A DOUBLE BARRELLED DETECTIVE

by Mark Twain




PART I

"We ought never to do wrong when people are looking."


I

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.