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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER 5

The Twins Thrill Dawson's Landing

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower
is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

Remark of Dr. Baldwin's, concerning upstarts: We don't care to eat
toadstools that think they are truffles.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

Mrs. York Driscoll enjoyed two years of bliss with