The person coming was Mary Jane. She went to the coffin, very soft, and

kneeled down and looked in; then she put up her handkerchief, and I see

she begun to cry, though I couldn't hear her, and her back was to me. I

slid out, and as I passed the dining-room I thought I'd make sure them

watchers hadn't seen me; so I looked through the crack, and everything

was all right. They hadn't stirred.

I slipped up to bed, feeling ruther blue, on accounts of the thing

playing out that way after I had took so much trouble and run so much

resk about it. Says I, if it could stay where it is, all right; because

when we get down the river a hundred mile or two I could write back to

Mary Jane, and she could dig him up again and get it; but that ain't the

thing that's going to happen; the thing that's going to happen is, the

money 'll be found when they come to screw on the lid. Then the king 'll

get it again, and it 'll be a long day before he gives anybody another

chance to smouch it from him. Of course I WANTED to slide down and get it

out of there, but I dasn't try it. Every minute it was getting earlier

now, and pretty soon some of them watchers would begin to stir, and I

might get catched--catched with six thousand dollars in my hands that

nobody hadn't hired me to take care of. I don't wish to be mixed up in

no such business as that, I says to myself.

When I got down stairs in the morning the parlor was shut up, and the

watchers was gone. There warn't nobody around but the family and the

widow Bartley and our tribe. I watched their faces to see if anything

had been happening, but I couldn't tell.

Towards the middle of the day the undertaker come with his man, and they

set the coffin in the middle of the room on a couple of chairs, and then

set all our chairs in rows, and borrowed more from the neighbors till the

hall and the parlor and the dining-room was full. I see the coffin lid

was the way it was before, but I dasn't go to look in under it, with

folks around.

Then the people begun to flock in, and the beats and the girls took seats

in the front row at the head of the coffin, and for a half an hour the

people filed around slow, in single rank, and looked down at the dead

man's face a minute, and some dropped in a tear, and it was all very

still and solemn, only the girls and the beats holding handkerchiefs to

their eyes and keeping their heads bent, and sobbing a little. There

warn't no other sound but the scraping of the feet on the floor and

blowing noses--because people always blows them more at a funeral than

they do at other places except church.

When the place was packed full the undertaker he slid around in his black

gloves with his softy soothering ways, putting on the last touches, and

getting people and things all ship-shape and comfortable, and making no

more sound than a cat. He never spoke; he moved people around, he

squeezed in late ones, he opened up passageways, and done it with nods,

and signs with his hands. Then he took his place over against the wall.

He was the softest, glidingest, stealthiest man I ever see; and there

warn't no more smile to him than there is to a ham.

They had borrowed a melodeum--a sick one; and when everything was ready a

young woman set down and worked it, and it was pretty skreeky and

colicky, and everybody joined in and sung, and Peter was the only one

that had a good thing, according to my notion. Then the Reverend Hobson

opened up, slow and solemn, and begun to talk; and straight off the most

outrageous row busted out in the cellar a body ever heard; it was only

one dog, but he made a most powerful racket, and he kept it up right

along; the parson he had to stand there, over the coffin, and wait--you

couldn't hear yourself think. It was right down awkward, and nobody

didn't seem to know what to do. But pretty soon they see that

long-legged undertaker make a sign to the preacher as much as to say,

"Don't you worry--just depend on me." Then he stooped down and begun to

glide along the wall, just his shoulders showing over the people's heads.

So he glided along, and the powwow and racket getting more and more

outrageous all the time; and at last, when he had gone around two sides

of the room, he disappears down cellar. Then in about two seconds we

heard a whack, and the dog he finished up with a most amazing howl or

two, and then everything was dead still, and the parson begun his solemn

talk where he left off. In a minute or two here comes this undertaker's

back and shoulders gliding along the wall again; and so he glided and

glided around three sides of the room, and then rose up, and shaded his

mouth with his hands, and stretched his neck out towards the preacher,

over the people's heads, and says, in a kind of a coarse whisper, "HE HAD

A RAT!" Then he drooped down and glided along the wall again to his

place. You could see it was a great satisfaction to the people, because

naturally they wanted to know. A little thing like that don't cost

nothing, and it's just the little things that makes a man to be looked up

to and liked. There warn't no more popular man in town than what that

undertaker was.

Well, the funeral sermon was very good, but pison long and tiresome; and

then the king he shoved in and got off some of his usual rubbage, and at

last the job was through, and the undertaker begun to sneak up on the

coffin with his screw-driver. I was in a sweat then, and watched him

pretty keen. But he never meddled at all; just slid the lid along as soft

as mush, and screwed it down tight and fast. So there I was! I didn't

know whether the money was in there or not. So, says I, s'pose somebody

has hogged that bag on the sly?--now how do I know whether to write to

Mary Jane or not? S'pose she dug him up and didn't find nothing, what

would she think of me? Blame it, I says, I might get hunted up and

jailed; I'd better lay low and keep dark, and not write at all; the

thing's awful mixed now; trying to better it, I've worsened it a hundred

times, and I wish to goodness I'd just let it alone, dad fetch the whole

business!

They buried him, and we come back home, and I went to watching faces

again--I couldn't help it, and I couldn't rest easy. But nothing come

of it; the faces didn't tell me nothing.

The king he visited around in the evening, and sweetened everybody up,

and made himself ever so friendly; and he give out the idea that his

congregation over in England would be in a sweat about him, so he must

hurry and settle up the estate right away and leave for home. He was

very sorry he was so pushed, and so was everybody; they wished he could

stay longer, but they said they could see it couldn't be done. And he

said of course him and William would take the girls home with them; and

that pleased everybody too, because then the girls would be well fixed

and amongst their own relations; and it pleased the girls, too--tickled

them so they clean forgot they ever had a trouble in the world; and told

him to sell out as quick as he wanted to, they would be ready. Them poor

things was that glad and happy it made my heart ache to see them getting

fooled and lied to so, but I didn't see no safe way for me to chip in and

change the general tune.

Well, blamed if the king didn't bill the house and the niggers and all

the property for auction straight off--sale two days after the funeral;

but anybody could buy private beforehand if they wanted to.

So the next day after the funeral, along about noon-time, the girls' joy

got the first jolt. A couple of nigger traders come along, and the king

sold them the niggers reasonable, for three-day drafts as they called it,

and away they went, the two sons up the river to Memphis, and their

mother down the river to Orleans. I thought them poor girls and them

niggers would break their hearts for grief; they cried around each other,

and took on so it most made me down sick to see it. The girls said they

hadn't ever dreamed of seeing the family separated or sold away from the

town. I can't ever get it out of my memory, the sight of them poor

miserable girls and niggers hanging around each other's necks and crying;

and I reckon I couldn't a stood it all, but would a had to bust out and

tell on our gang if I hadn't knowed the sale warn't no account and the

niggers would be back home in a week or two.

The thing made a big stir in the town, too, and a good many come out

flatfooted and said it was scandalous to separate the mother and the

children that way. It injured the frauds some; but the old fool he

bulled right along, spite of all the duke could say or do, and I tell you

the duke was powerful uneasy.

Next day was auction day. About broad day in the morning the king and

the duke come up in the garret and woke me up, and I see by their look

that there was trouble. The king says:

"Was you in my room night before last?"

"No, your majesty"--which was the way I always called him when nobody but

our gang warn't around.

"Was you in there yisterday er last night?"

"No, your majesty."

"Honor bright, now--no lies."

"Honor bright, your majesty, I'm telling you the truth. I hain't been

a-near your room since Miss Mary Jane took you and the duke and showed it

to you."

The duke says:

"Have you seen anybody else go in there?"

"No, your grace, not as I remember, I believe."

"Stop and think."

I studied awhile and see my chance; then I says:

"Well, I see the niggers go in there several times."

Both of them gave a little jump, and looked like they hadn't ever

expected it, and then like they HAD. Then the duke says:

"What, all of them?"

"No--leastways, not all at once--that is, I don't think I ever see them

all come OUT at once but just one time."

"Hello! When was that?"

"It was the day we had the funeral. In the morning. It warn't early,

because I overslept. I was just starting down the ladder, and I see

them."

"Well, go on, GO on! What did they do? How'd they act?"

"They didn't do nothing. And they didn't act anyway much, as fur as I

see. They tiptoed away; so I seen, easy enough, that they'd shoved in

there to do up your majesty's room, or something, s'posing you was up;

and found you WARN'T up, and so they was hoping to slide out of the way

of trouble without waking you up, if they hadn't already waked you up."

"Great guns, THIS is a go!" says the king; and both of them looked pretty

sick and tolerable silly. They stood there a-thinking and scratching

their heads a minute, and the duke he bust into a kind of a little raspy

chuckle, and says:

"It does beat all how neat the niggers played their hand. They let on to

be SORRY they was going out of this region! And I believed they WAS

sorry, and so did you, and so did everybody. Don't ever tell ME any more

that a nigger ain't got any histrionic talent. Why, the way they played

that thing it would fool ANYBODY. In my opinion, there's a fortune in

'em. If I had capital and a theater, I wouldn't want a better lay-out

than that--and here we've gone and sold 'em for a song. Yes, and ain't

privileged to sing the song yet. Say, where IS that song--that draft?"

"In the bank for to be collected. Where WOULD it be?"

"Well, THAT'S all right then, thank goodness."

Says I, kind of timid-like:

"Is something gone wrong?"

The king whirls on me and rips out:

"None o' your business! You keep your head shet, and mind y'r own

affairs--if you got any. Long as you're in this town don't you forgit

THAT--you hear?" Then he says to the duke, "We got to jest swaller it

and say noth'n': mum's the word for US."

As they was starting down the ladder the duke he chuckles again, and

says:

"Quick sales AND small profits! It's a good business--yes."

The king snarls around on him and says:

"I was trying to do for the best in sellin' 'em out so quick. If the

profits has turned out to be none, lackin' considable, and none to carry,

is it my fault any more'n it's yourn?"

"Well, THEY'D be in this house yet and we WOULDN'T if I could a got my

advice listened to."

The king sassed back as much as was safe for him, and then swapped around

and lit into ME again. He give me down the banks for not coming and

TELLING him I see the niggers come out of his room acting that way--said

any fool would a KNOWED something was up. And then waltzed in and cussed

HIMSELF awhile, and said it all come of him not laying late and taking

his natural rest that morning, and he'd be blamed if he'd ever do it

again. So they went off a-jawing; and I felt dreadful glad I'd worked it

all off on to the niggers, and yet hadn't done the niggers no harm by it.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

BY and by it was getting-up time. So I come down the ladder and started

for down-stairs; but as I come to the girls' room the door was open, and

I see Mary Jane setting by her old hair trunk, which was open and she'd

been packing things in it--getting ready to go to England. But she had

stopped now with a folded gown in her lap, and had her face in her hands,

crying. I felt awful bad to see it; of course anybody would. I went in

there and says:

"Miss Mary Jane, you can't a-bear to see people in trouble, and I can't

--most always. Tell me about it."

So she done it. And it was the niggers--I just expected it. She said

the beautiful trip to England was most about spoiled for her; she didn't

know HOW she was ever going to be happy there, knowing the mother and the

children warn't ever going to see each other no more--and then busted out

bitterer than ever, and flung up her hands, and says:

"Oh, dear, dear, to think they ain't EVER going to see each other any

more!"

"But they WILL--and inside of two weeks--and I KNOW it!" says I.

Laws, it was out before I could think! And before I could budge she

throws her arms around my neck and told me to say it AGAIN, say it AGAIN,

say it AGAIN!

I see I had spoke too sudden and said too much, and was in a close place.

I asked her to let me think a minute; and she set there, very impatient

and excited and handsome, but looking kind of happy and eased-up, like a

person that's had a tooth pulled out. So I went to studying it out. I

says to myself, I reckon a body that ups and tells the truth when he is

in a tight place is taking considerable many resks, though I ain't had no

experience, and can't say for certain; but it looks so to me, anyway; and

yet here's a case where I'm blest if it don't look to me like the truth

is better and actuly SAFER than a lie. I must lay it by in my mind, and

think it over some time or other, it's so kind of strange and unregular.

I never see nothing like it. Well, I says to myself at last, I'm a-going

to chance it; I'll up and tell the truth this time, though it does seem

most like setting down on a kag of powder and touching it off just to see

where you'll go to. Then I says:

"Miss Mary Jane, is there any place out of town a little ways where you

could go and stay three or four days?"

"Yes; Mr. Lothrop's. Why?"

"Never mind why yet. If I'll tell you how I know the niggers will see

each other again inside of two weeks--here in this house--and PROVE how I

know it--will you go to Mr. Lothrop's and stay four days?"

"Four days!" she says; "I'll stay a year!"

"All right," I says, "I don't want nothing more out of YOU than just your

word--I druther have it than another man's kiss-the-Bible." She smiled

and reddened up very sweet, and I says, "If you don't mind it, I'll shut

the door--and bolt it."

Then I come back and set down again, and says:

"Don't you holler. Just set still and take it like a man. I got to tell

the truth, and you want to brace up, Miss Mary, because it's a bad kind,

and going to be hard to take, but there ain't no help for it. These

uncles of yourn ain't no uncles at all; they're a couple of frauds

--regular dead-beats. There, now we're over the worst of it, you can stand

the rest middling easy."

It jolted her up like everything, of course; but I was over the shoal

water now, so I went right along, her eyes a-blazing higher and higher

all the time, and told her every blame thing, from where we first struck

that young fool going up to the steamboat, clear through to where she

flung herself on to the king's breast at the front door and he kissed her

sixteen or seventeen times--and then up she jumps, with her face afire

like sunset, and says:

"The brute! Come, don't waste a minute--not a SECOND--we'll have them

tarred and feathered, and flung in the river!"

Says I:

"Cert'nly. But do you mean BEFORE you go to Mr. Lothrop's, or--"

"Oh," she says, "what am I THINKING about!" she says, and set right down

again. "Don't mind what I said--please don't--you WON'T, now, WILL you?"

Laying her silky hand on mine in that kind of a way that I said I would

die first. "I never thought, I was so stirred up," she says; "now go on,

and I won't do so any more. You tell me what to do, and whatever you say

I'll do it."

"Well," I says, "it's a rough gang, them two frauds, and I'm fixed so I

got to travel with them a while longer, whether I want to or not--I

druther not tell you why; and if you was to blow on them this town would

get me out of their claws, and I'd be all right; but there'd be another

person that you don't know about who'd be in big trouble. Well, we got

to save HIM, hain't we? Of course. Well, then, we won't blow on them."

Saying them words put a good idea in my head. I see how maybe I could

get me and Jim rid of the frauds; get them jailed here, and then leave.

But I didn't want to run the raft in the daytime without anybody aboard

to answer questions but me; so I didn't want the plan to begin working

till pretty late to-night. I says:

"Miss Mary Jane, I'll tell you what we'll do, and you won't have to stay

at Mr. Lothrop's so long, nuther. How fur is it?"

"A little short of four miles--right out in the country, back here."

"Well, that 'll answer. Now you go along out there, and lay low till

nine or half-past to-night, and then get them to fetch you home again

--tell them you've thought of something. If you get here before eleven put

a candle in this window, and if I don't turn up wait TILL eleven, and

THEN if I don't turn up it means I'm gone, and out of the way, and safe.

Then you come out and spread the news around, and get these beats

jailed."

"Good," she says, "I'll do it."

"And if it just happens so that I don't get away, but get took up along

with them, you must up and say I told you the whole thing beforehand, and

you must stand by me all you can."

"Stand by you! indeed I will. They sha'n't touch a hair of your head!"

she says, and I see her nostrils spread and her eyes snap when she said

it, too.

"If I get away I sha'n't be here," I says, "to prove these rapscallions

ain't your uncles, and I couldn't do it if I WAS here. I could swear

they was beats and bummers, that's all, though that's worth something.

Well, there's others can do that better than what I can, and they're

people that ain't going to be doubted as quick as I'd be. I'll tell you

how to find them. Gimme a pencil and a piece of paper. There--'Royal

Nonesuch, Bricksville.' Put it away, and don't lose it. When the court

wants to find out something about these two, let them send up to

Bricksville and say they've got the men that played the Royal Nonesuch,

and ask for some witnesses--why, you'll have that entire town down here

before you can hardly wink, Miss Mary. And they'll come a-biling, too."

I judged we had got everything fixed about right now. So I says:

"Just let the auction go right along, and don't worry. Nobody don't have

to pay for the things they buy till a whole day after the auction on

accounts of the short notice, and they ain't going out of this till they

get that money; and the way we've fixed it the sale ain't going to count,

and they ain't going to get no money. It's just like the way it was with

the niggers--it warn't no sale, and the niggers will be back before

long. Why, they can't collect the money for the NIGGERS yet--they're in

the worst kind of a fix, Miss Mary."

"Well," she says, "I'll run down to breakfast now, and then I'll start

straight for Mr. Lothrop's."

"'Deed, THAT ain't the ticket, Miss Mary Jane," I says, "by no manner of

means; go BEFORE breakfast."

"Why?"

"What did you reckon I wanted you to go at all for, Miss Mary?"

"Well, I never thought--and come to think, I don't know. What was it?"

"Why, it's because you ain't one of these leather-face people. I don't

want no better book than what your face is. A body can set down and read

it off like coarse print. Do you reckon you can go and face your uncles

when they come to kiss you good-morning, and never--"

"There, there, don't! Yes, I'll go before breakfast--I'll be glad to.

And leave my sisters with them?"

"Yes; never mind about them. They've got to stand it yet a while. They

might suspicion something if all of you was to go. I don't want you to

see them, nor your sisters, nor nobody in this town; if a neighbor was to

ask how is your uncles this morning your face would tell something. No,

you go right along, Miss Mary Jane, and I'll fix it with all of them.

I'll tell Miss Susan to give your love to your uncles and say you've went

away for a few hours for to get a little rest and change, or to see a

friend, and you'll be back to-night or early in the morning."

"Gone to see a friend is all right, but I won't have my love given to

them."

"Well, then, it sha'n't be." It was well enough to tell HER so--no harm

in it. It was only a little thing to do, and no trouble; and it's the

little things that smooths people's roads the most, down here below; it

would make Mary Jane comfortable, and it wouldn't cost nothing. Then I

says: "There's one more thing--that bag of money."

"Well, they've got that; and it makes me feel pretty silly to think HOW

they got it."

"No, you're out, there. They hain't got it."

"Why, who's got it?"

"I wish I knowed, but I don't. I HAD it, because I stole it from them;

and I stole it to give to you; and I know where I hid it, but I'm afraid

it ain't there no more. I'm awful sorry, Miss Mary Jane, I'm just as

sorry as I can be; but I done the best I could; I did honest. I come

nigh getting caught, and I had to shove it into the first place I come

to, and run--and it warn't a good place."

"Oh, stop blaming yourself--it's too bad to do it, and I won't allow it

--you couldn't help it; it wasn't your fault. Where did you hide it?"

I didn't want to set her to thinking about her troubles again; and I

couldn't seem to get my mouth to tell her what would make her see that

corpse laying in the coffin with that bag of money on his stomach. So

for a minute I didn't say nothing; then I says:

"I'd ruther not TELL you where I put it, Miss Mary Jane, if you don't

mind letting me off; but I'll write it for you on a piece of paper, and

you can read it along the road to Mr. Lothrop's, if you want to. Do you

reckon that 'll do?"

"Oh, yes."

So I wrote: "I put it in the coffin. It was in there when you was

crying there, away in the night. I was behind the door, and I was mighty

sorry for you, Miss Mary Jane."

It made my eyes water a little to remember her crying there all by

herself in the night, and them devils laying there right under her own

roof, shaming her and robbing her; and when I folded it up and give it to

her I see the water come into her eyes, too; and she shook me by the

hand, hard, and says:

"GOOD-bye. I'm going to do everything just as you've told me; and if I

don't ever see you again, I sha'n't ever forget you and I'll think of

you a many and a many a time, and I'll PRAY for you, too!"--and she was

gone.

Pray for me! I reckoned if she knowed me she'd take a job that was more

nearer her size. But I bet she done it, just the same--she was just that

kind. She had the grit to pray for Judus if she took the notion--there

warn't no back-down to her, I judge. You may say what you want to, but

in my opinion she had more sand in her than any girl I ever see; in my

opinion she was just full of sand. It sounds like flattery, but it ain't

no flattery. And when it comes to beauty--and goodness, too--she lays

over them all. I hain't ever seen her since that time that I see her go

out of that door; no, I hain't ever seen her since, but I reckon I've

thought of her a many and a many a million times, and of her saying she

would pray for me; and if ever I'd a thought it would do any good for me

to pray for HER, blamed if I wouldn't a done it or bust.

Well, Mary Jane she lit out the back way, I reckon; because nobody see

her go. When I struck Susan and the hare-lip, I says:

"What's the name of them people over on t'other side of the river that

you all goes to see sometimes?"

They says:

"There's several; but it's the Proctors, mainly."

"That's the name," I says; "I most forgot it. Well, Miss Mary Jane she

told me to tell you she's gone over there in a dreadful hurry--one of

them's sick."

"Which one?"

"I don't know; leastways, I kinder forget; but I thinks it's--"

"Sakes alive, I hope it ain't HANNER?"

"I'm sorry to say it," I says, "but Hanner's the very one."

"My goodness, and she so well only last week! Is she took bad?"

"It ain't no name for it. They set up with her all night, Miss Mary Jane

said, and they don't think she'll last many hours."

"Only think of that, now! What's the matter with her?"

I couldn't think of anything reasonable, right off that way, so I says:

"Mumps."

"Mumps your granny! They don't set up with people that's got the mumps."

"They don't, don't they? You better bet they do with THESE mumps. These

mumps is different. It's a new kind, Miss Mary Jane said."

"How's it a new kind?"

"Because it's mixed up with other things."

"What other things?"

"Well, measles, and whooping-cough, and erysiplas, and consumption, and

yaller janders, and brain-fever, and I don't know what all."

"My land! And they call it the MUMPS?"

"That's what Miss Mary Jane said."

"Well, what in the nation do they call it the MUMPS for?"

"Why, because it IS the mumps. That's what it starts with."

"Well, ther' ain't no sense in it. A body might stump his toe, and take

pison, and fall down the well, and break his neck, and bust his brains

out, and somebody come along and ask what killed him, and some numskull

up and say, 'Why, he stumped his TOE.' Would ther' be any sense in that?

NO. And ther' ain't no sense in THIS, nuther. Is it ketching?"

"Is it KETCHING? Why, how you talk. Is a HARROW catching--in the dark?

If you don't hitch on to one tooth, you're bound to on another, ain't

you? And you can't get away with that tooth without fetching the whole

harrow along, can you? Well, these kind of mumps is a kind of a harrow,

as you may say--and it ain't no slouch of a harrow, nuther, you come to

get it hitched on good."

"Well, it's awful, I think," says the hare-lip. "I'll go to Uncle Harvey

and--"

"Oh, yes," I says, "I WOULD. Of COURSE I would. I wouldn't lose no

time."

"Well, why wouldn't you?"

"Just look at it a minute, and maybe you can see. Hain't your uncles

obleegd to get along home to England as fast as they can? And do you

reckon they'd be mean enough to go off and leave you to go all that

journey by yourselves? YOU know they'll wait for you. So fur, so good.

Your uncle Harvey's a preacher, ain't he? Very well, then; is a PREACHER

going to deceive a steamboat clerk? is he going to deceive a SHIP CLERK?

--so as to get them to let Miss Mary Jane go aboard? Now YOU know he

ain't. What WILL he do, then? Why, he'll say, 'It's a great pity, but

my church matters has got to get along the best way they can; for my

niece has been exposed to the dreadful pluribus-unum mumps, and so it's

my bounden duty to set down here and wait the three months it takes to

show on her if she's got it.' But never mind, if you think it's best to

tell your uncle Harvey--"

"Shucks, and stay fooling around here when we could all be having good

times in England whilst we was waiting to find out whether Mary Jane's

got it or not? Why, you talk like a muggins."

"Well, anyway, maybe you'd better tell some of the neighbors."

"Listen at that, now. You do beat all for natural stupidness. Can't you

SEE that THEY'D go and tell? Ther' ain't no way but just to not tell

anybody at ALL."

"Well, maybe you're right--yes, I judge you ARE right."

"But I reckon we ought to tell Uncle Harvey she's gone out a while,

anyway, so he won't be uneasy about her?"

"Yes, Miss Mary Jane she wanted you to do that. She says, 'Tell them to

give Uncle Harvey and William my love and a kiss, and say I've run over

the river to see Mr.'--Mr.--what IS the name of that rich family your

uncle Peter used to think so much of?--I mean the one that--"

"Why, you must mean the Apthorps, ain't it?"

"Of course; bother them kind of names, a body can't ever seem to remember

them, half the time, somehow. Yes, she said, say she has run over for to

ask the Apthorps to be sure and come to the auction and buy this house,

because she allowed her uncle Peter would ruther they had it than anybody

else; and she's going to stick to them till they say they'll come, and

then, if she ain't too tired, she's coming home; and if she is, she'll be

home in the morning anyway. She said, don't say nothing about the

Proctors, but only about the Apthorps--which 'll be perfectly true,

because she is going there to speak about their buying the house; I know

it, because she told me so herself."

"All right," they said, and cleared out to lay for their uncles, and give

them the love and the kisses, and tell them the message.

Everything was all right now. The girls wouldn't say nothing because

they wanted to go to England; and the king and the duke would ruther Mary

Jane was off working for the auction than around in reach of Doctor

Robinson. I felt very good; I judged I had done it pretty neat--I

reckoned Tom Sawyer couldn't a done it no neater himself. Of course he

would a throwed more style into it, but I can't do that very handy, not

being brung up to it.

Well, they held the auction in the public square, along towards the end

of the afternoon, and it strung along, and strung along, and the old man

he was on hand and looking his level pisonest, up there longside of the

auctioneer, and chipping in a little Scripture now and then, or a little

goody-goody saying of some kind, and the duke he was around goo-gooing

for sympathy all he knowed how, and just spreading himself generly.

But by and by the thing dragged through, and everything was sold

--everything but a little old trifling lot in the graveyard. So they'd got

to work that off--I never see such a girafft as the king was for wanting

to swallow EVERYTHING. Well, whilst they was at it a steamboat landed,

and in about two minutes up comes a crowd a-whooping and yelling and

laughing and carrying on, and singing out:

"HERE'S your opposition line! here's your two sets o' heirs to old Peter

Wilks--and you pays your money and you takes your choice!"

CHAPTER XXIX.

THEY was fetching a very nice-looking old gentleman along, and a

nice-looking younger one, with his right arm in a sling. And, my souls,

how the people yelled and laughed, and kept it up. But I didn't see no

joke about it, and I judged it would strain the duke and the king some to

see any. I reckoned they'd turn pale. But no, nary a pale did THEY

turn. The duke he never let on he suspicioned what was up, but just went

a goo-gooing around, happy and satisfied, like a jug that's googling out

buttermilk; and as for the king, he just gazed and gazed down sorrowful

on them new-comers like it give him the stomach-ache in his very heart to

think there could be such frauds and rascals in the world. Oh, he done

it admirable. Lots of the principal people gethered around the king, to

let him see they was on his side. That old gentleman that had just come

looked all puzzled to death. Pretty soon he begun to speak, and I see

straight off he pronounced LIKE an Englishman--not the king's way, though

the king's WAS pretty good for an imitation. I can't give the old gent's

words, nor I can't imitate him; but he turned around to the crowd, and

says, about like this:

"This is a surprise to me which I wasn't looking for; and I'll

acknowledge, candid and frank, I ain't very well fixed to meet it and

answer it; for my brother and me has had misfortunes; he's broke his arm,

and our baggage got put off at a town above here last night in the night

by a mistake. I am Peter Wilks' brother Harvey, and this is his brother

William, which can't hear nor speak--and can't even make signs to amount

to much, now't he's only got one hand to work them with. We are who we

say we are; and in a day or two, when I get the baggage, I can prove it.

But up till then I won't say nothing more, but go to the hotel and wait."

So him and the new dummy started off; and the king he laughs, and

blethers out:

"Broke his arm--VERY likely, AIN'T it?--and very convenient, too, for a

fraud that's got to make signs, and ain't learnt how. Lost their

baggage! That's MIGHTY good!--and mighty ingenious--under the

CIRCUMSTANCES!"

So he laughed again; and so did everybody else, except three or four, or

maybe half a dozen. One of these was that doctor; another one was a

sharp-looking gentleman, with a carpet-bag of the old-fashioned kind made

out of carpet-stuff, that had just come off of the steamboat and was

talking to him in a low voice, and glancing towards the king now and then

and nodding their heads--it was Levi Bell, the lawyer that was gone up to

Louisville; and another one was a big rough husky that come along and

listened to all the old gentleman said, and was listening to the king

now. And when the king got done this husky up and says:

"Say, looky here; if you are Harvey Wilks, when'd you come to this town?"

"The day before the funeral, friend," says the king.

"But what time o' day?"

"In the evenin'--'bout an hour er two before sundown."

"HOW'D you come?"

"I come down on the Susan Powell from Cincinnati."

"Well, then, how'd you come to be up at the Pint in the MORNIN'--in a

canoe?"

"I warn't up at the Pint in the mornin'."

"It's a lie."

Several of them jumped for him and begged him not to talk that way to an

old man and a preacher.

"Preacher be hanged, he's a fraud and a liar. He was up at the Pint that

mornin'. I live up there, don't I? Well, I was up there, and he was up

there. I see him there. He come in a canoe, along with Tim Collins and

a boy."

The doctor he up and says:

"Would you know the boy again if you was to see him, Hines?"

"I reckon I would, but I don't know. Why, yonder he is, now. I know him

perfectly easy."

It was me he pointed at. The doctor says:

"Neighbors, I don't know whether the new couple is frauds or not; but if

THESE two ain't frauds, I am an idiot, that's all. I think it's our duty

to see that they don't get away from here till we've looked into this

thing. Come along, Hines; come along, the rest of you. We'll take these

fellows to the tavern and affront them with t'other couple, and I reckon

we'll find out SOMETHING before we get through."

It was nuts for the crowd, though maybe not for the king's friends; so we

all started. It was about sundown. The doctor he led me along by the

hand, and was plenty kind enough, but he never let go my hand.

We all got in a big room in the hotel, and lit up some candles, and

fetched in the new couple. First, the doctor says:

"I don't wish to be too hard on these two men, but I think they're

frauds, and they may have complices that we don't know nothing about. If

they have, won't the complices get away with that bag of gold Peter Wilks

left? It ain't unlikely. If these men ain't frauds, they won't object

to sending for that money and letting us keep it till they prove they're

all right--ain't that so?"

Everybody agreed to that. So I judged they had our gang in a pretty

tight place right at the outstart. But the king he only looked

sorrowful, and says:

"Gentlemen, I wish the money was there, for I ain't got no disposition to

throw anything in the way of a fair, open, out-and-out investigation o'

this misable business; but, alas, the money ain't there; you k'n send and

see, if you want to."

"Where is it, then?"

"Well, when my niece give it to me to keep for her I took and hid it

inside o' the straw tick o' my bed, not wishin' to bank it for the few

days we'd be here, and considerin' the bed a safe place, we not bein'

used to niggers, and suppos'n' 'em honest, like servants in England. The

niggers stole it the very next mornin' after I had went down stairs; and

when I sold 'em I hadn't missed the money yit, so they got clean away

with it. My servant here k'n tell you 'bout it, gentlemen."

The doctor and several said "Shucks!" and I see nobody didn't altogether

believe him. One man asked me if I see the niggers steal it. I said no,

but I see them sneaking out of the room and hustling away, and I never

thought nothing, only I reckoned they was afraid they had waked up my

master and was trying to get away before he made trouble with them. That

was all they asked me. Then the doctor whirls on me and says:

"Are YOU English, too?"

I says yes; and him and some others laughed, and said, "Stuff!"

Well, then they sailed in on the general investigation, and there we had

it, up and down, hour in, hour out, and nobody never said a word about

supper, nor ever seemed to think about it--and so they kept it up, and

kept it up; and it WAS the worst mixed-up thing you ever see. They made

the king tell his yarn, and they made the old gentleman tell his'n; and

anybody but a lot of prejudiced chuckleheads would a SEEN that the old

gentleman was spinning truth and t'other one lies. And by and by they

had me up to tell what I knowed. The king he give me a left-handed look

out of the corner of his eye, and so I knowed enough to talk on the right

side. I begun to tell about Sheffield, and how we lived there, and all

about the English Wilkses, and so on; but I didn't get pretty fur till

the doctor begun to laugh; and Levi Bell, the lawyer, says:

"Set down, my boy; I wouldn't strain myself if I was you. I reckon you

ain't used to lying, it don't seem to come handy; what you want is

practice. You do it pretty awkward."

I didn't care nothing for the compliment, but I was glad to be let off,

anyway.

The doctor he started to say something, and turns and says:

"If you'd been in town at first, Levi Bell--" The king broke in and

reached out his hand, and says:

"Why, is this my poor dead brother's old friend that he's wrote so often

about?"

The lawyer and him shook hands, and the lawyer smiled and looked pleased,

and they talked right along awhile, and then got to one side and talked

low; and at last the lawyer speaks up and says:

"That 'll fix it. I'll take the order and send it, along with your

brother's, and then they'll know it's all right."

So they got some paper and a pen, and the king he set down and twisted

his head to one side, and chawed his tongue, and scrawled off something;

and then they give the pen to the duke--and then for the first time the

duke looked sick. But he took the pen and wrote. So then the lawyer

turns to the new old gentleman and says:

"You and your brother please write a line or two and sign your names."

The old gentleman wrote, but nobody couldn't read it. The lawyer looked

powerful astonished, and says:

"Well, it beats ME"--and snaked a lot of old letters out of his pocket,

and examined them, and then examined the old man's writing, and then THEM

again; and then says: "These old letters is from Harvey Wilks; and

here's THESE two handwritings, and anybody can see they didn't write

them" (the king and the duke looked sold and foolish, I tell you, to see

how the lawyer had took them in), "and here's THIS old gentleman's hand

writing, and anybody can tell, easy enough, HE didn't write them--fact

is, the scratches he makes ain't properly WRITING at all. Now, here's

some letters from--"

The new old gentleman says:

"If you please, let me explain. Nobody can read my hand but my brother

there--so he copies for me. It's HIS hand you've got there, not mine."

"WELL!" says the lawyer, "this IS a state of things. I've got some of

William's letters, too; so if you'll get him to write a line or so we can

com--"

"He CAN'T write with his left hand," says the old gentleman. "If he

could use his right hand, you would see that he wrote his own letters and

mine too. Look at both, please--they're by the same hand."

The lawyer done it, and says:

"I believe it's so--and if it ain't so, there's a heap stronger

resemblance than I'd noticed before, anyway. Well, well, well! I

thought we was right on the track of a solution, but it's gone to grass,

partly. But anyway, one thing is proved--THESE two ain't either of 'em

Wilkses"--and he wagged his head towards the king and the duke.

Well, what do you think? That muleheaded old fool wouldn't give in THEN!

Indeed he wouldn't. Said it warn't no fair test. Said his brother

William was the cussedest joker in the world, and hadn't tried to write

--HE see William was going to play one of his jokes the minute he put the

pen to paper. And so he warmed up and went warbling right along till he

was actuly beginning to believe what he was saying HIMSELF; but pretty

soon the new gentleman broke in, and says:

"I've thought of something. Is there anybody here that helped to lay out

my br--helped to lay out the late Peter Wilks for burying?"

"Yes," says somebody, "me and Ab Turner done it. We're both here."

Then the old man turns towards the king, and says:

"Perhaps this gentleman can tell me what was tattooed on his breast?"

Blamed if the king didn't have to brace up mighty quick, or he'd a

squshed down like a bluff bank that the river has cut under, it took him

so sudden; and, mind you, it was a thing that was calculated to make most

ANYBODY sqush to get fetched such a solid one as that without any notice,

because how was HE going to know what was tattooed on the man? He

whitened a little; he couldn't help it; and it was mighty still in there,

and everybody bending a little forwards and gazing at him. Says I to

myself, NOW he'll throw up the sponge--there ain't no more use. Well,

did he? A body can't hardly believe it, but he didn't. I reckon he

thought he'd keep the thing up till he tired them people out, so they'd

thin out, and him and the duke could break loose and get away. Anyway,

he set there, and pretty soon he begun to smile, and says:

"Mf! It's a VERY tough question, AIN'T it! YES, sir, I k'n tell you

what's tattooed on his breast. It's jest a small, thin, blue arrow

--that's what it is; and if you don't look clost, you can't see it. NOW

what do you say--hey?"

Well, I never see anything like that old blister for clean out-and-out

cheek.

The new old gentleman turns brisk towards Ab Turner and his pard, and his

eye lights up like he judged he'd got the king THIS time, and says:

"There--you've heard what he said! Was there any such mark on Peter

Wilks' breast?"

Both of them spoke up and says:

"We didn't see no such mark."

"Good!" says the old gentleman. "Now, what you DID see on his breast was

a small dim P, and a B (which is an initial he dropped when he was

young), and a W, with dashes between them, so: P--B--W"--and he marked

them that way on a piece of paper. "Come, ain't that what you saw?"

Both of them spoke up again, and says:

"No, we DIDN'T. We never seen any marks at all."

Well, everybody WAS in a state of mind now, and they sings out:

"The whole BILIN' of 'm 's frauds! Le's duck 'em! le's drown 'em! le's

ride 'em on a rail!" and everybody was whooping at once, and there was a

rattling powwow. But the lawyer he jumps on the table and yells, and

says:

"Gentlemen--gentleMEN! Hear me just a word--just a SINGLE word--if you

PLEASE! There's one way yet--let's go and dig up the corpse and look."

That took them.

"Hooray!" they all shouted, and was starting right off; but the lawyer

and the doctor sung out:

"Hold on, hold on! Collar all these four men and the boy, and fetch THEM

along, too!"

"We'll do it!" they all shouted; "and if we don't find them marks we'll

lynch the whole gang!"

I WAS scared, now, I tell you. But there warn't no getting away, you

know. They gripped us all, and marched us right along, straight for the

graveyard, which was a mile and a half down the river, and the whole town

at our heels, for we made noise enough, and it was only nine in the

evening.

As we went by our house I wished I hadn't sent Mary Jane out of town;

because now if I could tip her the wink she'd light out and save me, and

blow on our dead-beats.

Well, we swarmed along down the river road, just carrying on like

wildcats; and to make it more scary the sky was darking up, and the

lightning beginning to wink and flitter, and the wind to shiver amongst

the leaves. This was the most awful trouble and most dangersome I ever

was in; and I was kinder stunned; everything was going so different from

what I had allowed for; stead of being fixed so I could take my own time

if I wanted to, and see all the fun, and have Mary Jane at my back to

save me and set me free when the close-fit come, here was nothing in the

world betwixt me and sudden death but just them tattoo-marks. If they

didn't find them--

I couldn't bear to think about it; and yet, somehow, I couldn't think

about nothing else. It got darker and darker, and it was a beautiful

time to give the crowd the slip; but that big husky had me by the wrist

--Hines--and a body might as well try to give Goliar the slip. He dragged

me right along, he was so excited, and I had to run to keep up.

When they got there they swarmed into the graveyard and washed over it

like an overflow. And when they got to the grave they found they had

about a hundred times as many shovels as they wanted, but nobody hadn't

thought to fetch a lantern. But they sailed into digging anyway by the

flicker of the lightning, and sent a man to the nearest house, a half a

mile off, to borrow one.

So they dug and dug like everything; and it got awful dark, and the rain

started, and the wind swished and swushed along, and the lightning come

brisker and brisker, and the thunder boomed; but them people never took

no notice of it, they was so full of this business; and one minute you

could see everything and every face in that big crowd, and the shovelfuls

of dirt sailing up out of the grave, and the next second the dark wiped

it all out, and you couldn't see nothing at all.

At last they got out the coffin and begun to unscrew the lid, and then

such another crowding and shouldering and shoving as there was, to

scrouge in and get a sight, you never see; and in the dark, that way, it

was awful. Hines he hurt my wrist dreadful pulling and tugging so, and I

reckon he clean forgot I was in the world, he was so excited and panting.

All of a sudden the lightning let go a perfect sluice of white glare, and

somebody sings out:

"By the living jingo, here's the bag of gold on his breast!"

Hines let out a whoop, like everybody else, and dropped my wrist and give

a big surge to bust his way in and get a look, and the way I lit out and

shinned for the road in the dark there ain't nobody can tell.

I had the road all to myself, and I fairly flew--leastways, I had it all

to myself except the solid dark, and the now-and-then glares, and the

buzzing of the rain, and the thrashing of the wind, and the splitting of

the thunder; and sure as you are born I did clip it along!

When I struck the town I see there warn't nobody out in the storm, so I

never hunted for no back streets, but humped it straight through the main

one; and when I begun to get towards our house I aimed my eye and set it.

No light there; the house all dark--which made me feel sorry and

disappointed, I didn't know why. But at last, just as I was sailing by,

FLASH comes the light in Mary Jane's window! and my heart swelled up

sudden, like to bust; and the same second the house and all was behind me

in the dark, and wasn't ever going to be before me no more in this world.

She WAS the best girl I ever see, and had the most sand.

The minute I was far enough above the town to see I could make the

towhead, I begun to look sharp for a boat to borrow, and the first time

the lightning showed me one that wasn't chained I snatched it and shoved.

It was a canoe, and warn't fastened with nothing but a rope. The towhead

was a rattling big distance off, away out there in the middle of the

river, but I didn't lose no time; and when I struck the raft at last I

was so fagged I would a just laid down to blow and gasp if I could

afforded it. But I didn't. As I sprung aboard I sung out:

"Out with you, Jim, and set her loose! Glory be to goodness, we're shut

of them!"

Jim lit out, and was a-coming for me with both arms spread, he was so

full of joy; but when I glimpsed him in the lightning my heart shot up in

my mouth and I went overboard backwards; for I forgot he was old King

Lear and a drownded A-rab all in one, and it most scared the livers and

lights out of me. But Jim fished me out, and was going to hug me and

bless me, and so on, he was so glad I was back and we was shut of the

king and the duke, but I says:

"Not now; have it for breakfast, have it for breakfast! Cut loose and

let her slide!"

So in two seconds away we went a-sliding down the river, and it DID seem

so good to be free again and all by ourselves on the big river, and

nobody to bother us. I had to skip around a bit, and jump up and crack

my heels a few times--I couldn't help it; but about the third crack I

noticed a sound that I knowed mighty well, and held my breath and

listened and waited; and sure enough, when the next flash busted out over

the water, here they come!--and just a-laying to their oars and making

their skiff hum! It was the king and the duke.

So I wilted right down on to the planks then, and give up; and it was all

I could do to keep from crying.

CHAPTER XXX.

WHEN they got aboard the king went for me, and shook me by the collar,

and says:

"Tryin' to give us the slip, was ye, you pup! Tired of our company,

hey?"

I says:

"No, your majesty, we warn't--PLEASE don't, your majesty!"

"Quick, then, and tell us what WAS your idea, or I'll shake the insides

out o' you!"

"Honest, I'll tell you everything just as it happened, your majesty. The

man that had a-holt of me was very good to me, and kept saying he had a

boy about as big as me that died last year, and he was sorry to see a boy

in such a dangerous fix; and when they was all took by surprise by

finding the gold, and made a rush for the coffin, he lets go of me and

whispers, 'Heel it now, or they'll hang ye, sure!' and I lit out. It

didn't seem no good for ME to stay--I couldn't do nothing, and I didn't

want to be hung if I could get away. So I never stopped running till I

found the canoe; and when I got here I told Jim to hurry, or they'd catch

me and hang me yet, and said I was afeard you and the duke wasn't alive

now, and I was awful sorry, and so was Jim, and was awful glad when we

see you coming; you may ask Jim if I didn't."

Jim said it was so; and the king told him to shut up, and said, "Oh, yes,

it's MIGHTY likely!" and shook me up again, and said he reckoned he'd

drownd me. But the duke says:

"Leggo the boy, you old idiot! Would YOU a done any different? Did you

inquire around for HIM when you got loose? I don't remember it."

So the king let go of me, and begun to cuss that town and everybody in

it. But the duke says:

"You better a blame' sight give YOURSELF a good cussing, for you're the

one that's entitled to it most. You hain't done a thing from the start

that had any sense in it, except coming out so cool and cheeky with that

imaginary blue-arrow mark. That WAS bright--it was right down bully; and

it was the thing that saved us. For if it hadn't been for that they'd a

jailed us till them Englishmen's baggage come--and then--the

penitentiary, you bet! But that trick took 'em to the graveyard, and the

gold done us a still bigger kindness; for if the excited fools hadn't let

go all holts and made that rush to get a look we'd a slept in our cravats

to-night--cravats warranted to WEAR, too--longer than WE'D need 'em."

They was still a minute--thinking; then the king says, kind of

absent-minded like:

"Mf! And we reckoned the NIGGERS stole it!"

That made me squirm!

"Yes," says the duke, kinder slow and deliberate and sarcastic, "WE did."

After about a half a minute the king drawls out:

"Leastways, I did."

The duke says, the same way:

"On the contrary, I did."

The king kind of ruffles up, and says:

"Looky here, Bilgewater, what'r you referrin' to?"

The duke says, pretty brisk:

"When it comes to that, maybe you'll let me ask, what was YOU referring

to?"

"Shucks!" says the king, very sarcastic; "but I don't know--maybe you was

asleep, and didn't know what you was about."

The duke bristles up now, and says:

"Oh, let UP on this cussed nonsense; do you take me for a blame' fool?

Don't you reckon I know who hid that money in that coffin?"

"YES, sir! I know you DO know, because you done it yourself!"

"It's a lie!"--and the duke went for him. The king sings out:

"Take y'r hands off!--leggo my throat!--I take it all back!"

The duke says:

"Well, you just own up, first, that you DID hide that money there,

intending to give me the slip one of these days, and come back and dig it

up, and have it all to yourself."

"Wait jest a minute, duke--answer me this one question, honest and fair;

if you didn't put the money there, say it, and I'll b'lieve you, and take

back everything I said."

"You old scoundrel, I didn't, and you know I didn't. There, now!"

"Well, then, I b'lieve you. But answer me only jest this one more--now

DON'T git mad; didn't you have it in your mind to hook the money and hide

it?"

The duke never said nothing for a little bit; then he says:

"Well, I don't care if I DID, I didn't DO it, anyway. But you not only

had it in mind to do it, but you DONE it."

"I wisht I never die if I done it, duke, and that's honest. I won't say

I warn't goin' to do it, because I WAS; but you--I mean somebody--got in

ahead o' me."

"It's a lie! You done it, and you got to SAY you done it, or--"

The king began to gurgle, and then he gasps out:

"'Nough!--I OWN UP!"

I was very glad to hear him say that; it made me feel much more easier

than what I was feeling before. So the duke took his hands off and says:

"If you ever deny it again I'll drown you. It's WELL for you to set

there and blubber like a baby--it's fitten for you, after the way you've

acted. I never see such an old ostrich for wanting to gobble everything

--and I a-trusting you all the time, like you was my own father. You ought

to been ashamed of yourself to stand by and hear it saddled on to a lot

of poor niggers, and you never say a word for 'em. It makes me feel

ridiculous to think I was soft enough to BELIEVE that rubbage. Cuss you,

I can see now why you was so anxious to make up the deffisit--you wanted

to get what money I'd got out of the Nonesuch and one thing or another,

and scoop it ALL!"

The king says, timid, and still a-snuffling:

"Why, duke, it was you that said make up the deffisit; it warn't me."

"Dry up! I don't want to hear no more out of you!" says the duke. "And

NOW you see what you GOT by it. They've got all their own money back,

and all of OURN but a shekel or two BESIDES. G'long to bed, and don't

you deffersit ME no more deffersits, long 's YOU live!"

So the king sneaked into the wigwam and took to his bottle for comfort,

and before long the duke tackled HIS bottle; and so in about a half an

hour they was as thick as thieves again, and the tighter they got the

lovinger they got, and went off a-snoring in each other's arms. They

both got powerful mellow, but I noticed the king didn't get mellow enough

to forget to remember to not deny about hiding the money-bag again. That

made me feel easy and satisfied. Of course when they got to snoring we

had a long gabble, and I told Jim everything.

CHAPTER XXXI.

WE dasn't stop again at any town for days and days; kept right along down

the river. We was down south in the warm weather now, and a mighty long

ways from home. We begun to come to trees with Spanish moss on them,

hanging down from the limbs like long, gray beards. It was the first I

ever see it growing, and it made the woods look solemn and dismal. So

now the frauds reckoned they was out of danger, and they begun to work

the villages again.

First they done a lecture on temperance; but they didn't make enough for

them both to get drunk on. Then in another village they started a

dancing-school; but they didn't know no more how to dance than a kangaroo

does; so the first prance they made the general public jumped in and

pranced them out of town. Another time they tried to go at yellocution;

but they didn't yellocute long till the audience got up and give them a

solid good cussing, and made them skip out. They tackled missionarying,

and mesmerizing, and doctoring, and telling fortunes, and a little of

everything; but they couldn't seem to have no luck. So at last they got

just about dead broke, and laid around the raft as she floated along,

thinking and thinking, and never saying nothing, by the half a day at a

time, and dreadful blue and desperate.

And at last they took a change and begun to lay their heads together in

the wigwam and talk low and confidential two or three hours at a time.

Jim and me got uneasy. We didn't like the look of it. We judged they

was studying up some kind of worse deviltry than ever. We turned it over

and over, and at last we made up our minds they was going to break into

somebody's house or store, or was going into the counterfeit-money

business, or something. So then we was pretty scared, and made up an

agreement that we wouldn't have nothing in the world to do with such

actions, and if we ever got the least show we would give them the cold

shake and clear out and leave them behind. Well, early one morning we hid

the raft in a good, safe place about two mile below a little bit of a

shabby village named Pikesville, and the king he went ashore and told us

all to stay hid whilst he went up to town and smelt around to see if

anybody had got any wind of the Royal Nonesuch there yet. ("House to rob,

you MEAN," says I to myself; "and when you get through robbing it you'll

come back here and wonder what has become of me and Jim and the raft--and

you'll have to take it out in wondering.") And he said if he warn't back

by midday the duke and me would know it was all right, and we was to come

along.

So we stayed where we was. The duke he fretted and sweated around, and

was in a mighty sour way. He scolded us for everything, and we couldn't

seem to do nothing right; he found fault with every little thing.

Something was a-brewing, sure. I was good and glad when midday come and

no king; we could have a change, anyway--and maybe a chance for THE

chance on top of it. So me and the duke went up to the village, and

hunted around there for the king, and by and by we found him in the back

room of a little low doggery, very tight, and a lot of loafers

bullyragging him for sport, and he a-cussing and a-threatening with all

his might, and so tight he couldn't walk, and couldn't do nothing to

them. The duke he begun to abuse him for an old fool, and the king begun

to sass back, and the minute they was fairly at it I lit out and shook

the reefs out of my hind legs, and spun down the river road like a deer,

for I see our chance; and I made up my mind that it would be a long day

before they ever see me and Jim again. I got down there all out of

breath but loaded up with joy, and sung out:

"Set her loose, Jim! we're all right now!"

But there warn't no answer, and nobody come out of the wigwam. Jim was

gone! I set up a shout--and then another--and then another one; and run

this way and that in the woods, whooping and screeching; but it warn't no

use--old Jim was gone. Then I set down and cried; I couldn't help it.

But I couldn't set still long. Pretty soon I went out on the road,

trying to think what I better do, and I run across a boy walking, and

asked him if he'd seen a strange nigger dressed so and so, and he says:

"Yes."

"Whereabouts?" says I.

"Down to Silas Phelps' place, two mile below here. He's a runaway

nigger, and they've got him. Was you looking for him?"

"You bet I ain't! I run across him in the woods about an hour or two

ago, and he said if I hollered he'd cut my livers out--and told me to lay

down and stay where I was; and I done it. Been there ever since; afeard

to come out."

"Well," he says, "you needn't be afeard no more, becuz they've got him.

He run off f'm down South, som'ers."

"It's a good job they got him."

"Well, I RECKON! There's two hunderd dollars reward on him. It's like

picking up money out'n the road."

"Yes, it is--and I could a had it if I'd been big enough; I see him

FIRST. Who nailed him?"

"It was an old fellow--a stranger--and he sold out his chance in him for

forty dollars, becuz he's got to go up the river and can't wait. Think

o' that, now! You bet I'D wait, if it was seven year."

"That's me, every time," says I. "But maybe his chance ain't worth no

more than that, if he'll sell it so cheap. Maybe there's something ain't

straight about it."

"But it IS, though--straight as a string. I see the handbill myself. It

tells all about him, to a dot--paints him like a picture, and tells the

plantation he's frum, below NewrLEANS. No-sirree-BOB, they ain't no

trouble 'bout THAT speculation, you bet you. Say, gimme a chaw tobacker,

won't ye?"

I didn't have none, so he left. I went to the raft, and set down in the

wigwam to think. But I couldn't come to nothing. I thought till I wore

my head sore, but I couldn't see no way out of the trouble. After all

this long journey, and after all we'd done for them scoundrels, here it

was all come to nothing, everything all busted up and ruined, because

they could have the heart to serve Jim such a trick as that, and make him

a slave again all his life, and amongst strangers, too, for forty dirty

dollars.

Once I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for Jim to be a

slave at home where his family was, as long as he'd GOT to be a slave,

and so I'd better write a letter to Tom Sawyer and tell him to tell Miss

Watson where he was. But I soon give up that notion for two things:

she'd be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness for

leaving her, and so she'd sell him straight down the river again; and if

she didn't, everybody naturally despises an ungrateful nigger, and they'd

make Jim feel it all the time, and so he'd feel ornery and disgraced.

And then think of ME! It would get all around that Huck Finn helped a

nigger to get his freedom; and if I was ever to see anybody from that

town again I'd be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame. That's

just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he don't want to

take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide, it ain't no

disgrace. That was my fix exactly. The more I studied about this the

more my conscience went to grinding me, and the more wicked and low-down

and ornery I got to feeling. And at last, when it hit me all of a sudden

that here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in the face and

letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up

there in heaven, whilst I was stealing a poor old woman's nigger that

hadn't ever done me no harm, and now was showing me there's One that's

always on the lookout, and ain't a-going to allow no such miserable

doings to go only just so fur and no further, I most dropped in my tracks

I was so scared. Well, I tried the best I could to kinder soften it up

somehow for myself by saying I was brung up wicked, and so I warn't so

much to blame; but something inside of me kept saying, "There was the

Sunday-school, you could a gone to it; and if you'd a done it they'd a

learnt you there that people that acts as I'd been acting about that

nigger goes to everlasting fire."

It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I

couldn't try to quit being the kind of a boy I was and be better. So I

kneeled down. But the words wouldn't come. Why wouldn't they? It

warn't no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from ME, neither. I

knowed very well why they wouldn't come. It was because my heart warn't

right; it was because I warn't square; it was because I was playing

double. I was letting ON to give up sin, but away inside of me I was

holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth SAY

I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that

nigger's owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was

a lie, and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie--I found that out.

So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn't know what to do.

At last I had an idea; and I says, I'll go and write the letter--and then

see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a

feather right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece

of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote:

Miss Watson, your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below

Pikesville, and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the

reward if you send.

HUCK FINN.

I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever

felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it

straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking--thinking

how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost

and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our

trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day

and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we

a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I

couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the

other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, 'stead of

calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I

come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up

there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me

honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how

good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling

the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was

the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the ONLY one he's got

now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.

It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was

a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and

I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then

says to myself:

"All right, then, I'll GO to hell"--and tore it up.

It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. And I let them

stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole

thing out of my head, and said I would take up wickedness again, which

was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn't. And for a

starter I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I

could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as long as I

was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog.

Then I set to thinking over how to get at it, and turned over some

considerable many ways in my mind; and at last fixed up a plan that

suited me. So then I took the bearings of a woody island that was down

the river a piece, and as soon as it was fairly dark I crept out with my

raft and went for it, and hid it there, and then turned in. I slept the

night through, and got up before it was light, and had my breakfast, and

put on my store clothes, and tied up some others and one thing or another

in a bundle, and took the canoe and cleared for shore. I landed below

where I judged was Phelps's place, and hid my bundle in the woods, and

then filled up the canoe with water, and loaded rocks into her and sunk

her where I could find her again when I wanted her, about a quarter of a

mile below a little steam sawmill that was on the bank.

Then I struck up the road, and when I passed the mill I see a sign on it,

"Phelps's Sawmill," and when I come to the farm-houses, two or three

hundred yards further along, I kept my eyes peeled, but didn't see nobody

around, though it was good daylight now. But I didn't mind, because I

didn't want to see nobody just yet--I only wanted to get the lay of the

land. According to my plan, I was going to turn up there from the

village, not from below. So I just took a look, and shoved along,

straight for town. Well, the very first man I see when I got there was

the duke. He was sticking up a bill for the Royal Nonesuch--three-night

performance--like that other time. They had the cheek, them frauds! I

was right on him before I could shirk. He looked astonished, and says:

"Hel-LO! Where'd YOU come from?" Then he says, kind of glad and eager,

"Where's the raft?--got her in a good place?"

I says:

"Why, that's just what I was going to ask your grace."

Then he didn't look so joyful, and says:

"What was your idea for asking ME?" he says.

"Well," I says, "when I see the king in that doggery yesterday I says to

myself, we can't get him home for hours, till he's soberer; so I went

a-loafing around town to put in the time and wait. A man up and offered

me ten cents to help him pull a skiff over the river and back to fetch a

sheep, and so I went along; but when we was dragging him to the boat, and

the man left me a-holt of the rope and went behind him to shove him

along, he was too strong for me and jerked loose and run, and we after

him. We didn't have no dog, and so we had to chase him all over the

country till we tired him out. We never got him till dark; then we

fetched him over, and I started down for the raft. When I got there and

see it was gone, I says to myself, 'They've got into trouble and had to

leave; and they've took my nigger, which is the only nigger I've got in

the world, and now I'm in a strange country, and ain't got no property no

more, nor nothing, and no way to make my living;' so I set down and

cried. I slept in the woods all night. But what DID become of the raft,

then?--and Jim--poor Jim!"

"Blamed if I know--that is, what's become of the raft. That old fool had

made a trade and got forty dollars, and when we found him in the doggery

the loafers had matched half-dollars with him and got every cent but what

he'd spent for whisky; and when I got him home late last night and found

the raft gone, we said, 'That little rascal has stole our raft and shook

us, and run off down the river.'"

"I wouldn't shake my NIGGER, would I?--the only nigger I had in the

world, and the only property."

"We never thought of that. Fact is, I reckon we'd come to consider him

OUR nigger; yes, we did consider him so--goodness knows we had trouble

enough for him. So when we see the raft was gone and we flat broke,

there warn't anything for it but to try the Royal Nonesuch another shake.

And I've pegged along ever since, dry as a powder-horn. Where's that ten

cents? Give it here."

I had considerable money, so I give him ten cents, but begged him to

spend it for something to eat, and give me some, because it was all the

money I had, and I hadn't had nothing to eat since yesterday. He never

said nothing. The next minute he whirls on me and says:

"Do you reckon that nigger would blow on us? We'd skin him if he done

that!"

"How can he blow? Hain't he run off?"

"No! That old fool sold him, and never divided with me, and the money's

gone."

"SOLD him?" I says, and begun to cry; "why, he was MY nigger, and that

was my money. Where is he?--I want my nigger."

"Well, you can't GET your nigger, that's all--so dry up your blubbering.

Looky here--do you think YOU'D venture to blow on us? Blamed if I think

I'd trust you. Why, if you WAS to blow on us--"

He stopped, but I never see the duke look so ugly out of his eyes before.

I went on a-whimpering, and says:

"I don't want to blow on nobody; and I ain't got no time to blow, nohow.

I got to turn out and find my nigger."

He looked kinder bothered, and stood there with his bills fluttering on

his arm, thinking, and wrinkling up his forehead. At last he says:

"I'll tell you something. We got to be here three days. If you'll

promise you won't blow, and won't let the nigger blow, I'll tell you

where to find him."

So I promised, and he says:

"A farmer by the name of Silas Ph--" and then he stopped. You see, he

started to tell me the truth; but when he stopped that way, and begun to

study and think again, I reckoned he was changing his mind. And so he

was. He wouldn't trust me; he wanted to make sure of having me out of the

way the whole three days. So pretty soon he says:

"The man that bought him is named Abram Foster--Abram G. Foster--and he

lives forty mile back here in the country, on the road to Lafayette."

"All right," I says, "I can walk it in three days. And I'll start this

very afternoon."

"No you wont, you'll start NOW; and don't you lose any time about it,

neither, nor do any gabbling by the way. Just keep a tight tongue in

your head and move right along, and then you won't get into trouble with

US, d'ye hear?"

That was the order I wanted, and that was the one I played for. I wanted

to be left free to work my plans.

"So clear out," he says; "and you can tell Mr. Foster whatever you want

to. Maybe you can get him to believe that Jim IS your nigger--some idiots

don't require documents--leastways I've heard there's such down South

here. And when you tell him the handbill and the reward's bogus, maybe

he'll believe you when you explain to him what the idea was for getting

'em out. Go 'long now, and tell him anything you want to; but mind you

don't work your jaw any BETWEEN here and there."

So I left, and struck for the back country. I didn't look around, but I

kinder felt like he was watching me. But I knowed I could tire him out

at that. I went straight out in the country as much as a mile before I

stopped; then I doubled back through the woods towards Phelps'. I

reckoned I better start in on my plan straight off without fooling

around, because I wanted to stop Jim's mouth till these fellows could get

away. I didn't want no trouble with their kind. I'd seen all I wanted

to of them, and wanted to get entirely shut of them.

CHAPTER XXXII.

WHEN I got there it was all still and Sunday-like, and hot and sunshiny;

the hands was gone to the fields; and there was them kind of faint

dronings of bugs and flies in the air that makes it seem so lonesome and

like everybody's dead and gone; and if a breeze fans along and quivers

the leaves it makes you feel mournful, because you feel like it's spirits

whispering--spirits that's been dead ever so many years--and you always

think they're talking about YOU. As a general thing it makes a body wish

HE was dead, too, and done with it all.

Phelps' was one of these little one-horse cotton plantations, and they

all look alike. A rail fence round a two-acre yard; a stile made out of

logs sawed off and up-ended in steps, like barrels of a different length,

to climb over the fence with, and for the women to stand on when they are

going to jump on to a horse; some sickly grass-patches in the big yard,

but mostly it was bare and smooth, like an old hat with the nap rubbed

off; big double log-house for the white folks--hewed logs, with the

chinks stopped up with mud or mortar, and these mud-stripes been

whitewashed some time or another; round-log kitchen, with a big broad,

open but roofed passage joining it to the house; log smoke-house back of

the kitchen; three little log nigger-cabins in a row t'other side the

smoke-house; one little hut all by itself away down against the back

fence, and some outbuildings down a piece the other side; ash-hopper and

big kettle to bile soap in by the little hut; bench by the kitchen door,

with bucket of water and a gourd; hound asleep there in the sun; more

hounds asleep round about; about three shade trees away off in a corner;

some currant bushes and gooseberry bushes in one place by the fence;

outside of the fence a garden and a watermelon patch; then the cotton

fields begins, and after the fields the woods.

I went around and clumb over the back stile by the ash-hopper, and

started for the kitchen. When I got a little ways I heard the dim hum of

a spinning-wheel wailing along up and sinking along down again; and then

I knowed for certain I wished I was dead--for that IS the lonesomest

sound in the whole world.

I went right along, not fixing up any particular plan, but just trusting

to Providence to put the right words in my mouth when the time come; for

I'd noticed that Providence always did put the right words in my mouth if

I left it alone.

When I got half-way, first one hound and then another got up and went for

me, and of course I stopped and faced them, and kept still. And such

another powwow as they made! In a quarter of a minute I was a kind of a

hub of a wheel, as you may say--spokes made out of dogs--circle of

fifteen of them packed together around me, with their necks and noses

stretched up towards me, a-barking and howling; and more a-coming; you

could see them sailing over fences and around corners from everywheres.

A nigger woman come tearing out of the kitchen with a rolling-pin in her

hand, singing out, "Begone YOU Tige! you Spot! begone sah!" and she

fetched first one and then another of them a clip and sent them howling,

and then the rest followed; and the next second half of them come back,

wagging their tails around me, and making friends with me. There ain't

no harm in a hound, nohow.

And behind the woman comes a little nigger girl and two little nigger

boys without anything on but tow-linen shirts, and they hung on to their

mother's gown, and peeped out from behind her at me, bashful, the way

they always do. And here comes the white woman running from the house,

about forty-five or fifty year old, bareheaded, and her spinning-stick in

her hand; and behind her comes her little white children, acting the same

way the little niggers was going. She was smiling all over so she could

hardly stand--and says:

"It's YOU, at last!--AIN'T it?"

I out with a "Yes'm" before I thought.

She grabbed me and hugged me tight; and then gripped me by both hands and

shook and shook; and the tears come in her eyes, and run down over; and

she couldn't seem to hug and shake enough, and kept saying, "You don't

look as much like your mother as I reckoned you would; but law sakes, I

don't care for that, I'm so glad to see you! Dear, dear, it does seem

like I could eat you up! Children, it's your cousin Tom!--tell him

howdy."

But they ducked their heads, and put their fingers in their mouths, and

hid behind her. So she run on:

"Lize, hurry up and get him a hot breakfast right away--or did you get

your breakfast on the boat?"

I said I had got it on the boat. So then she started for the house,

leading me by the hand, and the children tagging after. When we got

there she set me down in a split-bottomed chair, and set herself down on

a little low stool in front of me, holding both of my hands, and says:

"Now I can have a GOOD look at you; and, laws-a-me, I've been hungry for

it a many and a many a time, all these long years, and it's come at last!

We been expecting you a couple of days and more. What kep' you?--boat

get aground?"

"Yes'm--she--"

"Don't say yes'm--say Aunt Sally. Where'd she get aground?"

I didn't rightly know what to say, because I didn't know whether the boat

would be coming up the river or down. But I go a good deal on instinct;

and my instinct said she would be coming up--from down towards Orleans.

That didn't help me much, though; for I didn't know the names of bars

down that way. I see I'd got to invent a bar, or forget the name of the

one we got aground on--or--Now I struck an idea, and fetched it out:

"It warn't the grounding--that didn't keep us back but a little. We

blowed out a cylinder-head."

"Good gracious! anybody hurt?"

"No'm. Killed a nigger."

"Well, it's lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt. Two years ago

last Christmas your uncle Silas was coming up from Newrleans on the old

Lally Rook, and she blowed out a cylinder-head and crippled a man. And I

think he died afterwards. He was a Baptist. Your uncle Silas knowed a

family in Baton Rouge that knowed his people very well. Yes, I remember

now, he DID die. Mortification set in, and they had to amputate him.

But it didn't save him. Yes, it was mortification--that was it. He

turned blue all over, and died in the hope of a glorious resurrection.

They say he was a sight to look at. Your uncle's been up to the town

every day to fetch you. And he's gone again, not more'n an hour ago;

he'll be back any minute now. You must a met him on the road, didn't

you?--oldish man, with a--"

"No, I didn't see nobody, Aunt Sally. The boat landed just at daylight,

and I left my baggage on the wharf-boat and went looking around the town

and out a piece in the country, to put in the time and not get here too

soon; and so I come down the back way."

"Who'd you give the baggage to?"

"Nobody."

"Why, child, it 'll be stole!"

"Not where I hid it I reckon it won't," I says.

"How'd you get your breakfast so early on the boat?"

It was kinder thin ice, but I says:

"The captain see me standing around, and told me I better have something

to eat before I went ashore; so he took me in the texas to the officers'

lunch, and give me all I wanted."

I was getting so uneasy I couldn't listen good. I had my mind on the

children all the time; I wanted to get them out to one side and pump them

a little, and find out who I was. But I couldn't get no show, Mrs.

Phelps kept it up and run on so. Pretty soon she made the cold chills

streak all down my back, because she says:

"But here we're a-running on this way, and you hain't told me a word

about Sis, nor any of them. Now I'll rest my works a little, and you

start up yourn; just tell me EVERYTHING--tell me all about 'm all every

one of 'm; and how they are, and what they're doing, and what they told

you to tell me; and every last thing you can think of."

Well, I see I was up a stump--and up it good. Providence had stood by me

this fur all right, but I was hard and tight aground now. I see it

warn't a bit of use to try to go ahead--I'd got to throw up my hand. So

I says to myself, here's another place where I got to resk the truth. I

opened my mouth to begin; but she grabbed me and hustled me in behind the

bed, and says:

"Here he comes! Stick your head down lower--there, that'll do; you can't

be seen now. Don't you let on you're here. I'll play a joke on him.

Children, don't you say a word."

I see I was in a fix now. But it warn't no use to worry; there warn't

nothing to do but just hold still, and try and be ready to stand from

under when the lightning struck.

I had just one little glimpse of the old gentleman when he come in; then

the bed hid him. Mrs. Phelps she jumps for him, and says:

"Has he come?"

"No," says her husband.

"Good-NESS gracious!" she says, "what in the warld can have become of

him?"

"I can't imagine," says the old gentleman; "and I must say it makes me

dreadful uneasy."

"Uneasy!" she says; "I'm ready to go distracted! He MUST a come; and

you've missed him along the road. I KNOW it's so--something tells me

so."

"Why, Sally, I COULDN'T miss him along the road--YOU know that."

"But oh, dear, dear, what WILL Sis say! He must a come! You must a

missed him. He--"

"Oh, don't distress me any more'n I'm already distressed. I don't know

what in the world to make of it. I'm at my wit's end, and I don't mind

acknowledging 't I'm right down scared. But there's no hope that he's

come; for he COULDN'T come and me miss him. Sally, it's terrible--just

terrible--something's happened to the boat, sure!"

"Why, Silas! Look yonder!--up the road!--ain't that somebody coming?"

He sprung to the window at the head of the bed, and that give Mrs. Phelps

the chance she wanted. She stooped down quick at the foot of the bed and

give me a pull, and out I come; and when he turned back from the window

there she stood, a-beaming and a-smiling like a house afire, and I

standing pretty meek and sweaty alongside. The old gentleman stared, and

says:

"Why, who's that?"

"Who do you reckon 't is?"

"I hain't no idea. Who IS it?"

"It's TOM SAWYER!"

By jings, I most slumped through the floor! But there warn't no time to

swap knives; the old man grabbed me by the hand and shook, and kept on

shaking; and all the time how the woman did dance around and laugh and

cry; and then how they both did fire off questions about Sid, and Mary,

and the rest of the tribe.

But if they was joyful, it warn't nothing to what I was; for it was like

being born again, I was so glad to find out who I was. Well, they froze

to me for two hours; and at last, when my chin was so tired it couldn't

hardly go any more, I had told them more about my family--I mean the

Sawyer family--than ever happened to any six Sawyer families. And I

explained all about how we blowed out a cylinder-head at the mouth of

White River, and it took us three days to fix it. Which was all right,

and worked first-rate; because THEY didn't know but what it would take

three days to fix it. If I'd a called it a bolthead it would a done just

as well.

Now I was feeling pretty comfortable all down one side, and pretty

uncomfortable all up the other. Being Tom Sawyer was easy and

comfortable, and it stayed easy and comfortable till by and by I hear a

steamboat coughing along down the river. Then I says to myself, s'pose

Tom Sawyer comes down on that boat? And s'pose he steps in here any

minute, and sings out my name before I can throw him a wink to keep

quiet?

Well, I couldn't HAVE it that way; it wouldn't do at all. I must go up

the road and waylay him. So I told the folks I reckoned I would go up to

the town and fetch down my baggage. The old gentleman was for going

along with me, but I said no, I could drive the horse myself, and I

druther he wouldn't take no trouble about me.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

SO I started for town in the wagon, and when I was half-way I see a wagon

coming, and sure enough it was Tom Sawyer, and I stopped and waited till

he come along. I says "Hold on!" and it stopped alongside, and his mouth

opened up like a trunk, and stayed so; and he swallowed two or three

times like a person that's got a dry throat, and then says:

"I hain't ever done you no harm. You know that. So, then, what you want

to come back and ha'nt ME for?"

I says:

"I hain't come back--I hain't been GONE."

When he heard my voice it righted him up some, but he warn't quite

satisfied yet. He says:

"Don't you play nothing on me, because I wouldn't on you. Honest injun,

you ain't a ghost?"

"Honest injun, I ain't," I says.

"Well--I--I--well, that ought to settle it, of course; but I can't

somehow seem to understand it no way. Looky here, warn't you ever

murdered AT ALL?"

"No. I warn't ever murdered at all--I played it on them. You come in

here and feel of me if you don't believe me."

So he done it; and it satisfied him; and he was that glad to see me again

he didn't know what to do. And he wanted to know all about it right off,

because it was a grand adventure, and mysterious, and so it hit him where

he lived. But I said, leave it alone till by and by; and told his driver

to wait, and we drove off a little piece, and I told him the kind of a

fix I was in, and what did he reckon we better do? He said, let him

alone a minute, and don't disturb him. So he thought and thought, and

pretty soon he says:

"It's all right; I've got it. Take my trunk in your wagon, and let on

it's your'n; and you turn back and fool along slow, so as to get to the

house about the time you ought to; and I'll go towards town a piece, and

take a fresh start, and get there a quarter or a half an hour after you;

and you needn't let on to know me at first."

I says:

"All right; but wait a minute. There's one more thing--a thing that

NOBODY don't know but me. And that is, there's a nigger here that I'm

a-trying to steal out of slavery, and his name is JIM--old Miss Watson's

Jim."

He says:

"What! Why, Jim is--"

He stopped and went to studying. I says:

"I know what you'll say. You'll say it's dirty, low-down business; but

what if it is? I'm low down; and I'm a-going to steal him, and I want

you keep mum and not let on. Will you?"

His eye lit up, and he says:

"I'll HELP you steal him!"

Well, I let go all holts then, like I was shot. It was the most

astonishing speech I ever heard--and I'm bound to say Tom Sawyer fell

considerable in my estimation. Only I couldn't believe it. Tom Sawyer a

NIGGER-STEALER!

"Oh, shucks!" I says; "you're joking."

"I ain't joking, either."

"Well, then," I says, "joking or no joking, if you hear anything said

about a runaway nigger, don't forget to remember that YOU don't know

nothing about him, and I don't know nothing about him."

Then we took the trunk and put it in my wagon, and he drove off his way

and I drove mine. But of course I forgot all about driving slow on

accounts of being glad and full of thinking; so I got home a heap too

quick for that length of a trip. The old gentleman was at the door, and

he says:

"Why, this is wonderful! Whoever would a thought it was in that mare to

do it? I wish we'd a timed her. And she hain't sweated a hair--not a

hair. It's wonderful. Why, I wouldn't take a hundred dollars for that

horse now--I wouldn't, honest; and yet I'd a sold her for fifteen

before, and thought 'twas all she was worth."

That's all he said. He was the innocentest, best old soul I ever see.

But it warn't surprising; because he warn't only just a farmer, he was a

preacher, too, and had a little one-horse log church down back of the

plantation, which he built it himself at his own expense, for a church

and schoolhouse, and never charged nothing for his preaching, and it was

worth it, too. There was plenty other farmer-preachers like that, and

done the same way, down South.

In about half an hour Tom's wagon drove up to the front stile, and Aunt

Sally she see it through the window, because it was only about fifty

yards, and says:

"Why, there's somebody come! I wonder who 'tis? Why, I do believe it's

a stranger. Jimmy" (that's one of the children) "run and tell Lize to

put on another plate for dinner."

Everybody made a rush for the front door, because, of course, a stranger

don't come EVERY year, and so he lays over the yaller-fever, for

interest, when he does come. Tom was over the stile and starting for the

house; the wagon was spinning up the road for the village, and we was all

bunched in the front door. Tom had his store clothes on, and an

audience--and that was always nuts for Tom Sawyer. In them circumstances

it warn't no trouble to him to throw in an amount of style that was

suitable. He warn't a boy to meeky along up that yard like a sheep; no,

he come ca'm and important, like the ram. When he got a-front of us he

lifts his hat ever so gracious and dainty, like it was the lid of a box

that had butterflies asleep in it and he didn't want to disturb them, and

says:

"Mr. Archibald Nichols, I presume?"

"No, my boy," says the old gentleman, "I'm sorry to say 't your driver

has deceived you; Nichols's place is down a matter of three mile more.

Come in, come in."

Tom he took a look back over his shoulder, and says, "Too late--he's out

of sight."

"Yes, he's gone, my son, and you must come in and eat your dinner with

us; and then we'll hitch up and take you down to Nichols's."

"Oh, I CAN'T make you so much trouble; I couldn't think of it. I'll walk

--I don't mind the distance."

"But we won't LET you walk--it wouldn't be Southern hospitality to do it.

Come right in."

"Oh, DO," says Aunt Sally; "it ain't a bit of trouble to us, not a bit in

the world. You must stay. It's a long, dusty three mile, and we can't

let you walk. And, besides, I've already told 'em to put on another

plate when I see you coming; so you mustn't disappoint us. Come right in

and make yourself at home."

So Tom he thanked them very hearty and handsome, and let himself be

persuaded, and come in; and when he was in he said he was a stranger from

Hicksville, Ohio, and his name was William Thompson--and he made another

bow.

Well, he run on, and on, and on, making up stuff about Hicksville and

everybody in it he could invent, and I getting a little nervious, and

wondering how this was going to help me out of my scrape; and at last,

still talking along, he reached over and kissed Aunt Sally right on the

mouth, and then settled back again in his chair comfortable, and was

going on talking; but she jumped up and wiped it off with the back of her

hand, and says:

"You owdacious puppy!"

He looked kind of hurt, and says:

"I'm surprised at you, m'am."

"You're s'rp--Why, what do you reckon I am? I've a good notion to take

and--Say, what do you mean by kissing me?"

He looked kind of humble, and says:

"I didn't mean nothing, m'am. I didn't mean no harm. I--I--thought

you'd like it."

"Why, you born fool!" She took up the spinning stick, and it looked like

it was all she could do to keep from giving him a crack with it. "What

made you think I'd like it?"

"Well, I don't know. Only, they--they--told me you would."

"THEY told you I would. Whoever told you's ANOTHER lunatic. I never

heard the beat of it. Who's THEY?"

"Why, everybody. They all said so, m'am."

It was all she could do to hold in; and her eyes snapped, and her fingers

worked like she wanted to scratch him; and she says:

"Who's 'everybody'? Out with their names, or ther'll be an idiot short."

He got up and looked distressed, and fumbled his hat, and says:

"I'm sorry, and I warn't expecting it. They told me to. They all told

me to. They all said, kiss her; and said she'd like it. They all said

it--every one of them. But I'm sorry, m'am, and I won't do it no more

--I won't, honest."

"You won't, won't you? Well, I sh'd RECKON you won't!"

"No'm, I'm honest about it; I won't ever do it again--till you ask me."

"Till I ASK you! Well, I never see the beat of it in my born days! I

lay you'll be the Methusalem-numskull of creation before ever I ask you

--or the likes of you."

"Well," he says, "it does surprise me so. I can't make it out, somehow.

They said you would, and I thought you would. But--" He stopped and

looked around slow, like he wished he could run across a friendly eye

somewheres, and fetched up on the old gentleman's, and says, "Didn't YOU

think she'd like me to kiss her, sir?"

"Why, no; I--I--well, no, I b'lieve I didn't."

Then he looks on around the same way to me, and says:

"Tom, didn't YOU think Aunt Sally 'd open out her arms and say, 'Sid

Sawyer--'"

"My land!" she says, breaking in and jumping for him, "you impudent young

rascal, to fool a body so--" and was going to hug him, but he fended her

off, and says:

"No, not till you've asked me first."

So she didn't lose no time, but asked him; and hugged him and kissed him

over and over again, and then turned him over to the old man, and he took

what was left. And after they got a little quiet again she says:

"Why, dear me, I never see such a surprise. We warn't looking for YOU at

all, but only Tom. Sis never wrote to me about anybody coming but him."

"It's because it warn't INTENDED for any of us to come but Tom," he says;

"but I begged and begged, and at the last minute she let me come, too;

so, coming down the river, me and Tom thought it would be a first-rate

surprise for him to come here to the house first, and for me to by and by

tag along and drop in, and let on to be a stranger. But it was a

mistake, Aunt Sally. This ain't no healthy place for a stranger to

come."

"No--not impudent whelps, Sid. You ought to had your jaws boxed; I

hain't been so put out since I don't know when. But I don't care, I

don't mind the terms--I'd be willing to stand a thousand such jokes to

have you here. Well, to think of that performance! I don't deny it, I

was most putrified with astonishment when you give me that smack."

We had dinner out in that broad open passage betwixt the house and the

kitchen; and there was things enough on that table for seven families

--and all hot, too; none of your flabby, tough meat that's laid in a

cupboard in a damp cellar all night and tastes like a hunk of old cold

cannibal in the morning. Uncle Silas he asked a pretty long blessing

over it, but it was worth it; and it didn't cool it a bit, neither, the

way I've seen them kind of interruptions do lots of times. There was a

considerable good deal of talk all the afternoon, and me and Tom was on

the lookout all the time; but it warn't no use, they didn't happen to say

nothing about any runaway nigger, and we was afraid to try to work up to

it. But at supper, at night, one of the little boys says:

"Pa, mayn't Tom and Sid and me go to the show?"

"No," says the old man, "I reckon there ain't going to be any; and you

couldn't go if there was; because the runaway nigger told Burton and me

all about that scandalous show, and Burton said he would tell the people;

so I reckon they've drove the owdacious loafers out of town before this

time."

So there it was!--but I couldn't help it. Tom and me was to sleep in the

same room and bed; so, being tired, we bid good-night and went up to bed

right after supper, and clumb out of the window and down the

lightning-rod, and shoved for the town; for I didn't believe anybody was

going to give the king and the duke a hint, and so if I didn't hurry up

and give them one they'd get into trouble sure.

On the road Tom he told me all about how it was reckoned I was murdered,

and how pap disappeared pretty soon, and didn't come back no more, and

what a stir there was when Jim run away; and I told Tom all about our

Royal Nonesuch rapscallions, and as much of the raft voyage as I had time

to; and as we struck into the town and up through the--here comes a

raging rush of people with torches, and an awful whooping and yelling,

and banging tin pans and blowing horns; and we jumped to one side to let

them go by; and as they went by I see they had the king and the duke

astraddle of a rail--that is, I knowed it WAS the king and the duke,

though they was all over tar and feathers, and didn't look like nothing

in the world that was human--just looked like a couple of monstrous big

soldier-plumes. Well, it made me sick to see it; and I was sorry for

them poor pitiful rascals, it seemed like I couldn't ever feel any

hardness against them any more in the world. It was a dreadful thing to

see. Human beings CAN be awful cruel to one another.

We see we was too late--couldn't do no good. We asked some stragglers

about it, and they said everybody went to the show looking very innocent;

and laid low and kept dark till the poor old king was in the middle of

his cavortings on the stage; then somebody give a signal, and the house

rose up and went for them.

So we poked along back home, and I warn't feeling so brash as I was

before, but kind of ornery, and humble, and to blame, somehow--though I

hadn't done nothing. But that's always the way; it don't make no

difference whether you do right or wrong, a person's conscience ain't got

no sense, and just goes for him anyway. If I had a yaller dog that

didn't know no more than a person's conscience does I would pison him.

It takes up more room than all the rest of a person's insides, and yet

ain't no good, nohow. Tom Sawyer he says the same.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

WE stopped talking, and got to thinking. By and by Tom says:

"Looky here, Huck, what fools we are to not think of it before! I bet I

know where Jim is."

"No! Where?"

"In that hut down by the ash-hopper. Why, looky here. When we was at

dinner, didn't you see a nigger man go in there with some vittles?"

"Yes."

"What did you think the vittles was for?"

"For a dog."

"So 'd I. Well, it wasn't for a dog."

"Why?"

"Because part of it was watermelon."

"So it was--I noticed it. Well, it does beat all that I never thought

about a dog not eating watermelon. It shows how a body can see and don't

see at the same time."

"Well, the nigger unlocked the padlock when he went in, and he locked it

again when he came out. He fetched uncle a key about the time we got up

from table--same key, I bet. Watermelon shows man, lock shows prisoner;

and it ain't likely there's two prisoners on such a little plantation,

and where the people's all so kind and good. Jim's the prisoner. All

right--I'm glad we found it out detective fashion; I wouldn't give

shucks for any other way. Now you work your mind, and study out a plan

to steal Jim, and I will study out one, too; and we'll take the one we

like the best."

What a head for just a boy to have! If I had Tom Sawyer's head I

wouldn't trade it off to be a duke, nor mate of a steamboat, nor clown in

a circus, nor nothing I can think of. I went to thinking out a plan, but

only just to be doing something; I knowed very well where the right plan

was going to come from. Pretty soon Tom says:

"Ready?"

"Yes," I says.

"All right--bring it out."

"My plan is this," I says. "We can easy find out if it's Jim in there.

Then get up my canoe to-morrow night, and fetch my raft over from the

island. Then the first dark night that comes steal the key out of the

old man's britches after he goes to bed, and shove off down the river on

the raft with Jim, hiding daytimes and running nights, the way me and Jim

used to do before. Wouldn't that plan work?"

"WORK? Why, cert'nly it would work, like rats a-fighting. But it's too

blame' simple; there ain't nothing TO it. What's the good of a plan that

ain't no more trouble than that? It's as mild as goose-milk. Why, Huck,

it wouldn't make no more talk than breaking into a soap factory."

I never said nothing, because I warn't expecting nothing different; but I

knowed mighty well that whenever he got HIS plan ready it wouldn't have

none of them objections to it.

And it didn't. He told me what it was, and I see in a minute it was

worth fifteen of mine for style, and would make Jim just as free a man as

mine would, and maybe get us all killed besides. So I was satisfied, and

said we would waltz in on it. I needn't tell what it was here, because I

knowed it wouldn't stay the way, it was. I knowed he would be changing

it around every which way as we went along, and heaving in new

bullinesses wherever he got a chance. And that is what he done.

Well, one thing was dead sure, and that was that Tom Sawyer was in

earnest, and was actuly going to help steal that nigger out of slavery.

That was the thing that was too many for me. Here was a boy that was

respectable and well brung up; and had a character to lose; and folks at

home that had characters; and he was bright and not leather-headed; and

knowing and not ignorant; and not mean, but kind; and yet here he was,

without any more pride, or rightness, or feeling, than to stoop to this

business, and make himself a shame, and his family a shame, before

everybody. I COULDN'T understand it no way at all. It was outrageous,

and I knowed I ought to just up and tell him so; and so be his true

friend, and let him quit the thing right where he was and save himself.

And I DID start to tell him; but he shut me up, and says:

"Don't you reckon I know what I'm about? Don't I generly know what I'm

about?"

"Yes."

"Didn't I SAY I was going to help steal the nigger?"

"Yes."

"WELL, then."

That's all he said, and that's all I said. It warn't no use to say any

more; because when he said he'd do a thing, he always done it. But I

couldn't make out how he was willing to go into this thing; so I just let

it go, and never bothered no more about it. If he was bound to have it

so, I couldn't help it.

When we got home the house was all dark and still; so we went on down to

the hut by the ash-hopper for to examine it. We went through the yard so

as to see what the hounds would do. They knowed us, and didn't make no

more noise than country dogs is always doing when anything comes by in

the night. When we got to the cabin we took a look at the front and the

two sides; and on the side I warn't acquainted with--which was the north

side--we found a square window-hole, up tolerable high, with just one

stout board nailed across it. I says:

"Here's the ticket. This hole's big enough for Jim to get through if we

wrench off the board."

Tom says:

"It's as simple as tit-tat-toe, three-in-a-row, and as easy as playing

hooky. I should HOPE we can find a way that's a little more complicated

than THAT, Huck Finn."

"Well, then," I says, "how 'll it do to saw him out, the way I done

before I was murdered that time?"

"That's more LIKE," he says. "It's real mysterious, and troublesome, and

good," he says; "but I bet we can find a way that's twice as long. There

ain't no hurry; le's keep on looking around."

Betwixt the hut and the fence, on the back side, was a lean-to that

joined the hut at the eaves, and was made out of plank. It was as long

as the hut, but narrow--only about six foot wide. The door to it was at

the south end, and was padlocked. Tom he went to the soap-kettle and

searched around, and fetched back the iron thing they lift the lid with;

so he took it and prized out one of the staples. The chain fell down,

and we opened the door and went in, and shut it, and struck a match, and

see the shed was only built against a cabin and hadn't no connection with

it; and there warn't no floor to the shed, nor nothing in it but some old

rusty played-out hoes and spades and picks and a crippled plow. The

match went out, and so did we, and shoved in the staple again, and the

door was locked as good as ever. Tom was joyful. He says;

"Now we're all right. We'll DIG him out. It 'll take about a week!"

Then we started for the house, and I went in the back door--you only have

to pull a buckskin latch-string, they don't fasten the doors--but that

warn't romantical enough for Tom Sawyer; no way would do him but he must

climb up the lightning-rod. But after he got up half way about three

times, and missed fire and fell every time, and the last time most busted

his brains out, he thought he'd got to give it up; but after he was

rested he allowed he would give her one more turn for luck, and this time

he made the trip.

In the morning we was up at break of day, and down to the nigger cabins

to pet the dogs and make friends with the nigger that fed Jim--if it WAS

Jim that was being fed. The niggers was just getting through breakfast

and starting for the fields; and Jim's nigger was piling up a tin pan

with bread and meat and things; and whilst the others was leaving, the

key come from the house.

This nigger had a good-natured, chuckle-headed face, and his wool was all

tied up in little bunches with thread. That was to keep witches off. He

said the witches was pestering him awful these nights, and making him see

all kinds of strange things, and hear all kinds of strange words and

noises, and he didn't believe he was ever witched so long before in his

life. He got so worked up, and got to running on so about his troubles,

he forgot all about what he'd been a-going to do. So Tom says:

"What's the vittles for? Going to feed the dogs?"

The nigger kind of smiled around gradually over his face, like when you

heave a brickbat in a mud-puddle, and he says:

"Yes, Mars Sid, A dog. Cur'us dog, too. Does you want to go en look at

'im?"

"Yes."

I hunched Tom, and whispers:

"You going, right here in the daybreak? THAT warn't the plan."

"No, it warn't; but it's the plan NOW."

So, drat him, we went along, but I didn't like it much. When we got in

we couldn't hardly see anything, it was so dark; but Jim was there, sure

enough, and could see us; and he sings out:

"Why, HUCK! En good LAN'! ain' dat Misto Tom?"

I just knowed how it would be; I just expected it. I didn't know nothing

to do; and if I had I couldn't a done it, because that nigger busted in

and says:

"Why, de gracious sakes! do he know you genlmen?"

We could see pretty well now. Tom he looked at the nigger, steady and

kind of wondering, and says:

"Does WHO know us?"

"Why, dis-yer runaway nigger."

"I don't reckon he does; but what put that into your head?"

"What PUT it dar? Didn' he jis' dis minute sing out like he knowed you?"

Tom says, in a puzzled-up kind of way:

"Well, that's mighty curious. WHO sung out? WHEN did he sing out? WHAT

did he sing out?" And turns to me, perfectly ca'm, and says, "Did YOU

hear anybody sing out?"

Of course there warn't nothing to be said but the one thing; so I says:

"No; I ain't heard nobody say nothing."

Then he turns to Jim, and looks him over like he never see him before,

and says:

"Did you sing out?"

"No, sah," says Jim; "I hain't said nothing, sah."

"Not a word?"

"No, sah, I hain't said a word."

"Did you ever see us before?"

"No, sah; not as I knows on."

So Tom turns to the nigger, which was looking wild and distressed, and

says, kind of severe:

"What do you reckon's the matter with you, anyway? What made you think

somebody sung out?"

"Oh, it's de dad-blame' witches, sah, en I wisht I was dead, I do. Dey's

awluz at it, sah, en dey do mos' kill me, dey sk'yers me so. Please to

don't tell nobody 'bout it sah, er ole Mars Silas he'll scole me; 'kase

he say dey AIN'T no witches. I jis' wish to goodness he was heah now

--DEN what would he say! I jis' bet he couldn' fine no way to git aroun'

it DIS time. But it's awluz jis' so; people dat's SOT, stays sot; dey

won't look into noth'n'en fine it out f'r deyselves, en when YOU fine it

out en tell um 'bout it, dey doan' b'lieve you."

Tom give him a dime, and said we wouldn't tell nobody; and told him to

buy some more thread to tie up his wool with; and then looks at Jim, and

says:

"I wonder if Uncle Silas is going to hang this nigger. If I was to catch

a nigger that was ungrateful enough to run away, I wouldn't give him up,

I'd hang him." And whilst the nigger stepped to the door to look at the

dime and bite it to see if it was good, he whispers to Jim and says:

"Don't ever let on to know us. And if you hear any digging going on

nights, it's us; we're going to set you free."

Jim only had time to grab us by the hand and squeeze it; then the nigger

come back, and we said we'd come again some time if the nigger wanted us

to; and he said he would, more particular if it was dark, because the

witches went for him mostly in the dark, and it was good to have folks

around then.

CHAPTER XXXV.

IT would be most an hour yet till breakfast, so we left and struck down

into the woods; because Tom said we got to have SOME light to see how to

dig by, and a lantern makes too much, and might get us into trouble; what

we must have was a lot of them rotten chunks that's called fox-fire, and

just makes a soft kind of a glow when you lay them in a dark place. We

fetched an armful and hid it in the weeds, and set down to rest, and Tom

says, kind of dissatisfied:

"Blame it, this whole thing is just as easy and awkward as it can be.

And so it makes it so rotten difficult to get up a difficult plan. There

ain't no watchman to be drugged--now there OUGHT to be a watchman. There

ain't even a dog to give a sleeping-mixture to. And there's Jim chained

by one leg, with a ten-foot chain, to the leg of his bed: why, all you

got to do is to lift up the bedstead and slip off the chain. And Uncle

Silas he trusts everybody; sends the key to the punkin-headed nigger, and

don't send nobody to watch the nigger. Jim could a got out of that

window-hole before this, only there wouldn't be no use trying to travel

with a ten-foot chain on his leg. Why, drat it, Huck, it's the stupidest

arrangement I ever see. You got to invent ALL the difficulties. Well, we

can't help it; we got to do the best we can with the materials we've got.

Anyhow, there's one thing--there's more honor in getting him out

through a lot of difficulties and dangers, where there warn't one of them

furnished to you by the people who it was their duty to furnish them, and

you had to contrive them all out of your own head. Now look at just that

one thing of the lantern. When you come down to the cold facts, we

simply got to LET ON that a lantern's resky. Why, we could work with a

torchlight procession if we wanted to, I believe. Now, whilst I think of

it, we got to hunt up something to make a saw out of the first chance we

get."

"What do we want of a saw?"

"What do we WANT of a saw? Hain't we got to saw the leg of Jim's bed

off, so as to get the chain loose?"

"Why, you just said a body could lift up the bedstead and slip the chain

off."