The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson

Excerpt: ... of the twins was it?" "Count Luigi." "You have challenged him?" "N-no," hesitated Tom, turning pale. "You will challenge him tonight. 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, repeated 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 heavyhearted. 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...