The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson

CHAPTER X.

The Nymph Revealed.

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 a 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 hill-tops 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 couldn’t love him, as yet, because there “warn’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 the 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’nhead 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.

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CHAPTER XI.

Pudd’nhead’s Startling Discovery.

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 doesn’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 doesn’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 doesn’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 wouldn’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 isn’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 didn’t.”

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

“Dave, I wasn’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 haven’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 haven’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 a 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.”

“Cæsar’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 on 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 hadn’t saved Angelo’s life, what would have become of mine? If I had let the man kill him, wouldn’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 sometime. 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 isn’t much too look at, except that it isn’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 hadn’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 didn’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 Capello 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, anyway, if he is a teetotaler!” “Drink his health!” “Give him a rouser, and no heeltaps!”

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

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-calls 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 drenching 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.

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CHAPTER XII.

The Shame of Judge Driscoll.

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 “didn’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 didn’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 wouldn’t have done it if I had thought: but it ain’t 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.”

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CHAPTER XIII.

Tom Stares at Ruin.

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 find 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’nhead—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 hasn’t got anything to do with dissipation. He wanted me to challenge that derned Italian savage, and I wouldn’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 didn’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 couldn’t understand it. How did it happen?”

“It happened because he didn’t know anything about it. He was asleep when I got home last night.”

“And you didn’t wake him? Tom, is that possible?”

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

“I didn’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 wouldn’t want any duels with that sort of characters, and wouldn’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—didn’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 didn’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 couldn’t find his father’s old silver watch that don’t keep time and he thinks so much of, and couldn’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 wasn’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 isn’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 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 hasn’t any room to worry about her own little losses.”

“It’s the same old raider,” said Wilson. “I suppose there isn’t any doubt about that.”

“Constable Blake doesn’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 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’sn’t go near them, nor send anybody. Whoever goes is going to get himself nabbed, for their 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 début 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.

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CHAPTER XIV.

Roxana Insists Upon Reform.

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 couldn’t leave that poor chap to fight along without means or profession, with certain defeat before him, and I knew you wouldn’t, for his father’s sake if not for his own.”

“For his dead father’s sake I couldn’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 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 doesn’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 up-stairs, 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 hadn’t any interest for me because it hadn’t any value, and couldn’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 isn’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? Didn’t you know dey was gwyne to be a duel?”

“No, I didn’t. The old man tried to get me to fight one with Count Luigi, but he didn’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 throwin’ 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 this 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 understan’. 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 had 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?”

“Happened 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 disfiggered 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! Weren’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 wouldn’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 didn’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 didn’t tell you. When I wouldn’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 ag’in! —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 didn’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!”

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CHAPTER XV.

The Robber Robbed.

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, isn’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 didn’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 haven’t caught her?”

“No; I haven’t caught her. If anybody could have caught her, I could; but nobody couldn’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 needn’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 revolutionize 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, didn’t you understand him to intimate that it wouldn’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 wouldn’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 hadn’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 couldn’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 didn’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—wouldn’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 isn’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 isn’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 loath 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 hadn’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 wouldn’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 hadn’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’s 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 couldn’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 couldn’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 awhile 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 couldn’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.

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CHAPTER XVI.

Sold Down the River.

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? Day 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 find 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 wouldn’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 “upcountry” 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 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 telltale 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!”

---

CHAPTER XVII.

The Judge Utters Dire Prophecy.

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 didn’t see him do it.—Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar.

July 4Statistics 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 canvas. 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 peddlers 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 that 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 hadn’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.

---

CHAPTER XVIII.

Roxana Commands.

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 DayLet 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 theatre 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 unkept 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 it for the best. It was a mistake, of course, but I thought it was for the best, I truly did.”

Roxana 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 the river!—for de bes’! I wouldn’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 warn’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 couldn’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 warn’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 couldn’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 didn’t care no mo’, nuther—life warn’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 hadn’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 didn’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 couldn’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’yred 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 didn’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 warn’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 couldn’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 warn’t worried no mo’, so I quit paddlin, en floated down de current, considerin’ what I ’uz gwine to do if I didn’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 warn’t no town en no woodyard, en putty soon I ketched de shape o’ de chimbly-tops ag’in’ de stars, en den 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 troublin’ deyselves a good deal ’bout me; but I warn’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 didn’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 deh 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’se 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 couldn’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 see 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 isn’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—

“Yo’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, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Did he give you de bill dat time?”

“No, he hadn’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 ask 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 couldn’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 couldn’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 Judge 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 wouldn’t open. Roxy smiled grimly, and said—

“I’s got de key, honey—set down. You needn’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 ketch me, I’s 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 right 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.”

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