A Double Barrelled Detective Story

Name: A Double Barrelled Detective Story
Author: Mark Twain

by Mark Twain

Pages: about 69
Category: Literature & Fiction
Language: English
Reading time: 76 min at 250 wpm

Start readingThe whole book, as cards or one word at a time. 42 min at 450 wpm in Read mode.

From the opening

The first scene is in the country, in Virginia; the time, 1880. There has been a wedding, between a handsome young man of slender means and a rich young girl--a case of love at first sight and a precipitate marriage; a marriage bitterly opposed by the girl's widowed father.
Jacob Fuller, the bridegroom, is twenty-six years old, is of an old but unconsidered family which had by compulsion emigrated from Sedgemoor, and for King James's purse's profit, so everybody said--some maliciously-- the rest merely because they believed it. The bride is nineteen and beautiful. She is intense, high-strung, romantic, immeasurably proud of her Cavalier blood, and passionate in her love for her young husband. For its sake she braved her father's displeasure, endured his reproaches, listened with loyalty unshaken to his warning predictions, and went from his house without his blessing, proud and happy in the proofs she was thus giving of the quality of the affection which had made its home in her heart.
The morning after the marriage there was a sad surprise for her. Her husband put aside her proffered caresses, and said:
“Sit down. I have something to say to you. I loved you. That was before I asked your father to give you to me. His refusal is not my grievance--I could have endured that. But the things he said of me to you--that is a different matter. There--you needn't speak; I know quite well what they were; I got them from authentic sources. Among other things he said that my character was written in my face; that I was treacherous, a dissembler, a coward, and a brute without sense of pity or compassion: the 'Sedgemoor trade-mark,' he called it--and 'white-sleeve badge.' Any other man in my place would have gone to his house and shot him down like a dog. I wanted to do it, and was minded to do it, but a better thought came to me: to put him to shame; to break his heart; to kill him by inches.

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A Double Barrelled Detective Story

From the opening

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