The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson

Roxana arrives in St. Louis to find Tom desolate. She tells Tom she loves him. Roxy, wanting to help her son, suggests that Tom sell her as a slave for $600, then keep half the money for Roxy and use the other half to pay his debts. Tom agrees with this plan, and forges a bill of sale, but betrays his mother by selling her down the river to an Arkansas cotton planter rather than a local owner looking for house help. Tom soothes his conscience by vowing to buy Roxy back in a year, but Twain writes, "For a whole week he was not able to sleep well...but after that he began to get comfortable again, and was presently able to sleep like any other miscreant." (118)

The twins' reputation suffers from mystery around the missing dagger, and Judge Driscoll campaigns against them in the election for aldermen, even ridiculing the twins and inferring that they are assassins: "He scoffed at them as adventurers, mountebanks, side-show riffraff, dime museum freaks; he assailed their showy titles with measureless derision..." (120) Judge Driscoll, desperate to believe that Tom is honorable, has turned on Luigi and Angelo.

Twain writes: "Wilson was elected, the twins were defeated—crushed, in fact, and left forlorn and substantially friendless.