He was getting into deep waters.  He was taking chances, privately, which might get him into trouble some day—­in fact, did.

Judge Driscoll had retired from the bench and from all business activities in 1850, and had now been comfortably idle three years.  He was president of the Freethinkers’ Society, and Pudd’nhead Wilson was the other member.  The society’s weekly discussions were now the old lawyer’s main interest in life.  Pudd’nhead was still toiling in obscurity at the bottom of the ladder, under the blight of that unlucky remark which he had let fall twenty-three years before about the dog.

Judge Driscoll was his friend, and claimed that he had a mind above the average, but that was regarded as one of the judge’s whims, and it failed to modify the public opinion.  Or rather, that was one of the reason why it failed, but there was another and better one.  If the judge had stopped with bare assertion, it would have had a good deal of effect; but he made the mistake of trying to prove his position.  For some years Wilson had been privately at work on a whimsical almanac, for his amusement—­a calendar, with a little dab of ostensible philosophy, usually in ironical form, appended to each date; and the judge thought that these quips and fancies of Wilson’s were neatly turned and cute; so he carried a handful of them around one day, and read them to some of the chief citizens.  But irony was not for those people; their mental vision was not focused for it.  They read those playful trifles in the solidest terms, and decided without hesitancy that if there had ever been any doubt that Dave Wilson was a pudd’nhead—­which there hadn’t—­this revelation removed that doubt for good and all.  That is just the way in this world; an enemy can partly ruin a man, but it takes a good-natured injudicious friend to complete the thing and make it perfect.  After this the judge felt tenderer than ever toward Wilson, and surer than ever that his calendar had merit.

Judge Driscoll could be a freethinker and still hold his place in society because he was the person of most consequence to the community, and therefore could venture to go his own way and follow out his own notions.  The other member of his pet organization was allowed the like liberty because he was a cipher in the estimation of the public, and nobody attached any importance to what he thought or did.  He was liked, he was welcome enough all around, but he simply didn’t count for anything.

The Widow Cooper—­affectionately called “Aunt Patsy” by everybody—­lived in a snug and comely cottage with her daughter Rowena, who was nineteen, romantic, amiable, and very pretty, but otherwise of no consequence.  Rowena had a couple of young brothers—­also of no consequence.