The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson

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. Tom went back to St. Louis happy." (121) Rather than leaving Dawson's Landing after losing the election, the twins simply remove themselves from social interaction: "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." (121)

Roxy reappears in St. Louis, and she confronts Tom with the reality of what he has done to her by selling her down the river where all her worst fears were realized. She tells Tom that when the overseer caught a young girl giving Roxy a potato to eat and began to beat the girl, Roxy knocked him out, stole his horse, and road to the river, where she stole a canoe and boarded a steamboat. The master of the cotton plantation is searching for her.

Tom is appalled that Roxy has put him in danger by coming to him at the boarding house, since the master threatened to hurt Tom if he helped Roxy evade capture. Roxy tries to problem solve, devising a plan for Tom to give $300 to the master so he will stop looking for her while Tom gets all of the money together to buy Roxy's freedom. Tom, however, decides that his best course of action is to steal money from his uncle to settle the whole affair.

Luigi presses Judge Driscoll to have another duel, but Driscoll says he will not duel an assassin. When Wilson tells the Judge that the murder Luigi committed had been justified, Driscoll is unpersuaded. Wilson tells Luigi that the Judge is blind to Tom's faults because the Judge had no children of his own before gaining custody of Tom when Percy Driscoll died.

Tom puts on girl's clothing and blackens his face to steal from the Judge, but finds the Judge asleep on the sofa. As Tom reaches for the cashbox next to him, the Judge awakens and cries out. Tom stabs the Judge and throws the dagger across the room. He flees upstairs as the twins, who have taken to walking late at night to avoid encountering any townspeople because of the shame Tom and the Judge have caused them, respond to the cries for help by entering the house.

Tom sneaks down to the river, steals a canoe, and heads downstream, boarding a steamer back to St. Louis.

The twins are arrested for the murder and are sent to prison to await trial. Wilson examines the fingerprints from the dagger and declares the twins innocent, arguing that the motive for the murder was revenge, not robbery. Wilson scans his collection of fingerprints to find prints that match the dagger handle.