THE ARREST OF UNCLE SILAS
Them awful words froze us solid. We couldn’t move hand or foot for as
much as half a minute. Then we kind of come to, and lifted the old man
up and got him into his chair, and Benny petted him and kissed him and
tried to comfort him, and poor old Aunt Sally she done the same; but,
poor things, they was so broke up and scared and knocked out of their
right minds that they didn’t hardly know what they was about. With Tom
it was awful; it ’most petrified him to think maybe he had got his
uncle into a thousand times more trouble than ever, and maybe it
wouldn’t ever happened if he hadn’t been so ambitious to get
celebrated, and let the corpse alone the way the others done. But
pretty soon he sort of come to himself again and says:
“Uncle Silas, don’t you say another word like that. It’s dangerous, and
there ain’t a shadder of truth in it.”
Aunt Sally and Benny was thankful to hear him say that, and they said
the same; but the old man he wagged his head sorrowful and hopeless,
and the tears run down his face, and he says;
“No—I done it; poor Jubiter, I done it!”
It was dreadful to hear him say it. Then he went on and told about it,
and said it happened the day me and Tom come—along about sundown. He
said Jubiter pestered him and aggravated him till he was so mad he just
sort of lost his mind and grabbed up a stick and hit him over the head
with all his might, and Jubiter dropped in his tracks. Then he was
scared and sorry, and got down on his knees and lifted his head up, and
begged him to speak and say he wasn’t dead; and before long he come to,
and when he see who it was holding his head, he jumped like he was
’most scared to death, and cleared the fence and tore into the woods,
and was gone. So he hoped he wasn’t hurt bad.
“But laws,” he says, “it was only just fear that gave him that last
little spurt of strength, and of course it soon played out and he laid
down in the bush, and there wasn’t anybody to help him, and he died.”
Then the old man cried and grieved, and said he was a murderer and the
mark of Cain was on him, and he had disgraced his family and was going
to be found out and hung. But Tom said:
“No, you ain’t going to be found out. You _didn’t_ kill him. _One_ lick
wouldn’t kill him. Somebody else done it.”
“Oh, yes,” he says, “I done it—nobody else. Who else had anything
against him? Who else _could_ have anything against him?”
He looked up kind of like he hoped some of us could mention somebody
that could have a grudge against that harmless no-account, but of
course it warn’t no use—he _had_ us; we couldn’t say a word. He noticed
that, and he saddened down again, and I never see a face so miserable
and so pitiful to see. Tom had a sudden idea, and says:
“But hold on!—somebody _buried_ him. Now who—”
He shut off sudden. I knowed the reason. It give me the cold shudders
when he said them words, because right away I remembered about us
seeing Uncle Silas prowling around with a long-handled shovel away in
the night that night. And I knowed Benny seen him, too, because she was
talking about it one day. The minute Tom shut off he changed the
subject and went to begging Uncle Silas to keep mum, and the rest of us
done the same, and said he _must_, and said it wasn’t his business to
tell on himself, and if he kept mum nobody would ever know; but if it
was found out and any harm come to him it would break the family’s
hearts and kill them, and yet never do anybody any good. So at last he
promised. We was all of us more comfortable, then, and went to work to
cheer up the old man. We told him all he’d got to do was to keep still,
and it wouldn’t be long till the whole thing would blow over and be
forgot. We all said there wouldn’t anybody ever suspect Uncle Silas,
nor ever dream of such a thing, he being so good and kind, and having
such a good character; and Tom says, cordial and hearty, he says:
“Why, just look at it a minute; just consider. Here is Uncle Silas, all
these years a preacher—at his own expense; all these years doing good
with all his might and every way he can think of—at his own expense,
all the time; always been loved by everybody, and respected; always
been peaceable and minding his own business, the very last man in this
whole deestrict to touch a person, and everybody knows it. Suspect
_him?_ Why, it ain’t any more possible than—”
“By authority of the State of Arkansaw, I arrest you for the murder of
Jubiter Dunlap!” shouts the sheriff at the door.
It was awful. Aunt Sally and Benny flung themselves at Uncle Silas,
screaming and crying, and hugged him and hung to him, and Aunt Sally
said go away, she wouldn’t ever give him up, they shouldn’t have him,
and the niggers they come crowding and crying to the door and—well, I
couldn’t stand it; it was enough to break a person’s heart; so I got
out.
They took him up to the little one-horse jail in the village, and we
all went along to tell him good-bye; and Tom was feeling elegant, and
says to me, “We’ll have a most noble good time and heaps of danger some
dark night getting him out of there, Huck, and it’ll be talked about
everywheres and we will be celebrated;” but the old man busted that
scheme up the minute he whispered to him about it. He said no, it was
his duty to stand whatever the law done to him, and he would stick to
the jail plumb through to the end, even if there warn’t no door to it.
It disappointed Tom and graveled him a good deal, but he had to put up
with it.
But he felt responsible and bound to get his uncle Silas free; and he
told Aunt Sally, the last thing, not to worry, because he was going to
turn in and work night and day and beat this game and fetch Uncle Silas
out innocent; and she was very loving to him and thanked him and said
she knowed he would do his very best. And she told us to help Benny
take care of the house and the children, and then we had a good-bye cry
all around and went back to the farm, and left her there to live with
the jailer’s wife a month till the trial in October.