
play out, he stepped outside to gather in a record or two.  Jasper
went to work energetically, at once, perceiving that his leisure was
observed.  Wilson inspected the children and asked --

        "How old are they, Roxy?"

        "Bofe de same age, sir -- five months.  Bawn de fust o'
Feb'uary."

        "They 're handsome little chaps.  One 's just as handsome as
the other, too."

        A delighted smile exposed the girl's white teeth, and she said:

        "Bless yo' soul, Misto Wilson, it 's pow'ful nice o' you to say
dat, 'ca'se one of 'em ain't on'y a nigger.  Mighty prime little
nigger, <I> al'ays says, but dat 's 'ca'se it 's mine, o' course."

        "How do you tell them apart, Roxy, when they have n't any
clothes on?"

        Roxy laughed a laugh proportioned to her size, and said:

        "Oh, <I> kin tell 'em 'part, Misto Wilson, but I bet Marse
Percy could n't, not to save his life."

        Wilson chatted along for a while, and presently got Roxy's
finger-prints for his collection -- right hand and left -- on a
couple of his glass strips; then labeled and dated them, and took the
"records" of both children, and labeled and dated them also.


        Two months later, on the 3d of September, he took this trio of
finger-marks again.  He liked to have a "series," two or three
"takings" at intervals during the period of childhood, these to be
followed by others at intervals of several years.

        The next day -- that is to say, on the 4th of September --
something occurred which profoundly impressed Roxana.  Mr. Driscoll
missed another small sum of money -- which is a way of saying that
this was not a new thing, but had happened before.  In truth it had
happened three times before.  Driscoll's patience was exhausted.  He
was a fairly humane man toward slaves and other animals; he was an
exceedingly humane man toward the erring of his own race.  Theft he
could not abide, and plainly there was a thief in his house.
Necessarily the thief must be one of his negroes.  Sharp measures
must be taken.  He called his servants before him.  There were three
of these, besides Roxy: a man, a woman, and a boy twelve years old.
They were not related.  Mr. Driscoll said:

        "You have all been warned before.  It has done no good.  This
time I will teach you a lesson.  I will sell the thief.  Which of you
is the guilty one?"

        They all shuddered at the threat, for here they had a good
home, and a new one was likely to be a change for the worse.  The
denial was general.  None had stolen anything -- not money, anyway --
a little sugar, or cake, or honey, or something like that, that
"Marse Percy would n't mind or miss," but not money -- never a cent
of money.  They were eloquent in their protestations, but Mr.
Driscoll was not moved by them.  He answered each in turn with a
stern "Name the thief!"

        The truth was, all were guilty but Roxana; she suspected that
the others were guilty, but she did not know them to be so.  She was
horrified to think how near she had come to being guilty herself; she
had been saved in the nick of time by a revival in the colored
Methodist Church, a fortnight before, at which time and place she
"got religion." The very next day after that gracious experience,
while her change of style was fresh upon her and she was vain of her
purified condition, her master left a couple of dollars lying
unprotected on his desk, and she happened upon that temptation when
she was polishing around with a dust-rag.  She looked at the money a
while with a steadily rising resentment, then she burst out with --

        "Dad blame dat revival, I wisht it had 'a' be'n put off till
to-morrow!"

        Then she covered the tempter with a book, and another member of
the kitchen cabinet got it.  She made this sacrifice as a matter of
religious etiquette; as a thing necessary just now, but by no means
to be wrested into a precedent; no, a week or two would limber up her
piety, then she would be rational again, and the next two dollars
that got left out in the cold would find a comforter -- and she could
name the comforter.

        Was she bad?  Was she worse than the general run of her race?
No.  They had an unfair show in the battle of life, and they held it
no sin to take military advantage of the enemy -- in a small way; in
a small way, but not in a large one.  They would smouch provisions
from the pantry whenever they got a chance; or a brass thimble, or a
cake of wax, or an emery bag, or a paper of needles, or a silver
spoon, or a dollar bill, or small articles of clothing, or any other
property of light value; and so far were they from considering such
reprisals sinful, that they would go to church and shout and pray
their loudest and sincerest with their plunder in their pockets.  A
farm smoke-house had to be kept heavily padlocked, for even the
colored deacon himself could not resist a ham when Providence showed
him in a dream, or otherwise, where such a thing hung lonesome and
longed for some one to love.  But with a hundred hanging before him
the deacon would not take two -- that is, on the same night.  On
frosty nights the humane negro prowler would warm the end of a plank
and put it up under the cold claws of chickens roosting in a tree; a
drowsy hen would step on to the comfortable board, softly clucking
her gratitude, and the prowler would dump her into his bag, and later
into his stomach, perfectly sure that in taking this trifle from the
man who daily robbed him of an inestimable treasure -- his liberty --
he was not committing any sin that God would remember against him in
the Last Great Day.

        "Name the thief!"


        For the fourth time Mr. Driscoll had said it, and always in the
same hard tone.  And now he added these words of awful import:

        "I give you one minute" -- he took out his watch.  "If at the
end of that time you have not confessed, I will not only sell all
four of you, <but> -- I will sell you DOWN THE RIVER!"

        It was equivalent to condemning them to hell!  No Missouri
negro doubted this.  Roxy reeled in her tracks and the color vanished
out of her face; the others dropped to their knees as if they had
been shot; tears gushed from their eyes, their supplicating hands
went up, and three answers came in the one instant:

        "I done it!"

        "I done it!"

        "I done it! -- have mercy, marster -- Lord have mercy on us po'
niggers!"

        "Very good," said the master, putting up his watch, "I will
sell you <here>, though you don't deserve it.  You ought to be sold
down the river."

        The culprits flung themselves prone, in an ecstasy of
gratitude, and kissed his feet, declaring that they would never
forget his goodness and never cease to pray for him as long as they
lived.  They were sincere, for like a god he had stretched forth his
mighty hand and closed the gates of hell against them.  He knew,
himself, that he had done a noble and gracious thing, and was
privately well pleased with his magnanimity; and that night he set
the incident down in his diary, so that his son might read it in
after years, and be thereby moved to deeds of gentleness and humanity
himself.


        III

        Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows
how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great
benefactor of our race.  He brought death into the world.
        -- <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

        Percy Driscoll slept well the night he saved his house-minions
from going down the river, but no wink of sleep visited Roxy's eyes.
A profound terror had taken possession of her.  Her child could grow
up and be sold down the river!  The thought crazed her with horror.
If she dozed and lost herself for a moment, the next moment she was
on her feet and flying to her child's cradle to see if it was still
there.  Then she would gather it to her heart and pour out her love
upon it in a frenzy of kisses, moaning, crying, and saying "Dey
sha'n't, oh, dey <sha'n't>! -- yo' po' mammy will kill you fust!"

        Once, when she was tucking it back in its cradle again, the
other child nestled in its sleep and attracted her attention.  She
went and stood over it a long time, communing with herself:

        "What has my po' baby done, dat he could n't have yo' luck?  He
hain't done noth'n'.  God was good to you; why war n't he good to
him?  Dey can't sell <you> down de river.  I hates yo' pappy; he
ain't got no heart -- for niggers he hain't, anyways.  I hates him,
en I could kill him!" She paused a while, thinking; then she burst
into wild sobbings again, and turned away, saying, "Oh, I got to kill
my chile, dey ain't no yuther way, -- killin' <him> would n't save de
chile fum goin' down de river.  Oh, I got to do it, yo' po' mammy's
got to kill you to save you, honey" -- she gathered her baby to her
bosom, now, and began to smother it with caresses -- "Mammy 's got to
kill you -- how <kin> I do it!  But yo' mammy ain't gwine to desert
you, -- no, no; <dah>, don't cry -- she gwine <wid> you, she gwine to
kill herself too.  Come along, honey, come along wid mammy; we gwine
to jump in de river, den de troubles o' dis worl' is all over -- dey
don't sell po' niggers down the river over <yonder>."

        She started toward the door, crooning to the child and hushing
it; midway she stopped, suddenly.  She had caught sight of her new
Sunday gown -- a cheap curtain-calico thing, a conflagration of gaudy
colors and fantastic figures.  She surveyed it wistfully, longingly.

        "Hain't ever wore it yet," she said, "en it 's jist lovely."
Then she nodded her head in response to a pleasant idea, and added,
"No, I ain't gwine to be fished out, wid everybody lookin' at me, in
dis mis'able ole linsey-woolsey."

        She put down the child and made the change.  She looked in the
glass and was astonished at her beauty.  She resolved to make her
death-toilet perfect.  She took off her handkerchief-turban and
dressed her glossy wealth of hair "like white folks"; she added some
odds and ends of rather lurid ribbon and a spray of atrocious
artificial flowers; finally she threw over her shoulders a fluffy
thing called a "cloud" in that day, which was of a blazing red
complexion.  Then she was ready for the tomb.

        She gathered up her baby once more; but when her eye fell upon
its miserably short little gray tow-linen shirt and noted the
contrast between its pauper shabbiness and her own volcanic irruption
of infernal splendors, her mother-heart was touched, and she was
ashamed.

        "No, dolling, mammy ain't gwine to treat you so.  De angels is
gwine to 'mire you jist as much as dey does yo' mammy.  Ain't gwine
to have 'em putt'n' dey han's up 'fo' dey eyes en sayin' to David en
Goliah en dem yuther prophets, `Dat chile is dress' too indelicate
fo' dis place.'"

        By this time she had stripped off the shirt.  Now she clothed
the naked little creature in one of Thomas a Becket's snowy long
baby-gowns, with its bright blue bows and dainty flummery of ruffles.

        "Dah -- now you 's fixed." She propped the child in a chair and
stood off to inspect it.  Straightway her eyes began to widen with
astonishment and admiration, and she clapped her hands and cried out,
"Why, it do beat all! -- I <never> knowed you was so lovely.  Marse
Tommy ain't a bit puttier -- not a single bit."

        She stepped over and glanced at the other infant; she flung a
glance back at her own; then one more at the heir of the house.  Now
a strange light dawned in her eyes, and in a moment she was lost in
thought.  She seemed in a trance; when she came out of it she
muttered, "When I 'uz a-washin' 'em in de tub, yistiddy, his own
pappy asked me which of 'em was his'n."

        She began to move about like one in a dream.  She undressed
Thomas a Becket, stripping him of everything, and put the tow-linen
shirt on him.  She put his coral necklace on her own child's neck.
Then she placed the children side by side, and after earnest
inspection she muttered --

        "Now who would b'lieve clo'es could do de like o' dat?  Dog my
cats if it ain't all <I> kin do to tell t' other fum which, let alone
his pappy."

        She put her cub in Tommy's elegant cradle and said --

        "You 's young Marse <Tom> fum dis out, en I got to practise and
git used to 'memberin' to call you dat, honey, or I 's gwine to make
a mistake some time en git us bofe into trouble.  Dah -- now you lay
still en don't fret no mo', Marse Tom -- oh, thank de good Lord in
heaven, you 's saved, you 's saved! -- dey ain't no man kin ever sell
mammy's po' little honey down de river now!"

        She put the heir of the house in her own child's unpainted pine
cradle, and said, contemplating its slumbering form uneasily --

        "I 's sorry for you, honey; I 's sorry, God knows I is, -- but
what <kin> I do, what <could> I do?  Yo' pappy would sell him to
somebody, some time, en den he' d go down de river, sho', en I could
n't, could n't, <could n't> stan' it."

        She flung herself on her bed and began to think and toss, toss
and think.  By and by she sat suddenly upright, for a comforting
thought had flown through her worried mind --

        "'T ain't no sin -- <white> folks has done it!  It ain't no
sin, glory to goodness it ain't no sin!  <Dey 's> done it -- yes, en
dey was de biggest quality in de whole bilin', too -- <kings!> --"

        She began to muse; she was trying to gather out of her memory
the dim particulars of some tale she had heard some time or other.
At last she said --

        "Now I 's got it; now I 'member.  It was dat ole nigger
preacher dat tole it, de time he come over here fum Illinois en
preached in de nigger church.  He said dey ain't nobody kin save his
own self -- can't do it by faith, can't do it by works, can't do it
no way at all.  Free grace is de <on'y> way, en dat don't come fum
nobody but jis' de Lord; en <he> kin give it to anybody he please,
saint or sinner -- <he> don't kyer.  He do jis' as he 's a mineter.
He s'lect out anybody dat suit him, en put another one in his place,
en make de fust one happy forever en leave t' other one to burn wid
Satan.  De preacher said it was jist like dey done in Englan' one
time, long time ago.  De queen she lef' her baby layin' aroun' one
day, en went out callin'; en one o' de niggers roun' 'bout de place
dat was 'mos' white, she come in en see de chile layin' aroun', en
tuck en put her own chile's clo'es on de queen's chile, en put de
queen's chile's clo'es on her own chile, en den lef' her own chile
layin' aroun' en tuck en toted de queen's chile home to de
nigger-quarter, en nobody ever foun' it out, en her chile was de king
bimeby, en sole de queen's chile down de river one time when dey had
to settle up de estate.  Dah, now -- de preacher said it his own
self, en it ain't no sin, 'ca'se white folks done it.  <Dey> done it
-- yes, <dey> done it; en not on'y jis' common white folks nuther,
but de biggest quality dey is in de whole bilin'.  Oh, I 's <so> glad
I 'member 'bout dat!"

        She got up light-hearted and happy, and went to the cradles and
spent what was left of the night "practising." She would give her own
child a light pat and say humbly, "Lay still, Marse Tom," then give
the real Tom a pat and say with severity, "Lay <still>, Chambers! --
does you want me to take somep'n' <to> you?"

        As she progressed with her practice, she was surprised to see
how steadily and surely the awe which had kept her tongue reverent
and her manner humble toward her young master was transferring itself
to her speech and manner toward the usurper, and how similarly handy
she was becoming in transferring her motherly curtness of speech and
peremptoriness of manner to the unlucky heir of the ancient house of
Driscoll.

        She took occasional rests from practising, and absorbed herself
in calculating her chances.

        "Dey 'll sell dese niggers to-day fo' stealin' de money, den
dey 'll buy some mo' dat don't know de chillen -- so <dat 's> all
right.  When I takes de chillen out to git de air, de minute I 's
roun' de corner I 's gwine to gaum dey mouths all roun' wid jam, den
dey can't <nobody> notice dey 's changed.  Yes, I gwineter do dat
till I 's safe, if it 's a year.

        "Dey ain't but one man dat I 's afeard of, en dat 's dat
Pudd'nhead Wilson.  Dey calls him a pudd'nhead, en says he 's a fool.
My lan', dat man ain't no mo' fool den I is!  He 's de smartes' man
in dis town, less 'n it 's Jedge Driscroll or maybe Pem Howard.
Blame dat man, he worries me wid dem ornery glasses o' hisn; <I>
b'lieve he's a witch.  But nemmine, I 's gwine to happen aroun' dah
one o' dese days en let on dat I reckon he wants to print de
chillen's fingers ag'in; en if <he> don't notice dey 's changed, I
bound dey ain't nobody gwine to notice it, en den I 's safe, sho'.
But I reckon I 'll tote along a hoss-shoe to keep off de witch-work."

        The new negroes gave Roxy no trouble, of course.  The master
gave her none, for one of his speculations was in jeopardy, and his
mind was so occupied that he hardly saw the children when he looked
at them, and all Roxy had to do was to get them both into a gale of
laughter when he came about; then their faces were mainly cavities
exposing gums, and he was gone again before the spasm passed and the
little creatures resumed a human aspect.

        Within a few days the fate of the speculation became so dubious
that Mr. Percy went away with his brother the Judge, to see what
could be done with it.  It was a land speculation as usual, and it
had gotten complicated with a lawsuit.  The men were gone seven
weeks.  Before they got back Roxy had paid her visit to Wilson, and
was satisfied.  Wilson took the finger-prints, labeled them with the
names and with the date -- October the first -- put them carefully
away and continued his chat with Roxy, who seemed very anxious that
he should admire the great advance in flesh and beauty which the
babies had made since he took their finger-prints a month before.  He
complimented their improvement to her contentment; and as they were
without any disguise of jam or other stain, she trembled all the
while and was miserably frightened lest at any moment he --

        But he did n't.  He discovered nothing; and she went home
jubilant, and dropped all concern about the matter permanently out of
her mind.


        IV

        Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principal one was,
that they escaped teething.
        -- <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

        There is this trouble about special providences -- namely,
there is so often a doubt as to which party was intended to be the
beneficiary.  In the case of the children, the bears and the prophet,
the bears got more real satisfaction out of the episode than the
prophet did, because they got the children.
        -- <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

        This history must henceforth accommodate itself to the change
which Roxana has consummated, and call the real heir "Chambers" and
the usurping little slave "Thomas a Becket" -- shortening this latter
name to "Tom," for daily use, as the people about him did.

        "Tom" was a bad baby, from the very beginning of his
usurpation.  He would cry for nothing; he would burst into storms of
devilish temper without notice, and let go scream after scream and
squall after squall, then climax the thing with "holding his breath"
-- that frightful specialty of the teething nursling, in the throes
of which the creature exhausts its lungs, then is convulsed with
noiseless squirmings and twistings and kickings in the effort to get
its breath, while the lips turn blue and the mouth stands wide and
rigid, offering for inspection one wee tooth set in the lower rim of
a hoop of red gums; and when the appalling stillness has endured
until one is sure the lost breath will never return, a nurse comes
flying, and dashes water in the child's face, and -- presto! the
lungs fill, and instantly discharge a shriek, or a yell, or a howl
which bursts the listening ear and surprises the owner of it into
saying words which would not go well with a halo if he had one.  The
baby Tom would claw anybody who came within reach of his nails, and
pound anybody he could reach with his rattle.  He would scream for
water until he got it, and then throw cup and all on the floor and
scream for more.  He was indulged in all his caprices, howsoever
troublesome and exasperating they might be; he was allowed to eat
anything he wanted, particularly things that would give him the
stomach-ache.

        When he got to be old enough to begin to toddle about and say
broken words and get an idea of what his hands were for, he was a
more consummate pest than ever.  Roxy got no rest while he was awake.
He would call for anything and everything he saw, simply saying "Awnt
it!" (want it), which was a command.  When it was brought, he said in
a frenzy, and motioning it away with his hands, "Don't awnt it! don't
awnt it!" and the moment it was gone he set up frantic yells of "Awnt
it! awnt it! awnt it!" and Roxy had to give wings to her heels to get
that thing back to him again before he could get time to carry out
his intention of going into convulsions about it.

        What he preferred above all other things was the tongs.  This
was because his "father" had forbidden him to have them lest he break
windows and furniture with them.  The moment Roxy's back was turned
he would toddle to the presence of the tongs and say "Like it!" and
cock his eye to one side to see if Roxy was observing; then, "Awnt
it!" and cock his eye again; then, "Hab it!" with another furtive
glance; and finally, "Take it!" -- and the prize was his.  The next
moment the heavy implement was raised aloft; the next, there was a
crash and a squall, and the cat was off on three legs to meet an
engagement; Roxy would arrive just as the lamp or a window went to
irremediable smash.

        Tom got all the petting, Chambers got none.  Tom got all the
delicacies, Chambers got mush and milk, and clabber without sugar.
In consequence Tom was a sickly child and Chambers was n't.  Tom was
"fractious," as Roxy called it, and overbearing; Chambers was meek
and docile.

        With all her splendid common sense and practical every-day
ability, Roxy was a doting fool of a mother.  She was this toward her
child -- and she was also more than this: by the fiction created by
herself, he was become her master; the necessity of recognizing this
relation outwardly and of perfecting herself in the forms required to
express the recognition, had moved her to such diligence and
faithfulness in practising these forms that this exercise soon
concreted itself into habit; it became automatic and unconscious;
then a natural result followed: deceptions intended solely for others
gradually grew practically into self-deceptions as well; the mock
reverence became real reverence, the mock obsequiousness real
obsequiousness, the mock homage real homage; the little counterfeit
rift of separation between imitation-slave and imitation-master
widened and widened, and became an abyss, and a very real one -- and
on one side of it stood Roxy, the dupe of her own deceptions, and on
the other stood her child, no longer a usurper to her, but her
accepted and recognized master.  He was her darling, her master, and
her deity all in one, and in her worship of him she forgot who she
was and what he had been.

        In babyhood Tom cuffed and banged and scratched Chambers
unrebuked, and Chambers early learned that between meekly bearing it
and resenting it, the advantage all lay with the former policy.  The
few times that his persecutions had moved him beyond control and made
him fight back had cost him very dear at headquarters; not at the
hands of Roxy, for if she ever went beyond scolding him sharply for
"forgitt'n' who his young master was," she at least never extended
her punishment beyond a box on the ear.  No, Percy Driscoll was the
person.  He told Chambers that under no provocation whatever was he
privileged to lift his hand against his little master.  Chambers
overstepped the line three times, and got three such convincing
canings from the man who was his father and did n't know it, that he
took Tom's cruelties in all humility after that, and made no more
experiments.

        Outside of the house the two boys were together all through
their boyhood.  Chambers was strong beyond his years, and a good
fighter; strong because he was coarsely fed and hard worked about the
house, and a good fighter because Tom furnished him plenty of
practice -- on white boys whom he hated and was afraid of.  Chambers
was his constant body-guard, to and from school; he was present on
the playground at recess to protect his charge.  He fought himself
into such a formidable reputation, by and by, that Tom could have
changed clothes with him, and "ridden in peace," like Sir Kay in
Launcelot's armor.

        He was good at games of skill, too.  Tom staked him with
marbles to play "keeps" with, and then took all the winnings away
from him.  In the winter season Chambers was on hand, in Tom's
worn-out clothes, with "holy" red mittens, and "holy" shoes, and
pants "holy" at the knees and seat, to drag a sled up the hill for
Tom, warmly clad, to ride down on; but he never got a ride himself.
He built snow men and snow fortifications under Tom's directions.  He
was Tom's patient target when Tom wanted to do some snowballing, but
the target could n't fire back.  Chambers carried Tom's skates to the
river and strapped them on him, then trotted around after him on the
ice, so as to be on hand when wanted; but he was n't ever asked to
try the skates himself.

        In summer the pet pastime of the boys of Dawson's Landing was
to steal apples, peaches, and melons from the farmers' fruit-wagons,
-- mainly on account of the risk they ran of getting their head laid
open with the butt of the farmer's whip.  Tom was a distinguished
adept at these thefts -- by proxy.  Chambers did his stealing, and
got the peach-stones, apple-cores, and melon-rinds for his share.

        Tom always made Chambers go in swimming with him, and stay by
him as a protection.  When Tom had had enough, he would slip out and
tie knots in Chambers's shirt, dip the knots in the water to make
them hard to undo, then dress himself and sit by and laugh while the
naked shiverer tugged at the stubborn knots with his teeth.

        Tom did his humble comrade these various ill turns partly out
of native viciousness, and partly because he hated him for his
superiorities of physique and pluck, and for his manifold
clevernesses.  Tom could n't dive, for it gave him splitting
headaches.  Chambers could dive without inconvenience, and was fond
of doing it.  He excited so much admiration, one day, among a crowd
of white boys, by throwing back somersaults from the stern of a
canoe, that it wearied Tom's spirit, and at last he shoved the canoe
underneath Chambers while he was in the air -- so he came down on his
head in the canoe-bottom; and while he lay unconscious, several of
Tom's ancient adversaries saw that their long-desired opportunity was
come, and they gave the false heir such a drubbing that with
Chambers's best help he was hardly able to drag himself home
afterward.

        When the boys were fifteen and upward, Tom was "showing off" in
the river one day, when he was taken with a cramp, and shouted for
help.  It was a common trick with the boys -- particularly if a
stranger was present -- to pretend a cramp and howl for help; then
when the stranger came tearing hand over hand to the rescue, the
howler would go on struggling and howling till he was close at hand,
then replace the howl with a sarcastic smile and swim blandly away,
while the town boys assailed the dupe with a volley of jeers and
laughter.  Tom had never tried this joke as yet, but was supposed to
be trying it now, so the boys held warily back; but Chambers believed
his master was in earnest, therefore he swam out, and arrived in
time, unfortunately, and saved his life.

        This was the last feather.  Tom had managed to endure
everything else, but to have to remain publicly and permanently under
such an obligation as this to a nigger, and to this nigger of all
niggers -- this was too much.  He heaped insults upon Chambers for
"pretending" to think he was in earnest in calling for help, and said
that anybody but a blockheaded nigger would have known he was funning
and left him alone.

        Tom's enemies were in strong force here, so they came out with
their opinions quite freely.  They laughed at him, and called him
coward, liar, sneak, and other sorts of pet names, and told him they
meant to call Chambers by a new name after this, and make it common
in the town -- "Tom Driscoll's niggerpappy," -- to signify that he
had had a second birth into this life, and that Chambers was the
author of his new being.  Tom grew frantic under these taunts, and
shouted --

        "Knock their heads off, Chambers! knock their heads off!  What
do you stand there with your hands in your pockets for?"

        Chambers expostulated, and said, "But, Marse Tom, dey 's too
many of 'em -- dey 's -- "

        "Do you hear me?"

        "Please, Marse Tom, don't make me!  Dey 's so many of 'em dat
-- "

        Tom sprang at him and drove his pocket-knife into him two or
three times before the boys could snatch him away and give the
wounded lad a chance to escape.  He was considerably hurt, but not
seriously.  If the blade had been a little longer his career would
have ended there.

        Tom had long ago taught Roxy "her place." It had been many a
day now since she had ventured a caress or a fondling epithet in his
quarter.  Such things, from a "nigger," were repulsive to him, and
she had been warned to keep her distance and remember who she was.
She saw her darling gradually cease from being her son, she saw
<that> detail perish utterly; all that was left was master -- master,
pure and simple, and it was not a gentle mastership, either.  She saw
herself sink from the sublime height of motherhood to the somber
deeps of unmodified slavery.  The abyss of separation between her and
her boy was complete.  She was merely his chattel, now, his
convenience, his dog, his cringing and helpless slave, the humble and
unresisting victim of his capricious temper and vicious nature.

        Sometimes she could not go to sleep, even when worn out with
fatigue, because her rage boiled so high over the day's experiences
with her boy.  She would mumble and mutter to herself --

        "He struck me, en I war n't no way to blame -- struck me in de
face, right before folks.  En he 's al'ays callin' me nigger-wench,
en hussy, en all dem mean names, when I 's doin' de very bes' I kin.
Oh, Lord, I done so much for him -- I lift' him away up to what he is
-- en dis is what I git for it."

        Sometimes when some outrage of peculiar offensiveness stung her
to the heart, she would plan schemes of vengeance and revel in the
fancied spectacle of his exposure to the world as an impostor and a
slave; but in the midst of these joys fear would strike her: she had
made him too strong; she could prove nothing, and -- heavens, she
might get sold down the river for her pains!  So her schemes always
went for nothing, and she laid them aside in impotent rage against
the fates, and against herself for playing the fool on that fatal
September day in not providing herself with a witness for use in the
day when such a thing might be needed for the appeasing of her
vengeance-hungry heart.

        And yet the moment Tom happened to be good to her, and kind, --
and this occurred every now and then, -- all her sore places were
healed, and she was happy; happy and proud, for this was her son, her
nigger son, lording it among the whites and securely avenging their
crimes against her race.

        There were two grand funerals in Dawson's Landing that fall --
the fall of 1845.  One was that of Colonel Cecil Burleigh Essex, the
other that of Percy Driscoll.

        On his death-bed Driscoll set Roxy free and delivered his
idolized ostensible son solemnly into the keeping of his brother the
Judge and his wife.  Those childless people were glad to get him.
Childless people are not difficult to please.

        Judge Driscoll had gone privately to his brother, a month
before, and bought Chambers.  He had heard that Tom had been trying
to get his father to sell the boy down the river, and he wanted to
prevent the scandal -- for public sentiment did not approve of that
way of treating family servants for light cause or for no cause.

        Percy Driscoll had worn himself out in trying to save his great
speculative landed estate, and had died without succeeding.  He was
hardly in his grave before the boom collapsed and left his hitherto
envied young devil of an heir a pauper.  But that was nothing; his
uncle told him he should be his heir and have all his fortune when he
died; so Tom was comforted.

        Roxy had no home, now; so she resolved to go around and say
good-by to her friends and then clear out and see the world -- that
is to say, she would go chambermaiding on a steamboat, the darling
ambition of her race and sex.

        Her last call was on the black giant, Jasper.  She found him
chopping Pudd'nhead Wilson's winter provision of wood.

        Wilson was chatting with him when Roxy arrived.  He asked her
how she could bear to go off chambermaiding and leave her boys; and
chaffingly offered to copy off a series of their finger-prints,
reaching up to their twelfth year, for her to remember them by; but
she sobered in a moment, wondering if he suspected anything; then she
said she believed she did n't want them.  Wilson said to himself,
"The drop of black blood in her is superstitious; she thinks there 's
some devilry, some witch-business about my glass mystery somewhere;
she used to come here with an old horseshoe in her hand; it could
have been an accident, but I doubt it."

        V

        Training is everything.  The peach was once a bitter almond;
cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.
        -- <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

        Remark of Dr. Baldwin's, concerning up-starts: We don't care to
eat toadstools that think they are truffles.
        -- <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

        Mrs. York Driscoll enjoyed two years of bliss with that prize,
Tom -- bliss that was troubled a little at times, it is true, but
bliss nevertheless; then she died, and her husband and his childless
sister, Mrs. Pratt, continued the bliss-business at the old stand.
Tom was petted and indulged and spoiled to his entire content -- or
nearly that.  This went on till he was nineteen, then he was sent to
Yale.  He went handsomely equipped with "conditions," but otherwise
he was not an object of distinction there.  He remained at Yale two
years, and then threw up the struggle.  He came home with his manners
a good deal improved; he had lost his surliness and brusqueness, and
was rather pleasantly soft and smooth, now; he was furtively, and
sometimes openly, ironical of speech, and given to gently touching
people on the raw, but he did it with a good-natured semiconscious
air that carried it off safely, and kept him from getting into
trouble.  He was as indolent as ever and showed no very strenuous
desire to hunt up an occupation.  People argued from this that he
preferred to be supported by his uncle until his uncle's shoes should
become vacant.  He brought back one or two new habits with him, one
of which he rather openly practised -- tippling -- but concealed
another, which was gambling.  It would not do to gamble where his
uncle could hear of it; he knew that quite well.

        Tom's Eastern polish was not popular among the young people.
They could have endured it, perhaps, if Tom had stopped there; but he
wore gloves, and that they could n't stand, and would n't; so he was
mainly without society.  He brought home with him a suit of clothes
of such exquisite style and cut and fashion, -- Eastern fashion, city
fashion, -- that it filled everybody with anguish and was regarded as
a peculiarly wanton affront.  He enjoyed the feeling which he was
exciting, and paraded the town serene and happy all day; but the
young fellows set a tailor to work that night, and when Tom started
out on his parade next morning he found the old deformed negro
bell-ringer straddling along in his wake tricked out in a flamboyant
curtain-calico exaggeration of his finery, and imitating his fancy
Eastern graces as well as he could.

        Tom surrendered, and after that clothed himself in the local
fashion.  But the dull country town was tiresome to him, since his
acquaintanceship with livelier regions, and it grew daily more and
more so.  He began to make little trips to St. Louis for refreshment.
There he found companionship to suit him, and pleasures to his taste,
along with more freedom, in some particulars, than he could have at
home.  So, during the next two years his visits to the city grew in
frequency and his tarryings there grew steadily longer in duration.

        He was getting into deep waters.  He was taking chances,
privately, which might get him into trouble some day -- in fact,
<did>.

        Judge Driscoll had retired from the bench and from all business
activities in 1850, and had now been comfortably idle three years.
He was president of the Free-thinkers' Society, and Pudd'nhead Wilson
was the other member.  The society's weekly discussions were now the
old lawyer's main interest in life.  Pudd'nhead was still toiling in
obscurity at the bottom of the ladder, under the blight of that
unlucky remark which he had let fall twenty-three years before about
the dog.

        Judge Driscoll was his friend, and claimed that he had a mind
above the average, but that was regarded as one of the Judge's whims,
and it failed to modify the public opinion.  Or rather, that was one
of the reasons why it failed, but there was another and better one.
If the judge had stopped with bare assertion, it would have had a
good deal of effect; but he made the mistake of trying to prove his
position.  For some years Wilson had been privately at work on a
whimsical almanac, for his amusement -- a calendar, with a little dab
of ostensible philosophy, usually in ironical form, appended to each
date; and the Judge thought that these quips and fancies of Wilson's
were neatly turned and cute; so he carried a handful of them around,
one day, and read them to some of the chief citizens.  But irony was
not for those people; their mental vision was not focussed for it.
They read those playful trifles in the solidest earnest, and decided
without hesitancy that if there had ever been any doubt that Dave
Wilson was a pudd'nhead -- which there had n't -- this revelation
removed that doubt for good and all.  That is just the way in this
world; an enemy can partly ruin a man, but it takes a good-natured
injudicious friend to complete the thing and make it perfect.  After
this the Judge felt tenderer than ever toward Wilson, and surer than
ever that his calendar had merit.

        Judge Driscoll could be a free-thinker and still hold his place
in society because he was the person of most consequence in the
community, and therefore could venture to go his own way and follow
out his own notions.  The other member of his pet organization was
allowed the like liberty because he was a cipher in the estimation of
the public, and nobody attached any importance to what he thought or
did.  He was liked, he was welcome enough all around, but he simply
did n't count for anything.

        The widow Cooper -- affectionately called "aunt Patsy" by
everybody -- lived in a snug and comely cottage with her daughter
Rowena, who was nineteen, romantic, amiable, and very pretty, but
otherwise of no consequence.  Rowena had a couple of young brothers
-- also of no consequence.

        The widow had a large spare room which she let to a lodger,
with board, when she could find one, but this room had been empty for
a year now, to her sorrow.  Her income was only sufficient for the
family support, and she needed the lodging-money for trifling
luxuries.  But now, at last, on a flaming June day, she found herself
happy; her tedious wait was ended; her year-worn advertisement had
been answered; and not by a village applicant, oh, no! -- this letter
was from away off yonder in the dim great world to the North; it was
from St. Louis.  She sat on her porch gazing out with unseeing eyes
upon the shining reaches of the mighty Mississippi, her thoughts
steeped in her good fortune.  Indeed it was specially good fortune,
for she was to have two lodgers instead of one.


        She had read the letter to the family, and Rowena had danced
away to see to the cleaning and airing of the room by the slave woman
Nancy, and the boys had rushed abroad in the town to spread the great
news, for it was matter of public interest, and the public would
wonder and not be pleased if not informed.  Presently Rowena
returned, all ablush with joyous excitement, and begged for a
re-reading of the letter.  It was framed thus:

        HONORED MADAM: My brother and I have seen your advertisement,
by chance, and beg leave to take the room you offer.  We are
twenty-four years of age and twins.  We are Italians by birth, but
have lived long in the various countries of Europe, and several years
in the United States.  Our names are Luigi and Angelo Capello.  You
desire but one guest; but dear Madam, if you will allow us to pay for
two, we will not incommode you.  We shall be down Thursday.

        "Italians!  How romantic!  Just think, ma -- there 's never
been one in this town, and everybody will be dying to see them, and
they 're all <ours>!  Think of that!"

        "Yes, I reckon they 'll make a grand stir."

        "Oh, indeed they will.  The whole town will be on its head!
Think -- they 've been in Europe and everywhere!  There 's never been
a traveler in this town before.  Ma, I should n't wonder if they 've
seen kings!"

        "Well, a body can't tell; but they 'll make stir enough,
without that."

        "Yes, that 's of course.  Luigi -- Angelo.  They 're lovely
names; and so grand and foreign -- not like Jones and Robinson and
such.  Thursday they are coming, and this is only Tuesday; it 's a
cruel long time to wait.  Here comes Judge Driscoll in at the gate.
He 's heard about it.  I 'll go and open the door."

        The judge was full of congratulations and curiosity.  The
letter was read and discussed.  Soon Justice Robinson arrived with
more congratulations, and there was a new reading and a new
discussion.  This was the beginning.  Neighbor after neighbor, of
both sexes, followed, and the procession drifted in and out all day
and evening and all Wednesday and Thursday.  The letter was read and
re-read until it was nearly worn out; everybody admired its courtly
and gracious tone, and smooth and practised style, everybody was
sympathetic and excited, and the Coopers were steeped in happiness
all the while.

        The boats were very uncertain in low water, in these primitive
times.  This time the Thursday boat had not arrived at ten at night
-- so the people had waited at the landing all day for nothing; they
were driven to their homes by a heavy storm without having had a view
of the illustrious foreigners.

        Eleven o'clock came; and the Cooper house was the only one in
the town that still had lights burning.  The rain and thunder were
booming yet, and the anxious family were still waiting, still hoping.
At last there was a knock at the door and the family jumped to open
it.  Two negro men entered, each carrying a trunk, and proceeded
up-stairs toward the guest-room.  Then entered the twins -- the
handsomest, the best dressed, the most distinguished-looking pair of
young fellows the West had ever seen.  One was a little fairer than
the other, but otherwise they were exact duplicates.

        VI

        Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the
undertaker will be sorry.
        -- <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

        Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any
man, but coaxed down-stairs a step at a time.
        -- <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

        At breakfast in the morning the twins' charm of manner and easy
and polished bearing made speedy conquest of the family's good
graces.  All constraint and formality quickly disappeared, and the
friendliest feeling succeeded.  Aunt Patsy called them by their
Christian names almost from the beginning.  She was full of the
keenest curiosity about them, and showed it; they responded by
talking about themselves, which pleased her greatly.  It presently
appeared that in their early youth they had known poverty and
hardship.  As the talk wandered along the old lady watched for the
right place to drop in a question or two concerning that matter, and
when she found it she said to the blond twin, who was now doing the
biographies in his turn while the brunette one rested --

        "If it ain't asking what I ought not to ask, Mr. Angelo, how
did you come to be so friendless and in such trouble when you were
little?  Do you mind telling?  But don't if you do."

        "Oh, we don't mind it at all, madam; in our case it was merely
misfortune, and nobody's fault.  Our parents were well to do, there
in Italy, and we were their only child.  We were of the old
Florentine nobility" -- Rowena's heart gave a great bound, her
nostrils expanded, and a fine light played in her eyes -- "and when
the war broke out my father was on the losing side and had to fly for
his life.  His estates were confiscated, his personal property
seized, and there we were, in Germany, strangers, friendless, and in
fact paupers.  My brother and I were ten years old, and well educated
for that age, very studious, very fond of our books, and well
grounded in the German, French, Spanish, and English languages.
Also, we were marvelous musical prodigies -- if you will allow me to
say it, it being only the truth.

        "Our father survived his misfortunes only a month, our mother
soon followed him, and we were alone in the world.  Our parents could
have made themselves comfortable by exhibiting us as a show, and they
had many and large offers; but the thought revolted their pride, and
they said they would starve and die first.  But what they would n't
consent to do we had to do without the formality of consent.  We were
seized for the debts occasioned by their illness and their funerals,
and placed among the attractions of a cheap museum in Berlin to earn
the liquidation money.  It took us two years to get out of that
slavery.  We traveled all about Germany, receiving no wages, and not
even our keep.  We had to be exhibited for nothing, and beg our
bread.

        "Well, madam, the rest is not of much consequence.  When we
escaped from that slavery at twelve years of age, we were in some
respects men.  Experience had taught us some valuable things; among
others, how to take care of ourselves, how to avoid and defeat sharks
and sharpers, and how to conduct our own business for our own profit
and without other people's help.  We traveled everywhere -- years and
years -- picking up smatterings of strange tongues, familiarizing
ourselves with strange sights and strange customs, accumulating an
education of a wide and varied and curious sort.  It was a pleasant
life.  We went to Venice -- to London, Paris, Russia, India, China,
Japan -- "

        At this point Nancy the slave woman thrust her head in at the
door and exclaimed:

        "Ole Missus, de house is plum' jam full o' people, en dey 's
jes a-spi'lin' to see de gen'lmen!" She indicated the twins with a
nod of her head, and tucked it back out of sight again.

        It was a proud occasion for the widow, and she promised herself
high satisfaction in showing off her fine foreign birds before her
neighbors and friends -- simple folk who had hardly ever seen a
foreigner of any kind, and never one of any distinction or style.
Yet her feeling was moderate indeed when contrasted with Rowena's.
Rowena was in the clouds, she walked on air; this was to be the
greatest day, the most romantic episode, in the colorless history of
that dull country town.  She was to be familiarly near the source of
its glory and feel the full flood of it pour over her and about her;
the other girls could only gaze and envy, not partake.

        The widow was ready, Rowena was ready, so also were the
foreigners.

        The party moved along the hall, the twins in advance, and
entered the open parlor door, whence issued a low hum of
conversation.  The twins took a position near the door, the widow
stood at Luigi's side, Rowena stood beside Angelo, and the march-past
and the introductions began.  The widow was all smiles and
contentment.  She received the procession and passed it on to Rowena.


        "Good mornin', Sister Cooper" -- hand-shake.

        "Good morning, Brother Higgins -- Count Luigi Capello, Mr.
Higgins" -- hand-shake, followed by a devouring stare and "I 'm glad
to see ye," on the part of Higgins, and a courteous inclination of
the head and a pleasant "Most happy!" on the part of Count Luigi.

        "Good mornin', Roweny" -- hand-shake.

        "Good morning, Mr. Higgins -- present you to Count Angelo
Capello." Hand-shake, admiring stare, "Glad to see ye," -- courteous
nod, smily "Most happy!" and Higgins passes on.

        None of these visitors was at ease, but, being honest people,
they did n't pretend to be.  None of them had ever seen a person
bearing a title of nobility before, and none had been expecting to
see one now, consequently the title came upon them as a kind of
pile-driving surprise and caught them unprepared.  A few tried to
rise to the emergency, and got out an awkward "My lord," or "Your
lordship," or something of that sort, but the great majority were
overwhelmed by the unaccustomed word and its dim and awful
associations with gilded courts and stately ceremony and anointed
kingship, so they only fumbled through the hand-shake and passed on,
speechless.  Now and then, as happens at all receptions everywhere, a
more than ordinarily friendly soul blocked the procession and kept it
waiting while he inquired how the brothers liked the village, and how
long they were going to stay, and if their families were well, and
dragged in the weather, and hoped it would get cooler soon, and all
that sort of thing, so as to be able to say, when they got home, "I
had quite a long talk with them"; but nobody did or said anything of
a regrettable kind, and so the great affair went through to the end
in a creditable and satisfactory fashion.

        General conversation followed, and the twins drifted about from
group to group, talking easily and fluently and winning approval,
compelling admiration and achieving favor from all.  The widow
followed their conquering march with a proud eye, and every now and
then Rowena said to herself with deep satisfaction, "And to think
they are ours -- all ours!"

        There were no idle moments for mother or daughter.  Eager
inquiries concerning the twins were pouring into their enchanted ears
all the time; each was the constant center of a group of breathless
listeners; each recognized that she knew now for the first time the
real meaning of that great word Glory, and perceived the stupendous
value of it, and understood why men in all ages had been willing to
throw away meaner happinesses, treasure, life itself, to get a taste
of its sublime and supreme joy.  Napoleon and all his kind stood
accounted for -- and justified.

        When Rowena had at last done all her duty by the people in the
parlor, she went up-stairs to satisfy the longings of an
overflow-meeting there, for the parlor was not big enough to hold all
the comers.  Again she was besieged by eager questioners and again
she swam in sunset seas of glory.  When the forenoon was nearly gone,
she recognized with a pang that this most splendid episode of her
life was almost over, that nothing could prolong it, that nothing
quite its equal could ever fall to her fortune again.  But never
mind, it was sufficient unto itself, the grand occasion had moved on
an ascending scale from the start, and was a noble and memorable
success.  If the twins could but do some crowning act, now, to climax
it, something unusual, something startling, something to concentrate
upon themselves the company's loftiest admiration, something in the
nature of an electric surprise --

        Here a prodigious slam-banging broke out below, and everybody
rushed down to see.  It was the twins knocking out a classic
four-handed piece on the piano, in great style.  Rowena was satisfied
-- satisfied down to the bottom of her heart.


        The young strangers were kept long at the piano.  The villagers
were astonished and enchanted with the magnificence of their
performance, and could not bear to have them stop.  All the music
that they had ever heard before seemed spiritless prentice-work and
barren of grace or charm when compared with these intoxicating floods
of melodious sound.  They realized that for once in their lives they
were hearing masters.


        VII

        One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is
that a cat has only nine lives.
        -- <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

        The company broke up reluctantly, and drifted toward their
several homes, chatting with vivacity, and all agreeing that it would
be many a long day before Dawson's Landing would see the equal of
this one again.  The twins had accepted several invitations while the
reception was in progress, and had also volunteered to play some
duets at an amateur entertainment for the benefit of a local charity.
Society was eager to receive them to its bosom.  Judge Driscoll had
the good fortune to secure them for an immediate drive, and to be the
first to display them in public.  They entered his buggy with him,
and were paraded down the main street, everybody flocking to the
windows and sidewalks to see.

        The Judge showed the strangers the new graveyard, and the jail,
and where the richest man lived, and the Freemasons' hall, and the
Methodist church, and the Presbyterian church, and where the Baptist
church was going to be when they got some money to build it with, and
showed them the town hall and the slaughter-house, and got out the
independent fire company in uniform and had them put out an imaginary
fire; then he let them inspect the muskets of the militia company,
and poured out an exhaustless stream of enthusiasm over all these
splendors, and seemed very well satisfied with the responses he got,
for the twins admired his admiration, and paid him back the best they
could, though they could have done better if some fifteen or sixteen
hundred thousand previous experiences of this sort in various
countries had not already rubbed off a considerable part of the
novelty of it.

        The Judge laid himself out hospitably to make them have a good
time, and if there was a defect anywhere it was not his fault.  He
told them a good many humorous anecdotes, and always forgot the nub,
but they were always able to furnish it, for these yarns were of a
pretty early vintage, and they had had many a rejuvenating pull at
them before.  And he told them all about his several dignities, and
how he had held this and that and the other place of honor or profit,
and had once been to the legislature, and was now president of the
Society of Free-thinkers.  He said the society had been in existence
four years, and already had two members, and was firmly established.
He would call for the brothers in the evening if they would like to
attend a meeting of it.

        Accordingly he called for them, and on the way he told them all
about Pudd'nhead Wilson, in order that they might get a favorable
impression of him in advance and be prepared to like him.  This
scheme succeeded -- the favorable impression was achieved.  Later it
was confirmed and solidified when Wilson proposed that out of
courtesy to the strangers the usual topics be put aside and the hour
be devoted to conversation upon ordinary subjects and the cultivation
of friendly relations and good-fellowship, -- a proposition which was
put to vote and carried.

        The hour passed quickly away in lively talk, and when it was
ended the lonesome and neglected Wilson was richer by two friends
than he had been when it began.  He invited the twins to look in at
his lodgings, presently, after disposing of an intervening
engagement, and they accepted with pleasure.

        Toward the middle of the evening they found themselves on the
road to his house.  Pudd'nhead was at home waiting for them and
putting in his time puzzling over a thing which had come under his
notice that morning.  The matter was this: He happened to be up very
early -- at dawn, in fact, and he crossed the hall which divided his
cottage through the center, and entered a room to get something
there.  The window of the room had no curtains, for that side of the
house had long been unoccupied, and through this window he caught
sight of something which surprised and interested him.  It was a
young woman -- a young woman where properly no young woman belonged;
for she was in Judge Driscoll's house, and in the bedroom over the
Judge's private study or sitting-room.  This was young Tom Driscoll's
bedroom.  He and the Judge, the Judge's widowed sister Mrs. Pratt and
three negro servants were the only people who belonged in the house.
Who, then, might this young lady be?  The two houses were separated
by an ordinary yard, with a low fence running back through its middle
from the street in front to the lane in the rear.  The distance was
not great, and Wilson was able to see the girl very well, the
window-shades of the room she was in being up and the window also.
The girl had on a neat and trim summer dress, patterned in broad
stripes of pink and white, and her bonnet was equipped with a pink
veil.  She was practising steps, gaits and attitudes, apparently; she
was doing the thing gracefully, and was very much absorbed in her
work.  Who could she be, and how came she to be in young Tom
Driscoll's room?

        Wilson had quickly chosen a position from which he could watch
the girl without running much risk of being seen by her, and he
remained there hoping she would raise her veil and betray her face.
But she disappointed him.  After a matter of twenty minutes she
disappeared, and although he stayed at his post half an hour longer,
she came no more.

        Toward noon he dropped in at the Judge's and talked with Mrs.
Pratt about the great event of the day, the levee of the
distinguished foreigners at Aunt Patsy Cooper's.  He asked after her
nephew Tom, and she said he was on his way home, and that she was
expecting him to arrive a little before night; and added that she and
the Judge were gratified to gather from his letters that he was
conducting himself very nicely and creditably -- at which Wilson
winked to himself privately.  Wilson did not ask if there was a
newcomer in the house, but he asked questions that would have brought
light-throwing answers as to that matter if Mrs. Pratt had had any
light to throw; so he went away satisfied that he knew of things that
were going on in her house of which she herself was not aware.

        He was now waiting for the twins, and still puzzling over the
problem of who that girl might be, and how she happened to be in that
young fellow's room at daybreak in the morning.


        VIII

        The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and
loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole
lifetime, if not asked to lend money.
        -- <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

        Consider well the proportions of things.  It is better to be a
young June-bug than an old bird of paradise.
        -- <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

        It is necessary now, to hunt up Roxy.

        At the time she was set free and went away chambermaiding, she
was thirty-five.  She got a berth as second chambermaid on a
Cincinnati boat in the New Orleans trade, the <Grand Mogul>.  A
couple of trips made her wonted and easy-going at the work, and
infatuated her with the stir and adventure and independence of
steamboat life.  Then she was promoted and became head chambermaid.
She was a favorite with the officers, and exceedingly proud of their
joking and friendly ways with her.

        During eight years she served three parts of the year on that
boat, and the winters on a Vicksburg packet.  But now for two months
she had had rheumatism in her arms, and was obliged to let the
wash-tub alone.  So she resigned.  But she was well fixed -- rich, as
she would have described it; for she had lived a steady life, and had
banked four dollars every month in New Orleans as a provision for her
old age.  She said in the start that she had "put shoes on one
bar'footed nigger to tromple on her with," and that one mistake like
that was enough; she would be independent of the human race
thenceforth forevermore if hard work and economy could accomplish it.
When the boat touched the levee at New Orleans she bade good-by to
her comrades on the <Grand Mogul> and moved her kit ashore.

        But she was back in an hour.  The bank had gone to smash and
carried her four hundred dollars with it.  She was a pauper, and
homeless.  Also disabled bodily, at least for the present.  The
officers were full of sympathy for her in her trouble, and made up a
little purse for her.  She resolved to go to her birthplace; she had
friends there among the negroes, and the unfortunate always help the
unfortunate, she was well aware of that; those lowly comrades of her
youth would not let her starve.

        She took the little local packet at Cairo, and now she was on
the home-stretch.  Time had worn away her bitterness against her son,
and she was able to think of him with serenity.  She put the vile
side of him out of her mind, and dwelt only on recollections of his
occasional acts of kindness to her.  She gilded and otherwise
decorated these, and made them very pleasant to contemplate.  She
began to long to see him.  She would go and fawn upon him, slave-like
-- for this would have to be her attitude, of course -- and maybe she
would find that time had modified him, and that he would be glad to
see his long-forgotten old nurse and treat her gently.  That would be
lovely; that would make her forget her woes and her poverty.

        Her poverty!  That thought inspired her to add another castle
to her dream: maybe he would give her a trifle now and then -- maybe
a dollar, once a month, say; any little thing like that would help,
oh, ever so much.

        By the time she reached Dawson's Landing she was her old self
again; her blues were gone, she was in high feather.  She would get
along, surely; there were many kitchens where the servants would
share their meals with her, and also steal sugar and apples and other
dainties for her to carry home -- or give her a chance to pilfer them
herself, which would answer just as well.  And there was the church.
She was a more rabid and devoted Methodist than ever, and her piety
was no sham, but was strong and sincere.  Yes, with plenty of
creature comforts and her old place in the amen-corner in her
possession again, she would be perfectly happy and at peace
thenceforward to the end.

        She went to Judge Driscoll's kitchen first of all.  She was
received there in great form and with vast enthusiasm.  Her wonderful
travels, and the strange countries she had seen and the adventures
she had had, made her a marvel, and a heroine of romance.  The
negroes hung enchanted upon the great story of her experiences,
interrupting her all along with eager questions, with laughter,
exclamations of delight and expressions of applause; and she was
obliged to confess to herself that if there was anything better in
this world than steamboating, it was the glory to be got by telling
about it.  The audience loaded her stomach with their dinners and
then stole the pantry bare to load up her basket.

        Tom was in St. Louis.  The servants said he had spent the best
part of his time there during the previous two years.  Roxy came
every day, and had many talks about the family and its affairs.  Once
she asked why Tom was away so much.  The ostensible "Chambers" said:

        "De fac' is, ole marster kin git along better when young
marster 's away den he kin when he 's in de town; yes, en he love him
better, too; so he gives him fifty dollahs a month -- "

        "No, is dat so?  Chambers, you 's a-jokin', ain't you?"

        "'Clah to goodness I ain't, mammy; Marse Tom tole me so his own
self.  But nemmine, 't ain't enough."

        "My lan', what de reason 't ain't enough?"

        "Well, I 's gwine to tell you, if you gimme a chanst, mammy.
De reason it ain't enough is 'ca'se Marse Tom gambles."

        Roxy threw up her hands in astonishment and Chambers went on --

        "Ole marster found it out, 'ca'se he had to pay two hunderd
dollahs for Marse Tom's gamblin' debts, en dat 's true, mammy, jes as
dead certain as you 's bawn."

        "Two -- hund'd -- dollahs!  Why, what is you talkin' 'bout?
Two -- hund'd -- dollahs.  Sakes alive, it 's 'mos' enough to buy a
tol'able good second-hand nigger wid.  En you ain't lyin', honey? --
you would n't lie to yo' ole mammy?"

        "It 's God's own truth, jes as I tell you -- two hund'd dollahs
-- I wisht I may never stir outen my tracks if it ain't so.  En, oh,
my lan', ole Marse was jes a-hoppin'! he was b'ilin' mad, I tell you!
He tuck 'n' dissenhurrit him."

        He licked his chops with relish after that stately word.  Roxy
struggled with it a moment, then gave it up and said --

        "Dissen<whiched> him?"

        "Dissenhurrit him."

        "What 's dat?  What do it mean?"


        "Means he bu'sted de will."

        "Bu's -- ted de will!  He would n't <ever> treat him so!  Take
it back, you mis'able imitation nigger dat I bore in sorrow en
tribbilation."

        Roxy's pet castle -- an occasional dollar from Tom's pocket --
was tumbling to ruin before her eyes.  She could not abide such a
disaster as that; she could n't endure the thought of it.  Her remark
amused Chambers:

        "Yah-yah-yah! jes listen to dat!  If I 's imitation, what is
you?  Bofe of us is imitation <white> -- dat 's what we is -- en
pow'ful good imitation, too -- yah-yah-yah! -- we don't 'mount to
noth'n' as imitation <niggers>; en as for -- "

        "Shet up yo' foolin', 'fo' I knock you side de head, en tell me
'bout de will.  Tell me 't ain't bu'sted -- do, honey, en I 'll never
forgit you."

        "Well, <'tain't> -- 'ca'se dey 's a new one made, en Marse Tom
's all right ag'in.  But what is you in sich a sweat 'bout it for,
mammy?  'T ain't none o' your business I don't reckon."

        "'T ain't none o' my business?  Whose business is it den, I 'd
like to know?  Wuz I his mother tell he was fifteen years old, or wus
n't I? -- you answer me dat.  En you speck I could see him turned out
po' en ornery on de worl' en never care noth'n' 'bout it?  I reckon
if you 'd ever be'n a mother yo'self, Valet de Chambers, you would
n't talk sich foolishness as dat."

        "Well, den, ole Marse forgive him en fixed up de will ag'in --
do dat satisfy you?"

        Yes, she was satisfied now, and quite happy and sentimental
over it.  She kept coming daily, and at last she was told that Tom
had come home.  She began to tremble with emotion, and straightway
sent to beg him to let his "po' ole nigger mammy have jes one sight
of him en die for joy."

        Tom was stretched at his lazy ease on a sofa when Chambers
brought the petition.  Time had not modified his ancient detestation
of the humble drudge and protector of his boyhood; it was still
bitter and uncompromising.  He sat up and bent a severe gaze upon the
fair face of the young fellow whose name he was unconsciously using
and whose family rights he was enjoying.  He maintained the gaze
until the victim of it had become satisfactorily pallid with terror,
then he said --

        "What does the old rip want with me?"

        The petition was meekly repeated.

        "Who gave you permission to come and disturb me with the social
attentions of niggers?"

        Tom had risen.  The other young man was trembling now, visibly.
He saw what was coming, and bent his head sideways, and put up his
left arm to shield it.  Tom rained cuffs upon the head and its
shield, saying no word; the victim received each blow with a
beseeching "Please, Marse Tom! -- oh, please, Marse Tom!" Seven blows
-- then Tom said, "Face the door -- march!" He followed behind with
one, two, three solid kicks.  The last one helped the pure-white
slave over the door-sill, and he limped away mopping his eyes with
his old ragged sleeve.  Tom shouted after him, "Send her in!"

        Then he flung himself panting on the sofa again, and rasped out
the remark, "He arrived just at the right moment; I was full to the
brim with bitter thinkings, and nobody to take it out of.  How
refreshing it was!  I feel better."

        Tom's mother entered now, closing the door behind her, and
approached her son with all the wheedling and supplicating
servilities that fear and interest can impart to the words and
attitudes of the born slave.  She stopped a yard from her boy and
made two or three admiring exclamations over his manly stature and
general handsomeness, and Tom put an arm under his head and hoisted a
leg over the sofa-back in order to look properly indifferent.

        "My lan', how you is growed, honey!  'Clah to goodness, I would
n't a-knowed you, Marse Tom! 'deed I would n't!  Look at me good;
does you 'member old Roxy? -- does you know yo' old nigger mammy,
honey?  Well now, I kin lay down en die in peace, 'ca'se I 's seed --
"

        "Cut it short, ------ it, cut it short!  What is it you want?"

        "You heah dat?  Jes de same old Marse Tom, al'ays so gay and
funnin' wid de ole mammy.  I 'uz jes as shore -- "

        "Cut it short, I tell you, and get along!  What do you want?"

        This was a bitter disappointment.  Roxy had for so many days
nourished and fondled and petted her notion that Tom would be glad to
see his old nurse, and would make her proud and happy to the marrow
with a cordial word or two, that it took two rebuffs to convince her
that he was not funning, and that her beautiful dream was a fond and
foolish vanity, a shabby and pitiful mistake.  She was hurt to the
heart, and so ashamed that for a moment she did not quite know what
to do or how to act.  Then her breast began to heave, the tears came,
and in her forlornness she was moved to try that other dream of hers
-- an appeal to her boy's charity; and so, upon the impulse, and
without reflection, she offered her supplication:

        "Oh, Marse Tom, de po' ole mammy is in sich hard luck dese
days; en she 's kinder crippled in de arms en can't work, en if you
could gimme a dollah -- on'y jes one little dol -- "

        Tom was on his feet so suddenly that the supplicant was
startled into a jump herself.

        "A dollar! -- give you a dollar!  I've a notion to strangle
you!  Is <that> your errand here?  Clear out! and be quick about it!"

        Roxy backed slowly toward the door.  When she was half-way she
stopped, and said mournfully:

        "Marse Tom, I nussed you when you was a little baby, en I
raised you all by myself tell you was 'most a young man; en now you
is young en rich, en I is po' en gitt'n' ole, en I come heah
b'lievin' dat you would he'p de ole mammy 'long down de little road
dat 's lef' 'twix' her en de grave, en -- "

        Tom relished this tune less than any that had preceded it, for
it began to wake up a sort of echo in his conscience; so he
interrupted and said with decision, though without asperity, that he
was not in a situation to help her, and was n't going to do it.

        "Ain't you ever gwine to he'p me, Marse Tom?"

        "No!  Now go away and don't bother me any more."

        Roxy's head was down, in an attitude of humility.  But now the
fires of her old wrongs flamed up in her breast and began to burn
fiercely.  She raised her head slowly, till it was well up, and at
the same time her great frame unconsciously assumed an erect and
masterful attitude, with all the majesty and grace of her vanished
youth in it.  She raised her finger and punctuated with it:


        "You has said de word.  You has had yo' chance, en you has
trompled it under yo' foot.  When you git another one, you 'll git
down on yo' knees en <beg> for it!"

        A cold chill went to Tom's heart, he did n't know why; for he
did not reflect that such words, from such an incongruous source, and
so solemnly delivered, could not easily fail of that effect.
However, he did the natural thing: he replied with bluster and
mockery:

        "<You 'll> give me a chance -- <you!> Perhaps I 'd better get
down on my knees now!  But in case I don't -- just for argument's
sake -- what 's going to happen, pray?"

        "Dis is what is gwine to happen.  I 's gwine as straight to yo'
uncle as I kin walk, en tell him every las' thing I knows 'bout you."

        Tom's cheek blenched, and she saw it.  Disturbing thoughts
began to chase each other through his head.  "How can she know?  And
yet she must have found out -- she looks it.  I 've had the will back
only three months, and am already deep in debt again, and moving
heaven and earth to save myself from exposure and destruction, with a
reasonably fair show of getting the thing covered up if I 'm let
alone, and now this fiend has gone and found me out somehow or other.
I wonder how much she knows?  Oh, oh, oh, it 's enough to break a
body's heart!  But I 've got to humor her -- there 's no other way."

        Then he worked up a rather sickly sample of a gay laugh and a
hollow chipperness of manner, and said:

        "Well, well, Roxy dear, old friends like you and me must n't
quarrel.  Here 's your dollar -- now tell me what you know."

        He held out the wild-cat bill; she stood as she was, and made
no movement.  It was her turn to scorn persuasive foolery, now, and
she did not waste it.  She said, with a grim implacability in voice
and manner which made Tom almost realize that even a former slave can
remember for ten minutes insults and injuries returned for
compliments and flatteries received, and can also enjoy taking
revenge for them when the opportunity offers:

        "What does I know?  I 'll tell you what I knows.  I knows
enough to bu'st dat will to flinders -- en more, mind you, <more!>"


        Tom was aghast.

        "More?" he said.  "What do you call more?  Where 's there any
room for more?"

        Roxy laughed a mocking laugh, and said scoffingly, with a toss
of her head, and her hands on her hips --

        "Yes! -- oh, I reckon!  <Co'se> you 'd like to know -- wid yo'
po' little ole rag dollah.  What you reckon I 's gwine to tell <you>
for? -- you ain't got no money.  I 's gwine to tell yo' uncle -- en I
'll do it dis minute, too -- he 'll gimme <five> dollahs for de news,
en mighty glad, too."

        She swung herself around disdainfully, and started away.  Tom
was in a panic.  He seized her skirts, and implored her to wait.  She
turned and said, loftily --

        "Look-a-heah, what 'uz it I tole you?"

        "You -- you -- I don't remember anything.  What was it you told
me?"

        "I tole you dat de next time I give you a chance you 'd git
down on yo' knees en beg for it."

        Tom was stupefied for a moment.  He was panting with
excitement.  Then he said:

        "Oh, Roxy, you would n't require your young master to do such a
horrible thing.  You can't mean it."

        "I 'll let you know mighty quick whether I means it or not!
You call me names, en as good as spit on me when I comes here po' en
ornery en 'umble, to praise you for bein' growed up so fine en
handsome, en tell you how I used to nuss you en tend you en watch you
when you 'uz sick en had n't no mother but me in de whole worl', en
beg you to give de po' ole nigger a dollah for to git her sum'n' to
eat, en you call me names -- <names>, dad blame you!  Yassir, I gives
you jes one chance mo', and dat's <now>, en it las' on'y a half a
second -- you hear?"

        Tom slumped to his knees and began to beg, saying --

        "You see I 'm begging, and it 's honest begging, too!  Now tell
me, Roxy, tell me."

        The heir of two centuries of unatoned insult and outrage looked
down on him and seemed to drink in deep draughts of satisfaction.
Then she said --

        "Fine nice young white gen'l'man kneelin' down to a
nigger-wench!  I 's wanted to see dat jes once befo' I 's called.
Now, Gabr'el, blow de hawn, I 's ready ...  Git up!"


        Tom did it.  He said, humbly --

        "Now, Roxy, don't punish me any more.  I deserved what I 've
got, but be good and let me off with that.  Don't go to uncle.  Tell
me -- I 'll give you the five dollars."

        "Yes, I bet you will; en you won't stop dah, nuther.  But I
ain't gwine to tell you heah -- "

        "Good gracious, no!"

        "Is you 'feared o' de ha'nted house?"

        "N-no."

        "Well, den, you come to de ha'nted house 'bout ten or 'leven
to-night, en climb up de ladder, 'ca'se de sta'r-steps is broke down,
en you 'll fine me.  I 's a-roostin' in de ha'nted house 'ca'se I
can't 'ford to roos' nowher's else." She started toward the door, but
stopped and said, "Gimme de dollah bill!" He gave it to her.  She
examined it and said, "H'm -- like enough de bank 's bu'sted." She
started again, but halted again.  "Has you got any whisky?"

        "Yes, a little."

        "Fetch it!"

        He ran to his room overhead and brought down a bottle which was
two thirds full.  She tilted it up and took a drink.  Her eyes
sparkled with satisfaction, and she tucked the bottle under her
shawl, saying, "It 's prime.  I 'll take it along."

        Tom humbly held the door for her, and she marched out as grim
and erect as a grenadier.


                       IX

         Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral?  It is
because we are not the person involved.
         -- <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

         It is easy to find fault, if one has that disposition.  There was
once a man who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal,
complained that there were too many prehistoric toads in it.
         -- <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

           Tom flung himself on the sofa, and put his throbbing head in
his hands, and rested his elbows on his knees.  He rocked himself
back and forth and moaned.

        "I 've knelt to a nigger-wench!" he muttered.  "I thought I had
struck the deepest depths of degradation before, but oh, dear, it was
nothing to this. ... Well, there is one consolation, such as it is --
I 've struck bottom this time; there 's nothing lower."

        But that was a hasty conclusion.

        At ten that night he climbed the ladder in the haunted house,
pale, weak, and wretched.  Roxy was standing in the door of one of
the rooms, waiting, for she had heard him.

        This was a two-story log house which had acquired the
reputation a few years before of being haunted, and that was the end
of its usefulness.  Nobody would live in it afterward, or go near it
by night, and most people even gave it a wide berth in the daytime.
As it had no competition, it was called <the> haunted house.  It was
getting crazy and ruinous, now, from long neglect.  It stood three
hundred yards beyond Pudd'nhead Wilson's house, with nothing between
but vacancy.  It was the last house in the town at that end.

        Tom followed Roxy into the room.  She had a pile of clean straw
in the corner for a bed, some cheap but well-kept clothing was
hanging on the wall, there was a tin lantern freckling the floor with
little spots of light, and there were various soap- and candle-boxes
scattered about, which served for chairs.  The two sat down.  Roxy
said --

        "Now den, I 'll tell you straight off, en I 'll begin to k'leck
de money later on; I ain't in no hurry.  What does you reckon I 's
gwine to tell you?"

        "Well, you -- you -- oh, Roxy, don't make it too hard for me!
Come right out and tell me you 've found out somehow what a shape I
'm in on account of dissipation and foolishness."

        "Disposition en foolishness!  <No> sir, dat ain't it.  Dat jist
ain't nothin' at all, 'longside o' what <I> knows."

        Tom stared at her, and said --

        "Why, Roxy, what do you mean?"

        She rose, and gloomed above him like a Fate.

        "I means dis -- en it 's de Lord's truth.  You ain't no more
kin to ole Marse Driscoll den I is! -- <dat 's> what I means!" and
her eyes flamed with triumph.

        "What!"

        "Yassir, en <dat> ain't all!  You 's a <nigger>! -- <bawn> a
nigger en a <slave>! -- en you 's a nigger en a slave dis minute; en
if I opens my mouf ole Marse Driscoll 'll sell you down de river
befo' you is two days older den what you is now!"

        "It 's a thundering lie, you miserable old blatherskite!"

        "It ain't no lie, nuther.  It 's jes de truth, en nothin' <but>
de truth, so he'p me.  Yassir -- you 's my <son> -- "

        "You devil!"

        "En dat po' boy dat you 's be'n a-kickin' en a-cuffin' to-day
is Percy Driscoll's son en yo' <marster> -- "

        "You beast!"

        "En <his> name 's Tom Driscoll, en <yo'> name 's Valet de
Chambers, en you ain't <got> no fambly name, beca'se niggers don't
<have> 'em!"

        Tom sprang up and seized a billet of wood and raised it; but
his mother only laughed at him, and said --

        "Set down, you pup!  Does you think you kin skyer me?  It ain't
in you, nor de likes of you.  I reckon you 'd shoot me in de back,
maybe, if you got a chance, for dat 's jist yo' style -- <I> knows
you, thoo en thoo -- but I don't mind gitt'n' killed, beca'se all dis
is down in writin', en it 's in safe hands, too, en de man dat 's got
it knows whah to look for de right man when I gits killed.  Oh, bless
yo' soul, if you puts yo' mother up for as big a fool as <you> is,
you 's pow'ful mistaken, I kin tell you!  Now den, you set still en
behave yo'self; en don't you git up ag'in till I tell you!"

        Tom fretted and chafed awhile in a whirlwind of disorganizing
sensations and emotions, and finally said, with something like
settled conviction --

        "The whole thing is moonshine; now then, go ahead and do your
worst; I 'm done with you."

        Roxy made no answer.  She took the lantern and started toward
the door.  Tom was in a cold panic in a moment.

        "Come back, come back!" he wailed.  "I did n't mean it, Roxy; I
take it all back, and I 'll never say it again!  Please come back,
Roxy!"

        The woman stood a moment, then she said gravely:

        "Dah 's one thing you 's got to stop, Valet de Chambers.  You
can't call me <Roxy>, same as if you was my equal.  Chillen don't
speak to dey mammies like dat.  You 'll call me ma or mammy, dat 's
what you 'll call me -- leastways when dey ain't nobody aroun'.
<Say> it!"

        It cost Tom a struggle, but he got it out.

        "Dat 's all right.  Don't you ever forgit it ag'in, if you
knows what 's good for you.  Now den, you has said you would n't ever
call it lies en moonshine ag'in.  I 'll tell you dis, for a warnin':
if you ever does say it ag'in, it 's de <las'> time you 'll ever say
it to me; I 'll tramp as straight to de Judge as I kin walk, en tell
him who you is, en <prove> it.  Does you b'lieve me when I says dat?"

        "Oh," groaned Tom, "I more than believe it; I <know> it."

        Roxy knew her conquest was complete.  She could have proved
nothing to anybody, and her threat about the writings was a lie; but
she knew the person she was dealing with, and had made both
statements without any doubt as to the effect they would produce.

        She went and sat down on her candle-box, and the pride and pomp
of her victorious attitude made it a throne.  She said --

        "Now den, Chambers, we 's gwine to talk business, en dey ain't
gwine to be no mo' foolishness.  In de fust place, you gits fifty
dollahs a month; you 's gwine to han' over half of it to yo' ma.
Plank it out!"


        But Tom had only six dollars in the world.  He gave her that,
and promised to start fair on next month's pension.

        "Chambers, how much is you in debt?"

        Tom shuddered, and said --

        "Nearly three hundred dollars."

        "How is you gwine to pay it?"

        Tom groaned out --

        "Oh, I don't know; don't ask me such awful questions."

        But she stuck to her point until she wearied a confession out
of him: he had been prowling about in disguise, stealing small
valuables from private houses; in fact, had made a good deal of a
raid on his fellow-villagers a fortnight before, when he was supposed
to be in St. Louis; but he doubted if he had sent away enough stuff
to realize the required amount, and was afraid to make a further
venture in the present excited state of the town.  His mother
approved of his conduct, and offered to help, but this frightened
him.  He tremblingly ventured to say that if she would retire from
the town he should feel better and safer, and could hold his head
higher -- and was going on to make an argument, but she interrupted
and surprised him pleasantly by saying she was ready; it did n't make
any difference to her where she stayed, so that she got her share of
the pension regularly.  She said she would not go far, and would call
at the haunted house once a month for her money.  Then she said --

        "I don't hate you so much now, but I 've hated you a many a
year -- and anybody would.  Did n't I change you off, en give you a
good fambly en a good name, en made you a white gen'l'man en rich,
wid store clothes on -- en what did I git for it?  You despised me
all de time, en was al'ays sayin' mean hard things to me befo' folks,
en would n't ever let me forgit I 's a nigger -- en -- en -- "

        She fell to sobbing, and broke down.  Tom said --

        "But you know I did n't know you were my mother; and besides --
"

        "Well, nemmine 'bout dat, now; let it go.  I 's gwine to fo'git
it." Then she added fiercely, "En don't you ever make me remember it
ag'in, or you 'll be sorry, <I> tell you."

        When they were parting, Tom said, in the most persuasive way he
could command --


        "Ma, would you mind telling me who was my father?"

        He had supposed he was asking an embarrassing question.  He was
mistaken.  Roxy drew herself up with a proud toss of her head, and
said --

        "Does I mine tellin' you?  No, dat I don't!  You ain't got no
'casion to be shame' o' yo' father, <I> kin tell you.  He wuz de
highest quality in dis whole town -- ole Virginny stock.  Fust
famblies, he wuz.  Jes as good stock as de Driscolls en de Howards,
de bes' day dey ever seed." She put on a little prouder air, if
possible, and added impressively: "Does you 'member Cunnel Cecil
Burleigh Essex, dat died de same year yo' young Marse Tom Driscoll's
pappy died, en all de Masons en Odd Fellers en Churches turned out en
give him de bigges' funeral dis town ever seed?  Dat 's de man."

        Under the inspiration of her soaring complacency the departed
graces of her earlier days returned to her, and her bearing took to
itself a dignity and state that might have passed for queenly if her
surroundings had been a little more in keeping with it.

        "Dey ain't another nigger in dis town dat 's as high-bawn as
you is.  Now den, go 'long!  En jes you hold yo' head up as high as
you want to -- you has de right, en dat I kin swah."


        X

        All say, "How hard it is that we have to die" -- a strange
complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
        -- <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

        When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.
        -- <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

        Every now and then, after Tom went to bed, he had sudden
wakings out of his sleep, and his first thought was, "Oh, joy, it was
all a dream!" Then he laid himself heavily down again, with a groan
and the muttered words, "A nigger!  I am a nigger!  Oh, I wish I was
dead!"

        He woke at dawn with one more repetition of this horror, and
then he resolved to meddle no more with that treacherous sleep.  He
began to think.  Sufficiently bitter thinkings they were.  They
wandered along something after this fashion:

        "Why were niggers <and> whites made?  What crime did the
uncreated first nigger commit that the curse of birth was decreed for
him?  And why is this awful difference made between white and black?
... How hard the nigger's fate seems, this morning! -- yet until last
night such a thought never entered my head."

        He sighed and groaned an hour or more away.  Then "Chambers"
came humbly in to say that breakfast was nearly ready.  "Tom" blushed
scarlet to see this aristocratic white youth cringe to him, a nigger,
and call him "Young Marster." He said roughly --

        "Get out of my sight!" and when the youth was gone, he
muttered, "He has done me no harm, poor wretch, but he is an eyesore
to me now, for he is Driscoll the young gentleman, and I am a -- oh,
I wish I was dead!"

        A gigantic irruption, like that of Krakatoa a few years ago,
with the accompanying earthquakes, tidal waves, and clouds of
volcanic dust, changes the face of the surrounding landscape beyond
recognition, bringing down the high lands, elevating the low, making
fair lakes where deserts had been, and deserts where green prairies
had smiled before.  The tremendous catastrophe which had befallen Tom
had changed his moral landscape in much the same way.  Some of his
low places he found lifted to ideals, some of his ideals had sunk to
the valleys, and lay there with the sackcloth and ashes of
pumice-stone and sulphur on their ruined heads.

        For days he wandered in lonely places, thinking, thinking,
thinking -- trying to get his bearings.  It was new work.  If he met
a friend, he found that the habit of a lifetime had in some
mysterious way vanished -- his arm hung limp, instead of
involuntarily extending the hand for a shake.  It was the "nigger" in
him asserting its humility, and he blushed and was abashed.  And the
"nigger" in him was surprised when the white friend put out his hand
for a shake with him.  He found the "nigger" in him involuntarily
giving the road, on the sidewalk, to the white rowdy and loafer.
When Rowena, the dearest thing his heart knew, the idol of his secret
worship, invited him in, the "nigger" in him made an embarrassed
excuse and was afraid to enter and sit with the dread white folks on
equal terms.  The "nigger" in him went shrinking and skulking here
and there and yonder, and fancying it saw suspicion and maybe
detection in all faces, tones, and gestures.  So strange and
uncharacteristic was Tom's conduct that people noticed it, and turned
to look after him when he passed on; and when he glanced back -- as
he could not help doing, in spite of his best resistance -- and
caught that puzzled expression in a person's face, it gave him a sick
feeling, and he took himself out of view as quickly as he could.  He
presently came to have a hunted sense and a hunted look, and then he
fled away to the hilltops and the solitudes.  He said to himself that
the curse of Ham was upon him.

        He dreaded his meals; the "nigger" in him was ashamed to sit at
the white folks' table, and feared discovery all the time; and once
when Judge Driscoll said, "What 's the matter with you?  You look as
meek as a nigger," he felt as secret murderers are said to feel when
the accuser says, "Thou art the man!" Tom said he was not well, and
left the table.

        His ostensible "aunt's" solicitudes and endearments were become
a terror to him, and he avoided them.

        And all the time, hatred of his ostensible "uncle" was steadily
growing in his heart; for he said to himself, "He is white; and I am
his chattel, his property, his goods, and he can sell me, just as he
could his dog."

        For as much as a week after this, Tom imagined that his
character had undergone a pretty radical change.  But that was
because he did not know himself.

        In several ways his opinions were totally changed, and would
never go back to what they were before, but the main structure of his
character was not changed, and could not be changed.  One or two very
important features of it were altered, and in time effects would
result from this, if opportunity offered -- effects of a quite
serious nature, too.  Under the influence of a great mental and moral
upheaval his character and habits had taken on the appearance of
complete change, but after a while with the subsidence of the storm
both began to settle toward their former places.  He dropped
gradually back into his old frivolous and easy-going ways and
conditions of feeling and manner of speech, and no familiar of his
could have detected anything in him that differentiated him from the
weak and careless Tom of other days.

        The theft-raid which he had made upon the village turned out
better than he had ventured to hope.  It produced the sum necessary
to pay his gaming-debts, and saved him from exposure to his uncle and
another smashing of the will.  He and his mother learned to like each
other fairly well.  She could n't love him, as yet, because there
"war n't nothing <to> him," as she expressed it, but her nature
needed something or somebody to rule over, and he was better than
nothing.  Her strong character and aggressive and commanding ways
compelled Tom's admiration in spite of the fact that he got more
illustrations of them than he needed for his comfort.  However, as a
rule her conversation was made up of racy tattle about the privacies
of the chief families of the town (for she went harvesting among
their kitchens every time she came to the village), and Tom enjoyed
this.  It was just in his line.  She always collected her half of his
pension punctually, and he was always at the haunted house to have a
chat with her on these occasions.  Every now and then she paid him a
visit there on between-days also.

        Occasionally he would run up to St. Louis for a few weeks, and
at last temptation caught him again.  He won a lot of money, but lost
it, and with it a deal more besides, which he promised to raise as
soon as possible.

        For this purpose he projected a new raid on his town.  He never
meddled with any other town, for he was afraid to venture into houses
whose ins and outs he did not know and the habits of whose households
he was not acquainted with.  He arrived at the haunted house in
disguise on the Wednesday before the advent of the twins -- after
writing his aunt Pratt that he would not arrive until two days after
-- and lay in hiding there with his mother until toward daylight
Friday morning, when he went to his uncle's house and entered by the
back way with his own key, and slipped up to his room, where he could
have the use of mirror and toilet articles.  He had a suit of girl's
clothes with him in a bundle as a disguise for his raid, and was
wearing a suit of his mother's clothing, with black gloves and veil.
By dawn he was tricked out for his raid, but he caught a glimpse of
Pudd'nhead Wilson through the window over the way, and knew that
Pudd'n-head had caught a glimpse of him.  So he entertained Wilson
with some airs and graces and attitudes for a while, then stepped out
of sight and resumed the other disguise, and by and by went down and
out the back way and started down town to reconnoiter the scene of
his intended labors.

        But he was ill at ease.  He had changed back to Roxy's dress,
with the stoop of age added to the disguise, so that Wilson would not
bother himself about a humble old woman leaving a neighbor's house by
the back way in the early morning, in case he was still spying.  But
supposing Wilson had seen him leave, and had thought it suspicious,
and had also followed him?  The thought made Tom cold.  He gave up
the raid for the day, and hurried back to the haunted house by the
obscurest route he knew.  His mother was gone; but she came back, by
and by, with the news of the grand reception at Patsy Cooper's, and
soon persuaded him that the opportunity was like a special
providence, it was so inviting and perfect.  So he went raiding,
after all, and made a nice success of it while everybody was gone to
Patsy Cooper's.  Success gave him nerve and even actual intrepidity;
insomuch, indeed, that after he had conveyed his harvest to his
mother in a back alley, he went to the reception himself, and added
several of the valuables of that house to his takings.

        AFTER this long digression we have now arrived once more at the
point where Pudd'nhead Wilson, while waiting for the arrival of the
twins on that same Friday evening, sat puzzling over the strange
apparition of that morning -- a girl in young Tom Driscoll's bedroom;
fretting, and guessing, and puzzling over it, and wondering who the
shameless creature might be.


        XI

        There are three infallible ways of pleasing an author, and the
three form a rising scale of compliment: 1, to tell him you have read
one of his books; 2, to tell him you have read all of his books; 3,
to ask him to let you read the manuscript of his forthcoming book.
No. 1 admits you to his respect; No. 2 admits you to his admiration;
No. 3 carries you clear into his heart.
        -- <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

        As to the Adjective: when in doubt, strike it out.
        -- <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

        The twins arrived presently, and talk began.  It flowed along
chattily and sociably, and under its influence the new friendship
gathered ease and strength.  Wilson got out his Calendar, by request,
and read a passage or two from it, which the twins praised quite
cordially.  This pleased the author so much that he complied gladly
when they asked him to lend them a batch of the work to read at home.
In the course of their wide travels they had found out that there are
three sure ways of pleasing an author; they were now working the best
of the three.

        There was an interruption, now.  Young Tom Driscoll appeared,
and joined the party.  He pretended to be seeing the distinguished
strangers for the first time when they rose to shake hands; but this
was only a blind, as he had already had a glimpse of them at the
reception, while robbing the house.  The twins made mental note that
he was smooth-faced and rather handsome, and smooth and undulatory in
his movements -- graceful, in fact.  Angelo thought he had a good
eye; Luigi thought there was something veiled and sly about it.
Angelo thought he had a pleasant free-and-easy way of talking; Luigi
thought it was more so than was agreeable.  Angelo thought he was a
sufficiently nice young man; Luigi reserved his decision.  Tom's
first contribution to the conversation was a question which he had
put to Wilson a hundred times before.  It was always cheerily and
good-naturedly put, and always inflicted a little pang, for it
touched a secret sore; but this time the pang was sharp, since
strangers were present.


        "Well, how does the law come on?  Had a case yet?"

        Wilson bit his lip, but answered, "No -- not yet," with as much
indifference as he could assume.  Judge Driscoll had generously left
the law feature out of the Wilson biography which he had furnished to
the twins.  Young Tom laughed pleasantly, and said:

        "Wilson 's a lawyer, gentlemen, but he does n't practise now."

        The sarcasm bit, but Wilson kept himself under control, and
said without passion:

        "I don't practise, it is true.  It is true that I have never
had a case, and have had to earn a poor living for twenty years as an
expert accountant in a town where I can't get hold of a set of books
to untangle as often as I should like.  But it is also true that I
did fit myself well for the practice of the law.  By the time I was
your age, Tom, I had chosen a profession, and was soon competent to
enter upon it." Tom winced.  "I never got a chance to try my hand at
it, and I may never get a chance; and yet if I ever do get it I shall
be found ready, for I have kept up my law-studies all these years."

        "That 's it; that 's good grit!  I like to see it.  I 've a
notion to throw all my business your way.  My business and your
law-practice ought to make a pretty gay team, Dave," and the young
fellow laughed again.

        "If you will throw -- " Wilson had thought of the girl in Tom's
bedroom, and was going to say, "If you will throw the surreptitious
and disreputable part of your business my way, it may amount to
something"; but thought better of it and said, "However, this matter
does n't fit well in a general conversation."

        "All right, we 'll change the subject; I guess you were about
to give me another dig, anyway, so I'm willing to change.  How 's the
Awful Mystery flourishing these days?  Wilson 's got a scheme for
driving plain window-glass out of the market by decorating it with
greasy finger-marks, and getting rich by selling it at famine prices
to the crowned heads over in Europe to outfit their palaces with.
Fetch it out, Dave."

        Wilson brought three of his glass strips, and said --

        "I get the subject to pass the fingers of his right hand
through his hair, so as to get a little coating of the natural oil on
them, and then press the balls of them on the glass.  A fine and
delicate print of the lines in the skin results, and is permanent, if
it does n't come in contact with something able to rub it off.  You
begin, Tom."

        "Why, I think you took my finger-marks once or twice before."

        "Yes; but you were a little boy the last time, only about
twelve years old."

        "That 's so.  Of course I 've changed entirely since then, and
variety is what the crowned heads want, I guess."

        He passed his fingers through his crop of short hair, and
pressed them one at a time on the glass.  Angelo made a print of his
fingers on another glass, and Luigi followed with the third.  Wilson
marked the glasses with names and date, and put them away.  Tom gave
one of his little laughs, and said --

        "I thought I would n't say anything, but if variety is what you
are after, you have wasted a piece of glass.  The hand-print of one
twin is the same as the hand-print of the fellow-twin."

        "Well, it 's done now, and I like to have them both, anyway,"
said Wilson, returning to his place.

        "But look here, Dave," said Tom, "you used to tell people's
fortunes, too, when you took their finger-marks.  Dave 's just an
all-round genius -- a genius of the first water, gentlemen; a great
scientist running to seed here in this village, a prophet with the
kind of honor that prophets generally get at home -- for here they
don't give shucks for his scientifics, and they call his skull a
notion-factory -- hey, Dave, ain't it so?  But never mind; he 'll
make his mark some day -- finger-mark, you know, he-he!  But really,
you want to let him take a shy at your palms once; it 's worth twice
the price of admission or your money 's returned at the door.  Why,
he 'll read your wrinkles as easy as a book, and not only tell you
fifty or sixty things that 's going to happen to you, but fifty or
sixty thousand that ain't.  Come, Dave, show the gentlemen what an
inspired Jack-at-all-science we 've got in this town, and don't know
it."

        Wilson winced under this nagging and not very courteous chaff,
and the twins suffered with him and for him.  They rightly judged,
now, that the best way to relieve him would be to take the thing in
earnest and treat it with respect, ignoring Tom's rather overdone
raillery; so Luigi said --

        "We have seen something of palmistry in our wanderings, and
know very well what astonishing things it can do.  If it is n't a
science, and one of the greatest of them, too, I don't know what its
other name ought to be.  In the Orient -- "

        Tom looked surprised and incredulous.  He said --

        "That juggling a science?  But really, you ain't serious, are
you?"

        "Yes, entirely so.  Four years ago we had our hands read out to
us as if our palms had been covered with print."

        "Well, do you mean to say there was actually anything in it?"
asked Tom, his incredulity beginning to weaken a little.

        "There was this much in it," said Angelo; "what was told us of
our characters was minutely exact -- we could not have bettered it
ourselves.  Next, two or three memorable things that had happened to
us were laid bare -- things which no one present but ourselves could
have known about."

        "Why, it 's rank sorcery!" exclaimed Tom, who was now becoming
very much interested.  "And how did they make out with what was going
to happen to you in the future?"

        "On the whole, quite fairly," said Luigi.  "Two or three of the
most striking things foretold have happened since; much the most
striking one of all happened within that same year.  Some of the
minor prophecies have come true; some of the minor and some of the
major ones have not been fulfilled yet, and of course may never be:
still, I should be more surprised if they failed to arrive than if
they did n't."

        Tom was entirely sobered, and profoundly impressed.  He said,
apologetically --

        "Dave, I was n't meaning to belittle that science; I was only
chaffing -- chattering, I reckon I 'd better say.  I wish you would
look at their palms.  Come, won't you?"

        "Why, certainly, if you want me to; but you know I 've had no
chance to become an expert, and don't claim to be one.  When a past
event is somewhat prominently recorded in the palm I can generally
detect that, but minor ones often escape me, -- not always, of
course, but often, -- but I have n't much confidence in myself when
it comes to reading the future.  I am talking as if palmistry was a
daily study with me, but that is not so.  I have n't examined half a
dozen hands in the last half dozen years; you see, the people got to
joking about it, and I stopped to let the talk die down.  I 'll tell
you what we 'll do, Count Luigi: I 'll make a try at your past, and
if I have any success there -- no, on the whole, I 'll let the future
alone; that 's really the affair of an expert."

        He took Luigi's hand.  Tom said --

        "Wait -- don't look yet, Dave!  Count Luigi, here 's paper and
pencil.  Set down that thing that you said was the most striking one
that was foretold to you, and happened less than a year afterward,
and give it to me so I can see if Dave finds it in your hand."

        Luigi wrote a line privately, and folded up the piece of paper,
and handed it to Tom, saying --

        "I 'll tell you when to look at it, if he finds it."

        Wilson began to study Luigi's palm, tracing life lines, heart
lines, head lines, and so on, and noting carefully their relations
with the cobweb of finer and more delicate marks and lines that
enmeshed them on all sides; he felt of the fleshy cushion at the base
of the thumb, and noted its shape; he felt of the fleshy side of the
hand between the wrist and the base of the little finger, and noted
its shape also; he painstakingly examined the fingers, observing
their form, proportions, and natural manner of disposing themselves
when in repose.  All this process was watched by the three spectators
with absorbing interest, their heads bent together over Luigi's palm,
and nobody disturbing the stillness with a word.  Wilson now entered
upon a close survey of the palm again, and his revelations began.

        He mapped out Luigi's character and disposition, his tastes,
aversions, proclivities, ambitions, and eccentricities in a way which
sometimes made Luigi wince and the others laugh, but both twins
declared that the chart was artistically drawn and was correct.

        Next, Wilson took up Luigi's history.  He proceeded cautiously
and with hesitation, now, moving his finger slowly along the great
lines of the palm, and now and then halting it at a "star" or some
such landmark, and examining that neighborhood minutely.  He
proclaimed one or two past events, Luigi confirmed his correctness,
and the search went on.  Presently Wilson glanced up suddenly with a
surprised expression --

        "Here is record of an incident which you would perhaps not wish
me to -- "

        "Bring it out," said Luigi, good-naturedly; "I promise you it
sha'n't embarrass me."

        But Wilson still hesitated, and did not seem quite to know what
to do.  Then he said --

        "I think it is too delicate a matter to -- to -- I believe I
would rather write it or whisper it to you, and let you decide for
yourself whether you want it talked out or not."

        "That will answer," said Luigi; "write it."

        Wilson wrote something on a slip of paper and handed it to
Luigi, who read it to himself and said to Tom --

        "Unfold your slip and read it, Mr. Driscoll."

        Tom read:

        <"It was prophesied that I would kill a man.  It came true
before the year was out.">

        Tom added, "Great Scott!"

        Luigi handed Wilson's paper to Tom, and said --

        "Now read this one."

        Tom read:

        <"You have killed some one, but whether man, woman or child, I
do not make out.">

        "Caesar's ghost!" commented Tom, with astonishment.  "It beats
anything that was ever heard of!  Why, a man's own hand is his
deadliest enemy!  Just think of that -- a man's own hand keeps a
record of the deepest and fatalest secrets of his life, and is
treacherously ready to expose him to any black-magic stranger that
comes along.  But what do you let a person look at your hand for,
with that awful thing printed in it?"

        "Oh," said Luigi, reposefully, "I don't mind it.  I killed the
man for good reasons, and I don't regret it."

        "What were the reasons?"

        "Well, he needed killing."

        "I 'll tell you why he did it, since he won't say himself,"
said Angelo, warmly.  "He did it to save my life, that 's what he did
it for.  So it was a noble act, and not a thing to be hid in the
dark."

        "So it was, so it was," said Wilson; "to do such a thing to
save a brother's life is a great and fine action."

        "Now come," said Luigi, "it is very pleasant to hear you say
these things, but for unselfishness, or heroism, or magnanimity, the
circumstances won't stand scrutiny.  You overlook one detail: suppose
I had n't saved Angelo's life, what would have become of mine?  If I
had let the man kill him, would n't he have killed me, too?  I saved
my own life, you see."

        "Yes; that is your way of talking," said Angelo, "but I know
you -- I don't believe you thought of yourself at all.  I keep that
weapon yet that Luigi killed the man with, and I 'll show it to you
some time.  That incident makes it interesting, and it had a history
before it came into Luigi's hands which adds to its interest.  It was
given to Luigi by a great Indian prince, the Gaikowar of Baroda, and
it had been in his family two or three centuries.  It killed a good
many disagreeable people who troubled that hearthstone at one time
and another.  It is n't much to look at, except that it is n't shaped
like other knives, or dirks, or whatever it may be called -- here, I
'll draw it for you." He took a sheet of paper and made a rapid
sketch.  "There it is -- a broad and murderous blade, with edges like
a razor for sharpness.  The devices engraved on it are the ciphers or
names of its long line of possessors -- I had Luigi's name added in
Roman letters myself with our coat of arms, as you see.  You notice
what a curious handle the thing has.  It is solid ivory, polished
like a mirror, and is four or five inches long -- round, and as thick
as a large man's wrist, with the end squared off flat, for your thumb
to rest on; for you grasp it, with your thumb resting on the blunt
end -- so -- and lift it aloft and strike downward.  The Gaikowar
showed us how the thing was done when he gave it to Luigi, and before
that night was ended Luigi had used the knife, and the Gaikowar was a
man short by reason of it.  The sheath is magnificently ornamented
with gems of great value.  You will find the sheath more worth
looking at than the knife itself, of course."

        Tom said to himself --


        "It's lucky I came here.  I would have sold that knife for a
song; I supposed the jewels were glass."

        "But go on; don't stop," said Wilson.  "Our curiosity is up
now, to hear about the homicide.  Tell us about that."

        "Well, briefly, the knife was to blame for that, all around.  A
native servant slipped into our room in the palace in the night, to
kill us and steal the knife on account of the fortune incrusted on
its sheath, without a doubt.  Luigi had it under his pillow; we were
in bed together.  There was a dim night-light burning.  I was asleep,
but Luigi was awake, and he thought he detected a vague form nearing
the bed.  He slipped the knife out of the sheath and was ready, and
unembarrassed by hampering bed-clothes, for the weather was hot and
we had n't any.  Suddenly that native rose at the bedside, and bent
over me with his right hand lifted and a dirk in it aimed at my
throat; but Luigi grabbed his wrist, pulled him downward, and drove
his own knife into the man's neck.  That is the whole story."

        Wilson and Tom drew deep breaths, and after some general chat
about the tragedy, Pudd'nhead said, taking Tom's hand --

        "Now, Tom, I 've never had a look at your palms, as it happens;
perhaps you 've got some little questionable privacies that need --
hel-lo!"

        Tom had snatched away his hand, and was looking a good deal
confused.

        "Why, he 's blushing!" said Luigi.

        Tom darted an ugly look at him, and said sharply --

        "Well, if I am, it ain't because I 'm a murderer!" Luigi's dark
face flushed, but before he could speak or move, Tom added with
anxious haste: "Oh, I beg a thousand pardons.  I did n't mean that;
it was out before I thought, and I 'm very, very sorry -- you must
forgive me!"

        Wilson came to the rescue, and smoothed things down as well as
he could; and in fact was entirely successful as far as the twins
were concerned, for they felt sorrier for the affront put upon him by
his guest's outburst of ill manners than for the insult offered to
Luigi.  But the success was not so pronounced with the offender.  Tom
tried to seem at his ease, and he went through the motions fairly
well, but at bottom he felt resentful toward all the three witnesses
of his exhibition; in fact, he felt so annoyed at them for having
witnessed it and noticed it that he almost forgot to feel annoyed at
himself for placing it before them.  However, something presently
happened which made him almost comfortable, and brought him nearly
back to a state of charity and friendliness.  This was a little spat
between the twins; not much of a spat, but still a spat; and before
they got far with it they were in a decided condition of irritation
with each other.  Tom was charmed; so pleased, indeed, that he
cautiously did what he could to increase the irritation while
pretending to be actuated by more respectable motives.  By his help
the fire got warmed up to the blazing-point, and he might have had
the happiness of seeing the flames show up, in another moment, but
for the interruption of a knock on the door -- an interruption which
fretted him as much as it gratified Wilson.  Wilson opened the door.

        The visitor was a good-natured, ignorant, energetic,
middle-aged Irishman named John Buckstone, who was a great politician
in a small way, and always took a large share in public matters of
every sort.  One of the town's chief excitements, just now, was over
the matter of rum.  There was a strong rum party and a strong
anti-rum party.  Buckstone was training with the rum party, and he
had been sent to hunt up the twins and invite them to attend a
mass-meeting of that faction.  He delivered his errand, and said the
clans were already gathering in the big hall over the market-house.
Luigi accepted the invitation cordially, Angelo less cordially, since
he disliked crowds, and did not drink the powerful intoxicants of
America.  In fact, he was even a teetotaler sometimes -- when it was
judicious to be one.

        The twins left with Buckstone, and Tom Driscoll joined company
with them uninvited.

        In the distance one could see a long wavering line of torches
drifting down the main street, and could hear the throbbing of the
bass drum, the clash of cymbals, the squeaking of a fife or two, and
the faint roar of remote hurrahs.  The tail-end of this procession
was climbing the market-house stairs when the twins arrived in its
neighborhood; when they reached the hall it was full of people,
torches, smoke, noise, and enthusiasm.  They were conducted to the
platform by Buckstone -- Tom Driscoll still following -- and were
delivered to the chairman in the midst of a prodigious explosion of
welcome.  When the noise had moderated a little, the chair proposed
that "our illustrious guests be at once elected, by complimentary
acclamation, to membership in our ever-glorious organization, the
paradise of the free and the perdition of the slave."

        This eloquent discharge opened the flood-gates of enthusiasm
again, and the election was carried with thundering unanimity.  Then
arose a storm of cries:

        "Wet them down!  Wet them down!  Give them a drink!"

        Glasses of whisky were handed to the twins.  Luigi waved his
aloft, then brought it to his lips; but Angelo set his down.  There
was another storm of cries:

        "What 's the matter with the other one?" "What is the blond one
going back on us for?" "Explain!  Explain!"

        The chairman inquired, and then reported --

        "We have made an unfortunate mistake, gentlemen.  I find that
the Count Angelo Cappello is opposed to our creed -- is a teetotaler,
in fact, and was not intending to apply for membership with us.  He
desires that we reconsider the vote by which he was elected.  What is
the pleasure of the house?"

        There was a general burst of laughter, plentifully accented
with whistlings and cat-calls, but the energetic use of the gavel
presently restored something like order.  Then a man spoke from the
crowd, and said that while he was very sorry that the mistake had
been made, it would not be possible to rectify it at the present
meeting.  According to the by-laws it must go over to the next
regular meeting for action.  He would not offer a motion, as none was
required.  He desired to apologize to the gentleman in the name of
the house, and begged to assure him that as far as it might lie in
the power of the Sons of Liberty, his temporary membership in the
order would be made pleasant to him.

        This speech was received with great applause, mixed with cries
of --

        "That 's the talk!" "He 's a good fellow, any way, if he <is> a
teetotaler!" "Drink his health!" "Give him a rouser, and no
heel-taps!"


        Glasses were handed around, and everybody on the platform drank
Angelo's health, while the house bellowed forth in song:

        For he 's a jolly good fel-low,
        For he 's a jolly good fel-low,
        For he 's a jolly good fe-el-low, --
        Which nobody can deny.

        Tom Driscoll drank.  It was his second glass, for he had drunk
Angelo's the moment that Angelo had set it down.  The two drinks made
him very merry -- almost idiotically so -- and he began to take a
most lively and prominent part in the proceedings, particularly in
the music and cat-call and side-remarks.

        The chairman was still standing at the front, the twins at his
side.  The extraordinarily close resemblance of the brothers to each
other suggested a witticism to Tom Driscoll, and just as the chairman
began a speech he skipped forward and said with an air of tipsy
confidence to the audience --

        "Boys, I move that he keeps still and lets this human philopena
snip you out a speech."

        The descriptive aptness of the phrase caught the house, and a
mighty burst of laughter followed.

        Luigi's southern blood leaped to the boiling-point in a moment
under the sharp humiliation of this insult delivered in the presence
of four hundred strangers.  It was not in the young man's nature to
let the matter pass, or to delay the squaring of the account.  He
took a couple of strides and halted behind the unsuspecting joker.
Then he drew back and delivered a kick of such titanic vigor that it
lifted Tom clear over the footlights and landed him on the heads of
the front row of the Sons of Liberty.

        Even a sober person does not like to have a human being emptied
on him when he is not doing any harm; a person who is not sober
cannot endure such an attention at all.  The nest of Sons of Liberty
that Driscoll landed in had not a sober bird in it; in fact there was
probably not an entirely sober one in the auditorium.  Driscoll was
promptly and indignantly flung on to the heads of Sons in the next
row, and these Sons passed him on toward the rear, and then
immediately began to pummel the front-row Sons who had passed him to
them.  This course was strictly followed by bench after bench as
Driscoll traveled in his tumultuous and airy flight toward the door;
so he left behind him an ever lengthening wake of raging and plunging
and fighting and swearing humanity.  Down went group after group of
torches, and presently above the deafening clatter of the gavel, roar
of angry voices, and crash of succumbing benches, rose the paralyzing
cry of

        "FIRE!"

        The fighting ceased instantly; the cursing ceased; for one
distinctly defined moment there was a dead hush, a motionless calm,
where the tempest had been; then with one impulse the multitude awoke
to life and energy again, and went surging and struggling and
swaying, this way and that, its outer edges melting away through
windows and doors and gradually lessening the pressure and relieving
the mass.

        The fire-boys were never on hand so suddenly before; for there
was no distance to go, this time, their quarters being in the rear
end of the market-house.  There was an engine company and a
hook-and-ladder company.  Half of each was composed of rummies and
the other half of anti-rummies, after the moral and political
share-and-share-alike fashion of the frontier town of the period.
Enough anti-rummies were loafing in quarters to man the engine and
the ladders.  In two minutes they had their red shirts and helmets on
-- they never stirred officially in unofficial costume -- and as the
mass meeting overhead smashed through the long row of windows and
poured out upon the roof of the arcade, the deliverers were ready for
them with a powerful stream of water which washed some of them off
the roof and nearly drowned the rest.  But water was preferable to
fire, and still the stampede from the windows continued, and still
the pitiless drenchings assailed it until the building was empty;
then the fire-boys mounted to the hall and flooded it with water
enough to annihilate forty times as much fire as there was there; for
a village fire-company does not often get a chance to show off, and
so when it does get a chance it makes the most of it.  Such citizens
of that village as were of a thoughtful and judicious temperament did
not insure against fire; they insured against the fire-company.


        XII

        Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear -- not absence
of fear.  Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to
say it is brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of the word.
Consider the flea! -- incomparably the bravest of all the creatures
of God, if ignorance of fear were courage.  Whether you are asleep or
awake he will attack you, caring nothing for the fact that in bulk
and strength you are to him as are the massed armies of the earth to
a sucking child; he lives both day and night and all days and nights
in the very lap of peril and the immediate presence of death, and yet
is no more afraid than is the man who walks the streets of a city
that was threatened by an earthquake ten centuries before.  When we
speak of Clive, Nelson, and Putnam as men who "did n't know what fear
was," we ought always to add the flea -- and put him at the head of
the procession.
        -- <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

        Judge Driscoll was in bed and asleep by ten o'clock on Friday
night, and he was up and gone a-fishing before daylight in the
morning with his friend Pembroke Howard.  These two had been boys
together in Virginia when that State still ranked as the chief and
most imposing member of the Union, and they still coupled the proud
and affectionate adjective "old" with her name when they spoke of
her.  In Missouri a recognized superiority attached to any person who
hailed from Old Virginia; and this superiority was exalted to
supremacy when a person of such nativity could also prove descent
from the First Families of that great commonwealth.  The Howards and
Driscolls were of this aristocracy.  In their eyes it was a nobility.
It had its unwritten laws, and they were as clearly defined and as
strict as any that could be found among the printed statutes of the
land.  The F. F. V. was born a gentleman; his highest duty in life
was to watch over that great inheritance and keep it unsmirched.  He
must keep his honor spotless.  Those laws were his chart; his course
was marked out on it; if he swerved from it by so much as half a
point of the compass it meant shipwreck to his honor; that is to say,
degradation from his rank as a gentleman.  These laws required
certain things of him which his religion might forbid: then his
religion must yield -- the laws could not be relaxed to accommodate
religions or anything else.  Honor stood first; and the laws defined
what it was and wherein it differed in certain details from honor as
defined by church creeds and by the social laws and customs of some
of the minor divisions of the globe that had got crowded out when the
sacred boundaries of Virginia were staked out.

        If Judge Driscoll was the recognized first citizen of Dawson's
Landing, Pembroke Howard was easily its recognized second citizen.
He was called "the great lawyer" -- an earned title.  He and Driscoll
were of the same age -- a year or two past sixty.

        Although Driscoll was a free-thinker and Howard a strong and
determined Presbyterian, their warm intimacy suffered no impairment
in consequence.  They were men whose opinions were their own property
and not subject to revision and amendment, suggestion or criticism,
by anybody, even their friends.

        The day's fishing finished, they came floating down stream in
their skiff, talking national politics and other high matters, and
presently met a skiff coming up from town, with a man in it who said:

        "I reckon you know one of the new twins gave your nephew a
kicking last night, Judge?"

        "Did <what>?"

        "Gave him a kicking."

        The old Judge's lips paled, and his eyes began to flame.  He
choked with anger for a moment, then he got out what he was trying to
say --

        "Well -- well -- go on!  Give me the details."

        The man did it.  At the finish the Judge was silent a minute,
turning over in his mind the shameful picture of Tom's flight over
the footlights; then he said, as if musing aloud --

        "H'm -- I don't understand it.  I was asleep at home.  He did
n't wake me.  Thought he was competent to manage his affair without
my help, I reckon." His face lit up with pride and pleasure at that
thought, and he said with a cheery complacency, "I like that -- it 's
the true old blood -- hey, Pembroke?"


        Howard smiled an iron smile, and nodded his head approvingly.
Then the news-bringer spoke again --

        "But Tom beat the twin on the trial."

        The Judge looked at the man wonderingly, and said --

        "The trial?  What trial?"

        "Why, Tom had him up before Judge Robinson for assault and
battery."

        The old man shrank suddenly together like one who has received
a death-stroke.  Howard sprang for him as he sank forward in a swoon,
and took him in his arms, and bedded him on his back in the boat.  He
sprinkled water in his face, and said to the startled visitor --

        "Go, now -- don't let him come to and find you here.  You see
what an effect your heedless speech has had; you ought to have been
more considerate than to blurt out such a cruel piece of slander as
that."

        "I 'm right down sorry I did it now, Mr. Howard, and I would
n't have done it if I had thought: but it ain't a slander; it 's
perfectly true, just as I told him."

        He rowed away.  Presently the old Judge came out of his faint
and looked up piteously into the sympathetic face that was bent over
him.

        "Say it ain't true, Pembroke; tell me it ain't true!" he said
in a weak voice.

        There was nothing weak in the deep organ-tones that responded
--

        "You know it 's a lie as well as I do, old friend.  He is of
the best blood of the Old Dominion."

        "God bless you for saying it!" said the old gentleman,
fervently.  "Ah, Pembroke, it was such a blow!"

        Howard stayed by his friend, and saw him home, and entered the
house with him.  It was dark, and past supper-time, but the Judge was
not thinking of supper; he was eager to hear the slander refuted from
headquarters, and as eager to have Howard hear it, too.  Tom was sent
for, and he came immediately.  He was bruised and lame, and was not a
happy-looking object.  His uncle made him sit down, and said --

        "We have been hearing about your adventure, Tom, with a
handsome lie added to it for embellishment.  Now pulverize that lie
to dust!  What measures have you taken?  How does the thing stand?"

        Tom answered guilelessly: "It don't stand at all; it 's all
over.  I had him up in court and beat him.  Pudd'nhead Wilson
defended him -- first case he ever had, and lost it.  The judge fined
the miserable hound five dollars for the assault."

        Howard and the Judge sprang to their feet with the opening
sentence -- why, neither knew; then they stood gazing vacantly at
each other.  Howard stood a moment, then sat mournfully down without
saying anything.  The Judge's wrath began to kindle, and he burst out
--

        "You cur!  You scum!  You vermin!  Do you mean to tell me that
blood of my race has suffered a blow and crawled to a court of law
about it?  Answer me!"

        Tom's head drooped, and he answered with an eloquent silence.
His uncle stared at him with a mixed expression of amazement and
shame and incredulity that was sorrowful to see.  At last he said --

        "Which of the twins was it?"

        "Count Luigi."

        "You have challenged him?"

        "N -- no," hesitated Tom, turning pale.

        "You will challenge him to-night.  Howard will carry it."

        Tom began to turn sick, and to show it.  He turned his hat
round and round in his hand, his uncle glowering blacker and blacker
upon him as the heavy seconds drifted by; then at last he began to
stammer, and said piteously --

        "Oh, please don't ask me to do it, uncle!  He is a murderous
devil -- I never could -- I -- I 'm afraid of him!"

        Old Driscoll's mouth opened and closed three times before he
could get it to perform its office; then he stormed out --

        "A coward in my family!  A Driscoll a coward!  Oh, what have I
done to deserve this infamy!" He tottered to his secretary in the
corner repeating that lament again and again in heartbreaking tones,
and got out of a drawer a paper, which he slowly tore to bits
scattering the bits absently in his track as he walked up and down
the room, still grieving and lamenting.  At last he said --

        "There it is, shreds and fragments once more -- my will.  Once
more you have forced me to disinherit you, you base son of a most
noble father!  Leave my sight!  Go -- before I spit on you!"

        The young man did not tarry.  Then the Judge turned to Howard:

        "You will be my second, old friend?"

        "Of course."

        "There is pen and paper.  Draft the cartel, and lose no time."

        "The Count shall have it in his hands in fifteen minutes," said
Howard.

        Tom was very heavy-hearted.  His appetite was gone with his
property and his self-respect.  He went out the back way and wandered
down the obscure lane grieving, and wondering if any course of future
conduct, however discreet and carefully perfected and watched over,
could win back his uncle's favor and persuade him to reconstruct once
more that generous will which had just gone to ruin before his eyes.
He finally concluded that it could.  He said to himself that he had
accomplished this sort of triumph once already, and that what had
been done once could be done again.  He would set about it.  He would
bend every energy to the task, and he would score that triumph once
more, cost what it might to his convenience, limit as it might his
frivolous and liberty-loving life.

        "To begin," he said to himself, "I 'll square up with the
proceeds of my raid, and then gambling has got to be stopped -- and
stopped short off.  It 's the worst vice I 've got -- from my
standpoint, anyway, because it 's the one he can most easily find
out, through the impatience of my creditors.  He thought it expensive
to have to pay two hundred dollars to them for me once.  Expensive --
<that!> Why, it cost me the whole of his fortune -- but of course he
never thought of that; some people can't think of any but their own
side of a case.  If he had known how deep I am in, now, the will
would have gone to pot without waiting for a duel to help.  Three
hundred dollars!  It 's a pile!  But he 'll never hear of it, I 'm
thankful to say.  The minute I 've cleared it off, I 'm safe; and I
'll never touch a card again.  Anyway, I won't while he lives, I make
oath to that.  I 'm entering on my last reform -- I know it -- yes,
and I 'll win; but after that, if I ever slip again I 'm gone."


        XIII

        When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who I
know have gone to a better world, I am moved to lead a different
life.
        -- <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

        October.  This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to
speculate in stocks in.  The others are July, January, September,
April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February.
        -- <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

        Thus mournfully communing with himself Tom moped along the lane
past Pudd'nhead Wilson's house, and still on and on between fences
inclosing vacant country on each hand till he neared the haunted
house, then he came moping back again, with many sighs and heavy with
trouble.  He sorely wanted cheerful company.  Rowena!  His heart gave
a bound at the thought, but the next thought quieted it -- the
detested twins would be there.

        He was on the inhabited side of Wilson's house, and now as he
approached it he noticed that the sitting-room was lighted.  This
would do; others made him feel unwelcome sometimes, but Wilson never
failed in courtesy toward him, and a kindly courtesy does at least
save one's feelings, even if it is not professing to stand for a
welcome.  Wilson heard footsteps at his threshold, then the clearing
of a throat.

        "It's that fickle-tempered, dissipated young goose -- poor
devil, he finds friends pretty scarce to-day, likely, after the
disgrace of carrying a personal-assault case into a law-court."

        A dejected knock.  "Come in!"

        Tom entered, and drooped into a chair, without saying anything.
Wilson said kindly --

        "Why, my boy, you look desolate.  Don't take it so hard.  Try
and forget you have been kicked."

        "Oh, dear," said Tom, wretchedly, "it 's not that, Pudd'n-head
-- it 's not that.  It's a thousand times worse than that -- oh, yes,
a million times worse."

        "Why, Tom, what do you mean?  Has Rowena -- "


        "Flung me?  No, but the old man has."

        Wilson said to himself, "Aha!" and thought of the mysterious
girl in the bedroom.  "The Driscolls have been making discoveries!"
Then he said aloud, gravely:

        "Tom, there are some kinds of dissipation which -- "

        "Oh, shucks, this has n't got anything to do with dissipation.
He wanted me to challenge that derned Italian savage, and I would n't
do it."

        "Yes, of course he would do that," said Wilson in a meditative
matter-of-course way; "but the thing that puzzled me was, why he did
n't look to that last night, for one thing, and why he let you carry
such a matter into a court of law at all, either before the duel or
after it.  It 's no place for it.  It was not like him.  I could n't
understand it.  How did it happen?"

        "It happened because he did n't know anything about it.  He was
asleep when I got home last night."

        "And you did n't wake him?  Tom, is that possible?"

        Tom was not getting much comfort here.  He fidgeted a moment,
then said:

        "I did n't choose to tell him -- that 's all.  He was going
a-fishing before dawn, with Pembroke Howard, and if I got the twins
into the common calaboose -- and I thought sure I could -- I never
dreamed of their slipping out on a paltry fine for such an outrageous
offense -- well, once in the calaboose they would be disgraced, and
uncle would n't want any duels with that sort of characters, and
would n't allow any."

        "Tom, I am ashamed of you!  I don't see how you could treat
your good old uncle so.  I am a better friend of his than you are;
for if I had known the circumstances I would have kept that case out
of court until I got word to him and let him have a gentleman's
chance."

        "You would?" exclaimed Tom, with lively surprise.  "And it your
first case!  And you know perfectly well there never would have
<been> any case if he had got that chance, don't you?  And you 'd
have finished your days a pauper nobody, instead of being an actually
launched and recognized lawyer to-day.  And you would really have
done that, would you?"

        "Certainly."

        Tom looked at him a moment or two, then shook his head
sorrowfully and said --


        "I believe you -- upon my word I do.  I don't know why I do,
but I do.  Pudd'nhead Wilson, I think you 're the biggest fool I ever
saw."

        "Thank you."

        "Don't mention it."

        "Well, he has been requiring you to fight the Italian and you
have refused.  You degenerate remnant of an honorable line!  I 'm
thoroughly ashamed of you, Tom!"

        "Oh, that 's nothing!  I don't care for anything, now that the
will 's torn up again."

        "Tom, tell me squarely -- did n't he find any fault with you
for anything but those two things -- carrying the case into court and
refusing to fight?"

        He watched the young fellow's face narrowly, but it was
entirely reposeful, and so also was the voice that answered:

        "No, he did n't find any other fault with me.  If he had had
any to find, he would have begun yesterday, for he was just in the
humor for it.  He drove that jack-pair around town and showed them
the sights, and when he came home he could n't find his father's old
silver watch that don't keep time and he thinks so much of, and could
n't remember what he did with it three or four days ago when he saw
it last; and so when I arrived he was all in a sweat about it, and
when I suggested that it probably was n't lost but stolen, it put him
in a regular passion and he said I was a fool -- which convinced me,
without any trouble, that that was just what he was afraid <had>
happened, himself, but did not want to believe it, because lost
things stand a better chance of being found again than stolen ones."

        "Whe-ew!" whistled Wilson; "score another on the list."

        "Another what?"

        "Another theft!"

        "Theft?"

        "Yes, theft.  That watch is n't lost, it 's stolen.  There 's
been another raid on the town -- and just the same old mysterious
sort of thing that has happened once before, as you remember."

        "You don't mean it!"

        "It 's as sure as you are born!  Have you missed anything
yourself?"


        "No.  That is, I did miss a silver pencil-case that Aunt Mary
Pratt gave me last birthday -- "

        "You 'll find it 's stolen -- that 's what you 'll find."

        "No, I sha'n't; for when I suggested theft about the watch and
got such a rap, I went and examined my room, and the pencil-case was
missing, but it was only mislaid, and I found it again."

        "You are sure you missed nothing else?"

        "Well, nothing of consequence.  I missed a small plain gold
ring worth two or three dollars, but that will turn up.  I 'll look
again."

        "In my opinion you 'll not find it.  There 's been a raid, I
tell you.  Come <in>!"

        Mr. Justice Robinson entered, followed by Buckstone and the
town-constable, Jim Blake.  They sat down, and after some wandering
and aimless weather-conversation Wilson said --

        "By the way, we 've just added another to the list of thefts,
maybe two.  Judge Driscoll's old silver watch is gone, and Tom here
has missed a gold ring."

        "Well, it is a bad business," said the Justice, "and gets worse
the further it goes.  The Hankses, the Dobsons, the Pilligrews, the
Ortons, the Grangers, the Hales, the Fullers, the Holcombs, in fact
everybody that lives around about Patsy Cooper's has been robbed of
little things like trinkets and teaspoons and such-like small
valuables that are easily carried off.  It 's perfectly plain that
the thief took advantage of the reception at Patsy Cooper's, when all
the neighbors were in her house and all their niggers hanging around
her fence for a look at the show, to raid the vacant houses
undisturbed.  Patsy is miserable about it; miserable on account of
the neighbors, and particularly miserable on account of her
foreigners, of course; so miserable on their account that she has n't
any room to worry about her own little losses."

        "It 's the same old raider," said Wilson.  "I suppose there is
n't any doubt about that."

        "Constable Blake does n't think so."

        "No, you 're wrong there," said Blake; "the other times it was
a man; there was plenty of signs of that, as we know, in the
profession, though we never got hands on him; but this time it 's a
woman."


        Wilson thought of the mysterious girl straight off.  She was
always in his mind now.  But she failed him again.  Blake continued:

        "She 's a stoop-shouldered old woman with a covered basket on
her arm, in a black veil, dressed in mourning.  I saw her going
aboard the ferry-boat yesterday.  Lives in Illinois, I reckon; but I
don't care where she lives, I 'm going to get her -- she can make
herself sure of that."

        "What makes you think she 's the thief?"

        "Well, there ain't any other, for one thing; and for another,
some of the nigger draymen that happened to be driving along saw her
coming out of or going into houses, and told me so -- and it just
happens that they was <robbed> houses, every time."

        It was granted that this was plenty good enough circumstantial
evidence.  A pensive silence followed, which lasted some moments,
then Wilson said --

        "There 's one good thing, anyway.  She can't either pawn or
sell Count Luigi's costly Indian dagger."

        "My!" said Tom, "is <that> gone?"

        "Yes."

        "Well, that was a haul!  But why can't she pawn it or sell it?"

        "Because when the twins went home from the Sons of Liberty
meeting last night, news of the raid was sifting in from everywhere,
and Aunt Patsy was in distress to know if they had lost anything.
They found that the dagger was gone, and they notified the police and
pawnbrokers everywhere.  It was a great haul, yes, but the old woman
won't get anything out of it, because she 'll get caught."

        "Did they offer a reward?" asked Buckstone.

        "Yes; five hundred dollars for the knife, and five hundred more
for the thief."

        "What a leather-headed idea!" exclaimed the constable.  "The
thief da's n't go near them, nor send anybody.  Whoever goes is going
to get himself nabbed, for there ain't any pawnbroker that 's going
to lose the chance to -- "

        If anybody had noticed Tom's face at that time, the gray-green
color of it might have provoked curiosity; but nobody did.  He said
to himself: "I 'm gone!  I never can square up; the rest of the
plunder won't pawn or sell for half of the bill.  Oh, I know it -- I
'm gone, I 'm gone -- and this time it 's for good.  Oh, this is
awful -- I don't know what to do, nor which way to turn!"

        "Softly, softly," said Wilson to Blake.  "I planned their
scheme for them at midnight last night, and it was all finished up
shipshape by two this morning.  They 'll get their dagger back, and
then I 'll explain to you how the thing was done."

        There were strong signs of a general curiosity, and Buckstone
said --

        "Well, you have whetted us up pretty sharp, Wilson, and I 'm
free to say that if you don't mind telling us in confidence -- "

        "Oh, I 'd as soon tell as not, Buckstone, but as long as the
twins and I agreed to say nothing about it, we must let it stand so.
But you can take my word for it you won't be kept waiting three days.
Somebody will apply for that reward pretty promptly, and I 'll show
you the thief and the dagger both very soon afterward."

        The constable was disappointed, and also perplexed.  He said --

        "It may all be -- yes, and I hope it will, but I 'm blamed if I
can see my way through it.  It 's too many for yours truly."

        The subject seemed about talked out.  Nobody seemed to have
anything further to offer.  After a silence the justice of the peace
informed Wilson that he and Buckstone and the constable had come as a
committee, on the part of the Democratic party, to ask him to run for
mayor -- for the little town was about to become a city and the first
charter election was approaching.  It was the first attention which
Wilson had ever received at the hands of any party; it was a
sufficiently humble one, but it was a recognition of his debut into
the town's life and activities at last; it was a step upward, and he
was deeply gratified.  He accepted, and the committee departed,
followed by young Tom.


        XIV

        The true Southern watermelon is a boon apart, and not to be
mentioned with commoner things.  It is chief of this world's
luxuries, king by the grace of God over all the fruits of the earth.
When one has tasted it, he knows what the angels eat.  It was not a
Southern watermelon that Eve took: we know it because she repented.
        -- <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

        About the time that Wilson was bowing the committee out,
Pembroke Howard was entering the next house to report.  He found the
old Judge sitting grim and straight in his chair, waiting.

        "Well, Howard -- the news?"

        "The best in the world."

        "Accepts, does he?" and the light of battle gleamed joyously in
the Judge's eye.

        "Accepts?  Why, he jumped at it."

        "Did, did he?  Now that 's fine -- that 's very fine.  I like
that.  When is it to be?"

        "Now!  Straight off!  To-night!  An admirable fellow --
admirable!"

        "Admirable?  He 's a darling!  Why, it 's an honor as well as a
pleasure to stand up before such a man.  Come -- off with you!  Go
and arrange everything -- and give him my heartiest compliments.  A
rare fellow, indeed; an admirable fellow, as you have said!"

        Howard hurried away, saying --

        "I 'll have him in the vacant stretch between Wilson's and the
haunted house within the hour, and I 'll bring my own pistols."

        Judge Driscoll began to walk the floor in a state of pleased
excitement; but presently he stopped, and began to think -- began to
think of Tom.  Twice he moved toward the secretary, and twice he
turned away again; but finally he said --

        "This may be my last night in the world -- I must not take the
chance.  He is worthless and unworthy, but it is largely my fault.
He was intrusted to me by my brother on his dying bed, and I have
indulged him to his hurt, instead of training him up severely, and
making a man of him.  I have violated my trust, and I must not add
the sin of desertion to that.  I have forgiven him once already, and
would subject him to a long and hard trial before forgiving him
again, if I could live; but I must not run that risk.  No, I must
restore the will.  But if I survive the duel, I will hide it away,
and he will not know, and I will not tell him until he reforms and I
see that his reformation is going to be permanent."

        He re-drew the will, and his ostensible nephew was heir to a
fortune again.  As he was finishing his task, Tom, wearied with
another brooding tramp, entered the house and went tiptoeing past the
sitting-room door.  He glanced in, and hurried on, for the sight of
his uncle had nothing but terrors for him to-night.  But his uncle
was writing!  That was unusual at this late hour.  What could he be
writing?  A chill of anxiety settled down upon Tom's heart.  Did that
writing concern him?  He was afraid so.  He reflected that when ill
luck begins, it does not come in sprinkles, but in showers.  He said
he would get a glimpse of that document or know the reason why.  He
heard some one coming, and stepped out of sight and hearing.  It was
Pembroke Howard.  What could be hatching?

        Howard said, with great satisfaction:

        "Everything 's right and ready.  He's gone to the battle-ground
with his second and the surgeon -- also with his brother.  I 've
arranged it all with Wilson -- Wilson 's his second.  We are to have
three shots apiece."

        "Good!  How is the moon?"

        "Bright as day, nearly.  Perfect, for the distance -- fifteen
yards.  No wind -- not a breath; hot and still."

        "All good; all first-rate.  Here, Pembroke, read this, and
witness it."

        Pembroke read and witnessed the will, then gave the old man's
hand a hearty shake and said:

        "Now that 's right, York -- but I knew you would do it.  You
could n't leave that poor chap to fight along without means or
profession, with certain defeat before him, and I knew you would n't,
for his father's sake if not for his own."

        "For his dead father's sake I could n't, I know; for poor Percy
-- but you know what Percy was to me.  But mind -- Tom is not to know
of this unless I fall to-night."

        "I understand.  I 'll keep the secret."

        The Judge put the will away, and the two started for the
battle-ground.  In another minute the will was in Tom's hands.  His
misery vanished, his feelings underwent a tremendous revulsion.  He
put the will carefully back in its place, and spread his mouth and
swung his hat once, twice, three times around his head, in imitation
of three rousing huzzas, no sound issuing from his lips.  He fell to
communing with himself excitedly and joyously, but every now and then
he let off another volley of dumb hurrahs.

        He said to himself: "I 've got the fortune again, but I 'll not
let on that I know about it.  And this time I 'm going to hang on to
it.  I take no more risks.  I 'll gamble no more, I 'll drink no
more, because -- well, because I 'll not go where there is any of
that sort of thing going on, again.  It 's the sure way, and the only
sure way; I might have thought of that sooner -- well, yes, if I had
wanted to.  But now -- dear me, I 've had a bad scare this time, and
I 'll take no more chances.  Not a single chance more.  Land!  I
persuaded myself this evening that I could fetch him around without
any great amount of effort, but I 've been getting more and more
heavy-hearted and doubtful straight along, ever since.  If he tells
me about this thing, all right; but if he does n't, I sha'n't let on.
I -- well, I 'd like to tell Pudd'nhead Wilson, but -- no, I 'll
think about that; perhaps I won't." He whirled off another dead
huzza, and said, "I 'm reformed, and this time I 'll stay so, sure!"

        He was about to close with a final grand silent demonstration,
when he suddenly recollected that Wilson had put it out of his power
to pawn or sell the Indian knife, and that he was once more in awful
peril of exposure by his creditors for that reason.  His joy
collapsed utterly, and he turned away and moped toward the door
moaning and lamenting over the bitterness of his luck.  He dragged
himself upstairs, and brooded in his room a long time disconsolate
and forlorn, with Luigi's Indian knife for a text.  At last he sighed
and said:

        "When I supposed these stones were glass and this ivory bone,
the thing had n't any interest for me because it had n't any value,
and could n't help me out of my trouble.  But now -- why, now it is
full of interest; yes, and of a sort to break a body's heart.  It 's
a bag of gold that has turned to dirt and ashes in my hands.  It
could save me, and save me so easily, and yet I 've got to go to
ruin.  It 's like drowning with a life-preserver in my reach.  All
the hard luck comes to me, and all the good luck goes to other people
-- Pudd'nhead Wilson, for instance; even his career has got a sort of
a little start at last, and what has he done to deserve it, I should
like to know?  Yes, he has opened his own road, but he is n't content
with that, but must block mine.  It 's a sordid, selfish world, and I
wish I was out of it." He allowed the light of the candle to play
upon the jewels of the sheath, but the flashings and sparklings had
no charm for his eye; they were only just so many pangs to his heart.
"I must not say anything to Roxy about this thing," he said, "she is
too daring.  She would be for digging these stones out and selling
them, and then -- why, she would be arrested and the stones traced,
and then -- " The thought made him quake, and he hid the knife away,
trembling all over and glancing furtively about, like a criminal who
fancies that the accuser is already at hand.

        Should he try to sleep?  Oh, no, sleep was not for him; his
trouble was too haunting, too afflicting for that.  He must have
somebody to mourn with.  He would carry his despair to Roxy.

        He had heard several distant gunshots, but that sort of thing
was not uncommon, and they had made no impression upon him.  He went
out at the back door, and turned westward.  He passed Wilson's house
and proceeded along the lane, and presently saw several figures
approaching Wilson's place through the vacant lots.  These were the
duelists returning from the fight; he thought he recognized them, but
as he had no desire for white people's company, he stooped down
behind the fence until they were out of his way.

        Roxy was feeling fine.  She said:

        "Whah was you, child?  Warn't you in it?"

        "In what?"

        "In de duel."

        "Duel?  Has there been a duel?"


        "'Co'se dey has.  De ole Jedge has be'n havin' a duel wid one
o' dem twins."

        "Great Scott!" Then he added to himself: "That 's what made him
re-make the will; he thought he might get killed, and it softened him
toward me.  And that 's what he and Howard were so busy about ... Oh
dear, if the twin had only killed him, I should be out of my -- "

        "What is you mumblin' 'bout, Chambers?  Whah was you?  Did n't
you know dey was gwyne to be a duel?"

        "No.  I did n't.  The old man tried to get me to fight one with
Count Luigi, but he did n't succeed, so I reckon he concluded to
patch up the family honor himself."

        He laughed at the idea, and went rambling on with a detailed
account of his talk with the Judge, and how shocked and ashamed the
Judge was to find that he had a coward in his family.  He glanced up
at last, and got a shock himself.  Roxana's bosom was heaving with
suppressed passion, and she was glowering down upon him with
measureless contempt written in her face.

        "En you refuse' to fight a man dat kicked you, 'stid o' jumpin'
at de chance!  En you ain't got no mo' feelin' den to come en tell
me, dat fetched sich a po' low-down ornery rabbit into de worl'!
Pah! it make me sick!  It 's de nigger in you, dat 's what it is.
Thirty-one parts o' you is white, en on'y one part nigger, en dat po'
little one part is yo' <soul>.  Tain't wuth savin'; tain't wuth
totin' out on a shovel en thowin in de gutter.  You has disgraced yo'
birth.  What would yo' pa think o' you?  It 's enough to make him
turn in his grave."

        The last three sentences stung Tom into a fury, and he said to
himself that if his father were only alive and in reach of
assassination his mother would soon find that he had a very clear
notion of the size of his indebtedness to that man, and was willing
to pay it up in full, and would do it too, even at risk of his life;
but he kept his thought to himself; that was safest in his mother's
present state.

        "Whatever has come o' yo' Essex blood?  Dat 's what I can't
understand.  En it ain't on'y jist Essex blood dat 's in you, not by
a long sight -- 'deed it ain't.  My great-great-great-gran'father en
yo' great-great-great-great-gran'father was ole Cap'n John Smith, de
highest blood dat Ole Virginny ever turned out, en <his>
great-great-gran'mother or somers along back dah, was Pocahontas de
Injun queen, en her husbun' was a nigger king outen Africa -- en yit
here you is, a slinkin' outen a duel en disgracin' our whole line
like a ornery low-down hound!  Yes, it 's de nigger in you!"

        She sat down on her candle-box and fell into a reverie.  Tom
did not disturb her; he sometimes lacked prudence, but it was not in
circumstances of this kind.  Roxana's storm went gradually down, but
it died hard, and even when it seemed to be quite gone, it would now
and then break out in a distant rumble, so to speak, in the form of
muttered ejaculations.  One of these was, "Ain't nigger enough in him
to show in his finger-nails, en dat takes mighty little -- yit dey 's
enough to paint his soul."

        Presently she muttered, "Yassir, enough to paint a whole
thimbleful of 'em." At last her ramblings ceased altogether, and her
countenance began to clear -- a welcome sign to Tom, who had learned
her moods, and knew she was on the threshold of good-humor, now.  He
noticed that from time to time she unconsciously carried her finger
to the end of her nose.  He looked closer and said:

        "Why, mammy, the end of your nose is skinned.  How did that
come?"

        She sent out the sort of whole-hearted peal of laughter which
God has vouchsafed in its perfection to none but the happy angels in
heaven and the bruised and broken black slave on the earth, and said:

        "Dad fetch dat duel, I be'n in it myself."

        "Gracious! did a bullet do that?"

        "Yassir, you bet it did!"

        "Well, I declare!  Why, how did that happen?"

        "Happen dis-away.  I 'uz a-sett'n' here kinder dozin' in de
dark, en <che-bang!> goes a gun, right out dah.  I skips along out
towards t' other end o' de house to see what 's gwyne on, en stops by
de ole winder on de side towards Pudd'nhead Wilson's house dat ain't
got no sash in it, -- but dey ain't none of 'em got any sashes, fur
as dat 's concerned, -- en I stood dah in de dark en look out, en dar
in de moonlight, right down under me 'uz one o' de twins a-cussin' --
not much, but jist a-cussin' soft -- it 'uz de brown one dat 'uz
cussin', 'ca'se he 'uz hit in de shoulder.  En Doctor Claypool he 'uz
a-workin' at him, en Pudd'nhead Wilson he 'uz a-he'pin', en ole Jedge
Driscoll en Pem Howard 'uz a-standin' out yonder a little piece
waitin' for 'em to git ready agin.  En treckly dey squared off en
give de word, en <bang-bang> went de pistols, en de twin he say,
`Ouch!' -- hit him on de han' dis time, -- en I hear dat same bullet
go <spat!> ag'in' de logs under de winder; en de nex' time dey shoot,
de twin say, `Ouch!' ag'in, en I done it too, 'ca'se de bullet
glance' on his cheek-bone en skip up here en glance on de side o' de
winder en whiz right acrost my face en tuck de hide off'n my nose --
why, if I 'd 'a' be'n jist a inch or a inch en a half furder 't would
'a' tuck de whole nose en disfigger me.  Here 's de bullet; I hunted
her up."

        "Did you stand there all the time?"

        "Dat 's a question to ask, ain't it!  What else would I do?
Does I git a chance to see a duel every day?"

        "Why, you were right in range!  Were n't you afraid?"

        The woman gave a sniff of scorn.

        "'Fraid!  De Smith-Pocahontases ain't 'fraid o' nothin', let
alone bullets."

        "They 've got pluck enough, I suppose; what they lack is
judgment.  <I> would n't have stood there."

        "Nobody 's accusin' you!"

        "Did anybody else get hurt?"

        "Yes, we all got hit 'cep' de blon' twin en de doctor en de
seconds.  De Jedge did n't git hurt, but I hear Pudd'nhead say de
bullet snip some o' his ha'r off."

        "'George!" said Tom to himself, "to come so near being out of
my trouble, and miss it by an inch.  Oh dear, dear, he will live to
find me out and sell me to some nigger-trader yet -- yes, and he
would do it in a minute." Then he said aloud, in a grave tone --

        "Mother, we are in an awful fix."

        Roxana caught her breath with a spasm, and said --

        "Chile!  What you hit a body so sudden for, like dat?  What 's
be'n en gone en happen'?"

        "Well, there 's one thing I did n't tell you.  When I would n't
fight, he tore up the will again, and -- "

        Roxana's face turned a dead white, and she said --


        "Now you 's <done>! -- done forever!  Dat 's de end.  Bofe un
us is gwyne to starve to -- "

        "Wait and hear me through, can't you!  I reckon that when he
resolved to fight, himself, he thought he might get killed and not
have a chance to forgive me any more in this life, so he made the
will again, and I 've seen it, and it 's all right.  But -- "

        "Oh, thank goodness, den we 's safe agin! -- safe! en so what
did you want to come here en talk sich dreadful -- "

        "Hold <on>, I tell you, and let me finish.  The swag I gathered
won't half square me up, and the first thing we know, my creditors --
well, you know what 'll happen."

        Roxana dropped her chin, and told her son to leave her alone --
she must think this matter out.  Presently she said impressively:

        "You got to go mighty keerful now, I tell you!  En here 's what
you got to do.  He did n't git killed, en if you gives him de least
reason, he 'll bust de will ag'in, en dat 's de <las>' time, now you
hear me!  So -- you 's got to show him what you kin do in de nex' few
days.  You 's got to be pison good, en let him see it; you got to do
everything dat 'll make him b'lieve in you, en you got to sweeten
aroun' ole Aunt Pratt, too, -- she 's pow'ful strong wid de Jedge, en
de bes' frien' you got.  Nex', you 'll go 'long away to Sent Louis,
en dat 'll <keep> him in yo' favor.  Den you go en make a bargain wid
dem people.  You tell 'em he ain't gwyne to live long -- en dat 's de
fac', too, -- en tell 'em you 'll pay 'em intrust, en big intrust,
too, -- ten per -- what you call it?"

        "Ten per cent. a month?"

        "Dat 's it.  Den you take and sell yo' truck aroun', a little
at a time, en pay de intrust.  How long will it las'?"

        "I think there 's enough to pay the interest five or six
months."

        "Den you 's all right.  If he don't die in six months, dat
don't make no diff'rence -- Providence 'll provide.  You 's gwyne to
be safe -- if you behaves." She bent an austere eye on him and added,
"En you <is> gwyne to behave -- does you know dat?"

        He laughed and said he was going to try, anyway.  She did not
unbend.  She said gravely:


        "Tryin' ain't de thing.  You 's gwyne to <do> it.  You ain't
gwyne to steal a pin -- 'ca'se it ain't safe no mo'; en you ain't
gwyne into no bad comp'ny -- not even once, you understand; en you
ain't gwyne to drink a drop -- nary single drop; en you ain't gwyne
to gamble one single gamble -- not one!  Dis ain't what you 's gwyne
to <try> to do, it 's what you 's gwyne to <do>.  En I 'll tell you
how I knows it.  Dis is how.  I 's gwyne to foller along to Sent
Louis my own self; en you 's gwyne to come to me every day o' yo'
life, en I 'll look you over; en if you fails in one single one o'
dem things -- jist <one> -- I take my oath I 'll come straight down
to dis town en tell de Jedge you 's a nigger en a slave -- en <prove>
it!" She paused to let her words sink home.  Then she added,
"Chambers, does you b'lieve me when I says dat?"

        Tom was sober enough now.  There was no levity in his voice
when he answered:

        "Yes, mother.  I know, now, that I am reformed -- and
permanently.  Permanently -- and beyond the reach of any human
temptation."

        "Den g' long home en begin!"


        XV

        Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.
        -- <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

        Behold, the fool saith, "Put not all thine eggs in the one
basket" -- which is but a manner of saying, "Scatter your money and
your attention"; but the wise man saith, "Put all your eggs in the
one basket and -- WATCH THAT BASKET."
        -- <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

        What a time of it Dawson's Landing was having!  All its life it
had been asleep, but now it hardly got a chance for a nod, so swiftly
did big events and crashing surprises come along in one another's
wake: Friday morning, first glimpse of Real Nobility, also grand
reception at Aunt Patsy Cooper's, also great robber-raid; Friday
evening, dramatic kicking of the heir of the chief citizen in
presence of four hundred people; Saturday morning, emergence as
practising lawyer of the long-submerged Pudd'nhead Wilson; Saturday
night, duel between chief citizen and titled stranger.

        The people took more pride in the duel than in all the other
events put together, perhaps.  It was a glory to their town to have
such a thing happen there.  In their eyes the principals had reached
the summit of human honor.  Everybody paid homage to their names;
their praises were in all mouths.  Even the duelists' subordinates
came in for a handsome share of the public approbation: wherefore
Pudd'nhead Wilson was suddenly become a man of consequence.  When
asked to run for the mayoralty Saturday night he was risking defeat,
but Sunday morning found him a made man and his success assured.

        The twins were prodigiously great, now; the town took them to
its bosom with enthusiasm.  Day after day, and night after night,
they went dining and visiting from house to house, making friends,
enlarging and solidifying their popularity, and charming and
surprising all with their musical prodigies, and now and then
heightening the effects with samples of what they could do in other
directions, out of their stock of rare and curious accomplishments.
They were so pleased that they gave the regulation thirty days'
notice, the required preparation for citizenship, and resolved to
finish their days in this pleasant place.  That was the climax.  The
delighted community rose as one man and applauded; and when the twins
were asked to stand for seats in the forthcoming aldermanic board,
and consented, the public contentment was rounded and complete.

        Tom Driscoll was not happy over these things; they sunk deep,
and hurt all the way down.  He hated the one twin for kicking him,
and the other one for being the kicker's brother.

        Now and then the people wondered why nothing was heard of the
raider, or of the stolen knife or the other plunder, but nobody was
able to throw any light on that matter.  Nearly a week had drifted
by, and still the thing remained a vexed mystery.

        On Saturday Constable Blake and Pudd'nhead Wilson met on the
street, and Tom Driscoll joined them in time to open their
conversation for them.  He said to Blake --

        "You are not looking well, Blake; you seem to be annoyed about
something.  Has anything gone wrong in the detective business?  I
believe you fairly and justifiably claim to have a pretty good
reputation in that line, is n't it so?" -- which made Blake feel
good, and look it; but Tom added, "for a country detective" -- which
made Blake feel the other way, and not only look it, but betray it in
his voice --

        "Yes, sir, I <have> got a reputation; and it 's as good as
anybody's in the profession, too, country or no country."

        "Oh, I beg pardon; I did n't mean any offense.  What I started
out to ask was only about the old woman that raided the town -- the
stoop-shouldered old woman, you know, that you said you were going to
catch; and I knew you would, too, because you have the reputation of
never boasting, and -- well, you -- you 've caught the old woman?"

        "D ------ the old woman!"

        "Why, sho! you don't mean to say you have n't caught her?"

        "No; I have n't caught her.  If anybody could have caught her,
I could; but nobody could n't, I don't care who he is."

        "I am sorry, real sorry -- for your sake; because, when it gets
around that a detective has expressed himself so confidently, and
then -- "

        "Don't you worry, that 's all -- don't you worry; and as for
the town, the town need n't worry, either.  She 's my meat -- make
yourself easy about that.  I 'm on her track; I 've got clues that --
"

        "That 's good!  Now if you could get an old veteran detective
down from St. Louis to help you find out what the clues mean, and
where they lead to, and then -- "

        "I 'm plenty veteran enough myself, and I don't need anybody's
help.  I 'll have her inside of a we -- inside of a month.  That I
'll swear to!"

        Tom said carelessly --

        "I suppose that will answer -- yes, that will answer.  But I
reckon she is pretty old, and old people don't often outlive the
cautious pace of the professional detective when he has got his clues
together and is out on his still-hunt."

        Blake's dull face flushed under this gibe, but before he could
set his retort in order Tom had turned to Wilson, and was saying,
with placid indifference of manner and voice --

        "Who got the reward, Pudd'nhead?"

        Wilson winced slightly, and saw that his own turn was come.

        "What reward?"

        "Why, the reward for the thief, and the other one for the
knife."

        Wilson answered -- and rather uncomfortably, to judge by his
hesitating fashion of delivering himself --

        "Well, the -- well, in fact, nobody has claimed it yet."

        Tom seemed surprised.

        "Why, is that so?"

        Wilson showed a trifle of irritation when he replied --

        "Yes, it 's so.  And what of it?"

        "Oh, nothing.  Only I thought you had struck out a new idea,
and invented a scheme that was going to revolution-ize the time-worn
and ineffectual methods of the -- " He stopped, and turned to Blake,
who was happy now that another had taken his place on the gridiron:
"Blake, did n't you understand him to intimate that it would n't be
necessary for you to hunt the old woman down?"


        "B'George, he said he 'd have thief and swag both inside of
three days -- he did, by hokey! and that 's just about a week ago.
Why, I said at the time that no thief and no thief's pal was going to
try to pawn or sell a thing where he knowed the pawnbroker could get
both rewards by taking <him> into camp <with> the swag.  It was the
blessedest idea that ever <I> struck!"

        "You 'd change your mind," said Wilson, with irritated
bluntness, "if you knew the entire scheme instead of only part of
it."

        "Well," said the constable, pensively, "I had the idea that it
would n't work, and up to now I 'm right, anyway."

        "Very well, then, let it stand at that, and give it a further
show.  It has worked at least as well as your own methods, you
perceive."

        The constable had n't anything handy to hit back with, so he
discharged a discontented sniff, and said nothing.

        After the night that Wilson had partly revealed his scheme at
his house, Tom had tried for several days to guess out the secret of
the rest of it, but had failed.  Then it occurred to him to give
Roxana's smarter head a chance at it.  He made up a supposititious
case, and laid it before her.  She thought it over, and delivered her
verdict upon it.  Tom said to himself, "She 's hit it, sure!" He
thought he would test that verdict, now, and watch Wilson's face; so
he said reflectively --

        "Wilson, you 're not a fool -- a fact of recent discovery.
Whatever your scheme was, it had sense in it, Blake's opinion to the
contrary notwithstanding.  I don't ask you to reveal it, but I will
suppose a case -- a case which will answer as a starting-point for
the real thing I am going to come at, and that 's all I want.  You
offered five hundred dollars for the knife, and five hundred for the
thief.  We will suppose, for argument's sake, that the first reward
is <advertised>, and the second offered by <private letter> to
pawnbrokers and -- "

        Blake slapped his thigh, and cried out --

        "By Jackson, he 's got you, Pudd'nhead!  Now why could n't I or
<any> fool have thought of that?"

        Wilson said to himself, "Anybody with a reasonably good head
would have thought of it.  I am not surprised that Blake did n't
detect it; I am only surprised that Tom did.  There is more to him
than I supposed." He said nothing aloud, and Tom went on:

        "Very well.  The thief would not suspect that there was a trap,
and he would bring or send the knife, and say he bought it for a
song, or found it in the road, or something like that, and try to
collect the reward, and be arrested -- would n't he?"

        "Yes," said Wilson.

        "I think so," said Tom.  "There can't be any doubt of it.  Have
you ever seen that knife?"

        "No."

        "Has any friend of yours?"

        "Not that I know of."

        "Well, I begin to think I understand why your scheme failed."

        "What do you mean, Tom?  What are you driving at?" asked
Wilson, with a dawning sense of discomfort.

        "Why, that there <is n't> any such knife."

        "Look here, Wilson," said Blake, "Tom Driscoll 's right, for a
thousand dollars -- if I had it."

        Wilson's blood warmed a little, and he wondered if he had been
played upon by those strangers; it certainly had something of that
look.  But what could they gain by it?  He threw out that suggestion.
Tom replied:

        "Gain?  Oh, nothing that you would value, maybe.  But they are
strangers making their way in a new community.  Is it nothing to them
to appear as pets of an Oriental prince -- at no expense?  Is it
nothing to them to be able to dazzle this poor little town with
thousand-dollar rewards -- at no expense?  Wilson, there is n't any
such knife, or your scheme would have fetched it to light.  Or if
there is any such knife, they 've got it yet.  I believe, myself,
that they 've seen such a knife, for Angelo pictured it out with his
pencil too swiftly and handily for him to have been inventing it, and
of course I can't swear that they 've never had it; but this I 'll go
bail for -- if they had it when they came to this town, they 've got
it yet."

        Blake said --

        "It looks mighty reasonable, the way Tom puts it; it most
certainly does."


        Tom responded, turning to leave --

        "You find the old woman, Blake, and if she can't furnish the
knife, go and search the twins!"

        Tom sauntered away.  Wilson felt a good deal depressed.  He
hardly knew what to think.  He was loth to withdraw his faith from
the twins, and was resolved not to do it on the present indecisive
evidence; but -- well, he would think, and then decide how to act.

        "Blake, what do you think of this matter?"

        "Well, Pudd'nhead, I 'm bound to say I put it up the way Tom
does.  They had n't the knife; or if they had it, they 've got it
yet."

        The men parted.  Wilson said to himself:

        "I believe they had it; if it had been stolen, the scheme would
have restored it, that is certain.  And so I believe they 've got it
yet."

        Tom had no purpose in his mind when he encountered those two
men.  When he began his talk he hoped to be able to gall them a
little and get a trifle of malicious entertainment out of it.  But
when he left, he left in great spirits, for he perceived that just by
pure luck and no troublesome labor he had accomplished several
delightful things: he had touched both men on a raw spot and seen
them squirm; he had modified Wilson's sweetness for the twins with
one small bitter taste that he would n't be able to get out of his
mouth right away; and, best of all, he had taken the hated twins down
a peg with the community; for Blake would gossip around freely, after
the manner of detectives, and within a week the town would be
laughing at them in its sleeve for offering a gaudy reward for a
bauble which they either never possessed or had n't lost.  Tom was
very well satisfied with himself.

        Tom's behavior at home had been perfect during the entire week.
His uncle and aunt had seen nothing like it before.  They could find
no fault with him anywhere.

        Saturday evening he said to the Judge --

        "I 've had something preying on my mind, uncle, and as I am
going away, and might never see you again, I can't bear it any
longer.  I made you believe I was afraid to fight that Italian
adventurer.  I had to get out of it on some pretext or other, and
maybe I chose badly, being taken unawares, but no honorable person
could consent to meet him in the field, knowing what I knew about
him."

        "Indeed?  What was that?"

        "Count Luigi is a confessed assassin."

        "Incredible!"

        "It is perfectly true.  Wilson detected it in his hand, by
palmistry, and charged him with it, and cornered him up so close that
he had to confess; but both twins begged us on their knees to keep
the secret, and swore they would lead straight lives here; and it was
all so pitiful that we gave our word of honor never to expose them
while they kept that promise.  You would have done it yourself,
uncle."

        "You are right, my boy; I would.  A man's secret is still his
own property, and sacred, when it has been surprised out of him like
that.  You did well, and I am proud of you." Then he added
mournfully, "But I wish I could have been saved the shame of meeting
an assassin on the field of honor."

        "It could n't be helped, uncle.  If I had known you were going
to challenge him I should have felt obliged to sacrifice my pledged
word in order to stop it, but Wilson could n't be expected to do
otherwise than keep silent."

        "Oh no; Wilson did right, and is in no way to blame.  Tom, Tom,
you have lifted a heavy load from my heart; I was stung to the very
soul when I seemed to have discovered that I had a coward in my
family."

        "You may imagine what it cost <me> to assume such a part,
uncle."

        "Oh, I know it, poor boy, I know it.  And I can understand how
much it has cost you to remain under that unjust stigma to this time.
But it is all right now, and no harm is done.  You have restored my
comfort of mind, and with it your own; and both of us had suffered
enough."

        The old man sat a while plunged in thought; then he looked up
with a satisfied light in his eye, and said: "That this assassin
should have put the affront upon me of letting me meet him on the
field of honor as if he were a gentleman is a matter which I will
presently settle -- but not now.  I will not shoot him until after
election.  I see a way to ruin them both before; I will attend to
that first.  Neither of them shall be elected, that I promise.  You
are sure that the fact that he is an assassin has not got abroad?"

        "Perfectly certain of it, sir."

        "It will be a good card.  I will fling a hint at it from the
stump on the polling-day.  It will sweep the ground from under both
of them."

        "There 's not a doubt of it.  It will finish them."

        "That and outside work among the voters will, to a certainty.
I want you to come down here by and by and work privately among the
rag-tag and bobtail.  You shall spend money among them; I will
furnish it."

        Another point scored against the detested twins!  Really it was
a great day for Tom.  He was encouraged to chance a parting shot,
now, at the same target, and did it.

        "You know that wonderful Indian knife that the twins have been
making such a to-do about?  Well, there 's no track or trace of it
yet; so the town is beginning to sneer and gossip and laugh.  Half
the people believe they never had any such knife, the other half
believe they had it and have got it still.  I 've heard twenty people
talking like that to-day."

        Yes, Tom's blemishless week had restored him to the favor of
his aunt and uncle.

        His mother was satisfied with him, too.  Privately, she
believed she was coming to love him, but she did not say so.  She
told him to go along to St. Louis, now, and she would get ready and
follow.  Then she smashed her whisky bottle and said --

        "Dah now!  I 's a-gwyne to make you walk as straight as a
string, Chambers, en so I 's bown' you ain't gwyne to git no bad
example out o' yo' mammy.  I tole you you could n't go into no bad
comp'ny.  Well, you 's gwyne into my comp'ny, en I 's gwyne to fill
de bill.  Now, den, trot along, trot along!"

        Tom went aboard one of the big transient boats that night with
his heavy satchel of miscellaneous plunder, and slept the sleep of
the unjust, which is serener and sounder than the other kind, as we
know by the hanging-eve history of a million rascals.  But when he
got up in the morning, luck was against him again: A brother-thief
had robbed him while he slept, and gone ashore at some intermediate
landing.


        XVI

        If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will
not bite you.  This is the principal difference between a dog and a
man.
        -- <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

        We know all about the habits of the ant, we know all about the
habits of the bee, but we know nothing at all about the habits of the
oyster.  It seems almost certain that we have been choosing the wrong
time for studying the oyster.
        -- <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

        When Roxana arrived, she found her son in such despair and
misery that her heart was touched and her motherhood rose up strong
in her.  He was ruined past hope, now; his destruction would be
immediate and sure, and he would be an outcast and friendless.  That
was reason enough for a mother to love a child; so she loved him, and
told him so.  It made him wince, secretly -- for she was a "nigger."
That he was one himself was far from reconciling him to that despised
race.

        Roxana poured out endearments upon him, to which he responded
uncomfortably, but as well as he could.  And she tried to comfort
him, but that was not possible.  These intimacies quickly became
horrible to him, and within the hour he began to try to get up
courage enough to tell her so, and require that they be discontinued
or very considerably modified.  But he was afraid of her; and
besides, there came a lull, now, for she had begun to think.  She was
trying to invent a saving plan.  Finally she started up, and said she
had found a way out.  Tom was almost suffocated by the joy of this
sudden good news.  Roxana said:

        "Here is de plan, en she 'll win, sure.  I 's a nigger, en
nobody ain't gwyne to doubt it dat hears me talk.  I 's wuth six
hund'd dollahs.  Take en sell me, en pay off dese gamblers."

        Tom was dazed.  He was not sure he had heard aright.  He was
dumb for a moment; then he said:

        "Do you mean that you would be sold into slavery to save me?"


        "Ain't you my chile?  En does you know anything dat a mother
won't do for her chile?  Dey ain't nothin' a white mother won't do
for her chile.  Who made 'em so?  De Lord done it.  En who made de
niggers?  De Lord made 'em.  In de inside, mothers is all de same.
De good Lord he made 'em so.  I 's gwyne to be sole into slavery, en
in a year you 's gwyne to buy yo' ole mammy free ag'in.  I 'll show
you how.  Dat 's de plan."

        Tom's hopes began to rise, and his spirits along with them.  He
said --

        "It 's lovely of you, mammy -- it 's just -- "

        "Say it ag'in!  En keep on sayin' it!  It 's all de pay a body
kin want in dis worl', en it 's mo' den enough.  Laws bless you,
honey, when I 's slavin' aroun', en dey 'buses me, if I knows you 's
a-sayin' dat, 'way off yonder somers, it 'll heal up all de sore
places, en I kin stan' 'em."

        "I <do> say it again, mammy, and I 'll keep on saying it, too.
But how am I going to sell you?  You 're free, you know."

        "Much diff'rence dat make!  White folks ain't partic'lar.  De
law kin sell me now if dey tell me to leave de State in six months en
I don't go.  You draw up a paper -- bill o' sale -- en put it 'way
off yonder, down in de middle 'o Kaintuck somers, en sign some names
to it, en say you 'll sell me cheap 'ca'se you 's hard up; you 'll
fine you ain't gwyne to have no trouble.  You take me up de country a
piece, en sell me on a farm; dem people ain't gwyne to ask no
questions if I 's a bargain."

        Tom forged a bill of sale and sold his mother to an Arkansas
cotton-planter for a trifle over six hundred dollars.  He did not
want to commit this treachery, but luck threw the man in his way, and
this saved him the necessity of going up country to hunt up a
purchaser, with the added risk of having to answer a lot of
questions, whereas this planter was so pleased with Roxy that he
asked next to none at all.  Besides, the planter insisted that Roxy
would n't know where she was, at first, and that by the time she
found out she would already have become contented.  And Tom argued
with himself that it was an immense advantage for Roxy to have a
master who was so pleased with her, as this planter manifestly was.
In almost no time his flowing reasonings carried him to the point of
even half believing he was doing Roxy a splendid surreptitious
service in selling her "down the river." And then he kept diligently
saying to himself all the time: "It 's for only a year.  In a year I
buy her free again; she 'll keep that in mind, and it 'll reconcile
her." Yes; the little deception could do no harm, and everything
would come out right and pleasant in the end, any way.  By agreement,
the conversation in Roxy's presence was all about the man's
"up-country" farm, and how pleasant a place it was, and how happy the
slaves were there; so poor Roxy was entirely deceived; and easily,
for she was not dreaming that her own son could be guilty of treason
to a mother who, in voluntarily going into slavery -- slavery of any
kind, mild or severe, or of any duration, brief or long -- was making
a sacrifice for him compared with which death would have been a poor
and commonplace one.  She lavished tears and loving caresses upon him
privately, and then went away with her owner -- went away
broken-hearted, and yet proud of what she was doing, and glad that it
was in her power to do it.

        Tom squared his accounts, and resolved to keep to the very
letter of his reform, and never to put that will in jeopardy again.
He had three hundred dollars left.  According to his mother's plan,
he was to put that safely away, and add her half of his pension to it
monthly.  In one year this fund would buy her free again.

        For a whole week he was not able to sleep well, so much the
villainy which he had played upon his trusting mother preyed upon his
rag of a conscience; but after that he began to get comfortable
again, and was presently able to sleep like any other miscreant.

        THE boat bore Roxy away from St. Louis at four in the
afternoon, and she stood on the lower guard abaft the paddle-box and
watched Tom through a blur of tears until he melted into the throng
of people and disappeared; then she looked no more, but sat there on
a coil of cable crying till far into the night.  When she went to her
foul steerage-bunk at last, between the clashing engines, it was not
to sleep, but only to wait for the morning, and, waiting, grieve.

        It had been imagined that she "would not know," and would think
she was traveling up stream.  She!  Why, she had been steamboating
for years.  At dawn she got up and went listlessly and sat down on
the cable-coil again.  She passed many a snag whose "break" could
have told her a thing to break her heart, for it showed a current
moving in the same direction that the boat was going; but her
thoughts were elsewhere, and she did not notice.  But at last the
roar of a bigger and nearer break than usual brought her out of her
torpor, and she looked up, and her practised eye fell upon that
tell-tale rush of water.  For one moment her petrified gaze fixed
itself there.  Then her head dropped upon her breast, and she said --

        "Oh, de good Lord God have mercy on po' sinful me -- <I 's sole
down de river!>"

        XVII

        Even popularity can be overdone.  In Rome, along at first, you
are full of regrets that Michelangelo died; but by and by you only
regret that you did n't see him do it.
        -- <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

        <July 4.> Statistics show that we lose more fools on this day
than in all the other days of the year put together.  This proves, by
the number left in stock, that one Fourth of July per year is now
inadequate, the country has grown so.
        <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

        The summer weeks dragged by, and then the political campaign
opened -- opened in pretty warm fashion, and waxed hotter and hotter
daily.  The twins threw themselves into it with their whole heart,
for their self-love was engaged.  Their popularity, so general at
first, had suffered afterward; mainly because they had been <too>
popular, and so a natural reaction had followed.  Besides, it had
been diligently whispered around that it was curious -- indeed,
<very> curious -- that that wonderful knife of theirs did not turn up
-- <if> it was so valuable, or <if> it had ever existed.  And with
the whisperings went chucklings and nudgings and winks, and such
things have an effect.  The twins considered that success in the
election would reinstate them, and that defeat would work them
irreparable damage.  Therefore they worked hard, but not harder than
Judge Driscoll and Tom worked against them in the closing days of the
canvass.  Tom's conduct had remained so letter-perfect during two
whole months, now, that his uncle not only trusted him with money
with which to persuade voters, but trusted him to go and get it
himself out of the safe in the private sitting-room.

        The closing speech of the campaign was made by Judge Driscoll,
and he made it against both of the foreigners.  It was disastrously
effective.  He poured out rivers of ridicule upon them, and forced
the big mass-meeting to laugh and applaud.  He scoffed at them as
adventurers, mountebanks, side-show riff-raff, dime-museum freaks; he
assailed their showy titles with measureless derision; he said they
were back-alley barbers disguised as nobilities, peanut pedlers
masquerading as gentlemen, organ-grinders bereft of their
brother-monkey.  At last he stopped and stood still.  He waited until
the place had become absolutely silent and expectant, then he
delivered his deadliest shot; delivered it with ice-cold seriousness
and deliberation, with a significant emphasis upon the closing words:
he said he believed that the reward offered for the lost knife was
humbug and buncombe, and that its owner would know where to find it
whenever he should have occasion <to assassinate somebody>.

        Then he stepped from the stand, leaving a startled and
impressive hush behind him instead of the customary explosion of
cheers and party cries.

        The strange remark flew far and wide over the town and made an
extraordinary sensation.  Everybody was asking, "What could he mean
by that?" And everybody went on asking that question, but in vain;
for the Judge only said he knew what he was talking about, and
stopped there; Tom said he had n't any idea what his uncle meant, and
Wilson, whenever he was asked what he thought it meant, parried the
question by asking the questioner what <he> thought it meant.

        Wilson was elected, the twins were defeated -- crushed, in
fact, and left forlorn and substantially friendless.  Tom went back
to St. Louis happy.

        Dawson's Landing had a week of repose, now, and it needed it.
But it was in an expectant state, for the air was full of rumors of a
new duel.  Judge Driscoll's election labors had prostrated him, but
it was said that as soon as he was well enough to entertain a
challenge he would get one from Count Luigi.

        The brothers withdrew entirely from society, and nursed their
humiliation in privacy.  They avoided the people, and went out for
exercise only late at night, when the streets were deserted.


        XVIII

        Gratitude and treachery are merely the two extremities of the
same procession.  You have seen all of it that is worth staying for
when the band and the gaudy officials have gone by.
        -- <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

        Thanksgiving Day.  Let all give humble, hearty, and sincere
thanks, now, but the turkeys.  In the island of Fiji they do not use
turkeys; they use plumbers.  It does not become you and me to sneer
at Fiji.
        -- <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

        The Friday after the election was a rainy one in St. Louis.  It
rained all day long, and rained hard, apparently trying its best to
wash that soot-blackened town white, but of course not succeeding.
Toward midnight Tom Driscoll arrived at his lodgings from the theater
in the heavy downpour, and closed his umbrella and let himself in;
but when he would have shut the door, he found that there was another
person entering -- doubtless another lodger; this person closed the
door and tramped up-stairs behind Tom.  Tom found his door in the
dark, and entered it and turned up the gas.  When he faced about,
lightly whistling, he saw the back of a man.  The man was closing and
locking his door for him.  His whistle faded out and he felt uneasy.
The man turned around, a wreck of shabby old clothes sodden with rain
and all a-drip, and showed a black face under an old slouch hat.  Tom
was frightened.  He tried to order the man out, but the words refused
to come, and the other man got the start.  He said, in a low voice --

        "Keep still -- I 's yo' mother!"

        Tom sunk in a heap on a chair, and gasped out --

        "It was mean of me, and base -- I know it; but I meant it for
the best, I did indeed -- I can swear it."

        Roxana stood awhile looking mutely down on him while he writhed
in shame and went on incoherently babbling self-accusations mixed
with pitiful attempts at explanation and palliation of his crime;
then she seated herself and took off her hat, and her unkempt masses
of long brown hair tumbled down about her shoulders.

        "It ain't no fault o' yo'n dat dat ain't gray," she said sadly,
noticing the hair.

        "I know it, I know it!  I 'm a scoundrel.  But I swear I meant
for the best.  It was a mistake, of course, but I thought it was for
the best, I truly did."

        Roxy began to cry softly, and presently words began to find
their way out between her sobs.  They were uttered lamentingly,
rather than angrily --

        "Sell a pusson down de river -- <down de river!> -- for de
bes'!  I would n't treat a dog so!  I is all broke down en wore out,
now, en so I reckon it ain't in me to storm aroun' no mo', like I
used to when I 'uz trompled on en 'bused.  I don't know -- but maybe
it 's so.  Leastways, I 's suffered so much dat mournin' seem to come
mo' handy to me now den stormin'."

        These words should have touched Tom Driscoll, but if they did,
that effect was obliterated by a stronger one -- one which removed
the heavy weight of fear which lay upon him, and gave his crushed
spirit a most grateful rebound, and filled all his small soul with a
deep sense of relief.  But he kept prudently still, and ventured no
comment.  There was a voiceless interval of some duration, now, in
which no sounds were heard but the beating of the rain upon the
panes, the sighing and complaining of the winds, and now and then a
muffled sob from Roxana.  The sobs became more and more infrequent,
and at last ceased.  Then the refugee began to talk again:

        "Shet down dat light a little.  More.  More yit.  A pusson dat
is hunted don't like de light.  Dah -- dat 'll do.  I kin see whah
you is, en dat 's enough.  I 's gwine to tell you de tale, en cut it
jes as short as I kin, en den I 'll tell you what you 's got to do.
Dat man dat bought me ain't a bad man; he 's good enough, as planters
goes; en if he could 'a' had his way I 'd 'a' be'n a house servant in
his fambly en be'n comfortable: but his wife she was a Yank, en not
right down good lookin', en she riz up agin me straight off; so den
dey sent me out to de quarter 'mongst de common fiel' han's.  Dat
woman war n't satisfied even wid dat, but she worked up de overseer
ag'in' me, she 'uz dat jealous en hateful; so de overseer he had me
out befo' day in de mawnin's en worked me de whole long day as long
as dey 'uz any light to see by; en many 's de lashin's I got 'ca'se I
could n't come up to de work o' de stronges'.  Dat overseer wuz a
Yank, too, outen New Englan', en anybody down South kin tell you what
dat mean.  <Dey> knows how to work a nigger to death, en dey knows
how to whale 'em, too -- whale 'em till dey backs is welted like a
washboard.  'Long at fust my marster say de good word for me to de
overseer, but dat 'uz bad for me; for de mistis she fine it out, en
arter dat I jist ketched it at every turn -- dey war n't no mercy for
me no mo'."

        Tom's heart was fired -- with fury against the planter's wife;
and he said to himself, "But for that meddlesome fool, everything
would have gone all right." He added a deep and bitter curse against
her.

        The expression of this sentiment was fiercely written in his
face, and stood thus revealed to Roxana by a white glare of lightning
which turned the somber dusk of the room into dazzling day at that
moment.  She was pleased -- pleased and grateful; for did not that
expression show that her child was capable of grieving for his
mother's wrongs and of feeling resentment toward her persecutors? --
a thing which she had been doubting.  But her flash of happiness was
only a flash, and went out again and left her spirit dark; for she
said to herself, "He sole me down de river -- he can't feel for a
body long; dis 'll pass en go." Then she took up her tale again.

        "'Bout ten days ago I 'uz sayin' to myself dat I could n't las'
many mo' weeks I 'uz so wore out wid de awful work en de lashin's, en
so downhearted en misable.  En I did n't care no mo', nuther -- life
war n't wuth noth'n' to me if I got to go on like dat.  Well, when a
body is in a frame o' mine like dat, what do a body care what a body
do?  Dey was a little sickly nigger wench 'bout ten year ole dat 'uz
good to me, en had n't no mammy, po' thing, en I loved her en she
loved me; en she come out whah I 'uz workin' en she had a roasted
tater, en tried to slip it to me, -- robbin' herself, you see, 'ca'se
she knowed de overseer did n't gimme enough to eat, -- en he ketched
her at it, en give her a lick acrost de back wid his stick, which 'uz
as thick as a broom-handle, en she drop' screamin' on de groun', en
squirmin' en wallerin' aroun' in de dust like a spider dat 's got
crippled.  I could n't stan' it.  All de hell-fire dat 'uz ever in my
heart flame' up, en I snatch de stick outen his han' en laid him
flat.  He laid dah moanin' en cussin', en all out of his head, you
know, en de niggers 'uz plumb sk'yerd to death.  Dey gathered roun'
him to he'p him, en I jumped on his hoss en took out for de river as
tight as I could go.  I knowed what dey would do wid me.  Soon as he
got well he would start in en work me to death if marster let him; en
if dey did n't do dat, they 'd sell me furder down de river, en dat
's de same thing.  So I 'lowed to drown myself en git out o' my
troubles.  It 'uz gitt'n' towards dark.  I 'uz at de river in two
minutes.  Den I see a canoe, en I says dey ain't no use to drown
myself tell I got to; so I ties de hoss in de edge o' de timber en
shove out down de river, keepin' in under de shelter o' de bluff bank
en prayin' for de dark to shet down quick.  I had a pow'ful good
start, 'ca'se de big house 'uz three mile back f'om de river en on'y
de work-mules to ride dah on, en on'y niggers to ride 'em, en <dey>
war n't gwine to hurry -- dey 'd gimme all de chance dey could.
Befo' a body could go to de house en back it would be long pas' dark,
en dey could n't track de hoss en fine out which way I went tell
mawnin', en de niggers would tell 'em all de lies dey could 'bout it.

        "Well, de dark come, en I went on a-spinnin' down de river.  I
paddled mo'n two hours, den I war n't worried no mo', so I quit
paddlin', en floated down de current, considerin' what I 'uz gwine to
do if I did n't have to drown myself.  I made up some plans, en
floated along, turnin' 'em over in my mine.  Well, when it 'uz a
little pas' midnight, as I reckoned, en I had come fifteen or twenty
mile, I see de lights o' a steamboat layin' at de bank, whah dey war
n't no town en no woodyard, en putty soon I ketched de shape o' de
chimbly-tops ag'in' de stars, en de good gracious me, I 'most jumped
out o' my skin for joy!  It 'uz de <Gran' Mogul> -- I 'uz chambermaid
on her for eight seasons in de Cincinnati en Orleans trade.  I slid
'long pas' -- don't see nobody stirrin' nowhah -- hear 'em
a-hammerin' away in de engine-room, den I knowed what de matter was
-- some o' de machinery 's broke.  I got asho' below de boat and
turn' de canoe loose, den I goes 'long up, en dey 'uz jes one plank
out, en I step' 'board de boat.  It 'uz pow'ful hot, deckhan's en
roustabouts 'uz sprawled aroun' asleep on de fo'cas'l', de second
mate, Jim Bangs, he sot dah on de bitts wid his head down, asleep --
'ca'se dat 's de way de second mate stan' de cap'n's watch!  -- en de
ole watchman, Billy Hatch, he 'uz a-noddin' on de companionway; -- en
I knowed 'em all; 'en, lan', but dey did look good!  I says to
myself, I wished old marster 'd come along <now> en try to take me --
bless yo' heart, I 's 'mong frien's, I is.  So I tromped right along
'mongst 'em, en went up on de b'iler deck en 'way back aft to de
ladies' cabin guard, en sot down dah in de same cheer dat I 'd sot in
'mos' a hund'd million times, I reckon; en it 'uz jist home ag'in, I
tell you!

        "In 'bout an hour I heard de ready-bell jingle, en den de
racket begin.  Putty soon I hear de gong strike.  `Set her back on de
outside,' I says to myself -- `I reckon I knows dat music!' I hear de
gong ag'in.  `Come ahead on de inside,' I says.  Gong ag'in.  `Stop
de outside.' Gong ag'in.  `Come ahead on de outside -- now we 's
pinted for Sent Louis, en I 's outer de woods en ain't got to drown
myself at all.' I knowed de <Mogul> 'uz in de Sent Louis trade now,
you see.  It 'uz jes fair daylight when we passed our plantation, en
I seed a gang o' niggers en white folks huntin' up en down de sho',
en trou-blin' deyselves a good deal 'bout me; but I war n't troublin'
myself none 'bout dem.

        "'Bout dat time Sally Jackson, dat used to be my second
chambermaid en 'uz head chambermaid now, she come out on de guard, en
'uz pow'ful glad to see me, en so 'uz all de officers; en I tole 'em
I 'd got kidnapped en sole down de river, en dey made me up twenty
dollahs en give it to me, en Sally she rigged me out wid good clo'es,
en when I got here I went straight to whah you used to wuz, en den I
come to dis house, en dey say you 's away but 'spected back every
day; so I did n't dast to go down de river to Dawson's, 'ca'se I
might miss you.

        "Well, las' Monday I 'uz pass'n' by one o' dem places in Fourth
street whah dey sticks up runaway-nigger bills, en he'ps to ketch
'em, en I seed my marster!  I 'mos' flopped down on de groun', I felt
so gone.  He had his back to me, en 'uz talkin' to de man en givin'
him some bills -- nigger-bills, I reckon, en I 's de nigger.  He 's
offerin' a reward -- dat 's it.  Ain't I right, don't you reckon?"

        Tom had been gradually sinking into a state of ghastly terror,
and he said to himself, now: "I 'm lost, no matter what turn things
take!  This man has said to me that he thinks there was something
suspicious about that sale.  He said he had a letter from a passenger
on the <Grand Mogul> saying that Roxy came here on that boat and that
everybody on board knew all about the case; so he says that her
coming here instead of flying to a free State looks bad for me, and
that if I don't find her for him, and that pretty soon, he will make
trouble for me.  I never believed that story; I could n't believe she
would be so dead to all motherly instincts as to come here, knowing
the risk she would run of getting me into irremediable trouble.  And
after all, here she is!  And I stupidly swore I would help him find
her, thinking it was a perfectly safe thing to promise.  If I venture
to deliver her up, she -- she -- but how can I help myself?  I 've
got to do that or pay the money, and where 's the money to come from?
I -- I -- well, I should think that if he would swear to treat her
kindly hereafter -- and she says, herself, that he is a good man --
and if he would swear to never allow her to be overworked, or ill
fed, or -- "

        A flash of lightning exposed Tom's pallid face, drawn and rigid
with these worrying thoughts.  Roxana spoke up sharply now, and there
was apprehension in her voice --

        "Turn up dat light!  I want to see yo' face better.  Dah now --
lemme look at you.  Chambers, you 's as white as yo' shirt!  Has you
seen dat man?  Has he be'n to see you?"

        "Ye-s."

        "When?"

        "Monday noon."

        "Monday noon!  Was he on my track?"

        "He -- well, he thought he was.  That is, he hoped he was.
This is the bill you saw." He took it out of his pocket.

        "Read it to me!"

        She was panting with excitement, and there was a dusky glow in
her eyes that Tom could not translate with certainty, but there
seemed to be something threatening about it.  The handbill had the
usual rude woodcut of a turbaned negro woman running, with the
customary bundle on a stick over her shoulder, and the heading in
bold type, "$100 REWARD." Tom read the bill aloud -- at least the
part that described Roxana and named the master and his St. Louis
address and the address of the Fourth-street agency; but he left out
the item that applicants for the reward might also apply to Mr.
Thomas Driscoll.

        "Gimme de bill!"

        Tom had folded it and was putting it in his pocket.  He felt a
chilly streak creeping down his back, but said as carelessly as he
could --

        "The bill?  Why, it is n't any use to you; you can't read it.
What do you want with it?"

        "Gimme de bill!" Tom gave it to her, but with a reluctance
which he could not entirely disguise.  "Did you read it <all> to me?"

        "Certainly I did."

        "Hole up yo' han' en swah to it."

        Tom did it.  Roxana put the bill carefully away in her pocket,
with her eyes fixed upon Tom's face all the while; then she said --

        "You 's lyin'!"

        "What would I want to lie about it for?"

        "I don't know -- but you is.  Dat 's my opinion, anyways.  But
nemmine 'bout dat.  When I seed dat man I 'uz dat sk'yerd dat I could
sca'cely wobble home.  Den I give a nigger man a dollar for dese
clo'es, en I ain't be'n in a house sence, night ner day, till now.  I
blacked my face en laid hid in de cellar of a ole house dat 's burnt
down, daytimes, en robbed de sugar hogsheads en grain sacks on de
wharf, nights, to git somethin' to eat, en never dast to try to buy
noth'n', en I 's 'mos' starved.  En I never dast to come near dis
place till dis rainy night, when dey ain't no people roun' sca'cely.
But to-night I be'n a-stannin' in de dark alley ever sence night
come, waitin' for you to go by.  En here I is."

        She fell to thinking.  Presently she said --

        "You seed dat man at noon, las' Monday?"

        "Yes."

        "I seed him de middle o' dat arternoon.  He hunted you up, did
n't he?"


        "Yes."

        "Did he give you de bill dat time?"

        "No, he had n't got it printed yet."

        Roxana darted a suspicious glance at him.

        "Did you he'p him fix up de bill?"

        Tom cursed himself for making that stupid blunder, and tried to
rectify it by saying he remembered, now, that it <was> at noon Monday
that the man gave him the bill.  Roxana said --

        "You 's lyin' ag'in, sho." Then she straightened up and raised
her finger:

        "Now den!  I 's gwine to ast you a question, en I wants to know
how you 's gwine to git aroun' it.  You knowed he 'uz arter me; en if
you run off, 'stid o' stayin' here to he'p him, he 'd know dey 'uz
somethin' wrong 'bout dis business, en den he would inquire 'bout
you, en dat would take him to yo' uncle, en yo' uncle would read de
bill en see dat you be'n sellin' a free nigger down de river, en you
know <him>, I reckon!  He 'd t'ar up de will en kick you outen de
house.  Now, den, you answer me dis question: hain't you tole dat man
dat I would be sho' to come here, en den you would fix it so he could
set a trap en ketch me?"

        Tom recognized that neither lies nor arguments could help him
any longer -- he was in a vise, with the screw turned on, and out of
it there was no budging.  His face began to take on an ugly look, and
presently he said, with a snarl --

        "Well, what could I do?  You see, yourself, that I was in his
grip and could n't get out."

        Roxy scorched him with a scornful gaze awhile, then she said --

        "What could you do?  You could be Judas to yo' own mother to
save yo' wuthless hide!  Would anybody b'lieve it?  No -- a dog could
n't!  You is de low-downest orneriest hound dat was ever pup'd into
dis worl' -- en I 's 'sponsible for it!" -- and she spat on him.

        He made no effort to resent this.  Roxy reflected a moment,
then she said --

        "Now I 'll tell you what you 's gwine to do.  You 's gwine to
give dat man de money dat you 's got laid up, en make him wait till
you kin go to de Jedge en git de res' en buy me free agin."

        "Thunder! what are you thinking of?  Go and ask him for three
hundred dollars and odd?  What would I tell him I want with it,
pray?"

        Roxy's answer was delivered in a serene and level voice --

        "You 'll tell him you 's sole me to pay yo' gamblin' debts en
dat you lied to me en was a villain, en dat I 'quires you to git dat
money en buy me back ag'in."

        "Why, you 've gone stark mad!  He would tear the will to shreds
in a minute -- don't you know that?"

        "Yes, I does."

        "Then you don't believe I 'm idiot enough to go to him, do
you?"

        "I don't b'lieve nothin' 'bout it -- I <knows> you 's a-goin',
I knows it 'ca'se you knows dat if you don't raise dat money I 'll go
to him myself, en den he 'll sell <you> down de river, en you kin see
how you like it!"

        Tom rose, trembling and excited, and there was an evil light in
his eye.  He strode to the door and said he must get out of this
suffocating place for a moment and clear his brain in the fresh air
so that he could determine what to do.  The door would n't open.
Roxy smiled grimly, and said --

        "I 's got de key, honey -- set down.  You need n't cle'r up yo'
brain none to fine out what you gwine to do -- <I> knows what you 's
gwine to do." Tom sat down and began to pass his hands through his
hair with a helpless and desperate air.  Roxy said, "Is dat man in
dis house?"

        Tom glanced up with a surprised expression, and asked --

        "What gave you such an idea?"

        "You done it.  Gwine out to cle'r yo' brain!  In de fust place
you ain't got none to cle'r, en in de second place yo' ornery eye
tole on you.  You 's de low-downest hound dat ever -- but I done tole
you dat befo'.  Now den, dis is Friday.  You kin fix it up wid dat
man, en tell him you 's gwine away to git de res' o' de money, en dat
you 'll be back wid it nex' Tuesday, or maybe Wednesday.  You
understan'?"

        Tom answered sullenly --

        "Yes."


        "En when you gits de new bill o' sale dat sells me to my own
self, take en send it in de mail to Mr. Pudd'nhead Wilson, en write
on de back dat he 's to keep it tell I come.  You understan'?"

        "Yes."

        "Dat 's all, den.  Take yo' umbreller, en put on yo' hat."

        "Why?"

        "Beca'se you 's gwine to see me home to de wharf.  You see dis
knife?  I 's toted it aroun' sence de day I seed dat man en bought
dese clo'es en it.  If he ketched me, I 'uz gwine to kill myself wid
it.  Now start along, en go sof', en lead de way; en if you gives a
sign in dis house, or if anybody comes up to you in de street, I 's
gwine to jam it into you.  Chambers, does you b'lieve me when I says
dat?"

        "It 's no use to bother me with that question.  I know your
word 's good."

        "Yes, it 's diff'rent from yo'n!  Shet de light out en move
along -- here 's de key."

        They were not followed.  Tom trembled every time a late
straggler brushed by them on the street, and half expected to feel
the cold steel in his back.  Roxy was right at his heels and always
in reach.  After tramping a mile they reached a wide vacancy on the
deserted wharves, and in this dark and rainy desert they parted.

        As Tom trudged home his mind was full of dreary thoughts and
wild plans; but at last he said to himself, wearily --

        "There is but the one way out.  I must follow her plan.  But
with a variation -- I will not ask for the money and ruin myself; I
will <rob> the old skinflint."

        XIX

        Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a
good example.
        -- <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

        It were not best that we should all think alike; it is
difference of opinion that makes horse-races.
        -- <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

        Dawson's Landing was comfortably finishing its season of dull
repose and waiting patiently for the duel.  Count Luigi was waiting,
too; but not patiently, rumor said.  Sunday came, and Luigi insisted
on having his challenge conveyed.  Wilson carried it.  Judge Driscoll
declined to fight with an assassin -- "that is," he added
significantly, "in the field of honor."

        Elsewhere, of course, he would be ready.  Wilson tried to
convince him that if he had been present himself when Angelo told
about the homicide committed by Luigi, he would not have considered
the act discreditable to Luigi; but the obstinate old man was not to
be moved.

        Wilson went back to his principal and reported the failure of
his mission.  Luigi was incensed, and asked how it could be that the
old gentleman, who was by no means dull-witted, held his trifling
nephew's evidence and inferences to be of more value than Wilson's.
But Wilson laughed, and said --

        "That is quite simple; that is easily explicable.  I am not his
doll -- his baby -- his infatuation: his nephew is.  The Judge and
his late wife never had any children.  The Judge and his wife were
past middle age when this treasure fell into their lap.  One must
make allowances for a parental instinct that has been starving for
twenty-five or thirty years.  It is famished, it is crazed with
hunger by that time, and will be entirely satisfied with anything
that comes handy; its taste is atrophied, it can't tell mud-cat from
shad.  A devil born to a young couple is measurably recognizable by
them as a devil before long, but a devil adopted by an old couple is
an angel to them, and remains so, through thick and thin.  Tom is
this old man's angel; he is infatuated with him.  Tom can persuade
him into things which other people can 't -- not all things; I don't
mean that, but a good many -- particularly one class of things: the
things that create or abolish personal partialities or prejudices in
the old man's mind.  The old man liked both of you.  Tom conceived a
hatred for you.  That was enough; it turned the old man around at
once.  The oldest and strongest friendship must go to the ground when
one of these late-adopted darlings throws a brick at it."

        "It 's a curious philosophy," said Luigi.

        "It ain't a philosophy at all -- it 's a fact.  And there is
something pathetic and beautiful about it, too.  I think there is
nothing more pathetic than to see one of these poor old childless
couples taking a menagerie of yelping little worthless dogs to their
hearts; and then adding some cursing and squawking parrots and a
jackass-voiced macaw; and next a couple of hundred screeching
song-birds, and presently some fetid guinea-pigs and rabbits, and a
howling colony of cats.  It is all a groping and ignorant effort to
construct out of base metal and brass filings, so to speak, something
to take the place of that golden treasure denied them by Nature, a
child.  But this is a digression.  The unwritten law of this region
requires you to kill Judge Driscoll on sight, and he and the
community will expect that attention at your hands -- though of
course your own death by his bullet will answer every purpose.  Look
out for him!  Are you heeled -- that is, fixed?"

        "Yes; he shall have his opportunity.  If he attacks me I will
respond."

        As Wilson was leaving, he said --

        "The Judge is still a little used up by his campaign work, and
will not get out for a day or so; but when he does get out, you want
to be on the alert."

        About eleven at night the twins went out for exercise, and
started on a long stroll in the veiled moonlight.

        Tom Driscoll had landed at Hackett's Store, two miles below
Dawson's, just about half an hour earlier, the only passenger for
that lonely spot, and had walked up the shore road and entered Judge
Driscoll's house without having encountered any one either on the
road or under the roof.

        He pulled down his window-blinds and lighted his candle.  He
laid off his coat and hat and began his preparations.  He unlocked
his trunk and got his suit of girl's clothes out from under the male
attire in it, and laid it by.  Then he blacked his face with burnt
cork and put the cork in his pocket.  His plan was, to slip down to
his uncle's private sitting-room below, pass into the bed-room, steal
the safe-key from the old gentleman's clothes, and then go back and
rob the safe.  He took up his candle to start.  His courage and
confidence were high, up to this point, but both began to waver a
little, now.  Suppose he should make a noise, by some accident, and
get caught -- say, in the act of opening the safe?  Perhaps it would
be well to go armed.  He took the Indian knife from its hiding-place,
and felt a pleasant return of his waning courage.  He slipped
stealthily down the narrow stair, his hair rising and his pulses
halting at the slightest creak.  When he was half-way down, he was
disturbed to perceive that the landing below was touched by a faint
glow of light.  What could that mean?  Was his uncle still up?  No,
that was not likely; he must have left his night-taper there when he
went to bed.  Tom crept on down, pausing at every step to listen.  He
found the door standing open, and glanced in.  What he saw pleased
him beyond measure.  His uncle was asleep on the sofa; on a small
table at the head of the sofa a lamp was burning low, and by it stood
the old man's small tin cash-box, closed.  Near the box was a pile of
bank-notes and a piece of paper covered with figures in pencil.  The
safe-door was not open.  Evidently the sleeper had wearied himself
with work upon his finances, and was taking a rest.

        Tom set his candle on the stairs, and began to make his way
toward the pile of notes, stooping low as he went.  When he was
passing his uncle, the old man stirred in his sleep, and Tom stopped
instantly -- stopped, and softly drew the knife from its sheath, with
his heart thumping, and his eyes fastened upon his benefactor's face.
After a moment or two he ventured forward again -- one step --
reached for his prize and seized it, dropping the knife-sheath.  Then
he felt the old man's strong grip upon him, and a wild cry of "Help!
help!" rang in his ear.  Without hesitation he drove the knife home
-- and was free.  Some of the notes escaped from his left hand and
fell in the blood on the floor.  He dropped the knife and snatched
them up and started to fly; transferred them to his left hand, and
seized the knife again, in his fright and confusion, but remembered
himself and flung it from him, as being a dangerous witness to carry
away with him.

        He jumped for the stair-foot, and closed the door behind him;
and as he snatched his candle and fled upward, the stillness of the
night was broken by the sound of urgent footsteps approaching the
house.  In another moment he was in his room and the twins were
standing aghast over the body of the murdered man!

        Tom put on his coat, buttoned his hat under it, threw on his
suit of girl's clothes, dropped the veil, blew out his light, locked
the room door by which he had just entered, taking the key, passed
through his other door into the back hall, locked that door and kept
the key, then worked his way along in the dark and descended the back
stairs.  He was not expecting to meet anybody, for all interest was
centered in the other part of the house, now; his calculation proved
correct.  By the time he was passing through the back yard, Mrs.
Pratt, her servants, and a dozen half-dressed neighbors had joined
the twins and the dead, and accessions were still arriving at the
front door.

        As Tom, quaking as with a palsy, passed out at the gate, three
women came flying from the house on the opposite side of the lane.
They rushed by him and in at the gate, asking him what the trouble
was there, but not waiting for an answer.  Tom said to himself,
"Those old maids waited to dress -- they did the same thing the night
Stevens's house burned down next door." In a few minutes he was in
the haunted house.  He lighted a candle and took off his
girl-clothes.  There was blood on him all down his left side, and his
right hand was red with the stains of the blood-soaked notes which he
had crushed in it; but otherwise he was free from this sort of
evidence.  He cleansed his hand on the straw, and cleaned most of the
smut from his face.  Then he burned his male and female attire to
ashes, scattered the ashes, and put on a disguise proper for a tramp.
He blew out his light, went below, and was soon loafing down the
river road with the intent to borrow and use one of Roxy's devices.
He found a canoe and paddled off down-stream, setting the canoe
adrift as dawn approached, and making his way by land to the next
village, where he kept out of sight till a transient steamer came
along, and then took deck passage for St. Louis.  He was ill at ease
until Dawson's Landing was behind him; then he said to himself, "All
the detectives on earth could n't trace me now; there 's not a
vestige of a clue left in the world; that homicide will take its
place with the permanent mysteries, and people won't get done trying
to guess out the secret of it for fifty years."

        In St. Louis, next morning, he read this brief telegram in the
papers -- dated at Dawson's Landing:

        Judge Driscoll, an old and respected citizen, was assassinated
here about midnight by a profligate Italian nobleman or barber on
account of a quarrel growing out of the recent election.  The
assassin will probably be lynched.

        "One of the twins!" soliloquized Tom; "how lucky!  It is the
knife that has done him this grace.  We never know when fortune is
trying to favor us.  I actually cursed Pudd'nhead Wilson in my heart
for putting it out of my power to sell that knife.  I take it back,
now."

        Tom was now rich and independent.  He arranged with the
planter, and mailed to Wilson the new bill of sale which sold Roxana
to herself; then he telegraphed his Aunt Pratt:

        Have seen the awful news in the papers and am almost prostrated
with grief.  Shall start by packet to-day.  Try to bear up till I
come.

        When Wilson reached the house of mourning and had gathered such
details as Mrs. Pratt and the rest of the crowd could tell him, he
took command as mayor, and gave orders that nothing should be
touched, but everything left as it was until Justice Robinson should
arrive and take the proper measures as coroner.  He cleared everybody
out of the room but the twins and himself.  The sheriff soon arrived
and took the twins away to jail.  Wilson told them to keep heart, and
promised to do his best in their defense when the case should come to
trial.  Justice Robinson came presently, and with him Constable
Blake.  They examined the room thoroughly.  They found the knife and
the sheath.  Wilson noticed that there were finger-prints on the
knife-handle.  That pleased him, for the twins had required the
earliest comers to make a scrutiny of their hands and clothes, and
neither these people nor Wilson himself had found any blood-stains
upon them.  Could there be a possibility that the twins had spoken
the truth when they said they found the man dead when they ran into
the house in answer to the cry for help?  He thought of that
mysterious girl at once.  But this was not the sort of work for a
girl to be engaged in.  No matter; Tom Driscoll's room must be
examined.

        After the coroner's jury had viewed the body and its
surroundings, Wilson suggested a search up-stairs, and he went along.
The jury forced an entrance to Tom's room, but found nothing, of
course.

        The coroner's jury found that the homicide was committed by
Luigi, and that Angelo was accessory to it.

        The town was bitter against the unfortunates, and for the first
few days after the murder they were in constant danger of being
lynched.  The grand jury presently indicted Luigi for murder in the
first degree, and Angelo as accessory before the fact.  The twins
were transferred from the city jail to the county prison to await
trial.

        Wilson examined the finger-marks on the knife-handle and said
to himself, "Neither of the twins made those marks." Then manifestly
there was another person concerned, either in his own interest or as
hired assassin.

        But who could it be?  That, he must try to find out.  The safe
was not open, the cash-box was closed, and had three thousand dollars
in it.  Then robbery was not the motive, and revenge was.  Where had
the murdered man an enemy except Luigi?  There was but that one
person in the world with a deep grudge against him.

        The mysterious girl!  The girl was a great trial to Wilson.  If
the motive had been robbery, the girl might answer; but there was n't
any girl that would want to take this old man's life for revenge.  He
had no quarrels with girls; he was a gentleman.

        Wilson had perfect tracings of the finger-marks of the
knife-handle; and among his glass-records he had a great array of the
finger-prints of women and girls, collected during the last fifteen
or eighteen years, but he scanned them in vain, they successfully
withstood every test; among them were no duplicates of the prints on
the knife.

        The presence of the knife on the stage of the murder was a
worrying circumstance for Wilson.  A week previously he had as good
as admitted to himself that he believed Luigi had possessed such a
knife, and that he still possessed it notwithstanding his pretense
that it had been stolen.  And now here was the knife, and with it the
twins.  Half the town had said the twins were humbugging when they
claimed that they had lost their knife, and now these people were
joyful, and said, "I told you so!"

        If their finger-prints had been on the handle -- but it was
useless to bother any further about that; the finger-prints on the
handle were <not> theirs -- that he knew perfectly.

        Wilson refused to suspect Tom; for first, Tom could n't murder
anybody -- he had n't character enough; secondly, if he could murder
a person he would n't select his doting benefactor and nearest
relative; thirdly, self-interest was in the way; for while the uncle
lived, Tom was sure of a free support and a chance to get the
destroyed will revived again, but with the uncle gone, that chance
was gone, too.  It was true the will had really been revived, as was
now discovered, but Tom could not have been aware of it, or he would
have spoken of it, in his native talky, unsecretive way.  Finally,
Tom was in St. Louis when the murder was done, and got the news out
of the morning journals, as was shown by his telegram to his aunt.
These speculations were unemphasized sensations rather than
articulated thoughts, for Wilson would have laughed at the idea of
seriously connecting Tom with the murder.

        Wilson regarded the case of the twins as desperate -- in fact,
about hopeless.  For he argued that if a confederate was not found,
an enlightened Missouri jury would hang them, sure; if a confederate
was found, that would not improve the matter, but simply furnish one
more person for the sheriff to hang.  Nothing could save the twins
but the discovery of a person who did the murder on his sole personal
account -- an undertaking which had all the aspect of the impossible.
Still, the person who made the finger-prints must be sought.  The
twins might have no case <with> him, but they certainly would have
none without him.


        So Wilson mooned around, thinking, thinking, guessing,
guessing, day and night, and arriving nowhere.  Whenever he ran
across a girl or a woman he was not acquainted with, he got her
finger-prints, on one pretext or another; and they always cost him a
sigh when he got home, for they never tallied with the finger-marks
on the knife-handle.

        As to the mysterious girl, Tom swore he knew no such girl, and
did not remember ever seeing a girl wearing a dress like the one
described by Wilson.  He admitted that he did not always lock his
room, and that sometimes the servants forgot to lock the house doors;
still, in his opinion the girl must have made but few visits or she
would have been discovered.  When Wilson tried to connect her with
the stealing-raid, and thought she might have been the old woman's
confederate, if not the very thief herself disguised as an old woman,
Tom seemed struck, and also much interested, and said he would keep a
sharp eye out for this person or persons, although he was afraid that
she or they would be too smart to venture again into a town where
everybody would now be on the watch for a good while to come.

        Everybody was pitying Tom, he looked so quiet and sorrowful,
and seemed to feel his great loss so deeply.  He was playing a part,
but it was not all a part.  The picture of his alleged uncle, as he
had last seen him, was before him in the dark pretty frequently, when
he was awake, and called again in his dreams, when he was asleep.  He
would n't go into the room where the tragedy had happened.  This
charmed the doting Mrs. Pratt, who realized now, "as she had never
done before," she said, what a sensitive and delicate nature her
darling had, and how he adored his poor uncle.


        XX

        Even the clearest and most perfect circumstantial evidence is
likely to be at fault, after all, and therefore ought to be received
with great caution.  Take the case of any pencil, sharpened by any
woman: if you have witnesses, you will find she did it with a knife;
but if you take simply the aspect of the pencil, you will say she did
it with her teeth.
        -- <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

        The weeks dragged along, no friend visiting the jailed twins
but their counsel and Aunt Patsy Cooper, and the day of trial came at
last -- the heaviest day in Wilson's life; for with all his tireless
diligence he had discovered no sign or trace of the missing
confederate.  "Confederate" was the term he had long ago privately
accepted for that person -- not as being unquestionably the right
term, but as being at least possibly the right one, though he was
never able to understand why the twins did not vanish and escape, as
the confederate had done, instead of remaining by the murdered man
and getting caught there.

        The court-house was crowded, of course, and would remain so to
the finish, for not only in the town itself, but in the country for
miles around, the trial was the one topic of conversation among the
people.  Mrs. Pratt, in deep mourning, and Tom with a weed on his
hat, had seats near Pembroke Howard, the public prosecutor, and back
of them sat a great array of friends of the family.  The twins had
but one friend present to keep their counsel in countenance, their
poor old sorrowing landlady.  She sat near Wilson, and looked her
friendliest.  In the "nigger corner" sat Chambers; also Roxy, with
good clothes on, and her bill of sale in her pocket.  It was her most
precious possession, and she never parted with it, day or night.  Tom
had allowed her thirty-five dollars a month ever since he came into
his property, and had said that he and she ought to be grateful to
the twins for making them rich; but had roused such a temper in her
by this speech that he did not repeat the argument afterward.  She
said the old Judge had treated her child a thousand times better than
he deserved, and had never done her an unkindness in his life; so she
hated these outlandish devils for killing him, and should n't ever
sleep satisfied till she saw them hanged for it.  She was here to
watch the trial, now, and was going to lift up just one "hooraw" over
it if the County Judge put her in jail a year for it.  She gave her
turbaned head a toss and said, "When dat verdic' comes, I 's gwine to
lif' dat <roof>, now, I <tell> you."

        Pembroke Howard briefly sketched the State's case.  He said he
would show by a chain of circumstantial evidence without break or
fault in it anywhere, that the principal prisoner at the bar
committed the murder; that the motive was partly revenge, and partly
a desire to take his own life out of jeopardy, and that his brother,
by his presence, was a consenting accessory to the crime; a crime
which was the basest known to the calendar of human misdeeds --
assassination; that it was conceived by the blackest of hearts and
consummated by the cowardliest of hands; a crime which had broken a
loving sister's heart, blighted the happiness of a young nephew who
was as dear as a son, brought inconsolable grief to many friends, and
sorrow and loss to the whole community.  The utmost penalty of the
outraged law would be exacted, and upon the accused, now present at
the bar, that penalty would unquestionably be executed.  He would
reserve further remark until his closing speech.

        He was strongly moved, and so also was the whole house; Mrs.
Pratt and several other women were weeping when he sat down, and many
an eye that was full of hate was riveted upon the unhappy prisoners.

        Witness after witness was called by the State, and questioned
at length; but the cross-questioning was brief.  Wilson knew they
could furnish nothing valuable for his side.  People were sorry for
Pudd'nhead; his budding career would get hurt by this trial.

        Several witnesses swore they heard Judge Driscoll say in his
public speech that the twins would be able to find their lost knife
again when they needed it to assassinate somebody with.  This was not
news, but now it was seen to have been sorrowfully prophetic, and a
profound sensation quivered through the hushed court-room when those
dismal words were repeated.

        The public prosecutor rose and said that it was within his
knowledge, through a conversation held with Judge Driscoll on the
last day of his life, that counsel for the defense had brought him a
challenge from the person charged at this bar with murder; that he
had refused to fight with a confessed assassin -- "that is, on the
field of honor," but had added significantly, that he would be ready
for him elsewhere.  Presumably the person here charged with murder
was warned that he must kill or be killed the first time he should
meet Judge Driscoll.  If counsel for the defense chose to let the
statement stand so, he would not call him to the witness stand.  Mr.
Wilson said he would offer no denial.  [Murmurs in the house -- "It
is getting worse and worse for Wilson's case."]

        Mrs. Pratt testified that she heard no outcry, and did not know
what woke her up, unless it was the sound of rapid footsteps
approaching the front door.  She jumped up and ran out in the hall
just as she was, and heard the footsteps flying up the front steps
and then following behind her as she ran to the sitting-room.  There
she found the accused standing over her murdered brother.  [Here she
broke down and sobbed.  Sensation in the court.] Resuming, she said
the persons entering behind her were Mr. Rogers and Mr. Buckstone.

        Cross-examined by Wilson, she said the twins proclaimed their
innocence; declared that they had been taking a walk, and had hurried
to the house in response to a cry for help which was so loud and
strong that they had heard it at a considerable distance; that they
begged her and the gentlemen just mentioned to examine their hands
and clothes -- which was done, and no blood-stains found.

        Confirmatory evidence followed from Rogers and Buckstone.

        The finding of the knife was verified, the advertisement
minutely describing it and offering a reward for it was put in
evidence, and its exact correspondence with that description proved.
Then followed a few minor details, and the case for the State was
closed.

        Wilson said that he had three witnesses, the Misses Clarkson,
who would testify that they met a veiled young woman leaving Judge
Driscoll's premises by the back gate a few minutes after the cries
for help were heard, and that their evidence, taken with certain
circumstantial evidence which he would call the court's attention to,
would in his opinion convince the court that there was still one
person concerned in this crime who had not yet been found, and also
that a stay of proceedings ought to be granted, in justice to his
clients, until that person should be discovered.  As it was late, he
would ask leave to defer the examination of his three witnesses until
the next morning.

        The crowd poured out of the place and went flocking away in
excited groups and couples, talking the events of the session over
with vivacity and consuming interest, and everybody seemed to have
had a satisfactory and enjoyable day except the accused, their
counsel, and their old-lady friend.  There was no cheer among these,
and no substantial hope.

        In parting with the twins Aunt Patsy did attempt a good-night
with a gay pretense of hope and cheer in it, but broke down without
finishing.

        Absolutely secure as Tom considered himself to be, the opening
solemnities of the trial had nevertheless oppressed him with a vague
uneasiness, his being a nature sensitive to even the smallest alarms;
but from the moment that the poverty and weakness of Wilson's case
lay exposed to the court, he was comfortable once more, even
jubilant.  He left the court-room sarcastically sorry for Wilson.
"The Clarksons met an unknown woman in the back lane," he said to
himself -- "<that> is his case!  I 'll give him a century to find her
in -- a couple of them if he likes.  A woman who does n't exist any
longer, and the clothes that gave her her sex burnt up and the ashes
thrown away -- oh, certainly, he 'll find <her> easy enough!" This
reflection set him to admiring, for the hundredth time, the shrewd
ingenuities by which he had insured himself against detection --
more, against even suspicion.

        "Nearly always in cases like this there is some little detail
or other overlooked, some wee little track or trace left behind, and
detection follows; but here there 's not even the faintest suggestion
of a trace left.  No more than a bird leaves when it flies through
the air -- yes, through the night, you may say.  The man that can
track a bird through the air in the dark and find that bird is the
man to track me out and find the Judge's assassin -- no other need
apply.  And that is the job that has been laid out for poor
Pudd'nhead Wilson, of all people in the world!  Lord, it will be
pathetically funny to see him grubbing and groping after that woman
that don't exist, and the right person sitting under his very nose
all the time!" The more he thought the situation over, the more the
humor of it struck him.  Finally he said, "I'll never let him hear
the last of that woman.  Every time I catch him in company, to his
dying day, I 'll ask him in the guileless affectionate way that used
to gravel him so when I inquired how his unborn law-business was
coming along, `Got on her track yet -- hey, Pudd'nhead?'" He wanted
to laugh, but that would not have answered; there were people about,
and he was mourning for his uncle.  He made up his mind that it would
be good entertainment to look in on Wilson that night and watch him
worry over his barren law-case and goad him with an exasperating word
or two of sympathy and commiseration now and then.

        Wilson wanted no supper, he had no appetite.  He got out all
the finger-prints of girls and women in his collection of records and
pored gloomily over them an hour or more, trying to convince himself
that that troublesome girl's marks were there somewhere and had been
overlooked.  But it was not so.  He drew back his chair, clasped his
hands over his head, and gave himself up to dull and arid musings.

        Tom Driscoll dropped in, an hour after dark, and said with a
pleasant laugh as he took a seat --

        "Hello, we 've gone back to the amusements of our days of
neglect and obscurity for consolation, have we?" and he took up one
of the glass strips and held it against the light to inspect it.
"Come, cheer up, old man; there 's no use in losing your grip and
going back to this child's-play merely because this big sun-spot is
drifting across your shiny new disk.  It 'll pass, and you 'll be all
right again" -- and he laid the glass down.  "Did you think you could
win always?"

        "Oh, no," said Wilson, with a sigh, "I did n't expect that, but
I can't believe Luigi killed your uncle, and I feel very sorry for
him.  It makes me blue.  And you would feel as I do, Tom, if you were
not prejudiced against those young fellows."

        "I don't know about that," and Tom's countenance darkened, for
his memory reverted to his kicking; "I owe them no good will,
considering the brunette one's treatment of me that night.  Prejudice
or no prejudice, Pudd'nhead, I don't like them, and when they get
their deserts you 're not going to find me sitting on the mourner's
bench."

        He took up another strip of glass, and exclaimed --

        "Why, here 's old Roxy's label!  Are you going to ornament the
royal palaces with nigger paw-marks, too?  By the date here, I was
seven months old when this was done, and she was nursing me and her
little nigger cub.  There 's a line straight across her thumb-print.
How comes that?" and Tom held out the piece of glass to Wilson.

        "That is common," said the bored man, wearily.  "Scar of a cut
or a scratch, usually" -- and he took the strip of glass
indifferently, and raised it toward the lamp.

        All the blood sunk suddenly out of his face; his hand quaked,
and he gazed at the polished surface before him with the glassy stare
of a corpse.

        "Great Heavens, what 's the matter with you, Wilson?  Are you
going to faint?"

        Tom sprang for a glass of water and offered it, but Wilson
shrank shuddering from him and said --

        "No, no! -- take it away!" His breast was rising and falling,
and he moved his head about in a dull and wandering way, like a
person who has been stunned.  Presently he said, "I shall feel better
when I get to bed; I have been overwrought to-day; yes, and
overworked for many days."

        "Then I 'll leave you and let you get to your rest.
Good-night, old man." But as Tom went out he could n't deny himself a
small parting gibe: "Don't take it so hard; a body can't win every
time; you 'll hang somebody yet."

        Wilson muttered to himself, "It is no lie to say I am sorry I
have to begin with you, miserable dog though you are!"

        He braced himself up with a glass of cold whisky, and went to
work again.  He did not compare the new finger-marks unintentionally
left by Tom a few minutes before on Roxy's glass with the tracings of
the marks left on the knife-handle, there being no need of that (for
his trained eye), but busied himself with another matter, muttering
from time to time, "Idiot that I was! -- Nothing but a <girl> would
do me -- a man in girl's clothes never occurred to me."  First, he
hunted out the plate containing the finger-prints made by Tom when he
was twelve years old, and laid it by itself; then he brought forth
the marks made by Tom's baby fingers when he was a suckling of seven
months, and placed these two plates with the one containing this
subject's newly (and unconsciously) made record.

        "Now the series is complete," he said with satisfaction, and
sat down to inspect these things and enjoy them.

        But his enjoyment was brief.  He stared a considerable time at
the three strips, and seemed stupefied with astonishment.  At last he
put them down and said, "I can't make it out at all -- hang it, the
baby's don't tally with the others!"

        He walked the floor for half an hour puzzling over his enigma,
then he hunted out two other glass plates.

        He sat down and puzzled over these things a good while, but
kept muttering, "It 's no use; I can't understand it.  They don't
tally right, and yet I 'll swear the names and dates are right, and
so of course they <ought> to tally.  I never labeled one of these
things carelessly in my life.  There is a most extraordinary mystery
here."

        He was tired out, now, and his brains were beginning to clog.
He said he would sleep himself fresh, and then see what he could do
with this riddle.  He slept through a troubled and unrestful hour,
then unconsciousness began to shred away, and presently he rose
drowsily to a sitting posture.  "Now what was that dream?" he said,
trying to recall it; "what was that dream? -- it seemed to unravel
that puz -- "

        He landed in the middle of the floor at a bound, without
finishing the sentence, and ran and turned up his light and seized
his "records." He took a single swift glance at them and cried out --

        "It 's so!  Heavens, what a revelation!  And for twenty-three
years no man has ever suspected it!"


        XXI

        He is useless on top of the ground; he ought to be under it,
inspiring the cabbages.
        -- <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

        <April I.> This is the day upon which we are reminded of what
we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.
        -- <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

        Wilson put on enough clothes for business purposes and went to
work under a high pressure of steam.  He was awake all over.  All
sense of weariness had been swept away by the invigorating
refreshment of the great and hopeful discovery which he had made.  He
made fine and accurate reproductions of a number of his "records,"
and then enlarged them on a scale of ten to one with his pantograph.
He did these pantograph enlargements on sheets of white cardboard,
and made each individual line of the bewildering maze of whorls or
curves or loops which constituted the "pattern" of a "record" stand
out bold and black by reinforcing it with ink.  To the untrained eye
the collection of delicate originals made by the human finger on the
glass plates looked about alike; but when enlarged ten times they
resembled the markings of a block of wood that has been sawed across
the grain, and the dullest eye could detect at a glance, and at a
distance of many feet, that no two of the patterns were alike.  When
Wilson had at last finished his tedious and difficult work, he
arranged its results according to a plan in which a progressive order
and sequence was a principal feature; then he added to the batch
several pantograph enlargements which he had made from time to time
in bygone years.

        The night was spent and the day well advanced, now.  By the
time he had snatched a trifle of breakfast it was nine o'clock, and
the court was ready to begin its sitting.  He was in his place twelve
minutes later with his "records."

        Tom Driscoll caught a slight glimpse of the records, and nudged
his nearest friend and said, with a wink, "Pudd'n-head's got a rare
eye to business -- thinks that as long as he can't win his case it 's
at least a noble good chance to advertise his palace-window
decorations without any expense." Wilson was informed that his
witnesses had been delayed, but would arrive presently; but he rose
and said he should probably not have occasion to make use of their
testimony.  [An amused murmur ran through the room -- "It 's a clean
back-down! he gives up without hitting a lick!"] Wilson continued --
"I have other testimony -- and better.  [This compelled interest, and
evoked murmurs of surprise that had a detectible ingredient of
disappointment in them.] If I seem to be springing this evidence upon
the court, I offer as my justification for this, that I did not
discover its existence until late last night, and have been engaged
in examining and classifying it ever since, until half an hour ago.
I shall offer it presently; but first I wish to say a few preliminary
words.

        "May it please the Court, the claim given the front place, the
claim most persistently urged, the claim most strenuously and I may
even say aggressively and defiantly insisted upon by the prosecution,
is this -- that the person whose hand left the blood-stained
finger-prints upon the handle of the Indian knife is the person who
committed the murder." Wilson paused, during several moments, to give
impressiveness to what he was about to say, and then added
tranquilly, <"We grant that claim.">

        It was an electrical surprise.  No one was prepared for such an
admission.  A buzz of astonishment rose on all sides, and people were
heard to intimate that the overworked lawyer had lost his mind.  Even
the veteran judge, accustomed as he was to legal ambushes and masked
batteries in criminal procedure, was not sure that his ears were not
deceiving him, and asked counsel what it was he had said.  Howard's
impassive face betrayed no sign, but his attitude and bearing lost
something of their careless confidence for a moment.  Wilson resumed:

        "We not only grant that claim, but we welcome it and strongly
endorse it.  Leaving that matter for the present, we will now proceed
to consider other points in the case which we propose to establish by
evidence, and shall include that one in the chain in its proper
place."

        He had made up his mind to try a few hardy guesses, in mapping
out his theory of the origin and motive of the murder -- guesses
designed to fill up gaps in it -- guesses which could help if they
hit, and would probably do no harm if they did n't.

        "To my mind, certain circumstances of the case before the court
seem to suggest a motive for the homicide quite different from the
one insisted on by the State.  It is my conviction that the motive
was not revenge, but robbery.  It has been urged that the presence of
the accused brothers in that fatal room, just after notification that
one of them must take the life of Judge Driscoll or lose his own the
moment the parties should meet, clearly signifies that the natural
instinct of self-preservation moved my clients to go there secretly
and save Count Luigi by destroying his adversary.

        "Then why did they stay there, after the deed was done?  Mrs.
Pratt had time, although she did not hear the cry for help, but woke
up some moments later, to run to that room -- and there she found
these men standing, and making no effort to escape.  If they were
guilty, they ought to have been running out of the house at the same
time that she was running to that room.  If they had had such a
strong instinct toward self-preservation as to move them to kill that
unarmed man, what had become of it now, when it should have been more
alert than ever?  Would any of us have remained there?  Let us not
slander our intelligence to that degree.

        "Much stress has been laid upon the fact that the accused
offered a very large reward for the knife with which this murder was
done; that no thief came forward to claim that extraordinary reward;
that the latter fact was good circumstantial evidence that the claim
that the knife had been stolen was a vanity and a fraud; that these
details taken in connection with the memorable and apparently
prophetic speech of the deceased concerning that knife, and the final
discovery of that very knife in the fatal room where no living person
was found present with the slaughtered man but the owner of the knife
and his brother, form an indestructible chain of evidence which fixes
the crime upon those unfortunate strangers.

        "But I shall presently ask to be sworn, and shall testify that
there was a large reward offered for the <thief>, also; that it was
offered secretly and not advertised; that this fact was indiscreetly
mentioned -- or at least tacitly admitted -- in what was supposed to
be safe circumstances, but may <not> have been.  The thief may have
been present himself.  [Tom Driscoll had been looking at the speaker,
but dropped his eyes at this point.] In that case he would retain the
knife in his possession, not daring to offer it for sale, or for
pledge in a pawn-shop.  [There was a nodding of heads among the
audience by way of admission that this was not a bad stroke.] I shall
prove to the satisfaction of the jury that there <was> a person in
Judge Driscoll's room several minutes before the accused entered it.
[This produced a strong sensation; the last drowsy-head in the
court-room roused up, now, and made preparation to listen.] If it
shall seem necessary, I will prove by the Misses Clarkson that they
met a veiled person -- ostensibly a woman -- coming out of the back
gate a few minutes after the cry for help was heard.  This person was
not a woman, but a man dressed in woman's clothes." Another
sensation.  Wilson had his eye on Tom when he hazarded this guess, to
see what effect it would produce.  He was satisfied with the result,
and said to himself, "It was a success -- he 's hit!"

        "The object of that person in that house was robbery, not
murder.  It is true that the safe was not open, but there was an
ordinary tin cash-box on the table, with three thousand dollars in
it.  It is easily supposable that the thief was concealed in the
house; that he knew of this box, and of its owner's habit of counting
its contents and arranging his accounts at night -- if he had that
habit, which I do not assert, of course; -- that he tried to take the
box while its owner slept, but made a noise and was seized, and had
to use the knife to save himself from capture; and that he fled
without his booty because he heard help coming.

        "I have now done with my theory, and will proceed to the
evidences by which I propose to try to prove its soundness." Wilson
took up several of his strips of glass.  When the audience recognized
these familiar mementos of Pudd'nhead's old-time childish "puttering"
and folly, the tense and funereal interest vanished out of their
faces, and the house burst into volleys of relieving and refreshing
laughter, and Tom chirked up and joined in the fun himself; but
Wilson was apparently not disturbed.  He arranged his records on the
table before him, and said --


        "I beg the indulgence of the court while I make a few remarks
in explanation of some evidence which I am about to introduce, and
which I shall presently ask to be allowed to verify under oath on the
witness stand.  Every human being carries with him from his cradle to
his grave certain physical marks which do not change their character,
and by which he can always be identified -- and that without shade of
doubt or question.  These marks are his signature, his physiological
autograph, so to speak, and this autograph cannot be counterfeited,
nor can he disguise it or hide it away, nor can it become illegible
by the wear and the mutations of time.  This signature is not his
face -- age can change that beyond recognition; it is not his hair,
for that can fall out; it is not his height, for duplicates of that
exist; it is not his form, for duplicates of that exist also, whereas
this signature is each man's very own -- there is no duplicate of it
among the swarming populations of the globe!  [The audience were
interested once more.]

        "This autograph consists of the delicate lines or corrugations
with which Nature marks the insides of the hands and the soles of the
feet.  If you will look at the balls of your fingers, -- you that
have very sharp eyesight, -- you will observe that these dainty
curving lines lie close together, like those that indicate the
borders of oceans in maps, and that they form various clearly defined
patterns, such as arches, circles, long curves, whorls, etc., and
that these patterns differ on the different fingers.  [Every man in
the room had his hand up to the light, now, and his head canted to
one side, and was minutely scrutinizing the balls of his fingers;
there were whispered ejaculations of "Why, it 's so -- I never
noticed that before!"] The patterns on the right hand are not the
same as those on the left.  [Ejaculations of "Why, that 's so, too!"]
Taken finger for finger, your patterns differ from your neighbor's.
[Comparisons were made all over the house -- even the judge and jury
were absorbed in this curious work.] The patterns of a twin's right
hand are not the same as those on his left.  One twin's patterns are
never the same as his fellow-twin's patterns -- the jury will find
that the patterns upon the finger-balls of the accused follow this
rule.  [An examination of the twins' hands was begun at once.] You
have often heard of twins who were so exactly alike that when dressed
alike their own parents could not tell them apart.  Yet there was
never a twin born into this world that did not carry from birth to
death a sure identifier in this mysterious and marvelous natal
autograph.  That once known to you, his fellow-twin could never
personate him and deceive you."

        Wilson stopped and stood silent.  Inattention dies a quick and
sure death when a speaker does that.  The stillness gives warning
that something is coming.  All palms and finger-balls went down, now,
all slouching forms straightened, all heads came up, all eyes were
fastened upon Wilson's face.  He waited yet one, two, three moments,
to let his pause complete and perfect its spell upon the house; then,
when through the profound hush he could hear the ticking of the clock
on the wall, he put out his hand and took the Indian knife by the
blade and held it aloft where all could see the sinister spots upon
its ivory handle; then he said, in a level and passionless voice --

        "Upon this haft stands the assassin's natal autograph, written
in the blood of that helpless and unoffending old man who loved you
and whom you all loved.  There is but one man in the whole earth
whose hand can duplicate that crimson sign," -- he paused and raised
his eyes to the pendulum swinging back and forth, -- "and please God
we will produce that man in this room before the clock strikes noon!"

        Stunned, distraught, unconscious of its own movement, the house
half rose, as if expecting to see the murderer appear at the door,
and a breeze of muttered ejaculations swept the place.  "Order in the
court! -- sit down!" This from the sheriff.  He was obeyed, and quiet
reigned again.  Wilson stole a glance at Tom, and said to himself,
"He is flying signals of distress, now; even people who despise him
are pitying him; they think this is a hard ordeal for a young fellow
who has lost his benefactor by so cruel a stroke -- and they are
right." He resumed his speech:

        "For more than twenty years I have amused my compulsory leisure
with collecting these curious physical signatures in this town.  At
my house I have hundreds upon hundreds of them.  Each and every one
is labeled with name and date; not labeled the next day or even the
next hour, but in the very minute that the impression was taken.
When I go upon the witness stand I will repeat under oath the things
which I am now saying.  I have the finger-prints of the court, the
sheriff, and every member of the jury.  There is hardly a person in
this room, white or black, whose natal signature I cannot produce,
and not one of them can so disguise himself that I cannot pick him
out from a multitude of his fellow-creatures and unerringly identify
him by his hands.  And if he and I should live to be a hundred I
could still do it!  [The interest of the audience was steadily
deepening, now.]

        "I have studied some of these signatures so much that I know
them as well as the bank cashier knows the autograph of his oldest
customer.  While I turn my back now, I beg that several persons will
be so good as to pass their fingers through their hair, and then
press them upon one of the panes of the window near the jury, and
that among them the accused may set <their> finger-marks.  Also, I
beg that these experimenters, or others, will set their finger-marks
upon another pane, and add again the marks of the accused, but not
placing them in the same order or relation to the other signatures as
before -- for, by one chance in a million, a person might happen upon
the right marks by pure guess-work <once>, therefore I wish to be
tested twice."

        He turned his back, and the two panes were quickly covered with
delicately-lined oval spots, but visible only to such persons as
could get a dark background for them -- the foliage of a tree,
outside, for instance.  Then, upon call, Wilson went to the window,
made his examination, and said --

        "This is Count Luigi's right hand; this one, three signatures
below, is his left.  Here is Count Angelo's right; down here is his
left.  Now for the other pane: here and here are Count Luigi's, here
and here are his brother's." He faced about.  "Am I right?"

        A deafening explosion of applause was the answer.  The Bench
said --

        "This certainly approaches the miraculous!"

        Wilson turned to the window again and remarked, pointing with
his finger --

        "This is the signature of Mr. Justice Robinson.  [Applause.]
This, of Constable Blake.  [Applause.] This, of John Mason, juryman.
[Applause.] This, of the sheriff.  [Applause.] I cannot name the
others, but I have them all at home, named and dated, and could
identify them all by my finger-print records."

        He moved to his place through a storm of applause -- which the
sheriff stopped, and also made the people sit down, for they were all
standing and struggling to see, of course.  Court, jury, sheriff, and
everybody had been too absorbed in observing Wilson's performance to
attend to the audience earlier.

        "Now, then," said Wilson, "I have here the natal autographs of
two children -- thrown up to ten times the natural size by the
pantograph, so that any one who can see at all can tell the markings
apart at a glance.  We will call the children <A> and <B>.  Here are
<A's> finger-marks, taken at the age of five months.  Here they are
again, taken at seven months.  [Tom started.] They are alike, you
see.  Here are <B's> at five months, and also at seven months.  They,
too, exactly copy each other, but the patterns are quite different
from <A's>, you observe.  I shall refer to these again presently, but
we will turn them face down, now.

        "Here, thrown up ten sizes, are the natal autographs of the two
persons who are here before you accused of murdering Judge Driscoll.
I made these pantograph copies last night, and will so swear when I
go upon the witness stand.  I ask the jury to compare them with the
finger-marks of the accused upon the window-panes, and tell the court
if they are the same."

        He passed a powerful magnifying-glass to the foreman.

        One juryman after another took the cardboard and the glass and
made the comparison.  Then the foreman said to the judge --

        "Your honor, we are all agreed that they are identical."

        Wilson said to the foreman --

        "Please turn that cardboard face down, and take this one, and
compare it searchingly, by the magnifier, with the fatal signature
upon the knife-handle, and report your findings to the court."

        Again the jury made minute examination, and again reported --


        "We find them to be exactly identical, your honor."

        Wilson turned toward the counsel for the prosecution, and there
was a clearly recognizable note of warning in his voice when he said
--

        "May it please the court, the State has claimed, strenuously
and persistently, that the blood-stained finger-prints upon that
knife-handle were left there by the assassin of Judge Driscoll.  You
have heard us grant that claim, and welcome it." He turned to the
jury: "Compare the finger-prints of the accused with the
finger-prints left by the assassin -- and report."

        The comparison began.  As it proceeded, all movement and all
sound ceased, and the deep silence of an absorbed and waiting
suspense settled upon the house; and when at last the words came --

        <"They do not even resemble,"> a thunder-crash of applause
followed and the house sprang to its feet, but was quickly repressed
by official force and brought to order again.  Tom was altering his
position every few minutes, now, but none of his changes brought
repose nor any small trifle of comfort.  When the house's attention
was become fixed once more, Wilson said gravely, indicating the twins
with a gesture --

        "These men are innocent -- I have no further concern with them.
[Another outbreak of applause began, but was promptly checked.] We
will now proceed to find the guilty.  [Tom's eyes were starting from
their sockets -- yes, it was a cruel day for the bereaved youth,
everybody thought.] We will return to the infant autographs of <A>
and <B>.  I will ask the jury to take these large pantograph
facsimiles of <A's>, marked five months and seven months.  Do they
tally?

        The foreman responded --

        "Perfectly."

        "Now examine this pantograph, taken at eight months, and also
marked <A>.  Does it tally with the other two?"

        The surprised response was --

        <"No> -- <they differ widely!">

        "You are quite right.  Now take these two pantographs of <B's>
autograph, marked five months and seven months.  Do they tally with
each other?"

        "Yes -- perfectly."


        "Take this third pantograph marked <B>, eight months.  Does it
tally with <B's> other two?"

        <"By no means!">

        "Do you know how to account for those strange discrepancies?  I
will tell you.  For a purpose unknown to us, but probably a selfish
one, somebody changed those children in the cradle."

        This produced a vast sensation, naturally; Roxana was
astonished at this admirable guess, but not disturbed by it.  To
guess the exchange was one thing, to guess who did it quite another.
Pudd'nhead Wilson could do wonderful things, no doubt, but he could
n't do impossible ones.  Safe?  She was perfectly safe.  She smiled
privately.

        "Between the ages of seven months and eight months those
children were changed in the cradle" -- he made one of his
effect-collecting pauses, and added -- "and the person who did it is
in this house!"

        Roxy's pulses stood still!  The house was thrilled as with an
electric shock, and the people half rose as if to seek a glimpse of
the person who had made that exchange.  Tom was growing limp; the
life seemed oozing out of him.  Wilson resumed:

        "<A> was put into <B's> cradle in the nursery; <B> was
transferred to the kitchen and became a negro and a slave [Sensation
-- confusion of angry ejaculations] -- but within a quarter of an
hour he will stand before you white and free!  [Burst of applause,
checked by the officers.] From seven months onward until now, <A> has
still been a usurper, and in my finger-records he bears <B's> name.
Here is his pantograph at the age of twelve.  Compare it with the
assassin's signature upon the knife-handle.  Do they tally?"

        The foreman answered --

        <"To the minutest detail!">

        Wilson said, solemnly --

        "The murderer of your friend and mine -- York Driscoll of the
generous hand and the kindly spirit -- sits in among you.  Valet de
Chambre, negro and slave, -- falsely called Thomas a Becket Driscoll,
-- make upon the window the finger-prints that will hang you!"

        Tom turned his ashen face imploringly toward the speaker,
        made some impotent movements with his white lips, then slid
limp and lifeless to the floor.

        Wilson broke the awed silence with the words --

        "There is no need.  He has confessed."

        Roxy flung herself upon her knees, covered her face with her
hands, and out through her sobs the words struggled --

        "De Lord have mercy on me, po' misable sinner dat I is!"

        The clock struck twelve.

        The court rose; the new prisoner, hand-cuffed, was removed.


        Conclusion

        It is often the case that the man who can't tell a lie thinks
he is the best judge of one.
        -- <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

        <October> 12, <the Discovery.> It was wonderful to find
America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.
        -- <Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.>

        The town sat up all night to discuss the amazing events of the
day and swap guesses as to when Tom's trial would begin.  Troop after
troop of citizens came to serenade Wilson, and require a speech, and
shout themselves hoarse over every sentence that fell from his lips
-- for all his sentences were golden, now, all were marvelous.  His
long fight against hard luck and prejudice was ended; he was a made
man for good.

        And as each of these roaring gangs of enthusiasts marched away,
some remorseful member of it was quite sure to raise his voice and
say --

        "And this is the man the likes of us have called a pudd'nhead
for more than twenty years.  He has resigned from that position,
friends."

        "Yes, but it is n't vacant -- we 're elected."

        The twins were heroes of romance, now, and with rehabilitated
reputations.  But they were weary of Western adventure, and
straightway retired to Europe.

        Roxy's heart was broken.  The young fellow upon whom she had
inflicted twenty-three years of slavery continued the false heir's
pension of thirty-five dollars a month to her, but her hurts were too
deep for money to heal; the spirit in her eye was quenched, her
martial bearing departed with it, and the voice of her laughter
ceased in the land.  In her church and its affairs she found her only
solace.

        The real heir suddenly found himself rich and free, but in a
most embarrassing situation.  He could neither read nor write, and
his speech was the basest dialect of the negro quarter.  His gait,
his attitudes, his gestures, his bearing, his laugh -- all were
vulgar and uncouth; his manners were the manners of a slave.  Money
and fine clothes could not mend these defects or cover them up; they
only made them the more glaring and the more pathetic.  The poor
fellow could not endure the terrors of the white man's parlor, and
felt at home and at peace nowhere but in the kitchen.  The family pew
was a misery to him, yet he could nevermore enter into the solacing
refuge of the "nigger gallery" -- that was closed to him for good and
all.  But we cannot follow his curious fate further -- that would be
a long story.

        The false heir made a full confession and was sentenced to
imprisonment for life.  But now a complication came up.  The Percy
Driscoll estate was in such a crippled shape when its owner died that
it could pay only sixty per cent.  of its great indebtedness, and was
settled at that rate.  But the creditors came forward, now, and
complained that inasmuch as through an error for which <they> were in
no way to blame the false heir was not inventoried at that time with
the rest of the property, great wrong and loss had thereby been
inflicted upon them.  They rightly claimed that "Tom" was lawfully
their property and had been so for eight years; that they had already
lost sufficiently in being deprived of his services during that long
period, and ought not to be required to add anything to that loss;
that if he had been delivered up to them in the first place, they
would have sold him and he could not have murdered Judge Driscoll;
therefore it was not he that had really committed the murder, the
guilt lay with the erroneous inventory.  Everybody saw that there was
reason in this.  Everybody granted that if "Tom" were white and free
it would be unquestionably right to punish him -- it would be no loss
to anybody; but to shut up a valuable slave for life -- that was
quite another matter.

        As soon as the Governor understood the case, he pardoned Tom at
once, and the creditors sold him down the river.