Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
Dawson's Landing was comfortably finishing its season of dull repose and waiting patiently for the duel.
Count Luigi was waiting, too; but not patiently, rumor said.
Sunday came, and Luigi insisted on having his challenge conveyed.
Wilson carried it. Judge Driscoll declined to fight with an assassin--"that is," he added significantly, "in the field of honor."
Elsewhere, of course, he would be ready. Wilson tried to convince him that if he had been present himself when Angelo told him about the homicide committed by Luigi, he would not have considered the act discreditable to Luigi; but the obstinate old man was not to be moved.
Wilson went back to his principal and reported the failure of his mission. Luigi was incensed, and asked how it could be that the old gentleman, who was by no means dull-witted, held his trifling nephew's evidence in inferences to be of more value than Wilson's.
But Wilson laughed, and said:
"That is quite simple; that is easily explicable.
I am not his doll--his baby--his infatuation: his nature is.
The judge and his late wife never had any children.
The judge and his wife were past middle age when this treasure fell into their lap. One must make allowances for a parental instinct that has been starving for twenty-five or thirty years.
It is famished, it is crazed wit hunger by that time, and will be entirely satisfied with anything that comes handy; its taste is atrophied, it can't tell mud cat from shad. A devil born to a young couple is measurably recognizable by them as a devil before long, but a devil adopted by an old couple is an angel to them, and remains so, through thick and thin. Tom is this old man's angel; he is infatuated with him. Tom can persuade him into things which other people can't--not all things; I don't mean that, but a good many--particularly one class of things: the things that create or abolish personal partialities or prejudices in the old man's mind. The old man liked both of you. Tom conceived a hatred for you. That was enough; it turned the old man around at once.
The oldest and strongest friendship must go to the ground when one of these late-adopted darlings throws a brick at it."
"It's a curious philosophy," said Luigi.
"It ain't philosophy at all--it's a fact. And there is something pathetic and beautiful about it, too. I think there is nothing more pathetic than to see one of these poor old childless couples taking a menagerie of yelping little worthless dogs to their hearts; and then adding some cursing and squawking parrots and a jackass-voiced macaw; and next a couple of hundred screeching songbirds, and presently some fetid guinea pigs and rabbits, and a howling colony of cats. It is all a groping and ignorant effort to construct out of base metal and brass filings, so to speak, something to take the place of that golden treasure denied them by Nature, a child. But this is a digression.
The unwritten law of this region requires you to kill Judge Driscoll on sight, and he and the community will expect that attention at your hands--though of course your own death by his bullet will answer every purpose. Look out for him! Are you healed--that is, fixed?"
"Yes, he shall have his opportunity. If he attacks me, I will respond."
As Wilson was leaving, he said:
"The judge is still a little used up by his campaign work, and will not get out for a day or so; but when he does get out, you want to be on the alert."
About eleven at night the twins went out for exercise, and started on a long stroll in the veiled moonlight.
Tom Driscoll had landed at Hackett's Store, two miles below Dawson's, just about half an hour earlier, the only passenger for that lonely spot, and had walked up the shore road and entered Judge Driscoll's house without having encountered anyone either on the road or under the roof.
He pulled down his window blinds and lighted his candle.
He laid off his coat and hat and began his preparations.
He unlocked his trunk and got his suit of girl's clothes out from under the male attire in it, and laid it by. Then he blacked his face with burnt cork and put the cork in his pocket.
His plan was to slip down to his uncle's private sitting room below, pass into the bedroom, steal the safe key from the old gentleman's clothes, and then go back and rob the safe. He took up his candle to start. His courage and confidence were high, up to this point, but both began to waver a little now.
Suppose he should make a noise, by some accident, and get caught-- say, in the act of opening the safe? Perhaps it would be well to go armed.
He took the Indian knife from its hiding place, and felt a pleasant return of his wandering courage. He slipped stealthily down the narrow stair, his hair rising and his pulses halting at the slightest creak. When he was halfway down, he was disturbed to perceive that the landing below was touched by a faint glow of light. What could that mean? Was his uncle still up?
No, that was not likely; he must have left his night taper there when he went to bed. Tom crept on down, pausing at every step to listen. He found the door standing open, and glanced it.
What he saw pleased him beyond measure. His uncle was asleep on the sofa; on a small table at the head of the sofa a lamp was burning low, and by it stood the old man's small cashbox, closed.
Near the box was a pile of bank notes and a piece of paper covered with figured in pencil. The safe door was not open.
Evidently the sleeper had wearied himself with work upon his finances, and was taking a rest.
Tom set his candle on the stairs, and began to make his way toward the pile of notes, stooping low as he went.