The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson • Paragraph 969
Stage 1 of 6

Read it through once

He braced himself up with a glass of cold whisky, and went to work again. He did not compare the new finger-marks unintentionally left by Tom a few minutes before on Roxy's glass with the tracings of the marks left on the knife-handle, there being no need for that (for his trained eye), but busied himself with another matter, muttering from time to time, "Idiot that I was!--Nothing but a girl would do me--a man in girl's clothes never occurred to me." First, he hunted out the plate containing the finger-prints made by Tom when he was twelve years old, and laid it by itself; then he brought forth the marks made by Tom's baby fingers when he was a suckling of seven months, and placed these two plates with the one containing this subject's newly (and unconsciously) made record.