She was asked if she would not recant those of her words and deeds which

had been pronounced evil by her judges. Here answer made confusion and

damage again:

"I submit them to God and the Pope."

The Pope once more! It was very embarrassing. Here was a person who was

asked to submit her case to the Church, and who frankly consents--offers

to submit it to the very head of it. What more could any one require? How

was one to answer such a formidably unanswerable answer as that?

The worried judges put their heads together and whispered and planned and

discussed. Then they brought forth this sufficiently shambling

conclusion--but it was the best they could do, in so close a place: they

said the Pope was so far away; and it was not necessary to go to him

anyway, because the present judges had sufficient power and authority to

deal with the present case, and were in effect "the Church" to that

extent. At another time they could have smiled at this conceit, but not

now; they were not comfortable enough now.

The mob was getting impatient. It was beginning to put on a threatening

aspect; it was tired of standing, tired of the scorching heat; and the

thunder was coming nearer, the lightning was flashing brighter. It was

necessary to hurry this matter to a close. Erard showed Joan a written

form, which had been prepared and made all ready beforehand, and asked

her to abjure.

"Abjure? What is abjure?"

She did not know the word. It was explained to her by Massieu. She tried

to understand, but she was breaking, under exhaustion, and she could not

gather the meaning. It was all a jumble and confusion of strange words.

In her despair she sent out this beseeching cry:

"I appeal to the Church universal whether I ought to abjure or not!"

Erard exclaimed:

"You shall abjure instantly, or instantly be burnt!"

She glanced up, at those awful words, and for the first time she saw the

stake and the mass of red coals--redder and angrier than ever now under

the constantly deepening storm-gloom. She gasped and staggered up out of

her seat muttering and mumbling incoherently, and gazed vacantly upon the

people and the scene about her like one who is dazed, or thinks he

dreams, and does not know where he is.

The priests crowded about her imploring her to sign the paper, there were

many voices beseeching and urging her at once, there was great turmoil

and shouting and excitement among the populace and everywhere.

"Sign! sign!" from the priests; "sign--sign and be saved!" And Loyseleur

was urging at her ear, "Do as I told you--do not destroy yourself!"

Joan said plaintively to these people:

"Ah, you do not do well to seduce me."

The judges joined their voices to the others. Yes, even the iron in their

hearts melted, and they said:

"O Joan, we pity you so! Take back what you have said, or we must deliver

you up to punishment."

And now there was another voice--it was from the other platform--pealing

solemnly above the din: Cauchon's--reading the sentence of death!

Joan's strength was all spent. She stood looking about her in a

bewildered way a moment, then slowly she sank to her knees, and bowed her

head and said:

"I submit."

They gave her no time to reconsider--they knew the peril of that. The

moment the words were out of her mouth Massieu was reading to her the

abjuration, and she was repeating the words after him mechanically,

unconsciously--and smiling; for her wandering mind was far away in some

happier world.

Then this short paper of six lines was slipped aside and a long one of

many pages was smuggled into its place, and she, noting nothing, put her

mark on it, saying, in pathetic apology, that she did not know how to

write. But a secretary of the King of England was there to take care of

that defect; he guided her hand with his own, and wrote her

name--Jehanne.

The great crime was accomplished. She had signed--what? She did not

know--but the others knew. She had signed a paper confessing herself a

sorceress, a dealer with devils, a liar, a blasphermer of God and His

angels, a lover of blood, a promoter of sedition, cruel, wicked,

commissioned of Satan; and this signature of hers bound her to resume the

dress of a woman.

There were other promises, but that one would answer, without the others;

and that one could be made to destroy her.

Loyseleur pressed forward and praised her for having done "such a good

day's work."

But she was still dreamy, she hardly heard.

Then Cauchon pronounced the words which dissolved the excommunication and

restored her to her beloved Church, with all the dear privileges of

worship. Ah, she heard that! You could see it in the deep gratitude that

rose in her face and transfigured it with joy.

But how transient was that happiness! For Cauchon, without a tremor of

pity in his voice, added these crushing words:

"And that she may repent of her crimes and repeat them no more, she is

sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, with the bread of affliction and the

water of anguish!"

Perpetual imprisonment! She had never dreamed of that--such a thing had

never been hinted to her by Loyseleur or by any other. Loyseleur had

distinctly said and promised that "all would be well with her." And the

very last words spoken to her by Erard, on that very platform, when he

was urging her to abjure, was a straight, unqualified promised--that if

she would do it she should go free from captivity.

She stood stunned and speechless a moment; then she remembered, with such

solacement as the thought could furnish, that by another clear promise

made by Cauchon himself--she would at least be the Church's captive, and

have women about her in place of a brutal foreign soldiery. So she turned

to the body of priests and said, with a sad resignation:

"Now, you men of the Church, take me to your prison, and leave me no

longer in the hands of the English"; and she gathered up her chains and

prepared to move.

But alas! now came these shameful words from Cauchon--and with them a

mocking laugh:

"Take her to the prison whence she came!"

Poor abused girl! She stood dumb, smitten, paralyzed. It was pitiful to

see. She had been beguiled, lied to, betrayed; she saw it all now.

The rumbling of a drum broke upon the stillness, and for just one moment

she thought of the glorious deliverance promised by her Voices--I read it

in the rapture that lit her face; then she saw what it was--her prison

escort--and that light faded, never to revive again. And now her head

began a piteous rocking motion, swaying slowly, this way and that, as is

the way when one is suffering unwordable pain, or when one's heart is

broken; then drearily she went from us, with her face in her hands, and

sobbing bitterly.

21 Respited Only for Torture

THERE IS no certainty that any one in all Rouen was in the secret of the

deep game which Cauchon was playing except the Cardinal of Winchester.

Then you can imagine the astonishment and stupefaction of that vast mob

gathered there and those crowds of churchmen assembled on the two

platforms, when they saw Joan of Arc moving away, alive and

whole--slipping out of their grip at last, after all this tedious

waiting, all this tantalizing expectancy.

Nobody was able to stir or speak for a while, so paralyzing was the

universal astonishment, so unbelievable the fact that the stake was

actually standing there unoccupied and its prey gone.

Then suddenly everybody broke into a fury of rage; maledictions and

charges of treachery began to fly freely; yes, and even stones: a stone

came near killing the Cardinal of Winchester--it just missed his head.

But the man who threw it was not to blame, for he was excited, and a

person who is excited never can throw straight.

The tumult was very great, indeed, for a while. In the midst of it a

chaplain of the Cardinal even forgot the proprieties so far as to

oppobriously assail the August Bishop of Beauvais himself, shaking his

fist in his face and shouting:

"By God, you are a traitor!"

"You lie!" responded the Bishop.

He a traitor! Oh, far from it; he certainly was the last Frenchman that

any Briton had a right to bring that charge against.

The Early of Warwick lost his temper, too. He was a doughty soldier, but

when it came to the intellectuals--when it came to delicate chicane, and

scheming, and trickery--he couldn't see any further through a millstone

than another. So he burst out in his frank warrior fashion, and swore

that the King of England was being treacherously used, and that Joan of

Arc was going to be allowed to cheat the stake. But they whispered

comfort into his ear:

"Give yourself no uneasiness, my lord; we shall soon have her again."

Perhaps the like tidings found their way all around, for good news

travels fast as well as bad. At any rate, the ragings presently quieted

down, and the huge concourse crumbled apart and disappeared. And thus we

reached the noon of that fearful Thursday.

We two youths were happy; happier than any words can tell--for we were

not in the secret any more than the rest. Joan's life was saved. We knew

that, and that was enough. France would hear of this day's infamous

work--and then! Why, then her gallant sons would flock to her standard by

thousands and thousands, multitudes upon multitudes, and their wrath

would be like the wrath of the ocean when the storm-winds sweep it; and

they would hurl themselves against this doomed city and overwhelm it like

the resistless tides of that ocean, and Joan of Arc would march again!

In six days--seven days--one short week--noble France, grateful France,

indignant France, would be thundering at these gates--let us count the

hours, let us count the minutes, let us count the seconds! O happy day, O

day of ecstasy, how our hearts sang in our bosoms!

For we were young then, yes, we were very young.

Do you think the exhausted prisoner was allowed to rest and sleep after

she had spent the small remnant of her strength in dragging her tired

body back to the dungeon?

No, there was no rest for her, with those sleuth-hounds on her track.

Cauchon and some of his people followed her to her lair straightway; they

found her dazed and dull, her mental and physical forces in a state of

prostration. They told her she had abjured; that she had made certain

promises--among them, to resume the apparel of her sex; and that if she

relapsed, the Church would cast her out for good and all. She heard the

words, but they had no meaning to her. She was like a person who has

taken a narcotic and is dying for sleep, dying for rest from nagging,

dying to be let alone, and who mechanically does everything the

persecutor asks, taking but dull note of the things done, and but dully

recording them in the memory. And so Joan put on the gown which Cauchon

and his people had brought; and would come to herself by and by, and have

at first but a dim idea as to when and how the change had come about.

Cauchon went away happy and content. Joan had resumed woman's dress

without protest; also she had been formally warned against relapsing. He

had witnesses to these facts. How could matters be better?

But suppose she should not relapse?

Why, then she must be forced to do it.

Did Cauchon hint to the English guards that thenceforth if they chose to

make their prisoner's captivity crueler and bitterer than ever, no

official notice would be taken of it? Perhaps so; since the guards did

begin that policy at once, and no official notice was taken of it. Yes,

from that moment Joan's life in that dungeon was made almost unendurable.

Do not ask me to enlarge upon it. I will not do it.

22 Joan Gives the Fatal Answer

FRIDAY and Saturday were happy days for Noel and me. Our minds were full

of our splendid dream of France aroused--France shaking her mane--France

on the march--France at the gates--Rouen in ashes, and Joan free! Our

imagination was on fire; we were delirious with pride and joy. For we

were very young, as I have said.

We knew nothing about what had been happening in the dungeon in the

yester-afternoon. We supposed that as Joan had abjured and been taken

back into the forgiving bosom of the Church, she was being gently used

now, and her captivity made as pleasant and comfortable for her as the

circumstances would allow. So, in high contentment, we planned out our

share in the great rescue, and fought our part of the fight over and over

again during those two happy days--as happy days as ever I have known.

Sunday morning came. I was awake, enjoying the balmy, lazy weather, and

thinking. Thinking of the rescue--what else? I had no other thought now.

I was absorbed in that, drunk with the happiness of it.

I heard a voice shouting far down the street, and soon it came nearer,

and I caught the words:

"Joan of Arc has relapsed! The witch's time has come!"

It stopped my heart, it turned my blood to ice. That was more than sixty

years ago, but that triumphant note rings as clear in my memory to-day as

it rang in my ear that long-vanished summer morning. We are so strangely

made; the memories that could make us happy pass away; it is the memories

that break our hearts that abide.

Soon other voices took up that cry--tens, scores, hundreds of voices; all

the world seemed filled with the brutal joy of it. And there were other

clamors--the clatter of rushing feet, merry congratulations, bursts of

coarse laughter, the rolling of drums, the boom and crash of distant

bands profaning the sacred day with the music of victory and

thanksgiving.

About the middle of the afternoon came a summons for Manchon and me to go

to Joan's dungeon--a summons from Cauchon. But by that time distrust had

already taken possession of the English and their soldiery again, and all

Rouen was in an angry and threatening mood. We could see plenty of

evidences of this from our own windows--fist-shaking, black looks,

tumultuous tides of furious men billowing by along the street.

And we learned that up at the castle things were going very badly,

indeed; that there was a great mob gathered there who considered the

relapse a lie and a priestly trick, and among them many half-drunk

English soldiers. Moreover, these people had gone beyond words. They had

laid hands upon a number of churchmen who were trying to enter the

castle, and it had been difficult work to rescue them and save their

lives.

And so Manchon refused to go. He said he would not go a step without a

safeguard from Warwick. So next morning Warwick sent an escort of

soldiers, and then we went. Matters had not grown peacefuler meantime,

but worse. The soldiers protected us from bodily damage, but as we passed

through the great mob at the castle we were assailed with insults and

shameful epithets. I bore it well enough, though, and said to myself,

with secret satisfaction, "In three or four short days, my lads, you will

be employing your tongues in a different sort from this--and I shall be

there to hear."

To my mind these were as good as dead men. How many of them would still

be alive after the rescue that was coming? Not more than enough to amuse

the executioner a short half-hour, certainly.

It turned out that the report was true. Joan had relapsed. She was

sitting there in her chains, clothed again in her male attire.

She accused nobody. That was her way. It was not in her character to hold

a servant to account for what his master had made him do, and her mind

had cleared now, and she knew that the advantage which had been taken of

her the previous morning had its origin, not in the subordinate but in

the master--Cauchon.

Here is what had happened. While Joan slept, in the early morning of

Sunday, one of the guards stole her female apparel and put her male

attire in its place. When she woke she asked for the other dress, but the

guards refused to give it back. She protested, and said she was forbidden

to wear the male dress. But they continued to refuse. She had to have

clothing, for modesty's sake; moreover, she saw that she could not save

her life if she must fight for it against treacheries like this; so she

put on the forbidden garments, knowing what the end would be. She was

weary of the struggle, poor thing.

We had followed in the wake of Cauchon, the Vice-Inquisitor, and the

others--six or eight--and when I saw Joan sitting there, despondent,

forlorn, and still in chains, when I was expecting to find her situation

so different, I did not know what to make of it. The shock was very

great. I had doubted the relapse perhaps; possibly I had believed in it,

but had not realized it.

Cauchon's victory was complete. He had had a harassed and irritated and

disgusted look for a long time, but that was all gone now, and

contentment and serenity had taken its place. His purple face was full of

tranquil and malicious happiness. He went trailing his robes and stood

grandly in front of Joan, with his legs apart, and remained so more than

a minute, gloating over her and enjoying the sight of this poor ruined

creature, who had won so lofty a place for him in the service of the meek

and merciful Jesus, Saviour of the World, Lord of the Universe--in case

England kept her promise to him, who kept no promises himself.

Presently the judges began to question Joan. One of them, named

Marguerie, who was a man with more insight than prudence, remarked upon

Joan's change of clothing, and said:

"There is something suspicious about this. How could it have come about

without connivance on the part of others? Perhaps even something worse?"

"Thousand devils!" screamed Cauchon, in a fury. "Will you shut your

mouth?"

"Armagnac! Traitor!" shouted the soldiers on guard, and made a rush for

Marguerie with their lances leveled. It was with the greatest difficulty

that he was saved from being run through the body. He made no more

attempts to help the inquiry, poor man. The other judges proceeded with

the questionings.

"Why have you resumed this male habit?"

I did not quite catch her answer, for just then a soldier's halberd

slipped from his fingers and fell on the stone floor with a crash; but I

thought I understood Joan to say that she had resumed it of her own

motion.

"But you have promised and sworn that you would not go back to it."

I was full of anxiety to hear her answer to that question; and when it

came it was just what I was expecting. She said--quiet quietly:

"I have never intended and never understood myself to swear I would not

resume it."

There--I had been sure, all along, that she did not know what she was

doing and saying on the platform Thursday, and this answer of hers was

proof that I had not been mistaken. Then she went on to add this:

"But I had a right to resume it, because the promises made to me have not

been kept--promises that I should be allowed to go to mass and receive

the communion, and that I should be freed from the bondage of these

chains--but they are still upon me, as you see."

"Nevertheless, you have abjured, and have especially promised to return

no more to the dress of a man."

Then Joan held out her fettered hands sorrowfully toward these unfeeling

men and said:

"I would rather die than continue so. But if they may be taken off, and

if I may hear mass, and be removed to a penitential prison, and have a

woman about me, I will be good, and will do what shall seem good to you

that I do."

Cauchon sniffed scoffingly at that. Honor the compact which he and his

had made with her?

Fulfil its conditions? What need of that? Conditions had been a good

thing to concede, temporarily, and for advantage; but they have served

their turn--let something of a fresher sort and of more consequence be

considered. The resumption of the male dress was sufficient for all

practical purposes, but perhaps Joan could be led to add something to

that fatal crime. So Cauchon asked her if her Voices had spoken to her

since Thursday--and he reminded her of her abjuration.

"Yes," she answered; and then it came out that the Voices had talked with

her about the abjuration--told her about it, I suppose. She guilelessly

reasserted the heavenly origin of her mission, and did it with the

untroubled mien of one who was not conscious that she had ever knowingly

repudiated it. So I was convinced once more that she had had no notion of

what she was doing that Thursday morning on the platform. Finally she

said, "My Voices told me I did very wrong to confess that what I had done

was not well." Then she sighed, and said with simplicity, "But it was the

fear of the fire that made me do so."

That is, fear of the fire had made her sign a paper whose contents she

had not understood then, but understood now by revelation of her Voices

and by testimony of her persecutors.

She was sane now and not exhausted; her courage had come back, and with

it her inborn loyalty to the truth. She was bravely and serenely speaking

it again, knowing that it would deliver her body up to that very fire

which had such terrors for her.

That answer of hers was quite long, quite frank, wholly free from

concealments or palliations. It made me shudder; I knew she was

pronouncing sentence of death upon herself. So did poor Manchon. And he

wrote in the margin abreast of it:

"RESPONSIO MORTIFERA."

Fatal answer. Yes, all present knew that it was, indeed, a fatal answer.

Then there fell a silence such as falls in a sick-room when the watchers

of the dying draw a deep breath and say softly one to another, "All is

over."

Here, likewise, all was over; but after some moments Cauchon, wishing to

clinch this matter and make it final, put this question:

"Do you still believe that your Voices are St. Marguerite and St.

Catherine?"

"Yes--and that they come from God."

"Yet you denied them on the scaffold?"

Then she made direct and clear affirmation that she had never had any

intention to deny them; and that if--I noted the if--"if she had made

some retractions and revocations on the scaffold it was from fear of the

fire, and it was a violation of the truth."

There it is again, you see. She certainly never knew what it was she had

done on the scaffold until she was told of it afterward by these people

and by her Voices.

And now she closed this most painful scene with these words; and there

was a weary note in them that was pathetic:

"I would rather do my penance all at once; let me die. I cannot endure

captivity any longer."

The spirit born for sunshine and liberty so longed for release that it

would take it in any form, even that.

Several among the company of judges went from the place troubled and

sorrowful, the others in another mood. In the court of the castle we

found the Earl of Warwick and fifty English waiting, impatient for news.

As soon as Cauchon saw them he shouted--laughing--think of a man

destroying a friendless poor girl and then having the heart to laugh at

it:

"Make yourselves comfortable--it's all over with her!"

23 The Time Is at Hand

THE YOUNG can sink into abysses of despondency, and it was so with Noel

and me now; but the hopes of the young are quick to rise again, and it

was so with ours. We called back that vague promise of the Voices, and

said the one to the other that the glorious release was to happen at "the

last moment"--"that other time was not the last moment, but this is; it

will happen now; the King will come, La Hire will come, and with them our

veterans, and behind them all France!" And so we were full of heart

again, and could already hear, in fancy, that stirring music the clash of

steel and the war-cries and the uproar of the onset, and in fancy see our

prisoner free, her chains gone, her sword in her hand.

But this dream was to pass also, and come to nothing. Late at night, when

Manchon came in, he said:

"I am come from the dungeon, and I have a message for you from that poor

child."

A message to me! If he had been noticing I think he would have discovered

me--discovered that my indifference concerning the prisoner was a

pretense; for I was caught off my guard, and was so moved and so exalted

to be so honored by her that I must have shown my feeling in my face and

manner.

"A message for me, your reverence?"

"Yes. It is something she wishes done. She said she had noticed the young

man who helps me, and that he had a good face; and did I think he would

do a kindness for her? I said I knew you would, and asked her what it

was, and she said a letter--would you write a letter to her mother?

"And I said you would. But I said I would do it myself, and gladly; but

she said no, that my labors were heavy, and she thought the young man

would not mind the doing of this service for one not able to do it for

herself, she not knowing how to write. Then I would have sent for you,

and at that the sadness vanished out of her face. Why, it was as if she

was going to see a friend, poor friendless thing. But I was not

permitted. I did my best, but the orders remain as strict as ever, the

doors are closed against all but officials; as before, none but officials

may speak to her. So I went back and told her, and she sighed, and was

sad again. Now this is what she begs you to write to her mother. It is

partly a strange message, and to me means nothing, but she said her

mother would understand. You will 'convey her adoring love to her family

and her village friends, and say there will be no rescue, for that this

night--and it is the third time in the twelvemonth, and is final--she has

seen the Vision of the Tree.'"

"How strange!"

"Yes, it is strange, but that is what she said; and said her parents

would understand. And for a little time she was lost in dreams and

thinkings, and her lips moved, and I caught in her muttering these lines,

which she said over two or three times, and they seemed to bring peace

and contentment to her. I set them down, thinking they might have some

connection with her letter and be useful; but it was not so; they were a

mere memory, floating idly in a tired mind, and they have no meaning, at

least no relevancy."

I took the piece of paper, and found what I knew I should find:

And when in exile wand'ring, we Shall fainting yearn for glimpse of thee,

Oh, rise upon our sight!

There was no hope any more. I knew it now. I knew that Joan's letter was

a message to Noel and me, as well as to her family, and that its object

was to banish vain hopes from our minds and tell us from her own mouth of

the blow that was going to fall upon us, so that we, being her soldiers,

would know it for a command to bear it as became us and her, and so

submit to the will of God; and in thus obeying, find assuagement of our

grief. It was like her, for she was always thinking of others, not of

herself. Yes, her heart was sore for us; she could find time to think of

us, the humblest of her servants, and try to soften our pain, lighten the

burden of our troubles--she that was drinking of the bitter waters; she

that was walking in the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

I wrote the letter. You will know what it cost me, without my telling

you. I wrote it with the same wooden stylus which had put upon parchment

the first words ever dictated by Joan of Arc--that high summons to the

English to vacate France, two years past, when she was a lass of

seventeen; it had now set down the last ones which she was ever to

dictate. Then I broke it. For the pen that had served Joan of Arc could

not serve any that would come after her in this earth without abasement.

The next day, May 29th, Cauchon summoned his serfs, and forty-two

responded. It is charitable to believe that the other twenty were ashamed

to come. The forty-two pronounced her a relapsed heretic, and condemned

her to be delivered over to the secular arm. Cauchon thanked them.

Then he sent orders that Joan of Arc be conveyed the next morning to the

place known as the Old Market; and that she be then delivered to the

civil judge, and by the civil judge to the executioner. That meant she

would be burnt.

All the afternoon and evening of Tuesday, the 29th, the news was flying,

and the people of the country-side flocking to Rouen to see the

tragedy--all, at least, who could prove their English sympathies and

count upon admission. The press grew thicker and thicker in the streets,

the excitement grew higher and higher. And now a thing was noticeable

again which had been noticeable more than once before--that there was

pity for Joan in the hearts of many of these people. Whenever she had

been in great danger it had manifested itself, and now it was apparent

again--manifest in a pathetic dumb sorrow which was visible in many

faces.

Early the next morning, Wednesday, Martin Ladvenu and another friar were

sent to Joan to prepare her for death; and Manchon and I went with

them--a hard service for me. We tramped through the dim corridors,

winding this way and that, and piercing ever deeper and deeper into that

vast heart of stone, and at last we stood before Joan. But she did not

know it. She sat with her hands in her lap and her head bowed, thinking,

and her face was very sad. One might not know what she was thinking of.

Of her home, and the peaceful pastures, and the friends she was no more

to see? Of her wrongs, and her forsaken estate, and the cruelties which

had been put upon her? Or was it of death--the death which she had longed

for, and which was now so close?

Or was it of the kind of death she must suffer? I hoped not; for she

feared only one kind, and that one had for her unspeakable terrors. I

believed she so feared that one that with her strong will she would shut

the thought of it wholly out of her mind, and hope and believe that God

would take pity on her and grant her an easier one; and so it might

chance that the awful news which we were bringing might come as a

surprise to her at last.

We stood silent awhile, but she was still unconscious of us, still deep

in her sad musings and far away. Then Martin Ladvenu said, softly:

"Joan."

She looked up then, with a little start and a wan smile, and said:

"Speak. Have you a message for me?"

"Yes, my poor child. Try to bear it. Do you think you can bear it?"

"Yes"--very softly, and her head drooped again.

"I am come to prepare you for death."

A faint shiver trembled through her wasted body. There was a pause. In

the stillness we could hear our breathings. Then she said, still in that

low voice:

"When will it be?"

The muffled notes of a tolling bell floated to our ears out of the

distance.

"Now. The time is at hand."

That slight shiver passed again.

"It is so soon--ah, it is so soon!"

There was a long silence. The distant throbbings of the bell pulsed

through it, and we stood motionless and listening. But it was broken at

last:

"What death is it?"

"By fire!"

"Oh, I knew it, I knew it!" She sprang wildly to her feet, and wound her

hands in her hair, and began to writhe and sob, oh, so piteously, and

mourn and grieve and lament, and turn to first one and then another of

us, and search our faces beseechingly, as hoping she might find help and

friendliness there, poor thing--she that had never denied these to any

creature, even her wounded enemy on the battle-field.

"Oh, cruel, cruel, to treat me so! And must my body, that has never been

defiled, be consumed today and turned to ashes? Ah, sooner would I that

my head were cut off seven times than suffer this woeful death. I had the

promise of the Church's prison when I submitted, and if I had but been

there, and not left here in the hands of my enemies, this miserable fate

had not befallen me.

"Oh, I appeal to God the Great Judge, against the injustice which has

been done me."

There was none there that could endure it. They turned away, with the

tears running down their faces. In a moment I was on my knees at her

feet. At once she thought only of my danger, and bent and whispered in my

hear: "Up!--do not peril yourself, good heart. There--God bless you

always!" and I felt the quick clasp of her hand. Mine was the last hand

she touched with hers in life. None saw it; history does not know of it

or tell of it, yet it is true, just as I have told it. The next moment

she saw Cauchon coming, and she went and stood before him and reproached

him, saying:

"Bishop, it is by you that I die!"

He was not shamed, not touched; but said, smoothly:

"Ah, be patient, Joan. You die because you have not kept your promise,

but have returned to your sins."

"Alas," she said, "if you had put me in the Church's prison, and given me

right and proper keepers, as you promised, this would not have happened.

And for this I summon you to answer before God!"

Then Cauchon winced, and looked less placidly content than before, and he

turned him about and went away.

Joan stood awhile musing. She grew calmer, but occasionally she wiped her

eyes, and now and then sobs shook her body; but their violence was

modifying now, and the intervals between them were growing longer.

Finally she looked up and saw Pierre Maurice, who had come in with the

Bishop, and she said to him:

"Master Peter, where shall I be this night?"

"Have you not good hope in God?"

"Yes--and by His grace I shall be in Paradise."

Now Martin Ladvenu heard her in confession; then she begged for the

sacrament. But how grant the communion to one who had been publicly cut

off from the Church, and was now no more entitled to its privileges than

an unbaptized pagan? The brother could not do this, but he sent to

Cauchon to inquire what he must do. All laws, human and divine, were

alike to that man--he respected none of them. He sent back orders to

grant Joan whatever she wished. Her last speech to him had reached his

fears, perhaps; it could not reach his heart, for he had none.

The Eucharist was brought now to that poor soul that had yearned for it

with such unutterable longing all these desolate months. It was a solemn

moment. While we had been in the deeps of the prison, the public courts

of the castle had been filling up with crowds of the humbler sort of men

and women, who had learned what was going on in Joan's cell, and had come

with softened hearts to do--they knew not what; to hear--they knew not

what. We knew nothing of this, for they were out of our view. And there

were other great crowds of the like caste gathered in masses outside the

castle gates. And when the lights and the other accompaniments of the

Sacrament passed by, coming to Joan in the prison, all those multitudes

kneeled down and began to pray for her, and many wept; and when the

solemn ceremony of the communion began in Joan's cell, out of the

distance a moving sound was borne moaning to our ears--it was those

invisible multitudes chanting the litany for a departing soul.

The fear of the fiery death was gone from Joan of Arc now, to come again

no more, except for one fleeting instant--then it would pass, and

serenity and courage would take its place and abide till the end.

24 Joan the Martyr

AT NINE o'clock the Maid of Orleans, Deliverer of France, went forth in

the grace of her innocence and her youth to lay down her life for the

country she loved with such devotion, and for the King that had abandoned

her. She sat in the cart that is used only for felons. In one respect she

was treated worse than a felon; for whereas she was on her way to be

sentenced by the civil arm, she already bore her judgment inscribed in

advance upon a miter-shaped cap which she wore:

HERETIC, RELAPSED, APOSTATE, IDOLATER

In the cart with her sat the friar Martin Ladvenu and Maetre Jean

Massieu. She looked girlishly fair and sweet and saintly in her long

white robe, and when a gush of sunlight flooded her as she emerged from

the gloom of the prison and was yet for a moment still framed in the arch

of the somber gate, the massed multitudes of poor folk murmured "A

vision! a vision!" and sank to their knees praying, and many of the women

weeping; and the moving invocation for the dying arose again, and was

taken up and borne along, a majestic wave of sound, which accompanied the

doomed, solacing and blessing her, all the sorrowful way to the place of

death. "Christ have pity! Saint Margaret have pity! Pray for her, all ye

saints, archangels, and blessed martyrs, pray for her! Saints and angels

intercede for her! From thy wrath, good Lord, deliver her! O Lord God,

save her! Have mercy on her, we beseech Thee, good Lord!"

It is just and true what one of the histories has said: "The poor and the

helpless had nothing but their prayers to give Joan of Arc; but these we

may believe were not unavailing. There are few more pathetic events

recorded in history than this weeping, helpless, praying crowd, holding

their lighted candles and kneeling on the pavement beneath the prison

walls of the old fortress."

And it was so all the way: thousands upon thousands massed upon their

knees and stretching far down the distances, thick-sown with the faint

yellow candle-flames, like a field starred with golden flowers.

But there were some that did not kneel; these were the English soldiers.

They stood elbow to elbow, on each side of Joan's road, and walled it in

all the way; and behind these living walls knelt the multitudes.

By and by a frantic man in priest's garb came wailing and lamenting, and

tore through the crowd and the barriers of soldiers and flung himself on

his knees by Joan's cart and put up his hands in supplication, crying

out:

"O forgive, forgive!"

It was Loyseleur!

And Joan forgave him; forgave him out of a heart that knew nothing but

forgiveness, nothing but compassion, nothing but pity for all that

suffer, let their offense be what it might. And she had no word of

reproach for this poor wretch who had wrought day and night with deceits

and treacheries and hypocrisies to betray her to her death.

The soldiers would have killed him, but the Earl of Warwick saved his

life. What became of him is not known. He hid himself from the world

somewhere, to endure his remorse as he might.

In the square of the Old Market stood the two platforms and the stake

that had stood before in the churchyard of St. Ouen. The platforms were

occupied as before, the one by Joan and her judges, the other by great

dignitaries, the principal being Cauchon and the English

Cardinal--Winchester. The square was packed with people, the windows and

roofs of the blocks of buildings surrounding it were black with them.

When the preparations had been finished, all noise and movement gradually

ceased, and a waiting stillness followed which was solemn and impressive.

And now, by order of Cauchon, an ecclesiastic named Nicholas Midi

preached a sermon, wherein he explained that when a branch of the

vine--which is the Church--becomes diseased and corrupt, it must be cut

away or it will corrupt and destroy the whole vine. He made it appear

that Joan, through her wickedness, was a menace and a peril to the

Church's purity and holiness, and her death therefore necessary. When he

was come to the end of his discourse he turned toward her and paused a

moment, then he said:

"Joan, the Church can no longer protect you. Go in peace!"

Joan had been placed wholly apart and conspicuous, to signify the

Church's abandonment of her, and she sat there in her loneliness, waiting

in patience and resignation for the end. Cauchon addressed her now. He

had been advised to read the form of her abjuration to her, and had

brought it with him; but he changed his mind, fearing that she would

proclaim the truth--that she had never knowingly abjured--and so bring

shame upon him and eternal infamy. He contented himself with admonishing

her to keep in mind her wickednesses, and repent of them, and think of

her salvation. Then he solemnly pronounced her excommunicate and cut off

from the body of the Church. With a final word he delivered her over to

the secular arm for judgment and sentence.

Joan, weeping, knelt and began to pray. For whom? Herself? Oh, no--for

the King of France. Her voice rose sweet and clear, and penetrated all

hearts with its passionate pathos. She never thought of his treacheries

to her, she never thought of his desertion of her, she never remembered

that it was because he was an ingrate that she was here to die a

miserable death; she remembered only that he was her King, that she was

his loyal and loving subject, and that his enemies had undermined his

cause with evil reports and false charges, and he not by to defend

himself. And so, in the very presence of death, she forgot her own

troubles to implore all in her hearing to be just to him; to believe that

he was good and noble and sincere, and not in any way to blame for any

acts of hers, neither advising them nor urging them, but being wholly

clear and free of all responsibility for them. Then, closing, she begged

in humble and touching words that all here present would pray for her and

would pardon her, both her enemies and such as might look friendly upon

her and feel pity for her in their hearts.

There was hardly one heart there that was not touched--even the English,

even the judges showed it, and there was many a lip that trembled and

many an eye that was blurred with tears; yes, even the English

Cardinal's--that man with a political heart of stone but a human heart of

flesh.

The secular judge who should have delivered judgment and pronounced

sentence was himself so disturbed that he forgot his duty, and Joan went

to her death unsentenced--thus completing with an illegality what had

begun illegally and had so continued to the end. He only said--to the

guards:

"Take her"; and to the executioner, "Do your duty."

Joan asked for a cross. None was able to furnish one. But an English

soldier broke a stick in two and crossed the pieces and tied them

together, and this cross he gave her, moved to it by the good heart that

was in him; and she kissed it and put it in her bosom. Then Isambard de

la Pierre went to the church near by and brought her a consecrated one;

and this one also she kissed, and pressed it to her bosom with rapture,

and then kissed it again and again, covering it with tears and pouring

out her gratitude to God and the saints.

And so, weeping, and with her cross to her lips, she climbed up the cruel

steps to the face of the stake, with the friar Isambard at her side. Then

she was helped up to the top of the pile of wood that was built around

the lower third of the stake and stood upon it with her back against the

stake, and the world gazing up at her breathless. The executioner

ascended to her side and wound chains around her slender body, and so

fastened her to the stake. Then he descended to finish his dreadful

office; and there she remained alone--she that had had so many friends in

the days when she was free, and had been so loved and so dear.

All these things I saw, albeit dimly and blurred with tears; but I could

bear no more. I continued in my place, but what I shall deliver to you

now I got by others' eyes and others' mouths. Tragic sounds there were

that pierced my ears and wounded my heart as I sat there, but it is as I

tell you: the latest image recorded by my eyes in that desolating hour

was Joan of Arc with the grace of her comely youth still unmarred; and

that image, untouched by time or decay, has remained with me all my days.

Now I will go on.

If any thought that now, in that solemn hour when all transgressors

repent and confess, she would revoke her revocation and say her great

deeds had been evil deeds and Satan and his fiends their source, they

erred. No such thought was in her blameless mind. She was not thinking of

herself and her troubles, but of others, and of woes that might befall

them. And so, turning her grieving eyes about her, where rose the towers

and spires of that fair city, she said:

"Oh, Rouen, Rouen, must I die here, and must you be my tomb? Ah, Rouen,

Rouen, I have great fear that you will suffer for my death."

A whiff of smoke swept upward past her face, and for one moment terror

seized her and she cried out, "Water! Give me holy water!" but the next

moment her fears were gone, and they came no more to torture her.

She heard the flames crackling below her, and immediately distress for a

fellow-creature who was in danger took possession of her. It was the

friar Isambard. She had given him her cross and begged him to raise it

toward her face and let her eyes rest in hope and consolation upon it

till she was entered into the peace of God. She made him go out from the

danger of the fire. Then she was satisfied, and said:

"Now keep it always in my sight until the end."

Not even yet could Cauchon, that man without shame, endure to let her die

in peace, but went toward her, all black with crimes and sins as he was,

and cried out:

"I am come, Joan, to exhort you for the last time to repent and seek the

pardon of God."

"I die through you," she said, and these were the last words she spoke to

any upon earth.

Then the pitchy smoke, shot through with red flashes of flame, rolled up

in a thick volume and hid her from sight; and from the heart of this

darkness her voice rose strong and eloquent in prayer, and when by

moments the wind shredded somewhat of the smoke aside, there were veiled

glimpses of an upturned face and moving lips. At last a mercifully swift

tide of flame burst upward, and none saw that face any more nor that

form, and the voice was still.

Yes, she was gone from us: JOAN OF ARC! What little words they are, to

tell of a rich world made empty and poor!

CONCLUSION

JOAN'S BROTHER Jacques died in Domremy during the Great Trial at Rouen.

This was according to the prophecy which Joan made that day in the

pastures the time that she said the rest of us would go to the great

wars.

When her poor old father heard of the martyrdom it broke his heart, and

he died.

The mother was granted a pension by the city of Orleans, and upon this

she lived out her days, which were many. Twenty-four years after her

illustrious child's death she traveled all the way to Paris in the

winter-time and was present at the opening of the discussion in the

Cathedral of Notre Dame which was the first step in the Rehabilitation.

Paris was crowded with people, from all about France, who came to get

sight of the venerable dame, and it was a touching spectacle when she

moved through these reverent wet-eyed multitudes on her way to the grand

honors awaiting her at the cathedral. With her were Jean and Pierre, no

longer the light-hearted youths who marched with us from Vaucouleurs, but

war-torn veterans with hair beginning to show frost.

After the martyrdom Noel and I went back to Domremy, but presently when

the Constable Richemont superseded La Tremouille as the King's chief

adviser and began the completion of Joan's great work, we put on our

harness and returned to the field and fought for the King all through the

wars and skirmishes until France was freed of the English. It was what

Joan would have desired of us; and, dead or alive, her desire was law for

us. All the survivors of the personal staff were faithful to her memory

and fought for the King to the end. Mainly we were well scattered, but

when Paris fell we happened to be together. It was a great day and a

joyous; but it was a sad one at the same time, because Joan was not there

to march into the captured capital with us.

Noel and I remained always together, and I was by his side when death

claimed him. It was in the last great battle of the war. In that battle

fell also Joan's sturdy old enemy Talbot. He was eighty-five years old,

and had spent his whole life in battle. A fine old lion he was, with his

flowing white mane and his tameless spirit; yes, and his indestructible

energy as well; for he fought as knightly and vigorous a fight that day

as the best man there.

La Hire survived the martyrdom thirteen years; and always fighting, of

course, for that was all he enjoyed in life. I did not see him in all

that time, for we were far apart, but one was always hearing of him.

The Bastard of Orleans and D'Alencon and D'Aulon lived to see France

free, and to testify with Jean and Pierre d'Arc and Pasquerel and me at

the Rehabilitation. But they are all at rest now, these many years. I

alone am left of those who fought at the side of Joan of Arc in the great

wars.

She said I would live until those wars were forgotten--a prophecy which

failed. If I should live a thousand years it would still fail. For

whatsoever had touch with Joan of Arc, that thing is immortal.

Members of Joan's family married, and they have left descendants. Their

descendants are of the nobility, but their family name and blood bring

them honors which no other nobles receive or may hope for. You have seen

how everybody along the way uncovered when those children came yesterday

to pay their duty to me. It was not because they are noble, it is because

they are grandchildren of the brothers of Joan of Arc.

Now as to the Rehabilitation. Joan crowned the King at Rheims. For reward

he allowed her to be hunted to her death without making one effort to

save her. During the next twenty-three years he remained indifferent to

her memory; indifferent to the fact that her good name was under a

damning blot put there by the priest because of the deeds which she had

done in saving him and his scepter; indifferent to the fact that France

was ashamed, and longed to have the Deliverer's fair fame restored.

Indifferent all that time. Then he suddenly changed and was anxious to

have justice for poor Joan himself. Why? Had he become grateful at last?

Had remorse attacked his hard heart? No, he had a better reason--a better

one for his sort of man. This better reason was that, now that the

English had been finally expelled from the country, they were beginning

to call attention to the fact that this King had gotten his crown by the

hands of a person proven by the priests to have been in league with Satan

and burned for it by them as a sorceress--therefore, of what value or

authority was such a Kingship as that? Of no value at all; no nation

could afford to allow such a king to remain on the throne.

It was high time to stir now, and the King did it. That is how Charles

VII. came to be smitten with anxiety to have justice done the memory of

his benefactress.

He appealed to the Pope, and the Pope appointed a great commission of

churchmen to examine into the facts of Joan's life and award judgment.

The Commission sat at Paris, at Domremy, at Rouen, at Orleans, and at

several other places, and continued its work during several months. It

examined the records of Joan's trials, it examined the Bastard of

Orleans, and the Duke d'Alencon, and D'Aulon, and Pasquerel, and

Courcelles, and Isambard de la Pierre, and Manchon, and me, and many

others whose names I have made familiar to you; also they examined more

than a hundred witnesses whose names are less familiar to you--the

friends of Joan in Domremy, Vaucouleurs, Orleans, and other places, and a

number of judges and other people who had assisted at the Rouen trials,

the abjuration, and the martyrdom. And out of this exhaustive examination

Joan's character and history came spotless and perfect, and this verdict

was placed upon record, to remain forever.

I was present upon most of these occasions, and saw again many faces

which I have not seen for a quarter of a century; among them some

well-beloved faces--those of our generals and that of Catherine Boucher

(married, alas!), and also among them certain other faces that filled me

with bitterness--those of Beaupere and Courcelles and a number of their

fellow-fiends. I saw Haumette and Little Mengette--edging along toward

fifty now, and mothers of many children. I saw Noel's father, and the

parents of the Paladin and the Sunflower.

It was beautiful to hear the Duke d'Alencon praise Joan's splendid

capacities as a general, and to hear the Bastard indorse these praises

with his eloquent tongue and then go on and tell how sweet and good Joan

was, and how full of pluck and fire and impetuosity, and mischief, and

mirthfulness, and tenderness, and compassion, and everything that was

pure and fine and noble and lovely. He made her live again before me, and

wrung my heart.

I have finished my story of Joan of Arc, that wonderful child, that

sublime personality, that spirit which in one regard has had no peer and

will have none--this: its purity from all alloy of self-seeking,

self-interest, personal ambition. In it no trace of these motives can be

found, search as you may, and this cannot be said of any other person

whose name appears in profane history.

With Joan of Arc love of country was more than a sentiment--it was a

passion. She was the Genius of Patriotism--she was Patriotism embodied,

concreted, made flesh, and palpable to the touch and visible to the eye.

Love, Mercy, Charity, Fortitude, War, Peace, Poetry, Music--these may be

symbolized as any shall prefer: by figures of either sex and of any age;

but a slender girl in her first young bloom, with the martyr's crown upon

her head, and in her hand the sword that severed her country's

bonds--shall not this, and no other, stand for PATRIOTISM through all the

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

TOM SAWYER, DETECTIVE

CHAPTER I. AN INVITATION FOR TOM AND HUCK

[Footnote: Strange as the incidents of this story are, they are not

inventions, but facts--even to the public confession of the accused. I

take them from an old-time Swedish criminal trial, change the actors, and

transfer the scenes to America. I have added some details, but only a

couple of them are important ones. -- M. T.]

WELL, it was the next spring after me and Tom Sawyer set our old nigger

Jim free, the time he was chained up for a runaway slave down there on

Tom's uncle Silas's farm in Arkansaw. The frost was working out of the

ground, and out of the air, too, and it was getting closer and closer

onto barefoot time every day; and next it would be marble time, and next

mumbletypeg, and next tops and hoops, and next kites, and then right away

it would be summer and going in a-swimming. It just makes a boy homesick

to look ahead like that and see how far off summer is. Yes, and it sets

him to sighing and saddening around, and there's something the matter

with him, he don't know what. But anyway, he gets out by himself and

mopes and thinks; and mostly he hunts for a lonesome place high up on the

hill in the edge of the woods, and sets there and looks away off on the

big Mississippi down there a-reaching miles and miles around the points

where the timber looks smoky and dim it's so far off and still, and

everything's so solemn it seems like everybody you've loved is dead and

gone, and you 'most wish you was dead and gone too, and done with it all.

Don't you know what that is? It's spring fever. That is what the name of

it is. And when you've got it, you want--oh, you don't quite know what

it is you DO want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it

so! It seems to you that mainly what you want is to get away; get away

from the same old tedious things you're so used to seeing and so tired

of, and set something new. That is the idea; you want to go and be a

wanderer; you want to go wandering far away to strange countries where

everything is mysterious and wonderful and romantic. And if you can't do

that, you'll put up with considerable less; you'll go anywhere you CAN

go, just so as to get away, and be thankful of the chance, too.

Well, me and Tom Sawyer had the spring fever, and had it bad, too; but it

warn't any use to think about Tom trying to get away, because, as he

said, his Aunt Polly wouldn't let him quit school and go traipsing off

somers wasting time; so we was pretty blue. We was setting on the front

steps one day about sundown talking this way, when out comes his aunt

Polly with a letter in her hand and says:

"Tom, I reckon you've got to pack up and go down to Arkansaw--your aunt

Sally wants you."

I 'most jumped out of my skin for joy. I reckoned Tom would fly at his

aunt and hug her head off; but if you believe me he set there like a

rock, and never said a word. It made me fit to cry to see him act so

foolish, with such a noble chance as this opening up. Why, we might lose

it if he didn't speak up and show he was thankful and grateful. But he

set there and studied and studied till I was that distressed I didn't

know what to do; then he says, very ca'm, and I could a shot him for it:

"Well," he says, "I'm right down sorry, Aunt Polly, but I reckon I got to

be excused--for the present."

His aunt Polly was knocked so stupid and so mad at the cold impudence of

it that she couldn't say a word for as much as a half a minute, and this

gave me a chance to nudge Tom and whisper:

"Ain't you got any sense? Sp'iling such a noble chance as this and

throwing it away?"

But he warn't disturbed. He mumbled back:

"Huck Finn, do you want me to let her SEE how bad I want to go? Why,

she'd begin to doubt, right away, and imagine a lot of sicknesses and

dangers and objections, and first you know she'd take it all back. You

lemme alone; I reckon I know how to work her."

Now I never would 'a' thought of that. But he was right. Tom Sawyer was

always right--the levelest head I ever see, and always AT himself and

ready for anything you might spring on him. By this time his aunt Polly

was all straight again, and she let fly. She says:

"You'll be excused! YOU will! Well, I never heard the like of it in all

my days! The idea of you talking like that to ME! Now take yourself off

and pack your traps; and if I hear another word out of you about what

you'll be excused from and what you won't, I lay I'LL excuse you--with a

hickory!"

She hit his head a thump with her thimble as we dodged by, and he let on

to be whimpering as we struck for the stairs. Up in his room he hugged

me, he was so out of his head for gladness because he was going

traveling. And he says:

"Before we get away she'll wish she hadn't let me go, but she won't know

any way to get around it now. After what she's said, her pride won't let

her take it back."

Tom was packed in ten minutes, all except what his aunt and Mary would

finish up for him; then we waited ten more for her to get cooled down and

sweet and gentle again; for Tom said it took her ten minutes to unruffle

in times when half of her feathers was up, but twenty when they was all

up, and this was one of the times when they was all up. Then we went

down, being in a sweat to know what the letter said.

She was setting there in a brown study, with it laying in her lap. We

set down, and she says:

"They're in considerable trouble down there, and they think you and

Huck'll be a kind of diversion for them--'comfort,' they say. Much of

that they'll get out of you and Huck Finn, I reckon. There's a neighbor

named Brace Dunlap that's been wanting to marry their Benny for three

months, and at last they told him point blank and once for all, he

COULDN'T; so he has soured on them, and they're worried about it. I

reckon he's somebody they think they better be on the good side of, for

they've tried to please him by hiring his no-account brother to help on

the farm when they can't hardly afford it, and don't want him around

anyhow. Who are the Dunlaps?"

"They live about a mile from Uncle Silas's place, Aunt Polly--all the

farmers live about a mile apart down there--and Brace Dunlap is a long

sight richer than any of the others, and owns a whole grist of niggers.

He's a widower, thirty-six years old, without any children, and is proud

of his money and overbearing, and everybody is a little afraid of him. I

judge he thought he could have any girl he wanted, just for the asking,

and it must have set him back a good deal when he found he couldn't get

Benny. Why, Benny's only half as old as he is, and just as sweet and

lovely as--well, you've seen her. Poor old Uncle Silas--why, it's

pitiful, him trying to curry favor that way--so hard pushed and poor, and

yet hiring that useless Jubiter Dunlap to please his ornery brother."

"What a name--Jubiter! Where'd he get it?"

"It's only just a nickname. I reckon they've forgot his real name long

before this. He's twenty-seven, now, and has had it ever since the first

time he ever went in swimming. The school teacher seen a round brown

mole the size of a dime on his left leg above his knee, and four little

bits of moles around it, when he was naked, and he said it minded him of

Jubiter and his moons; and the children thought it was funny, and so they

got to calling him Jubiter, and he's Jubiter yet. He's tall, and lazy,

and sly, and sneaky, and ruther cowardly, too, but kind of good-natured,

and wears long brown hair and no beard, and hasn't got a cent, and Brace

boards him for nothing, and gives him his old clothes to wear, and

despises him. Jubiter is a twin."

"What's t'other twin like?"

"Just exactly like Jubiter--so they say; used to was, anyway, but he

hain't been seen for seven years. He got to robbing when he was nineteen

or twenty, and they jailed him; but he broke jail and got away--up North

here, somers. They used to hear about him robbing and burglaring now and

then, but that was years ago. He's dead, now. At least that's what they

say. They don't hear about him any more."

"What was his name?"

"Jake."

There wasn't anything more said for a considerable while; the old lady

was thinking. At last she says:

"The thing that is mostly worrying your aunt Sally is the tempers that

that man Jubiter gets your uncle into."

Tom was astonished, and so was I. Tom says:

"Tempers? Uncle Silas? Land, you must be joking! I didn't know he HAD any

temper."

"Works him up into perfect rages, your aunt Sally says; says he acts as

if he would really hit the man, sometimes."

"Aunt Polly, it beats anything I ever heard of. Why, he's just as gentle

as mush."

"Well, she's worried, anyway. Says your uncle Silas is like a changed

man, on account of all this quarreling. And the neighbors talk about it,

and lay all the blame on your uncle, of course, because he's a preacher

and hain't got any business to quarrel. Your aunt Sally says he hates to

go into the pulpit he's so ashamed; and the people have begun to cool

toward him, and he ain't as popular now as he used to was."

"Well, ain't it strange? Why, Aunt Polly, he was always so good and kind

and moony and absent-minded and chuckle-headed and lovable--why, he was

just an angel! What CAN be the matter of him, do you reckon?"

CHAPTER II. JAKE DUNLAP

WE had powerful good luck; because we got a chance in a stern-wheeler

from away North which was bound for one of them bayous or one-horse

rivers away down Louisiana way, and so we could go all the way down the

Upper Mississippi and all the way down the Lower Mississippi to that farm

in Arkansaw without having to change steamboats at St. Louis; not so very

much short of a thousand miles at one pull.

A pretty lonesome boat; there warn't but few passengers, and all old

folks, that set around, wide apart, dozing, and was very quiet. We was

four days getting out of the "upper river," because we got aground so

much. But it warn't dull--couldn't be for boys that was traveling, of

course.

From the very start me and Tom allowed that there was somebody sick in

the stateroom next to ourn, because the meals was always toted in there

by the waiters. By and by we asked about it--Tom did and the waiter said

it was a man, but he didn't look sick.

"Well, but AIN'T he sick?"

"I don't know; maybe he is, but 'pears to me he's just letting on."

"What makes you think that?"

"Because if he was sick he would pull his clothes off SOME time or

other--don't you reckon he would? Well, this one don't. At least he don't

ever pull off his boots, anyway."

"The mischief he don't! Not even when he goes to bed?"

"No."

It was always nuts for Tom Sawyer--a mystery was. If you'd lay out a

mystery and a pie before me and him, you wouldn't have to say take your

choice; it was a thing that would regulate itself. Because in my nature

I have always run to pie, whilst in his nature he has always run to

mystery. People are made different. And it is the best way. Tom says to

the waiter:

"What's the man's name?"

"Phillips."

"Where'd he come aboard?"

"I think he got aboard at Elexandria, up on the Iowa line."

"What do you reckon he's a-playing?"

"I hain't any notion--I never thought of it."

I says to myself, here's another one that runs to pie.

"Anything peculiar about him?--the way he acts or talks?"

"No--nothing, except he seems so scary, and keeps his doors locked night

and day both, and when you knock he won't let you in till he opens the

door a crack and sees who it is."

"By jimminy, it's int'resting! I'd like to get a look at him. Say--the

next time you're going in there, don't you reckon you could spread the

door and--"

"No, indeedy! He's always behind it. He would block that game."

Tom studied over it, and then he says:

"Looky here. You lend me your apern and let me take him his breakfast in

the morning. I'll give you a quarter."

The boy was plenty willing enough, if the head steward wouldn't mind.

Tom says that's all right, he reckoned he could fix it with the head

steward; and he done it. He fixed it so as we could both go in with

aperns on and toting vittles.

He didn't sleep much, he was in such a sweat to get in there and find out

the mystery about Phillips; and moreover he done a lot of guessing about

it all night, which warn't no use, for if you are going to find out the

facts of a thing, what's the sense in guessing out what ain't the facts

and wasting ammunition? I didn't lose no sleep. I wouldn't give a dern

to know what's the matter of Phillips, I says to myself.

Well, in the morning we put on the aperns and got a couple of trays of

truck, and Tom he knocked on the door. The man opened it a crack, and

then he let us in and shut it quick. By Jackson, when we got a sight of

him, we 'most dropped the trays! and Tom says:

"Why, Jubiter Dunlap, where'd YOU come from?"

Well, the man was astonished, of course; and first off he looked like he

didn't know whether to be scared, or glad, or both, or which, but finally

he settled down to being glad; and then his color come back, though at

first his face had turned pretty white. So we got to talking together

while he et his breakfast. And he says:

"But I aint Jubiter Dunlap. I'd just as soon tell you who I am, though,

if you'll swear to keep mum, for I ain't no Phillips, either."

Tom says:

"We'll keep mum, but there ain't any need to tell who you are if you

ain't Jubiter Dunlap."

"Why?"

"Because if you ain't him you're t'other twin, Jake. You're the spit'n

image of Jubiter."

"Well, I'm Jake. But looky here, how do you come to know us Dunlaps?"

Tom told about the adventures we'd had down there at his uncle Silas's

last summer, and when he see that there warn't anything about his

folks--or him either, for that matter--that we didn't know, he opened out

and talked perfectly free and candid. He never made any bones about his

own case; said he'd been a hard lot, was a hard lot yet, and reckoned

he'd be a hard lot plumb to the end. He said of course it was a

dangerous life, and--He give a kind of gasp, and set his head like a

person that's listening. We didn't say anything, and so it was very

still for a second or so, and there warn't no sounds but the screaking of

the woodwork and the chug-chugging of the machinery down below.

Then we got him comfortable again, telling him about his people, and how

Brace's wife had been dead three years, and Brace wanted to marry Benny

and she shook him, and Jubiter was working for Uncle Silas, and him and

Uncle Silas quarreling all the time--and then he let go and laughed.

"Land!" he says, "it's like old times to hear all this tittle-tattle, and

does me good. It's been seven years and more since I heard any. How do

they talk about me these days?"

"Who?"

"The farmers--and the family."

"Why, they don't talk about you at all--at least only just a mention,

once in a long time."

"The nation!" he says, surprised; "why is that?"

"Because they think you are dead long ago."

"No! Are you speaking true?--honor bright, now." He jumped up, excited.

"Honor bright. There ain't anybody thinks you are alive."

"Then I'm saved, I'm saved, sure! I'll go home. They'll hide me and save

my life. You keep mum. Swear you'll keep mum--swear you'll never, never

tell on me. Oh, boys, be good to a poor devil that's being hunted day

and night, and dasn't show his face! I've never done you any harm; I'll

never do you any, as God is in the heavens; swear you'll be good to me

and help me save my life."

We'd a swore it if he'd been a dog; and so we done it. Well, he couldn't

love us enough for it or be grateful enough, poor cuss; it was all he

could do to keep from hugging us.

We talked along, and he got out a little hand-bag and begun to open it,

and told us to turn our backs. We done it, and when he told us to turn

again he was perfectly different to what he was before. He had on blue

goggles and the naturalest-looking long brown whiskers and mustashes you

ever see. His own mother wouldn't 'a' knowed him. He asked us if he

looked like his brother Jubiter, now.

"No," Tom said; "there ain't anything left that's like him except the

long hair."

"All right, I'll get that cropped close to my head before I get there;

then him and Brace will keep my secret, and I'll live with them as being

a stranger, and the neighbors won't ever guess me out. What do you

think?"

Tom he studied awhile, then he says:

"Well, of course me and Huck are going to keep mum there, but if you

don't keep mum yourself there's going to be a little bit of a risk--it

ain't much, maybe, but it's a little. I mean, if you talk, won't people

notice that your voice is just like Jubiter's; and mightn't it make them

think of the twin they reckoned was dead, but maybe after all was hid all

this time under another name?"

"By George," he says, "you're a sharp one! You're perfectly right. I've

got to play deef and dumb when there's a neighbor around. If I'd a

struck for home and forgot that little detail--However, I wasn't striking

for home. I was breaking for any place where I could get away from these

fellows that are after me; then I was going to put on this disguise and

get some different clothes, and--"

He jumped for the outside door and laid his ear against it and listened,

pale and kind of panting. Presently he whispers:

"Sounded like cocking a gun! Lord, what a life to lead!"

Then he sunk down in a chair all limp and sick like, and wiped the sweat

off of his face.

CHAPTER III. A DIAMOND ROBBERY

FROM that time out, we was with him 'most all the time, and one or

t'other of us slept in his upper berth. He said he had been so lonesome,

and it was such a comfort to him to have company, and somebody to talk to

in his troubles. We was in a sweat to find out what his secret was, but

Tom said the best way was not to seem anxious, then likely he would drop

into it himself in one of his talks, but if we got to asking questions he

would get suspicious and shet up his shell. It turned out just so. It

warn't no trouble to see that he WANTED to talk about it, but always

along at first he would scare away from it when he got on the very edge

of it, and go to talking about something else. The way it come about was

this: He got to asking us, kind of indifferent like, about the passengers

down on deck. We told him about them. But he warn't satisfied; we warn't

particular enough. He told us to describe them better. Tom done it. At

last, when Tom was describing one of the roughest and raggedest ones, he

gave a shiver and a gasp and says:

"Oh, lordy, that's one of them! They're aboard sure--I just knowed it.

I sort of hoped I had got away, but I never believed it. Go on."

Presently when Tom was describing another mangy, rough deck passenger, he

give that shiver again and says:

"That's him!--that's the other one. If it would only come a good black

stormy night and I could get ashore. You see, they've got spies on me.

They've got a right to come up and buy drinks at the bar yonder forrard,

and they take that chance to bribe somebody to keep watch on me--porter

or boots or somebody. If I was to slip ashore without anybody seeing me,

they would know it inside of an hour."

So then he got to wandering along, and pretty soon, sure enough, he was

telling! He was poking along through his ups and downs, and when he come

to that place he went right along. He says:

"It was a confidence game. We played it on a julery-shop in St. Louis.

What we was after was a couple of noble big di'monds as big as

hazel-nuts, which everybody was running to see. We was dressed up fine,

and we played it on them in broad daylight. We ordered the di'monds sent

to the hotel for us to see if we wanted to buy, and when we was examining

them we had paste counterfeits all ready, and THEM was the things that

went back to the shop when we said the water wasn't quite fine enough for

twelve thousand dollars."

"Twelve-thousand-dollars!" Tom says. "Was they really worth all that

money, do you reckon?"

"Every cent of it."

"And you fellows got away with them?"

"As easy as nothing. I don't reckon the julery people know they've been

robbed yet. But it wouldn't be good sense to stay around St. Louis, of

course, so we considered where we'd go. One was for going one way, one

another, so we throwed up, heads or tails, and the Upper Mississippi won.

We done up the di'monds in a paper and put our names on it and put it in

the keep of the hotel clerk, and told him not to ever let either of us

have it again without the others was on hand to see it done; then we went

down town, each by his own self--because I reckon maybe we all had the

same notion. I don't know for certain, but I reckon maybe we had."

"What notion?" Tom says.

"To rob the others."

"What--one take everything, after all of you had helped to get it?"

"Cert'nly."

It disgusted Tom Sawyer, and he said it was the orneriest, low-downest

thing he ever heard of. But Jake Dunlap said it warn't unusual in the

profession. Said when a person was in that line of business he'd got to

look out for his own intrust, there warn't nobody else going to do it for

him. And then he went on. He says:

"You see, the trouble was, you couldn't divide up two di'monds amongst

three. If there'd been three--But never mind about that, there warn't

three. I loafed along the back streets studying and studying. And I

says to myself, I'll hog them di'monds the first chance I get, and I'll

have a disguise all ready, and I'll give the boys the slip, and when I'm

safe away I'll put it on, and then let them find me if they can. So I

got the false whiskers and the goggles and this countrified suit of

clothes, and fetched them along back in a hand-bag; and when I was

passing a shop where they sell all sorts of things, I got a glimpse of

one of my pals through the window. It was Bud Dixon. I was glad, you

bet. I says to myself, I'll see what he buys. So I kept shady, and

watched. Now what do you reckon it was he bought?"

"Whiskers?" said I.

"No."

"Goggles?"

"No."

"Oh, keep still, Huck Finn, can't you, you're only just hendering all you

can. What WAS it he bought, Jake?"

"You'd never guess in the world. It was only just a screwdriver--just a

wee little bit of a screwdriver."

"Well, I declare! What did he want with that?"

"That's what I thought. It was curious. It clean stumped me. I says to

myself, what can he want with that thing? Well, when he come out I stood

back out of sight, and then tracked him to a second-hand slop-shop and

see him buy a red flannel shirt and some old ragged clothes--just the

ones he's got on now, as you've described. Then I went down to the wharf

and hid my things aboard the up-river boat that we had picked out, and

then started back and had another streak of luck. I seen our other pal

lay in HIS stock of old rusty second-handers. We got the di'monds and

went aboard the boat.

"But now we was up a stump, for we couldn't go to bed. We had to set up

and watch one another. Pity, that was; pity to put that kind of a strain

on us, because there was bad blood between us from a couple of weeks

back, and we was only friends in the way of business. Bad anyway, seeing

there was only two di'monds betwixt three men. First we had supper, and

then tramped up and down the deck together smoking till most midnight;

then we went and set down in my stateroom and locked the doors and looked

in the piece of paper to see if the di'monds was all right, then laid it

on the lower berth right in full sight; and there we set, and set, and

by-and-by it got to be dreadful hard to keep awake. At last Bud Dixon he

dropped off. As soon as he was snoring a good regular gait that was

likely to last, and had his chin on his breast and looked permanent, Hal

Clayton nodded towards the di'monds and then towards the outside door,

and I understood. I reached and got the paper, and then we stood up and

waited perfectly still; Bud never stirred; I turned the key of the

outside door very soft and slow, then turned the knob the same way, and

we went tiptoeing out onto the guard, and shut the door very soft and

gentle.

"There warn't nobody stirring anywhere, and the boat was slipping along,

swift and steady, through the big water in the smoky moonlight. We never

said a word, but went straight up onto the hurricane-deck and plumb back

aft, and set down on the end of the sky-light. Both of us knowed what

that meant, without having to explain to one another. Bud Dixon would

wake up and miss the swag, and would come straight for us, for he ain't

afeard of anything or anybody, that man ain't. He would come, and we

would heave him overboard, or get killed trying. It made me shiver,

because I ain't as brave as some people, but if I showed the white

feather--well, I knowed better than do that. I kind of hoped the boat

would land somers, and we could skip ashore and not have to run the risk

of this row, I was so scared of Bud Dixon, but she was an upper-river tub

and there warn't no real chance of that.

"Well, the time strung along and along, and that fellow never come! Why,

it strung along till dawn begun to break, and still he never come.

'Thunder,' I says, 'what do you make out of this?--ain't it suspicious?'

'Land!' Hal says, 'do you reckon he's playing us?--open the paper!' I

done it, and by gracious there warn't anything in it but a couple of

little pieces of loaf-sugar! THAT'S the reason he could set there and

snooze all night so comfortable. Smart? Well, I reckon! He had had them

two papers all fixed and ready, and he had put one of them in place of

t'other right under our noses.

"We felt pretty cheap. But the thing to do, straight off, was to make a

plan; and we done it. We would do up the paper again, just as it was,

and slip in, very elaborate and soft, and lay it on the bunk again, and

let on WE didn't know about any trick, and hadn't any idea he was

a-laughing at us behind them bogus snores of his'n; and we would stick by

him, and the first night we was ashore we would get him drunk and search

him, and get the di'monds; and DO for him, too, if it warn't too risky.

If we got the swag, we'd GOT to do for him, or he would hunt us down and

do for us, sure. But I didn't have no real hope. I knowed we could get

him drunk--he was always ready for that--but what's the good of it? You

might search him a year and never find--Well, right there I catched my

breath and broke off my thought! For an idea went ripping through my head

that tore my brains to rags--and land, but I felt gay and good! You see,

I had had my boots off, to unswell my feet, and just then I took up one

of them to put it on, and I catched a glimpse of the heel-bottom, and it

just took my breath away. You remember about that puzzlesome little

screwdriver?"

"You bet I do," says Tom, all excited.

"Well, when I catched that glimpse of that boot heel, the idea that went

smashing through my head was, I know where he's hid the di'monds! You

look at this boot heel, now. See, it's bottomed with a steel plate, and

the plate is fastened on with little screws. Now there wasn't a screw

about that feller anywhere but in his boot heels; so, if he needed a

screwdriver, I reckoned I knowed why."

"Huck, ain't it bully!" says Tom.

"Well, I got my boots on, and we went down and slipped in and laid the

paper of sugar on the berth, and sat down soft and sheepish and went to

listening to Bud Dixon snore. Hal Clayton dropped off pretty soon, but I

didn't; I wasn't ever so wide awake in my life. I was spying out from

under the shade of my hat brim, searching the floor for leather. It took

me a long time, and I begun to think maybe my guess was wrong, but at

last I struck it. It laid over by the bulkhead, and was nearly the color

of the carpet. It was a little round plug about as thick as the end of

your little finger, and I says to myself there's a di'mond in the nest

you've come from. Before long I spied out the plug's mate.

"Think of the smartness and coolness of that blatherskite! He put up that

scheme on us and reasoned out what we would do, and we went ahead and

done it perfectly exact, like a couple of pudd'nheads. He set there and

took his own time to unscrew his heelplates and cut out his plugs and

stick in the di'monds and screw on his plates again. He allowed we would

steal the bogus swag and wait all night for him to come up and get

drownded, and by George it's just what we done! I think it was powerful

smart."

"You bet your life it was!" says Tom, just full of admiration.

CHAPTER IV. THE THREE SLEEPERS

WELL, all day we went through the humbug of watching one another, and it

was pretty sickly business for two of us and hard to act out, I can tell

you. About night we landed at one of them little Missouri towns high up

toward Iowa, and had supper at the tavern, and got a room upstairs with a

cot and a double bed in it, but I dumped my bag under a deal table in the

dark hall while we was moving along it to bed, single file, me last, and

the landlord in the lead with a tallow candle. We had up a lot of whisky,

and went to playing high-low-jack for dimes, and as soon as the whisky

begun to take hold of Bud we stopped drinking, but we didn't let him

stop. We loaded him till he fell out of his chair and laid there snoring.

"We was ready for business now. I said we better pull our boots off, and

his'n too, and not make any noise, then we could pull him and haul him

around and ransack him without any trouble. So we done it. I set my

boots and Bud's side by side, where they'd be handy. Then we stripped him

and searched his seams and his pockets and his socks and the inside of

his boots, and everything, and searched his bundle. Never found any

di'monds. We found the screwdriver, and Hal says, 'What do you reckon he

wanted with that?' I said I didn't know; but when he wasn't looking I

hooked it. At last Hal he looked beat and discouraged, and said we'd got

to give it up. That was what I was waiting for. I says:

"'There's one place we hain't searched.'

"'What place is that?' he says.

"'His stomach.'

"'By gracious, I never thought of that! NOW we're on the homestretch, to

a dead moral certainty. How'll we manage?'

"'Well,' I says, 'just stay by him till I turn out and hunt up a drug

store, and I reckon I'll fetch something that'll make them di'monds tired

of the company they're keeping.'

"He said that's the ticket, and with him looking straight at me I slid

myself into Bud's boots instead of my own, and he never noticed. They

was just a shade large for me, but that was considerable better than

being too small. I got my bag as I went a-groping through the hall, and

in about a minute I was out the back way and stretching up the river road

at a five-mile gait.

"And not feeling so very bad, neither--walking on di'monds don't have no

such effect. When I had gone fifteen minutes I says to myself, there's

more'n a mile behind me, and everything quiet. Another five minutes and

I says there's considerable more land behind me now, and there's a man

back there that's begun to wonder what's the trouble. Another five and I

says to myself he's getting real uneasy--he's walking the floor now.

Another five, and I says to myself, there's two mile and a half behind

me, and he's AWFUL uneasy--beginning to cuss, I reckon. Pretty soon I

says to myself, forty minutes gone--he KNOWS there's something up! Fifty

minutes--the truth's a-busting on him now! he is reckoning I found the

di'monds whilst we was searching, and shoved them in my pocket and never

let on--yes, and he's starting out to hunt for me. He'll hunt for new

tracks in the dust, and they'll as likely send him down the river as up.

"Just then I see a man coming down on a mule, and before I thought I

jumped into the bush. It was stupid! When he got abreast he stopped and

waited a little for me to come out; then he rode on again. But I didn't

feel gay any more. I says to myself I've botched my chances by that; I

surely have, if he meets up with Hal Clayton.

"Well, about three in the morning I fetched Elexandria and see this

stern-wheeler laying there, and was very glad, because I felt perfectly

safe, now, you know. It was just daybreak. I went aboard and got this

stateroom and put on these clothes and went up in the pilot-house--to

watch, though I didn't reckon there was any need of it. I set there and

played with my di'monds and waited and waited for the boat to start, but

she didn't. You see, they was mending her machinery, but I didn't know

anything about it, not being very much used to steamboats.

"Well, to cut the tale short, we never left there till plumb noon; and

long before that I was hid in this stateroom; for before breakfast I see

a man coming, away off, that had a gait like Hal Clayton's, and it made

me just sick. I says to myself, if he finds out I'm aboard this boat,

he's got me like a rat in a trap. All he's got to do is to have me

watched, and wait--wait till I slip ashore, thinking he is a thousand

miles away, then slip after me and dog me to a good place and make me

give up the di'monds, and then he'll--oh, I know what he'll do! Ain't it

awful--awful! And now to think the OTHER one's aboard, too! Oh, ain't it

hard luck, boys--ain't it hard! But you'll help save me, WON'T you?--oh,

boys, be good to a poor devil that's being hunted to death, and save

me--I'll worship the very ground you walk on!"

We turned in and soothed him down and told him we would plan for him and

help him, and he needn't be so afeard; and so by and by he got to feeling

kind of comfortable again, and unscrewed his heelplates and held up his

di'monds this way and that, admiring them and loving them; and when the

light struck into them they WAS beautiful, sure; why, they seemed to kind

of bust, and snap fire out all around. But all the same I judged he was

a fool. If I had been him I would a handed the di'monds to them pals and

got them to go ashore and leave me alone. But he was made different. He

said it was a whole fortune and he couldn't bear the idea.

Twice we stopped to fix the machinery and laid a good while, once in the

night; but it wasn't dark enough, and he was afeard to skip. But the

third time we had to fix it there was a better chance. We laid up at a

country woodyard about forty mile above Uncle Silas's place a little

after one at night, and it was thickening up and going to storm. So Jake

he laid for a chance to slide. We begun to take in wood. Pretty soon

the rain come a-drenching down, and the wind blowed hard. Of course

every boat-hand fixed a gunny sack and put it on like a bonnet, the way

they do when they are toting wood, and we got one for Jake, and he

slipped down aft with his hand-bag and come tramping forrard just like

the rest, and walked ashore with them, and when we see him pass out of

the light of the torch-basket and get swallowed up in the dark, we got

our breath again and just felt grateful and splendid. But it wasn't for

long. Somebody told, I reckon; for in about eight or ten minutes them

two pals come tearing forrard as tight as they could jump and darted

ashore and was gone. We waited plumb till dawn for them to come back,

and kept hoping they would, but they never did. We was awful sorry and

low-spirited. All the hope we had was that Jake had got such a start that

they couldn't get on his track, and he would get to his brother's and

hide there and be safe.

He was going to take the river road, and told us to find out if Brace and

Jubiter was to home and no strangers there, and then slip out about

sundown and tell him. Said he would wait for us in a little bunch of

sycamores right back of Tom's uncle Silas's tobacker field on the river

road, a lonesome place.

We set and talked a long time about his chances, and Tom said he was all

right if the pals struck up the river instead of down, but it wasn't

likely, because maybe they knowed where he was from; more likely they

would go right, and dog him all day, him not suspecting, and kill him

when it come dark, and take the boots. So we was pretty sorrowful.

CHAPTER V. A TRAGEDY IN THE WOODS

WE didn't get done tinkering the machinery till away late in the

afternoon, and so it was so close to sundown when we got home that we

never stopped on our road, but made a break for the sycamores as tight as

we could go, to tell Jake what the delay was, and have him wait till we

could go to Brace's and find out how things was there. It was getting

pretty dim by the time we turned the corner of the woods, sweating and

panting with that long run, and see the sycamores thirty yards ahead of

us; and just then we see a couple of men run into the bunch and heard two

or three terrible screams for help. "Poor Jake is killed, sure," we says.

We was scared through and through, and broke for the tobacker field and

hid there, trembling so our clothes would hardly stay on; and just as we

skipped in there, a couple of men went tearing by, and into the bunch

they went, and in a second out jumps four men and took out up the road as

tight as they could go, two chasing two.

We laid down, kind of weak and sick, and listened for more sounds, but

didn't hear none for a good while but just our hearts. We was thinking

of that awful thing laying yonder in the sycamores, and it seemed like

being that close to a ghost, and it give me the cold shudders. The moon

come a-swelling up out of the ground, now, powerful big and round and

bright, behind a comb of trees, like a face looking through prison bars,

and the black shadders and white places begun to creep around, and it was

miserable quiet and still and night-breezy and graveyardy and scary. All

of a sudden Tom whispers:

"Look!--what's that?"

"Don't!" I says. "Don't take a person by surprise that way. I'm 'most

ready to die, anyway, without you doing that."

"Look, I tell you. It's something coming out of the sycamores."

"Don't, Tom!"

"It's terrible tall!"

"Oh, lordy-lordy! let's--"

"Keep still--it's a-coming this way."

He was so excited he could hardly get breath enough to whisper. I had to

look. I couldn't help it. So now we was both on our knees with our chins

on a fence rail and gazing--yes, and gasping too. It was coming down the

road--coming in the shadder of the trees, and you couldn't see it good;

not till it was pretty close to us; then it stepped into a bright splotch

of moonlight and we sunk right down in our tracks--it was Jake Dunlap's

ghost! That was what we said to ourselves.

We couldn't stir for a minute or two; then it was gone We talked about it

in low voices. Tom says:

"They're mostly dim and smoky, or like they're made out of fog, but this

one wasn't."

"No," I says; "I seen the goggles and the whiskers perfectly plain."

"Yes, and the very colors in them loud countrified Sunday clothes--plaid

breeches, green and black--"

"Cotton velvet westcot, fire-red and yaller squares--"

"Leather straps to the bottoms of the breeches legs and one of them

hanging unbottoned--"

"Yes, and that hat--"

"What a hat for a ghost to wear!"

You see it was the first season anybody wore that kind--a black

stiff-brim stove-pipe, very high, and not smooth, with a round top--just

like a sugar-loaf.

"Did you notice if its hair was the same, Huck?"

"No--seems to me I did, then again it seems to me I didn't."

"I didn't either; but it had its bag along, I noticed that."

"So did I. How can there be a ghost-bag, Tom?"

"Sho! I wouldn't be as ignorant as that if I was you, Huck Finn.

Whatever a ghost has, turns to ghost-stuff. They've got to have their

things, like anybody else. You see, yourself, that its clothes was turned

to ghost-stuff. Well, then, what's to hender its bag from turning, too?

Of course it done it."

That was reasonable. I couldn't find no fault with it. Bill Withers and

his brother Jack come along by, talking, and Jack says:

"What do you reckon he was toting?"

"I dunno; but it was pretty heavy."

"Yes, all he could lug. Nigger stealing corn from old Parson Silas, I

judged."

"So did I. And so I allowed I wouldn't let on to see him."

"That's me, too."

Then they both laughed, and went on out of hearing. It showed how

unpopular old Uncle Silas had got to be now. They wouldn't 'a' let a

nigger steal anybody else's corn and never done anything to him.

We heard some more voices mumbling along towards us and getting louder,

and sometimes a cackle of a laugh. It was Lem Beebe and Jim Lane. Jim

Lane says:

"Who?--Jubiter Dunlap?"

"Yes."

"Oh, I don't know. I reckon so. I seen him spading up some ground along

about an hour ago, just before sundown--him and the parson. Said he

guessed he wouldn't go to-night, but we could have his dog if we wanted

him."

"Too tired, I reckon."

"Yes--works so hard!"

"Oh, you bet!"

They cackled at that, and went on by. Tom said we better jump out and

tag along after them, because they was going our way and it wouldn't be

comfortable to run across the ghost all by ourselves. So we done it, and

got home all right.

That night was the second of September--a Saturday. I sha'n't ever forget

it. You'll see why, pretty soon.

CHAPTER VI. PLANS TO SECURE THE DIAMONDS

WE tramped along behind Jim and Lem till we come to the back stile where

old Jim's cabin was that he was captivated in, the time we set him free,

and here come the dogs piling around us to say howdy, and there was the

lights of the house, too; so we warn't afeard any more, and was going to

climb over, but Tom says:

"Hold on; set down here a minute. By George!"

"What's the matter?" says I.

"Matter enough!" he says. "Wasn't you expecting we would be the first to

tell the family who it is that's been killed yonder in the sycamores, and

all about them rapscallions that done it, and about the di'monds they've

smouched off of the corpse, and paint it up fine, and have the glory of

being the ones that knows a lot more about it than anybody else?"

"Why, of course. It wouldn't be you, Tom Sawyer, if you was to let such

a chance go by. I reckon it ain't going to suffer none for lack of

paint," I says, "when you start in to scollop the facts."

"Well, now," he says, perfectly ca'm, "what would you say if I was to

tell you I ain't going to start in at all?"

I was astonished to hear him talk so. I says:

"I'd say it's a lie. You ain't in earnest, Tom Sawyer?"

"You'll soon see. Was the ghost barefooted?"

"No, it wasn't. What of it?"

"You wait--I'll show you what. Did it have its boots on?"

"Yes. I seen them plain."

"Swear it?"

"Yes, I swear it."

"So do I. Now do you know what that means?"

"No. What does it mean?"

"Means that them thieves DIDN'T GET THE DI'MONDS."

"Jimminy! What makes you think that?"

"I don't only think it, I know it. Didn't the breeches and goggles and

whiskers and hand-bag and every blessed thing turn to ghost-stuff?

Everything it had on turned, didn't it? It shows that the reason its

boots turned too was because it still had them on after it started to go

ha'nting around, and if that ain't proof that them blatherskites didn't

get the boots, I'd like to know what you'd CALL proof."

Think of that now. I never see such a head as that boy had. Why, I had

eyes and I could see things, but they never meant nothing to me. But Tom

Sawyer was different. When Tom Sawyer seen a thing it just got up on its

hind legs and TALKED to him--told him everything it knowed. I never see

such a head.

"Tom Sawyer," I says, "I'll say it again as I've said it a many a time

before: I ain't fitten to black your boots. But that's all right--that's

neither here nor there. God Almighty made us all, and some He gives eyes

that's blind, and some He gives eyes that can see, and I reckon it ain't

none of our lookout what He done it for; it's all right, or He'd 'a'

fixed it some other way. Go on--I see plenty plain enough, now, that them

thieves didn't get way with the di'monds. Why didn't they, do you

reckon?"

"Because they got chased away by them other two men before they could

pull the boots off of the corpse."

"That's so! I see it now. But looky here, Tom, why ain't we to go and

tell about it?"

"Oh, shucks, Huck Finn, can't you see? Look at it. What's a-going to

happen? There's going to be an inquest in the morning. Them two men will

tell how they heard the yells and rushed there just in time to not save

the stranger. Then the jury'll twaddle and twaddle and twaddle, and

finally they'll fetch in a verdict that he got shot or stuck or busted

over the head with something, and come to his death by the inspiration of

God. And after they've buried him they'll auction off his things for to

pay the expenses, and then's OUR chance." "How, Tom?"

"Buy the boots for two dollars!"

Well, it 'most took my breath.

"My land! Why, Tom, WE'LL get the di'monds!"

"You bet. Some day there'll be a big reward offered for them--a thousand

dollars, sure. That's our money! Now we'll trot in and see the folks.

And mind you we don't know anything about any murder, or any di'monds, or

any thieves--don't you forget that."

I had to sigh a little over the way he had got it fixed. I'd 'a' SOLD

them di'monds--yes, sir--for twelve thousand dollars; but I didn't say

anything. It wouldn't done any good. I says:

"But what are we going to tell your aunt Sally has made us so long

getting down here from the village, Tom?"

"Oh, I'll leave that to you," he says. "I reckon you can explain it

somehow."

He was always just that strict and delicate. He never would tell a lie

himself.

We struck across the big yard, noticing this, that, and t'other thing

that was so familiar, and we so glad to see it again, and when we got to

the roofed big passageway betwixt the double log house and the kitchen

part, there was everything hanging on the wall just as it used to was,

even to Uncle Silas's old faded green baize working-gown with the hood to

it, and raggedy white patch between the shoulders that always looked like

somebody had hit him with a snowball; and then we lifted the latch and

walked in. Aunt Sally she was just a-ripping and a-tearing around, and

the children was huddled in one corner, and the old man he was huddled in

the other and praying for help in time of need. She jumped for us with

joy and tears running down her face and give us a whacking box on the

ear, and then hugged us and kissed us and boxed us again, and just

couldn't seem to get enough of it, she was so glad to see us; and she

says:

"Where HAVE you been a-loafing to, you good-for-nothing trash! I've been

that worried about you I didn't know what to do. Your traps has been

here ever so long, and I've had supper cooked fresh about four times so

as to have it hot and good when you come, till at last my patience is

just plumb wore out, and I declare I--I--why I could skin you alive! You

must be starving, poor things!--set down, set down, everybody; don't lose

no more time."

It was good to be there again behind all that noble corn-pone and

spareribs, and everything that you could ever want in this world. Old

Uncle Silas he peeled off one of his bulliest old-time blessings, with as

many layers to it as an onion, and whilst the angels was hauling in the

slack of it I was trying to study up what to say about what kept us so

long. When our plates was all loadened and we'd got a-going, she asked

me, and I says:

"Well, you see,--er--Mizzes--"

"Huck Finn! Since when am I Mizzes to you? Have I ever been stingy of

cuffs or kisses for you since the day you stood in this room and I took

you for Tom Sawyer and blessed God for sending you to me, though you told

me four thousand lies and I believed every one of them like a simpleton?

Call me Aunt Sally--like you always done."

So I done it. And I says:

"Well, me and Tom allowed we would come along afoot and take a smell of

the woods, and we run across Lem Beebe and Jim Lane, and they asked us to

go with them blackberrying to-night, and said they could borrow Jubiter

Dunlap's dog, because he had told them just that minute--"

"Where did they see him?" says the old man; and when I looked up to see

how HE come to take an intrust in a little thing like that, his eyes was

just burning into me, he was that eager. It surprised me so it kind of

throwed me off, but I pulled myself together again and says:

"It was when he was spading up some ground along with you, towards

sundown or along there."

He only said, "Um," in a kind of a disappointed way, and didn't take no

more intrust. So I went on. I says:

"Well, then, as I was a-saying--"

"That'll do, you needn't go no furder." It was Aunt Sally. She was boring

right into me with her eyes, and very indignant. "Huck Finn," she says,

"how'd them men come to talk about going a-black-berrying in

September--in THIS region?"

I see I had slipped up, and I couldn't say a word. She waited, still

a-gazing at me, then she says:

"And how'd they come to strike that idiot idea of going a-blackberrying

in the night?"

"Well, m'm, they--er--they told us they had a lantern, and--"

"Oh, SHET up--do! Looky here; what was they going to do with a dog?--hunt

blackberries with it?"

"I think, m'm, they--"

"Now, Tom Sawyer, what kind of a lie are you fixing YOUR mouth to

contribit to this mess of rubbage? Speak out--and I warn you before you

begin, that I don't believe a word of it. You and Huck's been up to

something you no business to--I know it perfectly well; I know you, BOTH

of you. Now you explain that dog, and them blackberries, and the lantern,

and the rest of that rot--and mind you talk as straight as a string--do

you hear?"

Tom he looked considerable hurt, and says, very dignified:

"It is a pity if Huck is to be talked to that way, just for making a

little bit of a mistake that anybody could make."

"What mistake has he made?"

"Why, only the mistake of saying blackberries when of course he meant

strawberries."

"Tom Sawyer, I lay if you aggravate me a little more, I'll--"

"Aunt Sally, without knowing it--and of course without intending it--you

are in the wrong. If you'd 'a' studied natural history the way you

ought, you would know that all over the world except just here in

Arkansaw they ALWAYS hunt strawberries with a dog--and a lantern--"

But she busted in on him there and just piled into him and snowed him

under. She was so mad she couldn't get the words out fast enough, and

she gushed them out in one everlasting freshet. That was what Tom Sawyer

was after. He allowed to work her up and get her started and then leave

her alone and let her burn herself out. Then she would be so aggravated

with that subject that she wouldn't say another word about it, nor let

anybody else. Well, it happened just so. When she was tuckered out and

had to hold up, he says, quite ca'm:

"And yet, all the same, Aunt Sally--"

"Shet up!" she says, "I don't want to hear another word out of you."

So we was perfectly safe, then, and didn't have no more trouble about

that delay. Tom done it elegant.

CHAPTER VII. A NIGHT'S VIGIL

BENNY she was looking pretty sober, and she sighed some, now and then;

but pretty soon she got to asking about Mary, and Sid, and Tom's aunt

Polly, and then Aunt Sally's clouds cleared off and she got in a good

humor and joined in on the questions and was her lovingest best self, and

so the rest of the supper went along gay and pleasant. But the old man he

didn't take any hand hardly, and was absent-minded and restless, and done

a considerable amount of sighing; and it was kind of heart-breaking to

see him so sad and troubled and worried.

By and by, a spell after supper, come a nigger and knocked on the door

and put his head in with his old straw hat in his hand bowing and

scraping, and said his Marse Brace was out at the stile and wanted his

brother, and was getting tired waiting supper for him, and would Marse

Silas please tell him where he was? I never see Uncle Silas speak up so

sharp and fractious before. He says:

"Am I his brother's keeper?" And then he kind of wilted together, and

looked like he wished he hadn't spoken so, and then he says, very gentle:

"But you needn't say that, Billy; I was took sudden and irritable, and I

ain't very well these days, and not hardly responsible. Tell him he ain't

here."

And when the nigger was gone he got up and walked the floor, backwards

and forwards, mumbling and muttering to himself and plowing his hands

through his hair. It was real pitiful to see him. Aunt Sally she

whispered to us and told us not to take notice of him, it embarrassed

him. She said he was always thinking and thinking, since these troubles

come on, and she allowed he didn't more'n about half know what he was

about when the thinking spells was on him; and she said he walked in his

sleep considerable more now than he used to, and sometimes wandered

around over the house and even outdoors in his sleep, and if we catched

him at it we must let him alone and not disturb him. She said she

reckoned it didn't do him no harm, and may be it done him good. She said

Benny was the only one that was much help to him these days. Said Benny

appeared to know just when to try to soothe him and when to leave him

alone.

So he kept on tramping up and down the floor and muttering, till by and

by he begun to look pretty tired; then Benny she went and snuggled up to

his side and put one hand in his and one arm around his waist and walked

with him; and he smiled down on her, and reached down and kissed her; and

so, little by little the trouble went out of his face and she persuaded

him off to his room. They had very petting ways together, and it was

uncommon pretty to see.

Aunt Sally she was busy getting the children ready for bed; so by and by

it got dull and tedious, and me and Tom took a turn in the moonlight, and

fetched up in the watermelon-patch and et one, and had a good deal of

talk. And Tom said he'd bet the quarreling was all Jubiter's fault, and

he was going to be on hand the first time he got a chance, and see; and

if it was so, he was going to do his level best to get Uncle Silas to

turn him off.

And so we talked and smoked and stuffed watermelons much as two hours,

and then it was pretty late, and when we got back the house was quiet and

dark, and everybody gone to bed.

Tom he always seen everything, and now he see that the old green baize

work-gown was gone, and said it wasn't gone when he went out; so he

allowed it was curious, and then we went up to bed.

We could hear Benny stirring around in her room, which was next to ourn,

and judged she was worried a good deal about her father and couldn't

sleep. We found we couldn't, neither. So we set up a long time, and

smoked and talked in a low voice, and felt pretty dull and down-hearted.

We talked the murder and the ghost over and over again, and got so creepy

and crawly we couldn't get sleepy nohow and noway.

By and by, when it was away late in the night and all the sounds was late

sounds and solemn, Tom nudged me and whispers to me to look, and I done

it, and there we see a man poking around in the yard like he didn't know

just what he wanted to do, but it was pretty dim and we couldn't see him

good. Then he started for the stile, and as he went over it the moon

came out strong, and he had a long-handled shovel over his shoulder, and

we see the white patch on the old work-gown. So Tom says:

"He's a-walking in his sleep. I wish we was allowed to follow him and

see where he's going to. There, he's turned down by the tobacker-field.

Out of sight now. It's a dreadful pity he can't rest no better."

We waited a long time, but he didn't come back any more, or if he did he

come around the other way; so at last we was tuckered out and went to

sleep and had nightmares, a million of them. But before dawn we was

awake again, because meantime a storm had come up and been raging, and

the thunder and lightning was awful, and the wind was a-thrashing the

trees around, and the rain was driving down in slanting sheets, and the

gullies was running rivers. Tom says:

"Looky here, Huck, I'll tell you one thing that's mighty curious. Up to

the time we went out last night the family hadn't heard about Jake Dunlap

being murdered. Now the men that chased Hal Clayton and Bud Dixon away

would spread the thing around in a half an hour, and every neighbor that

heard it would shin out and fly around from one farm to t'other and try

to be the first to tell the news. Land, they don't have such a big thing

as that to tell twice in thirty year! Huck, it's mighty strange; I don't

understand it."

So then he was in a fidget for the rain to let up, so we could turn out

and run across some of the people and see if they would say anything

about it to us. And he said if they did we must be horribly surprised and

shocked.

We was out and gone the minute the rain stopped. It was just broad day

then. We loafed along up the road, and now and then met a person and

stopped and said howdy, and told them when we come, and how we left the

folks at home, and how long we was going to stay, and all that, but none

of them said a word about that thing; which was just astonishing, and no

mistake. Tom said he believed if we went to the sycamores we would find

that body laying there solitary and alone, and not a soul around. Said

he believed the men chased the thieves so far into the woods that the

thieves prob'ly seen a good chance and turned on them at last, and maybe

they all killed each other, and so there wasn't anybody left to tell.

First we knowed, gabbling along that away, we was right at the sycamores.

The cold chills trickled down my back and I wouldn't budge another step,

for all Tom's persuading. But he couldn't hold in; he'd GOT to see if the

boots was safe on that body yet. So he crope in--and the next minute out

he come again with his eyes bulging he was so excited, and says:

"Huck, it's gone!"

I WAS astonished! I says:

"Tom, you don't mean it."

"It's gone, sure. There ain't a sign of it. The ground is trampled

some, but if there was any blood it's all washed away by the storm, for

it's all puddles and slush in there."

At last I give in, and went and took a look myself; and it was just as

Tom said--there wasn't a sign of a corpse.

"Dern it," I says, "the di'monds is gone. Don't you reckon the thieves

slunk back and lugged him off, Tom?"

"Looks like it. It just does. Now where'd they hide him, do you

reckon?"

"I don't know," I says, disgusted, "and what's more I don't care.

They've got the boots, and that's all I cared about. He'll lay around

these woods a long time before I hunt him up."

Tom didn't feel no more intrust in him neither, only curiosity to know

what come of him; but he said we'd lay low and keep dark and it wouldn't

be long till the dogs or somebody rousted him out.

We went back home to breakfast ever so bothered and put out and

disappointed and swindled. I warn't ever so down on a corpse before.

CHAPTER VIII. TALKING WITH THE GHOST

IT warn't very cheerful at breakfast. Aunt Sally she looked old and

tired and let the children snarl and fuss at one another and didn't seem

to notice it was going on, which wasn't her usual style; me and Tom had a

plenty to think about without talking; Benny she looked like she hadn't

had much sleep, and whenever she'd lift her head a little and steal a

look towards her father you could see there was tears in her eyes; and as

for the old man, his things stayed on his plate and got cold without him

knowing they was there, I reckon, for he was thinking and thinking all

the time, and never said a word and never et a bite.

By and by when it was stillest, that nigger's head was poked in at the

door again, and he said his Marse Brace was getting powerful uneasy about

Marse Jubiter, which hadn't come home yet, and would Marse Silas please

--He was looking at Uncle Silas, and he stopped there, like the rest of

his words was froze; for Uncle Silas he rose up shaky and steadied

himself leaning his fingers on the table, and he was panting, and his

eyes was set on the nigger, and he kept swallowing, and put his other

hand up to his throat a couple of times, and at last he got his words

started, and says:

"Does he--does he--think--WHAT does he think! Tell him--tell him--" Then

he sunk down in his chair limp and weak, and says, so as you could hardly

hear him: "Go away--go away!"

The nigger looked scared and cleared out, and we all felt--well, I don't

know how we felt, but it was awful, with the old man panting there, and

his eyes set and looking like a person that was dying. None of us could

budge; but Benny she slid around soft, with her tears running down, and

stood by his side, and nestled his old gray head up against her and begun

to stroke it and pet it with her hands, and nodded to us to go away, and

we done it, going out very quiet, like the dead was there.

Me and Tom struck out for the woods mighty solemn, and saying how

different it was now to what it was last summer when we was here and

everything was so peaceful and happy and everybody thought so much of

Uncle Silas, and he was so cheerful and simple-hearted and pudd'n-headed

and good--and now look at him. If he hadn't lost his mind he wasn't muck

short of it. That was what we allowed.

It was a most lovely day now, and bright and sunshiny; and the further

and further we went over the hills towards the prairie the lovelier and

lovelier the trees and flowers got to be and the more it seemed strange

and somehow wrong that there had to be trouble in such a world as this.

And then all of a sudden I catched my breath and grabbed Tom's arm, and

all my livers and lungs and things fell down into my legs.

"There it is!" I says. We jumped back behind a bush shivering, and Tom

says:

"'Sh!--don't make a noise."

It was setting on a log right in the edge of a little prairie, thinking.

I tried to get Tom to come away, but he wouldn't, and I dasn't budge by

myself. He said we mightn't ever get another chance to see one, and he

was going to look his fill at this one if he died for it. So I looked

too, though it give me the fan-tods to do it. Tom he HAD to talk, but he

talked low. He says:

"Poor Jakey, it's got all its things on, just as he said he would. NOW

you see what we wasn't certain about--its hair. It's not long now the way

it was: it's got it cropped close to its head, the way he said he would.

Huck, I never see anything look any more naturaler than what It does."

"Nor I neither," I says; "I'd recognize it anywheres."

"So would I. It looks perfectly solid and genuwyne, just the way it done

before it died."

So we kept a-gazing. Pretty soon Tom says:

"Huck, there's something mighty curious about this one, don't you know?

IT oughtn't to be going around in the daytime."

"That's so, Tom--I never heard the like of it before."

"No, sir, they don't ever come out only at night--and then not till

after twelve. There's something wrong about this one, now you mark my

words. I don't believe it's got any right to be around in the daytime.

But don't it look natural! Jake was going to play deef and dumb here, so

the neighbors wouldn't know his voice. Do you reckon it would do that if

we was to holler at it?"

"Lordy, Tom, don't talk so! If you was to holler at it I'd die in my

tracks."

"Don't you worry, I ain't going to holler at it. Look, Huck, it's

a-scratching its head--don't you see?"

"Well, what of it?"

"Why, this. What's the sense of it scratching its head? There ain't

anything there to itch; its head is made out of fog or something like

that, and can't itch. A fog can't itch; any fool knows that."

"Well, then, if it don't itch and can't itch, what in the nation is it

scratching it for? Ain't it just habit, don't you reckon?"

"No, sir, I don't. I ain't a bit satisfied about the way this one acts.

I've a blame good notion it's a bogus one--I have, as sure as I'm

a-sitting here. Because, if it--Huck!"

"Well, what's the matter now?"

"YOU CAN'T SEE THE BUSHES THROUGH IT!"

"Why, Tom, it's so, sure! It's as solid as a cow. I sort of begin to

think--"