APDL Eductation Resources/APDL Eductation Resources.iso/text/authors/marktwain/huck_finn/CHAP30_43

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  CHAPTER THIRTY


  When they got aboard, the king went for me, and shook me by the
collar, and says:

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

  I says:

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

  "Quick, then, and tell us what was your idea, or I'll shake the
insides out o' you!"

  "Honest, I'll tell you everything, just as it happened, your
majesty. The man that had aholt of me was very good to me, and kept
saying he had a boy about as big as me that died last year, and he was
sorry to see a boy in such a dangerous fix; and when they was all took
by surprise by finding the gold, and made a rush for the coffin, he
lets go of me and whispers, 'Heel it, now, or they'll hang ye,
sure!' and I lit out. It didn't seem no good for me to stay- I
couldn't do nothing, and I didn't want to be hung if I could get away.
So I never stopped running till I found the canoe; and when I got
there I told Jim to hurry, or they'd catch me and hang me yet, and
said I was afeard you and the duke wasn't alive, now, and I was
awful sorry, and so was Jim, and was awful glad when we see you
coming, you may ask Jim if I didn't."

  Jim said it was so; and the king told him to shut up, and said, "Oh,
yes, it's mighty likely!" and shook me up again, and said he
reckoned he'd drowned me. But the duke says:

  "Leggo the boy, you old idiot! Would you a done any different? Did
you inquire around for him, when you got loose? I don't remember it."

  So the king let go of me, and begun to cuss that town and
everybody in it. But the duke says:

  "You better a blame sight give yourself a good cussing, for you're
the one that's entitled to it most. You hain't done a thing, from
the start, that had any sense in it, except coming out so cool and
cheeky with that imaginary blue-arrow mark. That was bright- it was
right down bully; and it was the thing that saved us. For if it hadn't
been for that, they'd a jailed us till them Englishmen's baggage come-
and then- the penitentiary, you bet! But that trick took 'em to the
graveyard, and the gold done us a still bigger kindness; for if the
excited fools hadn't let go all holts and made that rush to get a
look, we'd a slept in our cravats to-night- cravats warranted to wear,
too- longer than we'd need 'em."

  They was still a minute- thinking- then the king says, kind of
absent-minded like:

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

  That made me squirm!

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

  After about a half a minute, the king drawls out:

  "Leastways- I did."

  The duke says, the same way:

  "On the contrary- I did."

  The king kind of ruffles up, and says:

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

  The duke says, pretty brisk:

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

  "Shucks!" says the king, very sarcastic; "but I don't know- maybe
you was asleep, and didn't know what you was about."

  The duke bristles right up, now, and says:

  "Oh, let up on this cussed nonsense- do you take me for a blame'
fool? Don't you reckon I know who hid that money in that coffin?"

  "Yes, sir! I know you do know- because you done it yourself!"

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

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

  "Well, you just own up, first, that you did hide that money there,
intending to give me the slip one of these days, and come back and dig
it up, and have it all to yourself."

  "Wait jest a minute, duke- answer me this one question, honest and
fair; if you didn't put that money there, say it, and I'll b'lieve
you, and take back everything I said."

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

  "Well, then, I b'lieve you. But answer me only jest this one more-
now don't git mad; didn't you have it in your mind to hook the money
and hide it?"

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

  "Well- I don't care if I did, I didn't do it, anyway. But you not
only had it in mind to do it, but you done it."

  "I wisht I may never die if I done it, duke, and that's honest. I
won't say I warn't goin' to do it, because I was; but you- I mean
somebody- got in ahead o' me."

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

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

  "'Nough!- I own up!"

  I was very glad to hear him say that, it made me feel much more
easier than what I was feeling before. So the duke took his hands off,
and says:

  "If you ever deny it again, I'll drown you. It's well for you to set
there and blubber like a baby- it's fitten for you, after the way
you've acted. I never see such an old ostrich for wanting to gobble
everything- and I a trusting you all the time, like you was my own
father. You ought to been ashamed of yourself to stand by and hear
it saddled onto a lot of poor niggers and you never say a word for
'em. It makes me feel ridiculous to think I was soft enough to believe
that rubbage. Cuss you, I can see, now, why you was so anxious to make
up the deffesit- you wanted to get what money I'd got out of the
Nonesuch and one thing or another, and scoop it all!"

  The king says, timid, and still a snuffling:

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

  "Dry up! I don't want to hear no more out of you!" says the duke.
"And now you see what you got by it. They've got all their own money
back, and all of ourn but a shekel or two, besides. G'long to bed- and
don't you deffersit me no more deffersits, long's you live!"

  So the king sneaked into the wigwam, and took to his bottle for
comfort; and before long the duke tackled his bottle; and so in
about a half an hour they was as thick as thieves again, and the
tighter they got, the lovinger they got; and went off a snoring in
each other's arms. They both got powerful mellow, but I noticed the
king didn't get mellow enough to forget to remember to not deny
about hiding the money-bag again. That made me feel easy and
satisfied. Of course when they got to snoring, we had a long gabble,
and I told Jim everything.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE


  We dasn't stop again at any town, for days and days; kept right
along down the river. We was down south in the warm weather, now,
and a mighty long ways from home. We begun to come to trees with
Spanish moss on them, hanging down from the limbs like long gray
beards. It was the first I ever see it growing, and it made the
woods look solemn and dismal. So now the frauds reckoned they was
out of danger, and they begun to work the villages again.

  First they done a lecture on temperance; but they didn't make enough
for them both to get drunk on. Then in another village they started
a dancing school; but they didn't know no more how to dance than a
kangaroo does; so the first prance they made, the general public
jumped in and pranced them out of town. Another time they tried a go
at yellocution; but they didn't yellocute long till the audience got
up and give them a solid good cussing and made them skip out. They
tackled missionarying, and mesmerizering, and doctoring, and telling
fortunes, and a little of everything; but they couldn't seem to have
no luck. So at last they got just about dead broke, and laid around
the raft, as she floated along, thinking, and thinking, and never
saying nothing, by the half a day at a time, and dreadful blue and
desperate.

  And at last they took a change, and begun to lay their heads
together in the wigwam and talk low and confidential two or three
hours at a time. Jim and me got uneasy. We didn't like the look of it.
We judged they was studying up some kind of worse deviltry than
ever. We turned it over and over, and at last we made up our minds
they was going to break into somebody's house or store, or was going
into the counterfeit-money business, or something. So then we was
pretty scared, and made up an agreement that we wouldn't have
nothing in the world to do with such actions, and if we ever got the
least show we would give them the cold shake, and clear out and
leave them behind. Well, early one morning we hid the raft in a good
safe place about two mile below a little bit of a shabby village,
named Pikesville, and the king he went ashore, and told us all to stay
hid whilst he went up to town and smelt around to see if anybody had
got any wind of the Royal Nonesuch there yet. ("House to rob, you
mean," says I to myself; "and when you get through robbing it you'll
come back here and wonder what's become of me and Jim and the raft-
and you'll have to take it out in wondering.") And he said if he
warn't back by midday, the duke and me would know it was all right,
and we was to come along.

  So we staid where we was. The duke he fretted and sweated around,
and was in a mighty sour way. He scolded us for everything, and we
couldn't seem to do nothing right; he found fault with every little
thing. Something was abrewing, sure. I was good and glad when midday
come and no king; we could have a change, anyway- and maybe a chance
for the change, on top of it. So me and the duke went up to the
village, and hunted around there for the king, and by-and-by we
found him in the back room of a little low doggery, very tight, and
a lot of loafers bullyragging him for sport, and he a cussing and
threatening with all his might, and so tight he couldn't walk, and
couldn't do nothing to them. The duke he begun to abuse him for an old
fool, and the king begun to sass back; and the minute they was
fairly at it, I lit out, and shook the reefs out of my hind legs,
and spun down the river road like a deer- for I see our chance; and
I made up my mind that it would be a long day before they ever see
me and Jim again. I got down there all out of breath but loaded up
with joy, and sung out-

  "Set her loose, Jim, we're all right, now!"

  But there warn't no answer, and nobody come out of the wigwam. Jim
was gone! I set up a shout- and then another one; and run this way and
that in the woods, whooping and screeching; but it warn't no use-
old Jim was gone. Then I set down and cried; I couldn't help it. But I
couldn't set still long. Pretty soon I went out on the road, trying to
think what I better do, and I run across a boy walking, and asked
him if he'd seen a strange nigger dressed so and so, and he says:

  "Yes."

  "Whereabouts?" says I.

  "Down to Silas Phelps's place, two miles below here. He's a
runaway nigger, and they've got him. Was you looking for him?"

  "You bet I ain't! I run across him in the woods about an hour or two
ago, and he said if I hollered he'd cut my livers out- and told me
to lay down and stay where I was; and I done it. Been there ever
since; afeard to come out."

  "Well," he says, "you needn't be afeard no more, becuz they've got
him. He run f'm down South, som'ers."

  "It's a good job they got him."

  "Well, I reckon! There two hundred dollars reward on him. It's
like picking up money out'n the road."

  "Yes, it is- and I could a had it if I'd been big enough; I see
him first. Who nailed him?"

  "It was an old fellow- a stranger- and he sold out his chance in him
for forty dollars, becuz he's got to go up the river and can't wait.
Think o' that, now! You bet I'd wait, if it was seven year."

  "That's me, every time," says I. "But maybe his chance ain't worth
no more than that, if he'll sell it so cheap. Maybe there's
something ain't straight about it."

  "But it is, though- straight as a string. I see the handbill myself.
It tells all about him, to a dot- paints him like a picture, and tells
the plantation he's frum, below Newrleans. No-siree-bob, they ain't no
trouble 'bout that speculation, you bet you. Say, gimme a chaw
tobacker, won't ye?"

  I didn't have none, so he left. I went to the raft, and set down
in the wigwam to think. But I couldn't come to nothing. I thought till
I wore my head sore, but I couldn't see no way out of the trouble.
After all this long journey, and after all we'd done for them
scoundrels, here was it all come to nothing, everything all busted
up and ruined, because they could have the heart to serve Jim such a
trick as that, and make him a slave again all his life, and amongst
strangers, too, for forty dirty dollars.

  Once I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for Jim to
be a slave at home where his family was, as long as he's got to be a
slave, and so I'd better write a letter to Tom Sawyer and tell him
to tell Miss Watson where he was. But I soon give up that notion,
for two things: she'd be mad and disgusted at his rascality and
ungratefulness for leaving her, and so she'd sell him straight down
the river again; and if she didn't, everybody naturally despises an
ungrateful nigger, and they'd make Jim feel it all the time, and so
he'd feel ornery and disgraced. And then think of me! It would get all
around, that Huck Finn helped a nigger to get his freedom; and if I
was to ever see anybody from that town again, I'd be ready to get down
and lick his boots for shame. That's just the way: a person does a
low-down thing, and then he don't want to take no consequences of
it. Thinks as long as he can hide it, it ain't no disgrace. That was
my fix exactly. The more I studied about this, the more my
conscience went to grinding me, and the more wicked and low-down and
ornery I got to feeling. And at last, when it hit me all of a sudden
that here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in the face and
letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up
there in heaven, whilst I was stealing a poor old woman's nigger
that hadn't ever done me no harm, and now was showing me there's One
that's always on the lookout, and ain't agoing to allow no such
miserable doings to go only just so fur and no further, I most dropped
in my tracks I was so scared. Well, I tried the best I could to kinder
soften it up somehow for myself, by saying I was brung up wicked,
and so I warn't so much to blame; but something inside of me kept
saying, "There was the Sunday school, you could a gone to it; and if
you'd a done it they'd a learnt you, there, that people that acts as
I'd been acting about that nigger goes to everlasting fire."

  It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray; and see if I
couldn't try to quit being the kind of a boy I was, and be better.
So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn't come. Why wouldn't they?
It warn't no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from me, neither.
I knowed very well why they wouldn't come. It was because my heart
warn't right; it was because I warn't square; it was because I was
playing double. I was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me
I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my
mouth say I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and
write to that nigger's owner and tell where he was; but deep down in
me I knowed it was a lie-and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie- I
found that out.

  So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn't know what
to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I'll go and write the
letter- and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I
felt as light as a feather, right straight off, and my troubles all
gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited,
and set down and wrote:


  Miss Watson your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below
Pikesville and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for
the reward if you send.                             HUCK FINN



  I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had
ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't
do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking-
thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come
to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to
thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me, all
the time; in the day, and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight,
sometimes storms, and we a floating along, talking, and singing, and
laughing. But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me
against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on
top of his'n, stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and
see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I
come to him agin in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and
such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me, and do
everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and
at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had
smallpox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best
friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he's got now;
and then I happened to look around, and see that paper.

  It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was
a trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things,
and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and
then says to myself:

  "All right, then, I'll go to hell"- and tore it up.

  It was awful thoughts, and awful words, but they was said. And I let
them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved
the whole thing out of my head; and said I would take up wickedness
again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other
warn't. And for a starter, I would go to work and steal Jim out of
slavery again; and if I could think up anything worse, I would do
that, too; because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as
well go the whole hog.

  Then I set to thinking over how to get at it, and turned over
considerable many ways in my mind; and at last fixed up a plan that
suited me. So then I took the bearings of a woody island that was down
the river a piece, and as soon as it was fairly dark I crept out
with my raft and went for it, and hid it there, and then turned in.
I slept the night through, and got up before it was light, and had
my breakfast, and put on my store clothes, and tied up some others and
one thing or another in a bundle, and took the canoe and cleared for
shore. I landed below where I judged was Phelps's place, and hid my
bundle in the woods, and then filled up the canoe with water, loaded
rocks into her and sunk her where I could find her again when I wanted
her, about a quarter of a mile below a little steam sawmill that was
on the bank.

  Then I struck up the road, and when I passed the mill I see a sign
on it, "Phelps's Sawmill," and when I come to the farm-houses, two
or three hundred yards further along, I kept my eyes peeled, but
didn't see nobody around, though it was good daylight, now. But I
didn't mind, because I didn't want to see nobody just yet- I only
wanted to get the lay of the land. According to my plan, I was going
to turn up there from the village, not from below. So I just took a
look, and shoved along, straight for town. Well, the very first man
I see, when I got there, was the duke. He was sticking up a bill for
the Royal Nonesuch- three-night performance- like the other time. They
had the cheek, them frauds! I was right on him, before I could
shirk. He looked astonished and says:

  "Hel-lo! Where'd you come from?" Then he says, kind of glad and
eager, "Where's the raft?- got her in a good place?"

  I says:

  "Why, that's just what I was agoing to ask your grace."

  Then he didn't look so joyful- and says:

  "What was your idea for asking me?" he says.

  "Well," I says, "when I see the king in that doggery yesterday, I
says to myself, we can't get him home for hours, till he's soberer; so
I went a loafing around town to put in the time, and wait. A man up
and offered me ten cents to help him pull a skiff over the river and
back to fetch a sheep, and so I went along; but when we was dragging
him to the boat, the man left me aholt of the rope and went behind him
to shove him along, he was too strong for me, and jerked loose and
run, and we after him. We didn't have no dog, and so we had to chase
him all over the country till we tired him out. We never got him
till dark, then we fetched him over, and I started down for the
raft. When I got there and see it was gone, I says to myself, 'they've
got into trouble and had to leave; and they've took my nigger, which
is the only nigger I've got in the world, and now I'm in a strange
country, and ain't got no property no more, nor nothing, and no way to
make my living'; so I set down and cried. I slept in the woods all
night. But what did become of the raft then?- and Jim, poor Jim!"

  "Blamed if I know- that is, what's become of the raft. That old fool
had made a trade and got forty dollars, and when we found him in the
doggery the loafers had matched half dollars with him and got every
cent but what he'd spent for whisky; and when I got him home late last
night and found the raft gone, we said, 'That little rascal has
stole our raft and shook us, and run off down the river.'"

    "I wouldn't shake my nigger, would I?- the only nigger I had in
the world, and the only property."

  "We never thought of that. Fact is, I reckon we'd come to consider
him our nigger; yes, we did consider him so- goodness knows we had
trouble enough for him. So when we see the raft was gone, and we
flat broke, there warn't anything for it but to try the Royal Nonesuch
another shake. And I've pegged along ever since, dry as a
powderhorn. Where's that ten cents? Give it here."

  I had considerable money, so I give him ten cents, but begged him to
spend it for something to eat, and give me some, because it was all
the money I had, and I hadn't had nothing to eat since yesterday.
The next minute he whirls on me and says:

  "Do you reckon that nigger would blow on us? We'd skin him if he
done that!"

  "How can he blow? Hain't he run off.?"

  "No! That old fool sold him, and never divided with me, and the
money's gone."

  "Sold him?" I says, and begun to cry; "why, he was my nigger, and
that was my money. Where is he?- I want my nigger."

  "Well, you can't get your nigger, that's all- so dry up your
blubbering. Looky here- do you think you'd venture to blow on us?
Blamed if I think I'd trust you. Why, if you was to blow on us-"

  He stopped, but I never see the duke look so ugly out of his eyes
before. I went on a-whimpering, and says:

  "I don't want to blow on nobody; and I ain't got no time to blow,
nohow. I got to turn out and find my nigger."

  He looked kinder bothered, and stood there with his bills fluttering
on his arm, thinking, and wrinkling up his forehead. At last he says:

  "I'll tell you something. We got to be here three days. If you'll
promise you won't blow, and won't let the nigger blow, I'll tell you
where to find him."

  So I promised, and he says:

  "A farmer by the name of Silas Ph-" and then he stopped. You see
he started to tell me the truth; but when he stopped, that way, and
begun to study and think agin, I reckoned he was changing his mind.
And so he was. He wouldn't trust me; he wanted to make sure of
having me out of the way the whole three days. So pretty soon he says:
"The man that bought him is named Abram Foster- Abram G. Foster- and
he lives forty mile back here in the country, on the road to
Lafayette."

  "All right," I says, "I can walk it in three days. And I'll start
this very afternoon."

  "No, you won't, you'll start now; and don't lose any time about
it, neither, nor do any gabbling by the way. Just keep a tight
tongue in your head and move right along, and then you won't get
into trouble with us, d'ye hear?"

  That was the order I wanted, and that was the one I played for. I
wanted to be left free to work my plans.

  "So clear out," he says; "and can tell Mr. Foster whatever you
want to. Maybe you can get him to believe that Jim is your nigger-
some idiots don't require documents- leastways I've heard there's such
down South here. And when you tell him the handbill and the reward's
bogus, maybe he'll believe you when you explain to him what the idea
was for getting 'em out. Go 'long, now, and tell him anything you want
to; but mind you don't work your jaw any between here and there."

  So I left, and struck for the back country. I didn't look around,
but I kinder felt like he was watching me. But I knowed I could tire
him out at that. I went straight out in the country as much as a mile,
before I stopped; then I doubled back through the woods towards
Phelps's. I reckoned I better start in on my plan straight off,
without fooling around, because I wanted to stop Jim's mouth till
these fellows could get away. I didn't want no trouble with their
kind. I'd seen all I wanted to of them, and wanted to get entirely
shut of them.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO


  When I got there it was all still and Sunday-like, and hot and
sunshiny- the hands was gone to the fields; and there was them kind of
faint dronings of bugs and flies in the air that makes it seem so
lonesome and like everybody's dead and gone; and if a breeze fans
along and quivers the leaves, it makes you feel mournful, because
you feel like it's spirits whispering-spirits that's been dead ever so
many years- and you always think they're talking about you. As a
general thing it makes a body wish he was dead, too, and done with
it all.

  Phelps's was one of these little one-horse cotton plantations; and
they all look alike. A rail fence round a two-acre yard; a stile, made
out of logs sawed off and up-ended, in steps, like barrels of a
different length, to climb over the fence with, and for the women to
stand on when they are going to jump onto a horse; some sickly
grass-patches in the big yard, but mostly it was bare and smooth, like
an old hat with the nap rubbed off; big double log house for the white
folks- hewed logs, with the chinks stopped up with mud or mortar,
and these mud-stripes been whitewashed some time or another; round-log
kitchen, with a big broad, open but roofed passage joining it to the
house; log smoke-house back of the kitchen; three little log
nigger-cabins in a row t'other side the smokehouse; one little hut all
by itself away down against the back fence, and some outbuildings down
a piece the other side; ash-hopper, and big kettle to bile soap in, by
the little hut; bench by the kitchen door, with bucket of water and
a gourd; hound asleep there, in the sun; more hounds asleep, round
about; about three shade-trees away off in a corner; some currant
bushes and gooseberry bushes in one place by the fence; outside of the
fence a garden and a water-melon patch; then the cotton fields begins;
and after the fields, the woods.

  I went around and clumb over the back stile by the ash-hopper, and
started for the kitchen. When I got a little ways, I heard the dim hum
of a spinning-wheel wailing along up and sinking along down again; and
then I knowed for certain I wished I was dead- for that is the
lonesomest sound in the whole world.

  I went right along, not fixing up any particular plan, but just
trusting to Providence to put the right words in my mouth when the
time come; for I'd noticed that Providence always did put the right
words in my mouth, if I left it alone.

  When I got half-way, first one hound and then another got up and
went for me, and of course I stopped and faced them, and kept still.
And such another pow-wow as they made! In a quarter of a minute I
was a kind of a hub of a wheel, as you may say- spokes made out of
dogs- circle of fifteen of them packed together around me, with
their necks and noses stretched up towards me, a barking and
howling; and more a coming; you could see them sailing over fences and
around corners from everywheres.

  A nigger woman come tearing out of the kitchen with a rolling-pin in
her hand, singing out, "Begone! you Tige! you Spot! begone, sah!"
and she fetched first one and then another of them a clip and sent him
howling, and then the rest followed; and the next second, half of them
come back, wagging their tails around me and making friends with me.
There ain't no harm in a hound, nohow.

  And behind the woman comes a little nigger girl and two little
nigger boys, without anything on but tow-linen shirts, and they hung
onto their mother's gown, and peeped out from behind her at me,
bashful, the way they always do. And here comes the white woman
running from the house, about forty-five or fifty year old,
bareheaded, and her spinningstick in her hand; and behind her comes
her little white children, acting the same way the little niggers
was doing. She was smiling all over so she could hardly stand- and
says:

  "It's you, at last!- ain't it?"

  I out with a "Yes'm," before I thought.

  She grabbed me and hugged me tight; and then gripped me by both
hands and shook and shook; and the tears come in her eyes, and run
down over; and she couldn't seem to hug and shake enough, and kept
saying, "You don't look as much like your mother as I reckoned you
would, but law sakes, I don't care for that, I'm so glad to see you!
Dear, dear, it does seem like I could eat you up! Children, it's
your cousin Tom!- tell him howdy."

  But they ducked their heads, and put their fingers in their
mouths, and hid behind her. So she run on:

  "Lize, hurry up and get him a hot breakfast, right away- or did
you get your breakfast on the boat?"

  I said I had got it on the boat. So then she started for the
house, leading me by the hand, and the children tagging after. When we
got there, she set me down in a split-bottomed chair, and set
herself down on a little low stool in front of me, holding both of
my hands, and says:

  "Now I can have a good look at you: and laws-a-me, I've been
hungry for it a many and a many a time, all these long years, and it's
come at last! We been expecting you a couple of days and more.
What's kep' you?- boat get aground?"

  "Don't say yes'm- say Aunt Sally. Where'd she get aground?"

  I didn't rightly know what to say, because I didn't know whether the
boat would be coming up the river or down. But I go a good deal on
instinct; and my instinct said she would be coming up- from down
towards Orleans. That didn't help me much, though; for I didn't know
the names of bars down that way. I see I'd got to invent a bar, or
forget the name of the one we got aground on- or- Now I struck an
idea, and fetched it out:

  "It warn't the grounding- that didn't keep us back but a little.
We blowed out a cylinder-head."

  "Good gracious! anybody hurt?"

  "No'm. Killed a nigger."

  "Well, it's lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt. Two years
ago last Christmas, your uncle Silas was coming up from Newrleans on
the old Lally Rook, and she blowed out a cylinder-head and crippled
a man. And I think he died afterwards. He was a Babtist. Your uncle
Silas knowed a family in Baton Rouge that knowed his people very well.
Yes, I remember, now he did die. Mortification set in, and they had to
amputate him. But it didn't save him. Yes, it was mortification-
that was it. He turned blue all over, and died in the hope of a
glorious resurrection. They say he was a sight to look at. Your
uncle's been up to the town every day to fetch you. And he's gone
again, not more'n an hour ago; he'll be back any minute, now. You must
a met him on the road, didn't you?- oldish man, with a-"

  "No, I didn't see nobody, Aunt Sally. The boat landed just at
daylight, and I left my baggage on the wharf-boat and went looking
around the town and out a piece in the country, to put in the time and
not get here too soon; and so I come down the back way."

  "Who'd you give the baggage to?"

  "Nobody."

  "Why, child, it'll be stole!"

  "Not where I hid it I reckon it won't," I says.

  "How'd you get your breakfast so early on the boat?" It was kinder
thin ice, but I says:

  "The captain see me standing around, and told me I better have
something to eat before I went ashore; so he took me in the texas to
the officers' lunch, and give me all I wanted."

  I was getting so uneasy I couldn't listen good. I had my mind on the
children all the time; I wanted to get them out to one side, and
pump them a little, and find out who I was. But I couldn't get no
show, Mrs. Phelps kept it up and run on so. Pretty soon she made the
cold chills streak all down my back, because she says:

  "But here we're a running on this way, and you hain't told me a word
about Sis, nor any of them. Now I'll rest my works a little, and you
start up yourn; just tell me everything- tell me all about 'm all-
every one of 'm; and how they are, and what they're doing, and what
they told you to tell me; and every last thing you can think of."

  Well, I see I was up a stump- and up it good. Providence had stood
by me this fur, all right, but I was hard and tight aground, now, I
see it warn't a bit of use to try to go ahead- I'd got to throw up
my hand. So I says to myself, here's another place where I got to resk
the truth. I opened my mouth to begin; but she grabbed me and
hustled me in behind the bed, and says:

  "Here he comes! stick your head down lower- there, that'll do; you
can't be seen, now. Don't you let on you're here. I'll play a joke
on him. Children, don't you say a word."

  I see I was in a fix, now. But it warn't no use to worry; there
warn't nothing to do but just hold still, and try and be ready to
stand from under when the lightning struck.

  I had just one little glimpse of the old gentleman when he come
in, then the bed hid him. Mrs. Phelps she jumps for him and says:

  "Has he come?"

  "No," says her husband.

  "Good-ness gracious!" she says, "what in the world can have become
of him?"

  "I can't imagine," says the old gentleman; "and I must say, it makes
me dreadful uneasy."

  "Uneasy!" she says, "I'm ready to go distracted! He must a come; and
you've missed him along the road. I know it's so- something tells me
so."

  "Why Sally, I couldn't miss him along the road- you know that."

  "But oh, dear, dear, what will Sis say! He must a come! You must a
missed him. He-"

  "Oh, don't distress me any more'n I'm already distressed. I don't
know what in the world to make of it. I'm at my wit's end, and I don't
mind acknowledging't I'm right down scared. But there's no hope that
he's come; for he couldn't come and me miss him. Sally, it's terrible-
just terrible- something's happened to the boat, sure!"

  "Why, Silas! Look yonder!- up the road!- ain't that somebody
coming?"

  He sprung to the window at the head of the bed, and that gave Mrs.
Phelps the chance she wanted. She stooped down quick, at the foot of
the bed, and give me a pull, and out I come; and when he turned back
from the window, there she stood, a-beaming and a-smiling like a house
afire, and I standing pretty meek and sweaty alongside. The old
gentleman stared, and says:

  "Why, who's that?"

  "Who do you reckon 't is?"

  "I haint no idea. Who is it?"

  "It's Tom Sawyer!"

  By jings, I most slumped through the floor. But there warn't no time
to swap knives; the old man grabbed me by the hand and shook, and kept
on shaking; and all the time, how the woman did dance around and laugh
and cry; and then how they both did fire off questions about Sid,
and Mary, and the rest of the tribe.

  But if they was joyful, it warn't nothing to what I was; for it
was like being born again, I was so glad to find out who I was.
Well, they froze to me for two hours; and at last when my chin was
so tired it couldn't hardly go, any more, I had told them more about
my family- I mean the Sawyer family- than ever happened to any six
Sawyer families. And I explained all about how we blowed out a
cylinder-head at the mouth of White River and it took us three days to
fix it. Which was all right, and worked first rate; because they
didn't know but what it would take three days to fix it. If I'd a
called it a bolt-head it would a done just as well.

  Now I was feeling pretty comfortable all down one side, and pretty
uncomfortable all up the other. Being Tom Sawyer was easy and
comfortable; and it stayed easy and comfortable till by-and-by I
hear a steamboat coughing along down the river- then I says to myself,
spose Tom Sawyer come down on that boat?- and spose he steps in
here, any minute, and sings out my name before I can throw him a
wink to keep quiet? Well, I couldn't have it that way- it wouldn't
do at all. I must go up the road and waylay him. So I told the folks I
reckoned I would go up to the town and fetch down my baggage. The
old gentleman was for going along with me, but I said no, I could
drive the horse myself, and I druther he wouldn't take no trouble
about me.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE


  So I started for town, in the wagon, and when I was half-way I see a
wagon coming, and sure enough it was Tom Sawyer, and I stopped and
waited till he come along. I says "Hold on!" and it stopped alongside,
and his mouth opened up like a trunk, and staid so; and he swallowed
two or three times like a person that's got a dry throat, and then
says:

  "I hain't ever done you no harm. You know that. So then, what you
want to come back and ha'nt me for?"

  I says:

  "I hain't come back- I hain't been gone."

  When he heard my voice, it righted him up some, but he warn't
quite satisfied yet. He says:

  "Don't you play nothing on me, because I wouldn't on you. Honest
injun, now, you ain't a ghost?"

  "Honest injun, I ain't," I says.

  "Well- I- I- well, that ought to settle it, of course; but I can't
somehow seem to understand it, no way. Looky here, warn't you ever
murdered at all?"

  "No. I warn't ever murdered at all- I played it on them. You come in
here and feel of me if you don't believe me."

  So he done it; and it satisfied him; and he was that glad to see
me again, he didn't know what to do. And he wanted to know all about
it right off; because it was a grand adventure, and mysterious, and so
it hit him where he lived. But I said, leave it alone till
by-and-by; and told his driver to wait, and we drove off a little
piece, and I told him the kind of a fix I was in, and what did he
reckon we better do? He said, let him alone a minute, and don't
disturb him. So he thought and thought, and pretty soon he says:

  "It's all right, I've got it. Take my trunk in your wagon, and let
on it's your'n; and you turn back and fool along slow, so as to get to
the house about the time you ought to; and I'll go towards town a
piece, and take a fresh start, and get there a quarter or a half an
hour after you; and you needn't let on to know me, at first."

  I says:

  "All right; but wait a minute. There's one more thing- a thing
that nobody don't know but me. And that is, there's a nigger here that
I'm a trying to steal out of slavery- and his name is Jim- old Miss
Watson's Jim."

  He says:

  "What! Why Jim is-"

  He stopped and went to studying. I says:

  "I know what you'll say. You'll say it's dirty low-down business;
but what if it is?- I'm low down; and I'm agoing to steal him, and I
want you to keep mum and not let on. Will you?"

  His eye lit up, and he says:

  "I'll help you steal him!"

  Well, I let go all holts then, like I was shot. It was the most
astonishing speech I ever heard- and I'm bound to say Tom Sawyer fell,
considerable, in my estimation. Only I couldn't believe it. Tom Sawyer
a nigger stealer!

  "Oh, shucks," I says, "you're joking."

  "I ain't joking, either."

  "Well, then," I says, "joking or no joking, if you hear anything
said about a runaway nigger, don't forget to remember that you don't
know nothing about him, and I don't know nothing about him."

  Then we took the trunk and put it in my wagon and he drove off his
way, and I drove mine. But of course I forgot all about driving
slow, on accounts of being glad and full of thinking; so I got home
a heap too quick for that length of a trip. The old gentleman was at
the door, and he says:

  "Why, this is wonderful. Who ever would a thought it was in that
mare to do it. I wish we'd a timed her. And she hain't sweated a hair-
not a hair. It's wonderful. Why, I wouldn't take a hundred dollars for
that horse now; I wouldn't, honest; and yet I'd a sold her for fifteen
before, and thought 'twas all she was worth."

  That's all he said. He was the innocentest, best old soul I ever
see. But it warn't surprising; because he warn't only just a farmer,
he was a preacher, too, and had a little one-horse log church down
back of the plantation, which he built it himself at his own
expense, for a church and school-house, and never charged nothing
for his preaching, and it was worth it, too. There was plenty other
farmer-preachers like that, and done the same way, down South.

  In about half an hour Tom's wagon drove up to the front stile, and
Aunt Sally she see it through the window because it was only about
fifty yards, and says:

  "Why, there's somebody come! I wonder who 'tis? Why, I do believe
it's a stranger. Jimmy" (that's one of the children), "run and tell
Lize to put on another plate for dinner."

  Everybody made a rush for the front door, because, of course, a
stranger don't come every year, and so he lays over the yaller
fever, for interest, when he does come. Tom was over the stile and
starting for the house; the wagon was spinning up the road for the
village, and we was all bunched in the front door. Tom had his store
clothes on, and an audience- and that was always nuts for Tom
Sawyer. In them circumstances it warn't no trouble to him to throw
in an amount of style that was suitable. He warn't a boy to meeky
along up that yard like a sheep; no, he come ca'm and important,
like the ram. When he got afront of us, he lifts his hat ever so
gracious and dainty, like it was the lid of a box that had butterflies
asleep in it and he didn't want to disturb them, and says:

  "Mr. Archibald Nichols, I presume?"

  "No, my boy," says the old gentleman, "I'm sorry to say't your
driver has deceived you; Nichols's place is down a matter of three
mile more. Come in, come in."

  Tom he took a look back over his shoulder, and says, "Too late- he's
out of sight."

  "Yes, he's gone, my son, and you must come in and eat your dinner
with us; and then we'll hitch up and take you down to Nichols's."

  "Oh, I can't make you so much trouble; I couldn't think of it.
I'll walk- I don't mind the distance."

  "But we won't let you walk- it wouldn't be Southern hospitality to
do it. Come right in."

  "Oh, do," says Aunt Sally; "it ain't a bit of trouble to us, not a
bit in the world. You must stay. It's a long, dusty three mile, and we
can't let you walk. And besides, I've already told 'em to put on
another plate, when I see you coming; so you mustn't disappoint us.
Come right in, and make yourself at home."

  So Tom he thanked them very hearty and handsome, and let himself
be persuaded, and come in; and when he was in, he said he was a
stranger from Hicksville, Ohio, and his name was William Thompson- and
he made another bow.

  Well, he run on, and on, and on, making up stuff about Hicksville
and everybody in it he could invent, and I was getting a little
nervous, and wondering how this was going to help me out of my scrape;
and at last, still talking along, he reached over and kissed Aunt
Sally right on the mouth, and then settled back again in his chair,
comfortable, and was going on talking; but she jumped up and wiped
it off with the back of her hand, and says:

  "You owdacious puppy!"

  He looked kind of hurt, and says:

  "I'm surprised at you, m'am."

  "You're s'rp- Why, what do you reckon I am? I've a good notion to
take and- say, what do you mean by kissing me?"

  He looked kind of humble, and says:

  "I didn't mean nothing, m'am. I didn't mean no harm. I- I- thought
you'd like it."

  "Why, you born fool!" She took up the spinning-stick, and it
looked like it was all she could do to keep from giving him a crack
with it. "What made you think I'd like it?"

  "Well, I don't know. Only, they- they- told me you would."

  "They told you I would. Whoever told you's another lunatic. I
never heard the beat of it. Who's they?"

  "Why- everybody. They all said so, m'am."

  It was all she could do to hold in; and her eyes snapped, and her
fingers worked like she wanted to scratch him; and she says:

  "Who's 'everybody?' Out with their names- or ther'll be an idiot
short."

  He got up and looked distressed, and fumbled his hat, and says:

  "I'm sorry, and I warn't expecting it. They told me to. They all
told me to. They all said kiss her; and said she'll like it. They
all said it- every one of them. But I'm sorry, m'am, and I won't do it
no more- I won't honest."

  "You won't, won't you? Well, I sh'd reckon you won't!"

  "No'm, I'm honest about it; I won't ever do it again. Till you ask
me."

  "Till I ask you! Well, I never see the beat of it in my born days! I
lay you'll be the Methusalem-numskull of creation before ever I ask
you- or the likes of you."

  "Well," he says, "it does surprise me so. I can't make it out,
somehow. They said you would, and I thought you would. But-" He
stopped and looked around slow, like he wished he could run across a
friendly eye, somewhere's; and fetched up on the old gentleman's,
and says, "Didn't you think she'd like me to kiss her, sir?"

  "Why, no, I- I- well, no, I b'lieve I didn't."

  Then he looks on around, the same way, to me- and says:

  "Tom, didn't you think Aunt Sally'd open out her arms and say,
'Sid Sawyer-'"

  "My land!" she says, breaking in and jumping for him, "you
impudent young rascal, to fool a body so-" and was going to hug him,
but he fended her off, and says:

  "No, not till you've asked me, first."

  So she didn't lose no time, but asked him; and hugged him and kissed
him, over and over again, and then turned him over to the old man, and
he took what was left. And after they got a little quiet again, she
says:

  "Why, dear me, I never see such a surprise. We warn't looking for
you, at all, but only Tom. Sis never wrote to me about anybody
coming but him."

  "It's because it warn't intended for any of us to come but Tom,"
he says; "but I begged and begged, and at the last minute she let me
come, too; so, coming down the river, me and Tom thought it would be a
first-rate surprise for him to come here to the house first, and for
me to by-and-by tag along and drop in and let on to be a stranger. But
it was a mistake, Aunt Sally. This ain't no healthy place for a
stranger to come."

  "No- not impudent whelps, Sid. You ought to had your jaws boxed; I
hain't been so put out since I don't know when. But I don't care, I
don't mind the terms- I'd be willing to stand a thousand such jokes to
have you here. Well, to think of that performance! I don't deny it,
I was most putrified with astonishment when you give me that smack."

  We had dinner out in that broad open passage betwixt the house and
the kitchen; and there was things enough on that table for seven
families- and all hot, too; none of your flabby tough meat that's laid
in a cupboard in a damp cellar all night and tastes like a hunk of old
cold cannibal in the morning. Uncle Silas he asked a pretty long
blessing over it, but it was worth it; and it didn't cool it a bit,
neither, the way I've seen them kind of interruptions do, lots of
times.

  There was a considerable good deal of talk, all the afternoon, and
me and Tom was on the lookout all the time, but it warn't no use, they
didn't happen to say nothing about any runaway nigger, and we was
afraid to try to work up to it. But at supper, at night, one of the
little boys says:

  "Pa, mayn't Tom and Sid and me go to the show?"

  "No," says the old man, "I reckon there ain't going to be any; and
you couldn't go if there was; because the runaway nigger told Burton
and me all about that scandalous show, and Burton said he would tell
the people; so I reckon they've drove the owdacious loafers out of
town before this time."

  So there it was!- but I couldn't help it. Tom and me was to sleep in
the same room and bed; so, being tired, we bid goodnight and went up
to bed, right after supper, and clumb out of the window and down the
lightning-rod, and shoved for the town; for I didn't believe anybody
was going to give the king and the duke a hint, and so, if I didn't
hurry up and give them one they'd get into trouble sure.

  On the road Tom he told me all about how it was reckoned I was
murdered, and how pap disappeared, pretty soon, and didn't come back
no more, and what a stir there was when Jim run away; and I told Tom
all about our Royal Nonesuch rapscallions, and as much of the
raft-voyage as I had time to; and as we struck into the town and up
through the middle of it- it was as much as half-after eight, then-
here comes a raging rush of people, with torches, and an awful
whooping and yelling, and banging tin pans and blowing horns; and we
jumped to one side to let them go by; and as they went by, I see
they had the king and the duke astraddle of a rail- that is, I
knowed it was the king and the duke, though they was all over tar
and feathers, and didn't look like nothing in the world that was
human- just looked like a couple of monstrous big soldier-plumes.
Well, it made me sick to see it; and I was sorry for them poor pitiful
rascals, it seemed like I couldn't ever feel any hardness against them
any more in the world. It was a dreadful thing to see. Human beings
can be awful cruel to one another.

  We see we was too late- couldn't do no good. We asked some
stragglers about it, and they said everybody went to the show
looking very innocent; and laid low and kept dark till the poor old
king was in the middle of his cavortings on the stage; then somebody
give a signal, and the house rose up and went for them.

  So we poked along back home, and I warn't feeling so brash as I
was before, but kind of ornery, and humble, and to blame, somehow-
though I hadn't done nothing. But that's always the way; it don't make
no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person's conscience
ain't got no sense, and just goes for him anyway. If I had a yaller
dog that didn't know no more than a person's conscience does, I
would pison him. It takes up more room than all the rest of a person's
insides, and yet ain't no good, nohow. Tom Sawyer he says the same.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR


  We stopped talking, and got to thinking. By-and-by Tom says:

  "Looky here, Huck, what fools we are, to not think of it before! I
bet I know where Jim is."

  "No! Where?"

  "In that hut down by the ash-hopper. Why, looky here. When we was at
dinner, didn't you see a nigger man go in there with some vittles?"

  "What did you think the vittles was for?"

  "For a dog."

  "So'd I. Well, it wasn't for a dog."

  "Because part of it was watermelon."

  "So it was- I noticed it. Well, it does beat all, that I never
thought about a dog not eating watermelon. It shows how a body can see
and don't see at the same time."

  "Well, the nigger unlocked the padlock when he went in, and he
locked it again when he come out. He fetched uncle a key, about the
time we got up from table- same key, I bet. Watermelon shows man, lock
shows prisoner; and it ain't likely there's two prisoners on such a
little plantation, and where the people's all so kind and good.
Jim's the prisoner. All right- I'm glad we found it out detective
fashion; I wouldn't give shucks for any other way. Now you work your
mind and study out a plan to steal Jim, and I will study out one, too;
and we'll take the one we like the best."

  What a head for just a boy to have! If I had Tom Sawyer's head, I
wouldn't trade it off to be a duke, nor mate of a steamboat, nor clown
in a circus, nor nothing I can think of. I went to thinking out a
plan, but only just to be doing something; I knowed very well where
the right plan was going to come from. Pretty soon, Tom says:

  "Ready?"

  "Yes," I says.

  "All right- bring it out."

  "My plan is this," I says. "We can easy find out if it's Jim in
there. Then get up my canoe to-morrow night, and fetch my raft over
from the island. Then the first dark night that comes, steal the key
out of the old man's britches, after he goes to bed, and shove off
down the river on the raft, with Jim, hiding daytimes and running
nights, the way me and Jim used to do before. Wouldn't that plan
work?"

  "Work? Why cert'nly, it would work, like rats a fighting. But it's
too blame' simple; there ain't nothing to it. What's the good of a
plan that ain't no more trouble than that? It's as mild as goose-milk.
Why, Huck, it wouldn't make no more talk than breaking into a soap
factory."

  I never said nothing, because I warn't expecting nothing
different; but I knowed mighty well that whenever he got his plan
ready it wouldn't have none of them objections to it.

  And it didn't. He told me what it was, and I see in a minute it
was worth fifteen of mine, for style, and would make Jim just as
free a man as mine would, and maybe get us all killed besides. So I
was satisfied, and said we would waltz in on it. I needn't tell what
it was, here, because I knowed it wouldn't stay the way it was. I
knowed he would be changing it around, every which way, as we went
along, and heaving in new bullinesses wherever he got a chance. And
that is what he done.

  Well, one thing was dead sure; and that was, that Tom Sawyer was
in earnest and was actuly going to help steal that nigger out of
slavery. That was the thing that was too many for me. Here was a boy
that was respectable, and well brung up and had a character to lose;
and folks at home that had characters; and he was bright and not
leather-headed; and knowing and not ignorant; and not mean, but
kind; and yet here he was, without any more pride, or rightness, or
feeling, than to stoop to this business, and make himself a shame, and
his family a shame, before everybody. I couldn't understand it, no way
at all. It was outrageous, and I knowed I ought to just up and tell
him so; and so be his true friend, and let him quit the thing right
where he was, and save himself. And I did start to tell him; but he
shut me up, and says:

  "Don't you reckon I know what I'm about? Don't I generly know what
I'm about?"

  "Yes."

  "Didn't I say I was going to help steal the nigger?"

  "Yes."

  "Well then."

  That's all he said, and that's all I said. It warn't no use to say
any more; because when he said he'd do a thing, he always done it. But
I couldn't make out how he was willing to go into this thing; so I
just let it go, and never bothered no more about it. If he was bound
to have it so, I couldn't help it.

  When we got home, the house was all dark and still; so we went on
down to the hut by the ash-hopper, for to examine it. We went
through the yard, so as to see what the hounds would do. They knowed
us, and didn't make no more noise than country dogs is always doing
when anything comes by in the night. When we got to the cabin, we took
a look at the front and the two sides; and on the side I warn't
acquainted with- which was the north side- we found a square
window-hole, up tolerable high, with just one stout board nailed
across it. I says:

  "Here's the ticket. This hole's big enough for Jim to get through,
if we wrench off the board."

  Tom says:

  "It's as simple as tit-tat-toe, three-in-a-row, and as easy as
playing hooky. I should hope we can find a way that's a little more
complicated than that, Huck Finn."

  "Well then," I says, "how'll it do to saw him out, the way I done
before I was murdered, that time?"

  "That's more like," he says. "It's real mysterious, and troublesome,
and good," he says; "but I bet we can find a way that's twice as long.
There ain't no hurry; le's keep on looking around."

  Betwixt the hut and the fence, on the back side, was a lean-to, that
joined the hut at the eaves, and was made out of plank. It was as long
as the hut, but narrow- only about six foot wide. The door to it was
at the south end, and was padlocked. Tom he went to the soap kettle,
and searched around and fetched back the iron thing they lift the
lid with; so he took it and prized out one of the staples. The chain
fell down, and we opened the door and went in, and shut it, and struck
a match, and see the shed was only built against the cabin and
hadn't no connection with it; and there warn't no floor to the shed,
nor nothing in it but some rusty played-out hoes, and spades, and
packs, and a crippled plow. The match went out, and so did we, and
shoved in the staple again, and the door was locked as good as ever.
Tom was joyful. He says:

  "Now we're all right. We'll dig him out. It'll take about a week!"

  Then we started for the house, and I went in the back door- you only
have to pull a buckskin latch-string, they don't fasten the doors- but
that warn't romantical enough for Tom Sawyer: no way would do him
but he must climb up the lightning-rod. But after he got up half-way
about three times, and missed fire and fell every time, and the last
time most busted his brains out, he thought he'd got to give it up;
but after he was rested, he allowed he would give her one more turn
for luck, and this time he made the trip.

  In the morning we was up at break of day, and down to the nigger
cabins to pet the dogs and make friends with the nigger that fed
Jim- if it was Jim that was being fed. The niggers was just getting
through breakfast and starting for the fields; and Jim's nigger was
piling up a tin pan with bread and meat and things; and whilst the
others was leaving, the key come from the house.

  This nigger had a good-natured, chuckle-headed face, and his wool
was all tied up in little bunches with thread. That was to keep
witches off. He said the witches was pestering him awful, these
nights, and making him see all kinds of strange things, and hear all
kinds of strange words and noises, and he didn't believe he was ever
witched so long, before, in his life. He got so worked up, and got
to running on so about his troubles, he forgot all about what he'd
been going to do. So Tom says:

  "What's the vittles for? Going to feed the dogs?"

  The nigger kind of smiled around graduly over his face, like when
you heave a brickbat in a mud puddle, and he says:

  "Yes, Mars Sid, a dog. Cur'us dog, too. Does you want to go en
look at 'im?"

  "Yes."

  I hunched Tom, and whispers:

  "You going, right here in the day-break? That warn't the plan."

  "No, it warn't- but it's the plan now."

  So, drat him, we went along, but I didn't like it much. When we
got in, we couldn't hardly see anything, it was so dark; but Jim was
there, sure enough, and could see us; and he sings out:

  "Why, Huck! En good lan'! ain'dat Misto Tom?"

  I just knowed how it would be; I just expected it. I didn't know
nothing to do; and if I had, I couldn't a done it; because that nigger
busted in and says:

  "Why, de gracious sakes! do he know you genlmen?"

  We could see pretty well, now. Tom he looked at the nigger, steady
and kind of wondering, and says:

  "Does who know us?"

  "Why, dish-yer runaway nigger."

  "I don't reckon he does; but what put that into your head?"

  "What put it dar? Didn' he jis' dis minute sing out like he knowed
you?"

  Tom says, in a puzzled-up kind of way:

  "Well, that's mighty curious. Who sung out? When did he sing out?
What did he sing out?" And turns to me, perfectly c'am, and says, "Did
you hear anybody sing out?"

  Of course there warn't nothing to be said but the one thing; so I
says:

  "No; I ain't heard nobody say nothing."

  Then he turns to Jim, and looks him over like he never see him
before; and says:

  "Did you sing out?"

  "No, sah," says Jim; "I hain't said nothing, sah."

  "Not a word?"

  "No, sah; not as I knows on."

  So Tom turns to the nigger, which was looking wild and distressed,
and says, kind of severe:

  "What do you reckon's the matter with you, anyway? What made you
think somebody sung out?"

  "Oh, it's de dad-blame' witches, sah, en I wisht I was dead, I do.
Dey's awluz at it, sah, en dey do mos' kill me, dey sk'yers me so.
Please to don't tell nobody 'bout it sah, er ole Mars Silas he'll
scole me; 'kase he say dey ain't no witches. I jis' wish to goodness
he was heah now- den what would he say! I jis' bet he couldn't fine no
way to git around it dis time. But it's awluz jis' so; people dat's
sot, stays sot; dey won't look into nothin' en fine it out f'r
deyselves, en when you fine it out en tell um 'bout it, dey doan'
b'lieve you."

  Tom give him a dime, and said we wouldn't tell nobody; and told
him to buy some more thread to tie up his wool with; and then looks at
Jim, and says:

  "I wonder if Uncle Silas is going to hang this nigger. If I was to
catch a nigger that was ungrateful enough to run away, I wouldn't give
him up, I'd hang him." And whilst the nigger stepped to the door to
look at the dime and bite it to see if it was good, he whispers to
Jim, and says:

  "Don't ever let on to know us. And if you hear any digging going
on nights, it's us: we're going to set you free."

  Jim only had time to grab us by the hand and squeeze it, then the
nigger come back, and we said we'd come again some time if the
nigger wanted us to; and he said he would, more particular if it was
dark, because the witches went for him mostly in the dark, and it
was good to have folks around then.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE


  It would be most an hour, yet, till breakfast, so we left, and
struck down into the woods; because Tom said we got to have some light
to see how to dig by, and a lantern makes too much, and might get us
into trouble; what we must have was a lot of them rotten chunks that's
called fox-fire and just makes a soft kind of a glow when you lay them
in a dark place. We fetched an armful and hid it in the weeds, and set
down to rest, and Tom says, kind of dissatisfied:

  "Blame it, this whole thing is just as easy and awkward as it can
be. And so it makes it so rotten difficult to get up a difficult plan.
There ain't no watchman to be drugged- now there ought to be a
watchman. There ain't even a dog to get a sleeping-mixture to. And
there's Jim chained by one leg, with a ten-foot chain, to the leg of
his bed: why, all you got to do is to lift up the bedstead and slip
off the chain. And Uncle Silas he trusts everybody; sends the key to
the punkinheaded nigger, and don't send nobody to watch the nigger.
Jim could a got out of that window hole before this, only there
wouldn't be no use trying to travel with a ten-foot chain on his
leg. Why, drat it, Huck, it's the stupidest arrangement I ever see.
You got to invent all the difficulties. Well, we can't help it, we got
to do the best we can with the materials we've got. Anyhow, there's
one thing- there's more honor in getting him out through a lot of
difficulties and dangers, where there warn't one of them furnished
to you by the people who it was their duty to furnish them, and you
had to contrive them all out of your own head. Now look at just that
one thing of the lantern. When you come down to the cold facts, we
simply got to let on that a lantern's resky. Why, we could work with a
torchlight procession if we wanted to, I believe. Now, whilst I
think of it, we got to hunt up something to make a saw out of, the
first chance we get."

  "What do we want of a saw?"

  "What do we want of it? Hain't we got to saw the leg of Jim's bed
off, so as to get the chain loose?"

  "Why, you just said a body could lift up the bedstead and slip the
chain off."

  "Well, if that ain't just like you, Huck Finn. You can get up the
infant-schooliest ways of going at a thing. Why, hain't you ever
read any books at all?- Baron Trenck, nor Casanova, nor Benvenuto
Chelleeny, nor Henri IV., nor none of them heroes? Whoever heard of
getting a prisoner loose in such an old-maidy way as that? No; the way
all the best authorities does, is to saw the bed-leg in two, and leave
it just so, and swallow the sawdust, so it can't be found, and put
some dirt and grease around the sawed place so the very keenest
seneskal can't see no sign of its being sawed, and thinks the
bed-leg is perfectly sound. Then, the night you're ready, fetch the
leg a kick, down she goes; slip off your chain, and there you are.
Nothing to do but hitch your rope-ladder to the battlements, shin down
it, break your leg in the moat- because a rope-ladder is nineteen foot
too short, you know- and there's your horses and your trusty
vassles, and they scoop you up and fling you across a saddle and
away you go, to your native Langudoc, or Navarre, or wherever it is.
It's gaudy, Huck. I wish there was a moat to this cabin. If we get
time, the night of the escape, we'll dig one."

  I says:

  "What do we want of a moat, when we're going to snake him out from
under the cabin?"

  But he never heard me. He had forgot me and everything else. He
had his chin in his hand, thinking. Pretty soon, he sighs, and
shakes his head; then sighs again, and says:

  "No, it wouldn't do- there ain't necessity enough for it."

  "For what?" I says.

  "Why, to saw Jim's leg off," he says.

  "Good land!" I says, "why, there ain't no necessity for it. And what
you want to saw his leg off for, anyway?"

  "Well, some of the best authorities has done it. They couldn't get
the chain off, so they just cut their hand off, and shoved. And a
leg would be better still. But we got to let that go. There ain't
necessity enough in this case; and besides, Jim's a nigger and
wouldn't understand the reasons for it, and how it's the custom in
Europe; so we'll let it go. But there's one thing- he can have a
rope-ladder; we can tear up our sheets and make him a rope-ladder easy
enough. And we can send it to him in a pie; it's mostly done that way.
And I've et worse pies."

  "Why, Tom Sawyer, how you talk," I says; "Jim ain't got no use for a
rope-ladder."

  "He has got use for it. How you talk, you better say; you don't know
nothing about it. He's got to have a rope ladder; they all do."

  "What in the nation can he do with it?"

  "Do with it? He can hide it in his bed, can't he? That's what they
all do; and he's got to, too. Huck, you don't ever seem to want to
do anything that's regular; you want to be starting something fresh
all the time. Spose he don't do nothing with it? ain't it there in his
bed, for a clew, after he's gone? and don't you reckon they'll want
clews? Of course they will. And you wouldn't leave them any? That
would be a pretty howdy- do, wouldn't it! I never heard of such a
thing."

  "Well," I says, "if it's in the regulations, and he's got to have
it, all right, let him have it; because I don't wish to go back on
no regulations; but there's one thing, Tom Sawyer- if we go to tearing
up our sheets to make Jim a rope-ladder, we're going to get into
trouble with Aunt Sally, just as sure as you're born. Now, the way I
look at it, a hickry-bark ladder don't cost nothing, and don't waste
nothing, and is just as good to load up a pie with, and hide in a
straw tick, as any rag ladder you can start; and as for Jim, he
ain't had no experience, and so he don't care what kind of a-"

  "Oh, shucks, Huck Finn, if I was as ignorant as you, I'd keep still-
that's what I'd do. Who ever heard of a state prisoner escaping by a
hickry-bark ladder? Why, it's perfectly ridiculous."

  "Well, all right, Tom, fix it your own way; but if you'll take my
advice, you'll let me borrow a sheet off of the clothes-line."

  He said that would do. And that give him another idea, and he says:

  "Borrow a shirt, too."

  "What do we want of a shirt, Tom?"

  "Want it for Jim to keep a journal on."

  "Journal your granny- Jim can't write."

  "Spose he can't write- he can make marks on the shirt, can't he,
if we make him a pen out of an old pewter spoon or a piece of an old
iron barrel-hoop?"

  "Why, Tom, we can pull a feather out of a goose and make him a
better one; and quicker, too."

  "Prisoners don't have geese running around the donjon-keep to pull
pens out of, you muggins. They always make their pens out of the
hardest, toughest, troublesomest piece of old brass candlestick or
something like that they can get their hands on; and it takes them
weeks and weeks, and months and months to file it out, too, because
they've got to do it by rubbing it on the wall. They wouldn't use a
goosequill if they had it. It ain't regular."

  "Well, then, what'll we make him the ink out of?"

  "Many makes it out of iron-rust and tears; but that's the common
sort and women; the best authorities uses their own blood. Jim can
do that; and when he wants to send any little common ordinary
mysterious message to let the world know where he's captivated, he can
write it on the bottom of a tin plate with a fork and throw it out
of the window. The Iron Mask always done that, and it's a blame'
good way, too."

  "Jim ain't got no tin plates. They feed him in a pan."

  "That ain't anything; we can get him some."

  "Can't nobody read his plates."

  "That ain't got nothing to do with it, Huck Finn. All he's got to do
is to write on the plate and throw it out. You don't have to be able
to read it. Why, half the time you can't read anything a prisoner
writes on a plate, or anywhere else."

  "Well, then, what's the sense in wasting the plates?"

  "Why, blame it all, it ain't the prisoner's plates."

  "But it's somebody's plates, ain't it?"

  "Well, spos'n it is? What does the prisoner care whose-"

  He broke off there, because we heard the breakfast-horn blowing.
So we cleared out for the house.

  Along during that morning I borrowed a sheet and a white shirt off
of the clothes-line; and I found an old sack and put them in it, and
we went down and got the fox-fire, and put that in too. I called it
borrowing, because that was what pap always called it; but Tom said it
warn't borrowing, it was stealing. He said we was representing
prisoners; and prisoners don't care how they get a thing so they get
it, and nobody don't blame them for it, either. It ain't no crime in a
prisoner to steal the thing he needs to get away with, Tom said;
it's his right; and so, as long as we was representing a prisoner,
we had a perfect right to steal anything on this place we had the
least use for, to get ourselves out of prison with. He said if we
warn't prisoners it would be a very different thing, and nobody but
a mean ornery person would steal when he warn't a prisoner. So we
allowed we would steal everything there was that come handy. And yet
he made a mighty fuss, one day, after that, when I stole a
watermelon out of the nigger patch and eat it; and he made me go and
give the niggers a dime, without telling them what it was for. Tom
said that what he meant was, we could steal anything we needed.
Well, I says, I needed the watermelon. But he said I didn't need it to
get out of prison with, there's where the difference was. He said if
I'd a wanted it to hide a knife in, and smuggle it to Jim to kill
the seneskal with, it would a been all right. So I let it go at
that, though I couldn't see no advantage in representing a prisoner,
if I got to set down and chaw over a lot of gold-leaf distinctions
like that, every time I see a chance to hog a watermelon.

  Well, as I was saying, we waited that morning till everybody was
settled down to business, and nobody in sight around the yard; then
Tom he carried the sack into the leanto whilst I stood off a piece
to keep watch. By-and-by he come out, and we went and set down on
the wood-pile, to talk. He says:

  "Everything's all right, now, except tools; and that's easy fixed."

  "Tools?" I says. "Tools for what?"

  "Why, to dig with. We ain't going to gnaw him out, are we?"

  "Ain't them old crippled picks and things in there good enough to
dig a nigger out with?" I says.

  He turns on me looking pitying enough to make a body cry, and says:

  "Huck Finn, did you ever hear of a prisoner having picks and
shovels, and all the modern conveniences in his wardrobe to dig
himself out with? Now I want to ask you- if you got any reasonableness
in you at all- what kind of a show would that give him to be a hero?
Why, they might as well lend him the key, and done with it. Picks
and shovels- why they wouldn't furnish 'em to a king."

  "Well, then," I says, "if we don't want the picks and shovels,
what do we want?"

  "A couple of case-knives."

  "To dig the foundations out from under that cabin with?"

  "Yes."

  "Confound it, it's foolish, Tom."

  "It don't make no difference how foolish it is, it's the right
way- and it's the regular way. And there ain't no other way, that ever
I heard of, and I've read all the books that gives any information
about these things. They always dig out with a case-knife- and not
through dirt, mind you; generly it's through solid rock. And it
takes them weeks and weeks and weeks, and for ever and ever. Why, look
at one of them prisoners in the bottom dungeon of the Castle Deef,
in the harbor of Marseilles, that dug himself out that way; how long
was he at it, you reckon?"

  "I don't know."

  "Well, guess."

  "I don't know. A month and a half?"

  "Thirty-seven year- and he come out in China. That's the kind. I
wish the bottom of this fortress was solid rock."

  "Jim don't know nobody in China."

  "What's that got to do with it? Neither did our fellow. But you're
always a-wandering off on a side issue. Why can't you stick to the
main point?"

  "All right- I don't care where he comes out, so he comes out; and
Jim don't, either, I reckon. But there's one thing, anyway- Jim's
too old to be dug out with a case-knife. He won't last."

  "Yes he will last, too. You don't reckon it's going to take
thirty-seven years to dig out through a dirt foundation, do you?"

  "How long will it take, Tom?"

  "Well, we can't resk being as long as we ought to, because it mayn't
take very long for Uncle Silas to hear from down there by New Orleans.
He'll hear Jim ain't from there. Then his next move will be to
advertise Jim, or something like that. So we can't resk being as
long digging him out as we ought to. By rights I reckon we ought to be
a couple of years; but we can't. Things being so uncertain, what I
recommend is this: that we really dig right in, as quick as we can;
and after that, we can let on, to ourselves, that we was at it
thirty-seven years. Then we can snatch him out and rush him away the
first time there's an alarm. Yes, I reckon that'll be the best way."

  "Now, there's sense in that," I says. "Letting on don't cost
nothing; letting on ain't no trouble; and if it's any object, I
don't mind letting on we was at it a hundred and fifty year. It
wouldn't strain me none, after I got my hand in. So I'll mosey along
now, and smouch a couple of case-knives."

  "Smouch three," he says; "we want one to make a saw out of."

  "Tom, if it ain't unregular and irreligious to sejest it," I says,
"there's an old rusty saw-blade around yonder sticking under the
weatherboarding behind the smoke-house."

  He looked kind of weary and discouraged-like, and says:

  "It ain't no use to try to learn you nothing, Huck. Run along and
smouch the knives- three of them." So I done it.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX


  As soon as we reckoned everybody was asleep, that night, we went
down the lightning-rod, and shut ourselves up in the lean-to, and
got out our pile of fox-fire, and went to work. We cleared
everything out of the way, about four or five foot along the middle of
the bottom log. Tom said he was right behind Jim's bed now, and we'd
dig it under it, and when we got through there couldn't nobody in
the cabin ever know there was any hole there, because Jim's counterpin
hung down most to the ground, and you'd have to raise it up and look
under to see the hole. So we dug and dug, with the caseknives, till
most midnight; and then we was dog tired, and our hands was blistered,
and yet you couldn't see we'd done anything, hardly. At last I says:

  "This ain't no thirty-seven year job, this is a thirty-eight year
job, Tom Sawyer."

  He never said nothing. But he sighed, and pretty soon he stopped
digging, and then for a good little while I knowed he was thinking.
Then he says:

  "It ain't no use, Huck, it ain't agoing to work. If we was prisoners
it would, because then we'd have as many years as we wanted, and no
hurry; and we wouldn't get but a few minutes to dig, every day,
while they was changing watches, and so our hands wouldn't get
blistered, and we could keep it up right along, year in and year
out, and do it right, and the way it ought to be done. But we can't
fool along, we got to rush; we ain't got no time to spare. If we was
to put in another night this way, we'd have to knock off for a week to
let our hands get well- couldn't touch a case-knife with them sooner."

  "Well, then, what we going to do, Tom?"

  "I'll tell you. It ain't right, and it ain't moral, and I wouldn't
like it to get out- but there ain't only just the one way; we got to
dig him out with the picks, and let on it's case-knives."

  "Now you're talking!" I says; "your head gets leveler and leveler
all the time, Tom Sawyer," I says. "Picks is the thing, moral or no
moral; and as for me, I don't care shucks for the morality of it,
nohow. When I start in to steal a nigger, or a watermelon, or a
Sunday-school book, I ain't no ways particular how it's done so it's
done. What I want is my nigger; or what I want is my watermelon; or
what I want is my Sunday-school book; and if a pick's the handiest
thing, that's the thing I'm agoing to dig that nigger or that
watermelon or that Sunday-school book out with; and I don't give a
dead rat what the authorities think about it nuther."

  "Well," he says, "there's excuse for picks and letting-on in a
case like this; if it warn't so, I wouldn't approve of it, nor I
wouldn't stand by and see the rules broke- because right is right, and
wrong is wrong, and a body ain't got no business doing wrong when he
ain't ignorant and knows better. It might answer for you to dig Jim
out with a pick, without any letting-on, because you don't know no
better; but it wouldn't for me, because I do know better. Gimme a
case-knife."

  He had his own by him, but I handed him mine. He flung it down,
and says:

  "Gimme a case-knife."

  I didn't know just what to do- but then I thought. I scratched
around amongst the old tools, and got a pick-ax and give it to him,
and he took it and went to work, and never said a word.

  He was always just that particular. Full of principle.

  So then I got a shovel, and then we picked and shoveled, turn about,
and made the fur fly. We stuck to it about a half an hour, which was
as long as we could stand up; but we had a good deal of a hole to show
for it. When I got up stairs, I looked out at the window and see Tom
doing his level best with the lightning-rod, but he couldn't come
it, his hands was so sore. At last he says:

  "It ain't no use, it can't be done. What you reckon I better do?
Can't you think up no way?"

  "Yes," I says, "but I reckon it ain't regular. Come up the stairs,
and let on it's a lightning-rod."

  So he done it.

  Next day Tom stole a pewter spoon and a brass candlestick in the
house, for to make some pens for Jim out of, and six tallow candles;
and I hung around the nigger cabins, and laid for a chance, and
stole three tin plates. Tom said it wasn't enough; but I said nobody
wouldn't ever see the plates that Jim throwed out, because they'd fall
in the dog-fennel and jimpson weeds under the window-hole- then we
could tote them back and he could use them over again. So Tom was
satisfied. Then he says:

  "Now, the thing to study out is, how to get the things to Jim."

  "Take them in through the hole," I says, "when we get it done."

  He only just looked scornful, and said something about nobody ever
heard of such an idiotic idea, and then he went to studying. By-and-by
he said he had ciphered out two or three ways, but there warn't no
need to decide on any of them yet. Said we'd got to post Jim first.

  That night we went down the lightning-rod a little after ten, and
took one of the candles along, and listened under the window-hole, and
heard Jim snoring; so we pitched it in, and it didn't wake him. Then
we whirled in with the pick and shovel, and in about two hours and a
half the job was done. We crept in under Jim's bed and into the cabin,
and pawed around and found the candle and lit it, and stood over Jim a
while, and found him looking hearty and healthy, and then we woke
him up gentle and gradual. He was so glad to see us he most cried; and
called us honey, and all the pet names he could think of; and was
for having us hunt up a cold chisel to cut the chain off of his leg
with, right away, and clearing out without losing any time. But Tom he
showed him how unregular it would be, and set down and told him all
about our plans, and how we could alter them in a minute any time
there was an alarm; and not be the least afraid, because we would
see he got away, sure. So Jim he said it was all right, and we set
there and talked over old times a while, and then Tom asked a lot of
questions, and when Jim told him Uncle Silas come in every day or
two to pray with him, and Aunt Sally come in to see if he was
comfortable and had plenty to eat, and both of them was kind as they
could be, Tom says:

  "Now I know how to fix it. We'll send you some things by them."

  I said, "Don't do nothing of the kind; it's one of the most
jackass ideas I ever struck;" but he never paid no attention to me;
went right on. It was his way when he'd got his plans set.

  So he told Jim how we'd have to smuggle in the rope-ladder pie,
and other large things, by Nat, the nigger that fed him, and he must
be on the lookout, and not be surprised, and not let Nat see him
open them; and we would put small things in uncle's coat pockets and
he must steal them out; and we would tie things to aunt's apron
strings or put them in her apron pocket, if we got a chance; and
told him what they would be and what they was for. And told him how to
keep a journal on the shirt with his blood, and all that. He told
him everything. Jim he couldn't see no sense in the most of it, but he
allowed we was white folks and knowed better than him; so he was
satisfied, and said he would do it all just as Tom said.

  Jim had plenty corn-cob pipes and tobacco; so we had a right down
good sociable time; then we crawled out through the hole, and so
home to bed, with hands that looked like they'd been chawed. Tom was
in high spirits. He said it was the best fun he ever had in his
life, and the most intellectural; and said if he only could see his
way to it we would keep it up all the rest of our lives and leave
Jim to our children to get out; for he believed Jim would come to like
it better and better the more he got used to it. He said that in
that way it could be strung out to as much as eighty year, and would
be the best time on record. And he said it would make us all
celebrated that had a hand in it.

  In the morning we went out to the wood-pile and chopped up the brass
candlestick into handy sizes, and Tom put them and the pewter spoon in
his pocket. Then we went to the nigger cabins, and while I got Nat's
notice off, Tom shoved a piece of candlestick into the middle of a
corn-pone that was in Jim's pan, and we went along with Nat to see how
it would work, and it just worked noble; when Jim bit into it most
mashed all his teeth out; and there warn't ever anything could a
worked better. Tom said so himself. Jim he never let on but what it
was only just a piece of rock or something like that that's always
getting into bread, you know; but after that he never bit into nothing
but what he jabbed his fork into it in three or four places, first.

  And whilst we was a standing there in the dimmish light, here
comes a couple of the hounds bulging in, from under Jim's bed; and
they kept on piling in till there was eleven of them, and there warn't
hardly room in there to get your breath. By jings, we forgot to fasten
that lean-to door. The nigger Nat he only just hollered "witches!"
once, and keeled over onto the floor amongst the dogs, and begun to
groan like he was dying. Tom jerked the door open and flung out a slab
of Jim's meat, and the dogs went for it, and in two seconds he was out
himself and back again and shut the door, and I knowed he'd fixed
the other door too. Then he went to work on the nigger, coaxing him
and petting him, and asking him if he'd been imagining he saw
something again. He raised up, and blinked his eyes around, and says:

  "Mars Sid, you'll say I's a fool, but if I didn't b'lieve I see most
a million dogs, er devils, er some'n, I wisht I may die right heah
in dese tracks. I did, mos' sholy. Mars Sid, I felt um- I felt um,
sah; dey was all over me. Dad fetch it, I jis' wisht I could git my
han's on one er dem witches jis' wunst- on'y jis' wunst- it's all
I'd ast. But mos'ly I wisht dey'd lemme 'lone, I does."

  Tom says:

  "Well, I tell you what I think. What makes them come here just at
this runaway nigger's breakfast-time? It's because they're hungry;
that's the reason. You make them a witch pie; that's the thing for you
to do."

  "But my lan', Mars Sid, how's I gwyne to make make 'm a witch pie? I
doan' know how to make it. I hain't ever hearn er sich a thing b'fo'."

  "Well, then, I'll have to make it myself"

  "Will you do it, honey?- will you? I'll wusshup de groun' und' yo'
foot, I will!"

  "All right, I'll do it, seeing it's you, and you've been good to
us and showed us the runaway nigger. But you got to be mighty careful.
When we come around, you turn your back; and then whatever we've put
in the pan, don't you let on you see it at all. And don't you look,
when Jim unloads the pan- something might happen, I don't know what.
And above all, don't you handle the witch-things."

  "Hannel 'm Mars Sid? What is you a talkin' 'bout? I wouldn' lay de
weight er my finger on um, not f'r ten hund'd thous'n' billion
dollars, I wouldn't."

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN


  That was all fixed. So then we went away and went to the
rubbage-pile in the back yard where they keep the old boots, and rags,
and pieces of bottles, and wore-out tin things, and all such truck,
and scratched around and found an old tin washpan and stopped up the
holes as well as we could, to bake the pie in and took it down
cellar and stole it full of flour, and started for breakfast and found
a couple of shingle-nails that Tom said would be handy for a
prisoner to scrabble his name and sorrows on the dungeon walls with,
and dropped one of them in Aunt Sally's apron pocket which was hanging
on a chair, and t'other we stuck in the band of Uncle Silas's hat,
which was on the bureau, because we heard the children say their pa
and ma was going to the runaway nigger's house this morning, and
then went to breakfast, and Tom dropped the pewter spoon in Uncle
Silas's coat pocket, and Aunt Sally wasn't come yet, so we had to wait
a little while.

  And when she come she was hot, and red, and cross, and couldn't
hardly wait for the blessing; and then she went to sluicing out coffee
with one hand and cracking the handiest child's head with her
thimble with the other, and says:

  "I've hunted high, and I've hunted low, and it does beat all, what
has become of your other shirt."

  My heart fell down amongst my lungs and livers and things, and a
hard piece of corn-crust started down my throat after it and got met
on the road with a cough and was shot across the table and took one of
the children in the eye and curled him up like a fishing-worm, and let
a cry out of him the size of a war-whoop, and Tom he turned kinder
blue around the gills, and it all amounted to a considerable state
of things for about a quarter of a minute or as much as that, and I
would a sold out for half price if there was a bidder. But after
that we was all right again- it was the sudden surprise of it that
knocked us so kind of cold. Uncle Silas he says:

  "It's most uncommon curious, I can't understand it. I know perfectly
well I took it off, because-"

  "Because you hain't got but one on. Just listen at the man! I know
you took it off, and know it by a better way than your
wool-gethering memory, too, because it was on the clo'esline
yesterday- I see it there myself. But it's gone- that's the long and
the short of it, and you'll just have to change to a red flann'l one
till I can get time to make a new one. And it'll be the third I've
made in two years; it just keeps a body on the jump to keep you in
shirts; and whatever you do manage to do with 'm all, is more'n I
can make out. A body'd think you would learn to take some sort of care
of 'em, at your time of life."

  "I know it, Sally, and I do try all I can. But it oughtn't to be
altogether my fault, because you know I don't see them nor have
nothing to do with them except when they're on me; and I don't believe
I've ever lost one of them off of me."

  "Well, it ain't your fault if you haven't, Silas- you'd a done it if
you could, I reckon. And the shirt ain't all that's gone, nuther.
Ther's a spoon gone; and that ain't all. There was ten, and now
there's only nine. The calf got the shirt I reckon, but the calf never
took the spoon, that's certain."

  "Why, what else is gone, Sally?"

  "Ther's six candles gone- that's what. The rats could a got the
candles, and I reckon they did; I wonder they don't walk off with
the whole place, the way you're always going to stop their holes and
don't do it; and if they warn't fools they'd sleep in your hair,
Silas- you'd never find it out; but you can't lay the spoon on the
rats, and that I know."

  "Well, Sally, I'm in fault, and I acknowledge it; I've been
remiss; but I won't let to-morrow go by without stopping up them
holes."

  "Oh, I wouldn't hurry, next year'll do. Matilda Angelina Araminta
Phelps!"

  Whack comes the thimble, and the child snatches her claws out of the
sugar-bowl without fooling around any. Just then, the nigger woman
steps onto the passage, and says:

  "Missus, dey's a sheet gone."

  "A sheet gone! Well, for the land's sake!"

  "I'll stop up them holes to-day," says Uncle Silas, looking
sorrowful.

  "Oh, do shet up!- spose the rats took the sheet? Where's it gone,
Lize?"

  "Clah to goodness I hain't no notion, Miss Sally. She wuz on de
clo's-line yistiddy, but she done gone; she ain' dah no mo', now."

  "I reckon the world is coming to an end. I never see the beat of it,
in all my born days. A shirt, and a sheet, and a spoon, and six can-"

  "Missus," comes a young yaller wench, "dey's a brass cannelstick
missin."

  "Cler out from here, you hussy, er I'll take a skillet to ye!"

  Well, she was just a biling. I begun to lay for a chance; I reckoned
I would sneak out and go for the woods till the weather moderated. She
kept a raging right along, running her insurrection all by herself,
and everybody else mighty meek and quiet; and at last Uncle Silas,
looking kind of foolish, fishes up that spoon out of his pocket. She
stopped, with her mouth open and her hands up; and as for me, I wished
I was in Jeruslem or somewheres. But not long; because she says:

  "It's just as I expected. So you had it in your pocket all the time;
and like as not you've got the other things there, too. How'd it get
there?"

  "I reely don't know, Sally," he says, kind of apologizing, "or you
know I would tell. I was a-studying over my text in Acts Seventeen,
before breakfast, and I reckon I put it in there, not noticing,
meaning to put my Testament in, and it must be so, because my
Testament ain't in, but I'll go and see, and if that Testament is
where I had it, I'll know I didn't put it in, and that will show
that I laid the Testament down and took up the spoon, and-"

  "Oh, for the land's sake! Give a body a rest! Go 'long now, the
whole kit and biling of ye; and don't come nigh me again till I've got
back my peace of mind."

  I'd a heard her, if she'd a said it to herself, let alone speaking
it out; and I'd a got up and obeyed her, if I'd a been dead. As we was
passing through the setting-room, the old man he took up his hat,
and the shingle-nail fell out on the floor, and he just merely
picked it up and laid it on the mantel-shelf, and never said
nothing, and went out. Tom see him do it, and remembered about the
spoon, and says:

  "Well, it ain't no use to send things by him no more, he ain't
reliable." Then he says: "But he done us a good turn with the spoon,
anyway, without knowing it, and so we'll go and do him one without him
knowing it- stop up his rat-holes."

  There was a noble good lot of them, down cellar, and it took us a
whole hour, but we done the job tight and good, and ship-shape. Then
we heard steps on the stairs, and blowed out our light, and hid; and
here comes the old man, with a candle in one hand and a bundle of
stuff in t'other, looking as absent-minded as year before last. He
went a mooning around, first to one rat-hole and then another, till
he'd been to them all. Then he stood about five minutes, picking
tallow-drip off of his candle and thinking. Then he turns off slow and
dreamy towards the stairs, saying:

  "Well, for the life of me I can't remember when I done it. I could
show her now that I warn't to blame on account of the rats. But
never mind- let it go. I reckon it wouldn't do no good."

  And so he went on a mumbling up stairs, and then we left. He was a
mighty nice old man. And always is.

  Tom was a good deal bothered about what to do for a spoon, but he
said we'd got to have it; so he took a think. When he ciphered it out,
he told me how we was to do; then we went and waited around the
spoon-basket till we see Aunt Sally coming, and then Tom went to
counting the spoons and laying them out to one side, and I slid one of
them up my sleeve, and Tom says:

  "Why, Aunt Sally, there ain't but nine spoons, yet."

  She says:

  "Go 'long to your play, and don't bother me. I know better, I
counted 'm myself."

  "Well, I've counted them twice, Aunty, and I can't make but nine."

  She looked out of all patience, but of course she come to count-
anybody would.

  "I declare to gracious ther' ain't but nine!" she says. "Why, what
in the world- plague take the things, I'll count 'm again."

  So I slipped back the one I had, and when she got done counting, she
says:

  "Hang the troublesome rubbage, ther's ten, now!" and she looked
hurry and bothered both. But Tom says:

  "Why, Aunty, I don't think there's ten."

  "You numskull, didn't you see me count 'm?"

  "I know, but-"

  "Well, I'll count 'm again."

  So I smouched one, and they come out nine same as the other time.
Well, she was in a tearing way- just trembling all over, she was so
mad. But she counted and counted, till she got that addled she'd start
to count-in the basket for a spoon, sometimes; and so, three times
they come out right and three times they come out wrong. Then she
grabbed up the basket and slammed it across the house and knocked
the cat galley-west; and she said cle'r out and let her have some
peace, and if we come bothering around her again betwixt that and
dinner, she'd skin us. So we had the odd spoon; and dropped it in
her apron pocket whilst she was a giving us our sailing-orders, and
Jim got it all right, along with her shingle-nail, before noon. We was
very well satisfied with this business, and Tom allowed it was worth
twice the trouble it took, because he said now she couldn't ever count
them spoons twice alike again to save her life; and wouldn't believe
she'd counted them right, if she did; and said that after she'd
about counted her head off, for the next three days, he judged she'd
give it up and offer to kill anybody that wanted her to ever count
them any more.

  So we put the sheet back on the line, that night, and stole one
out of her closet; and kept on putting it back and stealing it
again, for a couple of days till she didn't know how many sheets she
had, any more, and said she didn't care, and warn't agoing to bullyrag
the rest of her soul out about it, and wouldn't count them again not
to save her life, she druther die first.

  So we was all right now, as to the shirt and the sheet and the spoon
and the candles, by the help of the calf and the rats and the mixed-up
counting; and as to the candlestick, it warn't no consequence, it
would blow over by-and-by.

  But that pie was a job; we had no end of trouble with that pie. We
fixed it up away down in the woods, and cooked it there; and we got it
done at last, and very satisfactory, too; but not all in one day;
and we had to use up three washpans full of flour, before we got
through, and we got burnt pretty much all over, in places, and eyes
put out with the smoke; because, you see, we didn't want nothing but a
crust, and we couldn't prop it up right, and she would always cave in.
But of course we thought of the right way at last; which was to cook
the ladder, too, in the pie. So then we laid in with Jim, the second
night, and tore up the sheet all in little strings, and twisted them
together, and long before daylight we had a lovely rope, that you
could a hung a person with. We let on it took nine months to make it.

  And in the forenoon we took it down to the woods, but it wouldn't go
in the pie. Being made of a whole sheet, that way, there was rope
enough for forty pies, if we'd a wanted them, and plenty left over for
soup, or sausage, or anything you choose. We could a had a whole
dinner.

  But we didn't need it. All we needed was just enough for the pie,
and so we throwed the rest away. We didn't cook none of the pies in
the washpan, afraid the solder would melt; but Uncle Silas he had a
noble brass warming-pan which he thought considerable of, because it
belonged to one of his ancesters with a long wooden handle that come
over from England with William the Conqueror in the Mayflower or one
of them early ships and was hid away up garret with a lot of other old
pots and things that was valuable, not on account of being any account
because they warn't, but on account of them being relicts, you know,
and we snaked her out, private, and took her down there, but she
failed on the first pies, because we didn't know how, but she come
up smiling on the last one. We took and lined her with dough, and
set her in the coals, and loaded her up with rag-rope, and put on a
dough roof, and shut down the lid, and put hot embers on top, and
stood off five foot, with the long handle, cool and comfortable, and
in fifteen minutes she turned out a pie that was a satisfaction to
look at. But the person that et it would want to fetch a couple of
kags of toothpicks along, for if the rope-ladder wouldn't cramp him
down to business, I don't know nothing what I'm talking about, and lay
him enough stomach-ache to last him till next time, too.

  Nat didn't look, when we put the witch-pie in Jim's pan; and we
put the three tin plates in the bottom of the pan under the vittles;
and so Jim got everything all right, and so soon as he was by
himself he busted into the pie and hid the rope-ladder inside of his
straw tick, and scratched some marks on a tin plate and throwed it out
of the window-hole.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT


  Making them pens was a distressid-tough job, and so was the saw; and
Jim allowed the inscription was going to be the toughest of all.
That's the one which the prisoner has to scrabble on the wall. But
we had to have it; Tom said we'd got to; there warn't no case of a
state priosner not scrabbling his inscription to leave behind, and his
coat of arms.

  "Look at Lady Jane Grey," he says; "look at Gilford Dudley; look
at old Northumberland! Why, Huck, spose it is considerable trouble?-
what you going to do?- how you going to get around it? Jim's got to do
his inscription and coat of arms. They all do."

  Jim says:

  "Why, Mars Tom, I hain't got no coat o' arms; I hain't got nuffn but
dish-yer ole shirt, en you knows I got to keep de journal on dat."

  "Oh, you don't understand, Jim; a coat of arms is very different."

  "Well," I says, "Jim's right, anyway, when he says he hain't got
no coat of arms, because he hain't."

  "I reckon I knowed that," Tom says, "but you bet he'll have one
before he goes out of this- because he's going out right, and there
ain't going to be no flaws in his record."

  So whilst me and Jim filed away at the pens on a brickbat apiece,
Jim a making his'n out of the brass and I making mine out of the
spoon, Tom set to work to think out the coat of arms. By-and-by he
said he'd struck so many good ones he didn't hardly know which to
take, but there was one which he reckoned he'd decide on. He says:

  "On the scutcheon we'll have a bend or in the dexter base, a saltire
murrey in the fess, with a dog, couchant, for common charge, and under
his foot a chain embattled, for slavery, with a chevron vert in a
chief engrailed, and three invected lines on a field azure, with the
nombril points rampant on a dancette indented; crest, a runaway
nigger, sable, with his bundle over his shoulder on a bar sinister:
and a couple of gules for supporters, which is you and me; motto,
Maggiore fretta, minore atto. Got it out of a book-means, the more
haste, the less speed."

  "Geewhillikins," I says, "but what does the rest of it mean?"

  "We ain't got no time to bother over that," he says, "we got to
dig in like all git-out."

  "Well, anyway," I says, "what's some of it? What's a fess?"

  "A fess- a fess is- you don't need to know what a fess is. I'll show
him how to make it when he gets to it."

  "Shucks, Tom," I says, "I think you might tell a person. What's a
bar sinister?"

  "Oh, I don't know. But he's got to have it. All the nobility does."

  That was just his way. If it didn't suit him to explain a thing to
you, he wouldn't do it. You might pump at him a week, it wouldn't make
no difference.

  He'd got all that coat of arms business fixed, so now he started
in to finish up the rest of that part of the work, which was to plan
out a mournful inscription- said Jim got to have one, like they all
done. He made up a lot, and wrote them out on a paper, and read them
off, so:

  1. Here a captive heart busted.

  2. Here a poor prisoner, forsook by the world and friends, fretted
out his sorrowful life.

  3. Here a lonely heart broke, and a worn spirit went to its rest,
after thirty-seven years of solitary captivity.

  4. Here, homeless and friendless, after thirty-seven years of bitter
captivity, perished a noble stranger, natural son of Louis XIV.

  Tom's voice trembled, whilst he was reading them, and he most
broke down. When he got done, he couldn't no way make up his mind
which one for Jim to scrabble onto the wall, they was all so good; but
at last he allowed he would let him scrabble them all on. Jim said
it would take him a year to scrabble such a lot of truck onto the logs
with a nail, and he didn't know how to make letters, besides; but
Tom said he would block them out for him, and then he wouldn't have
nothing to do but just follow the lines. Then pretty soon he says:

  "Come to think, the logs ain't agoing to do; they don't have log
walls in a dungeon: we got to dig the inscriptions into a rock.
We'll fetch a rock."

  Jim said the rock was worse than the logs; he said it would take him
such a pison long time to dig them into a rock, he wouldn't ever get
out. But Tom said he would let me help him do it. Then he took a
look to see how me and Jim was getting along with the pens. It was
most pesky tedious hard work and slow, and didn't give my hands no
show to get well of the sores, and we didn't seem to make no
headway, hardly. So Tom says:

  "I know how to fix it. We got to have a rock for the coat of arms
and mournful inscriptions, and we can kill two birds with that same
rock. There's a gaudy big grindstone down at the mill, and we'll
smouch it, and carve the things on it, and file out the pens and the
saw on it, too."

  It warn't no slouch of an idea; and it warn't no slouch of a
grindstone nuther; but we allowed we'd tackle it. It warn't quite
midnight, yet, so we cleared out for the mill, leaving Jim at work. We
smouched the grindstone, and set out to roll her home, but it was a
most nation tough job. Sometimes, do what we could, we couldn't keep
her from falling over, and she come mighty near mashing us, every
time. Tom said she was going to get one of us, sure, before we got
through. We got her half way; and then we was plumb played out, and
most drownded with sweat. We see it warn't no use, we got to go and
fetch Jim. So he raised up his bed and slid the chain off of the
bed-leg, and wrapt it round and round his neck, and we crawled out
through our hole and down there, and Jim and me laid into the
grindstone and walked her along like nothing; and Tom superintended.
He could out-superintend any boy I ever see. He knowed how to do
everything.

  Our hole was pretty big, but it warn't big enough to get the
grindstone through; but Jim he took the pick and soon make it big
enough. Then Tom marked out them things on it with the nail, and set
Jim to work on them, with the nail for a chisel and an iron bolt
from the rubbage in the lean-to for a hammer, and told him to work
till the rest of his candle quit on him, and then he could go to
bed, and hide the grindstone under his straw tick and sleep on it.
Then we helped him fix his chain back on the bed-leg, and was ready
for bed ourselves. But Tom thought of something, and says:

  "You got any spiders in here, Jim?"

  "No, sah, thanks to goodness I hain't, Mars Tom."

  "All right, we'll get you some."

  "But bless you, honey, I doan' want none. I's afeard un um. I jis'
's soon have rattlesnakes aroun'."

  Tom thought a minute or two, and says:

  "It's a good idea. And I reckon it's been done. It must a been done;
it stands to reason. Yes, it's a prime good idea. Where could you keep
it?"

  "Keep what, Mars Tom?"

  "Why, a rattlesnake."

  "De goodness gracious alive, Mars Tom! Why, if dey was a rattlesnake
to come in heah, I'd take en bust right out thoo dat log wall, I
would, wid my head."

  "Why, Jim, you wouldn't be afraid of it, after a little. You could
tame it."

  "Tame it!"

  "Yes- easy enough. Every animal is grateful for kindness and
petting, and they wouldn't think of hurting a person that pets them.
Any book will tell you that. You try- that's all I ask; just try for
two or three days. Why, you can get him so, in a little while, that
he'll love you; and sleep with you; and won't stay away from you a
minute; and will let you wrap him round your neck and put his head
in your mouth."

  "Please, Mars Tom- doan' talk so! I can't stan' it! He'd let me
shove his head in my mouf- fer a favor, hain't it? I lay he'd wait a
pow'ful long time 'fo' I ast him. En mo' en dat, I doan' want him to
sleep wid me."

  "Jim, don't act so foolish. A prisoner's got to have some kind of
a dumb pet, and if a rattlesnake hain't ever been tried, why,
there's more glory to be gained in your being the first to ever try it
than any other way you could ever think of to save your life."

  "Why, Mars Tom, I doan' want no sich glory. Snake take 'n bite Jim's
chin off, den whah is de glory? No, sah, I doan' want no sich doin's."

  "Blame it, can't you try? I only want you to try- you needn't keep
it up if it don't work."

  "But de trouble all done, ef de snake bite me while I's a tryin'
him. Mars Tom, I's willin' to tackle mos'anything' at ain't
onreasonable, but ef you en Huck fetches a rattlesnake in heah for
me to tame, I's gwyne to leave, dat's shore."

  "Well, then, let it go, let it go, if you're so bullheaded about it.
We can get you some garter-snakes and you can tie some buttons on
their tails, and let on they're rattlesnakes, and I reckon that'll
have to do."

  "I k'n stan' dem, Mars Tom, but blame' 'f I couldn' get along widout
um, I tell you dat. I never knowed b'fo', 't was so much bother and
trouble to be a prisoner."

  "Well, it always is, when it's done right. You got any rats around
here?"

  "No, sah, I hain't seed none."

  "Well, we'll get you some rats."

  "Why, Mars Tom, I doan' want no rats. Dey's de dadblamedest
creturs to sturb a body, en rustle roun' over 'im, en bite his feet,
when he's trying to sleep, I ever see. No, sah, gimme g'yarter-snakes,
'f I's got to have 'm, but doan' gimme no rats, I ain' got no use
f'r um, skasely."

  "But Jim, you got to have 'em- they all do. So don't make no more
fuss about it. Prisoners ain't ever without rats. There ain't no
instance of it. And they train them, and pet them, and learn them
tricks, and they get to be as sociable as flies. But you got to play
music to them. You got anything to play music on?"

  "I ain' got nuffn but a coase comb en a piece o' paper, en a
juice-harp; but I reck'n dey wouldn' take no stock in a juice-harp."

  "Yes they would. They don't care what kind of music 'tis. A
jews-harp's plenty good enough for a rat. All animals likes music-
in a prison they dote on it. Specially, painful music; and you can't
get no other kind out of a jews-harp. It always interests them; they
come out to see what's the matter with you. Yes, you're all right;
you're fixed very well. You want to set on your bed, nights, before
you go to sleep, and early in the mornings, and play your jews-harp;
play The Last Link is Broken- that's the thing that'll scoop a rat,
quicker'n anything else: and when you've played about two minutes,
you'll see all the rats, and the snakes, and spiders, and things begin
to feel worried about you, and come. And they'll just fairly swarm
over you, and have a noble good time."

  "Yes, dey will, I reck'n, Mars Tom, but what kine er time is Jim
havin'? Blest if I kin see de pint. But I'll do it ef I got to. I
reck'n I better keep de animals satisfied, en not have no trouble in
de house."

  Tom waited to think over, and see if there wasn't nothing else;
and pretty soon he says:

  "Oh- there's one thing I forgot. Could you raise a flower here, do
you reckon?"

  "I doan' know but maybe I could, Mars Tom; but it's tolerable dark
in heah, en I ain' got no use f'r no flower, nohow, en she'd be a
pow'ful sight o' trouble."

  "Well, you try it anyway. Some other prisoners has done it."

  "One er dem big cat-tail-lookin' mullen-stalks would grow in heah,
Mars Tom, I reck'n, but she wouldn' be wuth half de trouble she'd
coss."

  "Don't you believe it. We'll fetch you a little one, and you plant
it in the corner, over there, and raise it. And don't call it
mullen, call it Pitchiola- that's its right name, when it's in a
prison. And you want to water it with your tears."

  "Why, I got plenty spring water, Mars Tom."

  "You don't want spring water; you want to water it with your
tears. It's the way they always do."

  "Why, Mars Tom, I lay I kin raise one er dem mullen-stalks twyste
wid spring water whiles another man's a start'n one wid tears."

  "That ain't the idea. You got to do it with tears."

  "She'll die on my han's, Mars Tom, she sholy will; kase I doan'
skasely ever cry."

  So Tom was stumped. But he studied it over, and then said Jim
would have to worry along the best he could with an onion. He promised
he would go to the nigger cabins and drop one, private, in Jim's
coffee-pot, in the morning. Jim said he would "jis' 's soon have
tobacker in his coffee;" and found so much fault with it, and with the
work and bother of raising the mullen, and jews-harping the rats,
and petting and flattering up the snakes and spiders and things, on
top of all the other work he had to do on pens, and inscriptions,
and journals, and things, which made it more trouble and worry and
responsibility to be a prisoner than anything he ever undertook,
that Tom most lost all patience with him; and said he was just
loadened down with more gaudier chances than a prisoner ever had in
the world to make a name for himself, and yet he didn't know enough to
appreciate them, and they was just about wasted on him. So Jim he
was sorry, and said he wouldn't behave so no more, and then me and Tom
shoved for bed.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE


  In the morning we went up to the village and bought a wire rat
trap and fetched it down, and unstopped the best rat hole, and in
about an hour we had fifteen of the bulliest kind of ones; and then we
took it and put it in a safe place under Aunt Sally's bed. But while
we was gone for spiders, little Thomas Franklin Benjamin Jefferson
Elexander Phelps found it there, and opened the door of it to see if
the rats would come out, and they did; and Aunt Sally she come in, and
when we got back she was a standing on top of the bed raising Cain,
and the rats was doing what they could to keep off the dull times
for her. So she took and dusted us both with the hickry, and we was as
much as two hours catching another fifteen or sixteen, drat that
meddlesome cub, and they warn't the likeliest, nuther, because the
first haul was the pick of the flock. I never see a likelier lot of
rats than what that first haul was.

  We got a splendid stock of sorted spiders, and bugs, and frogs,
and caterpillars, and one thing or another; and we liketo got a
hornet's nest, but we didn't. The family was at home. We didn't give
it right up, but staid with them as long as we could; because we
allowed we'd tire them out or they'd got to tire us out, and they done
it. Then we got allycumpain and rubbed on the places, and was pretty
near all right again, but couldn't set down convenient. And so we went
for the snakes, and grabbed a couple of dozen garters and housesnakes,
and put them in a bag, and put it in our room, and by that time it was
supper time, and a rattling good honest day's work; and hungry?- oh,
no, I reckon not! And there warn't a blessed snake up there, when we
went back- we didn't half tie the sack, and they worked out,
somehow, and left. But it didn't matter much, because they was still
on the premises somewheres. So we judged we could get some of them
again. No, there warn't no real scarcity of snakes about the house for
a considerable spell. You'd see them dripping from the rafters and
places, every now and then; and they generly landed in your plate,
or down the back of your neck, and most of the time where you didn't
want them. Well, they was handsome, and striped, and there warn't no
harm in a million of them; but that never made no difference to Aunt
Sally, she despised snakes, be the breed what they might, and she
couldn't stand them no way you could fix it; and every time one of
them flopped down on her, it didn't make no difference what she was
doing, she would just lay that work down and light out. I never see
such a woman. And you could hear her whoop to Jericho. You couldn't
get her to take aholt of one of them with the tongs. And if she turned
over and found one in bed, she would scramble out and lift a howl that
you would think the house was afire. She disturbed the old man so,
that he said he could most wish there hadn't ever been no snakes
created. Why, after every last snake had been gone clear out of the
house for as much as a week, Aunt Sally warn't over it yet; she warn't
near over it; when she was setting thinking about something, you could
touch her on the back of her neck with a feather and she would jump
right out of her stockings. It was very curious. But Tom said all
women was just so. He said they was made that way; for some reason
or other.

  We got a licking every time one of our snakes come in her way; and
she allowed these lickings warn't nothing to what she would do if we
ever loaded up the place again with them. I didn't mind the
lickings, because they didn't amount to nothing; but I minded the
trouble we had, to lay in another lot. But we got them laid in, and
all the other things; and you never see a cabin as blithesome as Jim's
was when they'd all swarm out for music and go for him. Jim didn't
like the spiders, and the spiders didn't like Jim; and so they'd lay
for him and make it mighty warm for him. And he said that between
the rats, and the snakes, and the grindstone, there warn't no room
in bed for him, skasely; and when there was, a body couldn't sleep, it
was so lively, and it was always lively, he said, because they never
all slept at one time, but took turn about, so when the snakes was
asleep the rats was on deck, and when the rats turned in the snakes
come on watch, so he always had one gang under him, in his way, and
t'other gang having a circus over him, and if he got up to hunt a
new place, the spiders would take a chance at him as he crossed
over. He said if he ever got out, this time, he wouldn't ever be a
prisoner again, not for a salary.

  Well, by the end of three weeks, everything was in pretty good
shape. The shirt was sent in early, in a pie, and every time a rat bit
Jim he would get up and write a little in his journal whilst the ink
was fresh; the pens was made, the inscriptions and so on was all
carved on the grindstone; the bed-leg was sawed in two, and we had
et up the sawdust, and it give us a most amazing stomach-ache. We
reckoned we was all going to die, but didn't. It was the most
undigestible sawdust I ever see; and Tom said the same. But as I was
saying, we'd got all the work done, now, at last; and we was all
pretty much fagged out, too, but mainly Jim. The old man had wrote a
couple of times to the plantation below Orleans to come and get
their runaway nigger, but hadn't got no answer, because there warn't
no such plantation; so he allowed he would advertise Jim in the St.
Louis and New Orleans papers; and when he mentioned the St. Louis
ones, it give me the cold shivers, and I see we hadn't no time to
lose. So Tom said, now for the nonnamous letters.

  "What's them?" I says.

  "Warnings to the people that something is up. Sometimes it's done
one way, sometimes another. But there's always somebody spying around,
that gives notice to the governor of the castle. When Louis XVI was
going to light out of the Tooleries, a servant girl done it. It's a
very good way, and so is the nonnamous letters. We'll use them both.
And it's usual for the prisoner's mother to change clothes with him,
and she stays in, and he slides out in her clothes. We'll do that
too."

  "But looky here, Tom, what do we want to warn anybody for, that
something's up? Let them find it out for themselves- it's their
lookout."

  "Yes, I know; but you can't depend on them. It's the way they've
acted from the very start- left us to do everything. They're so
confiding and mullet-headed they don't take notice of nothing at
all. So if we don't give them notice, there won't be nobody nor
nothing to interfere with us, and so after all our hard work and
trouble this escape'll go off perfectly flat: won't amount to nothing-
won't be nothing to it."

  "Well, as for me, Tom, that's the way I'd like."

  "Shucks," he says, and looked disgusted. So I says:

  "But I ain't going to make no complaint. Any way that suits you
suits me. What you going to do about the servant-girl?"

  "You'll be her. You slide in, in the middle of the night, and hook
that yaller girl's frock."

  "Why, Tom, that'll make trouble next morning; because of course
she prob'bly hain't got any but that one."

  "I know; but you don't want it but fifteen minutes, to carry the
nonnamous letter and shove it under the front door."

  "All right, then, I'll do it; but I could carry it just as handy
in my own togs."

  "You wouldn't look like a servant-girl then, would you?"

  "No, but there won't be nobody to see what I look like, anyway."

  "That ain't got nothing to do with it. The thing for us to do, is
just to do our duty, and not worry about whether anybody sees us do it
or not. Hain't you got no principle at all?"

  "All right, I ain't saying nothing; I'm the servant-girl.

  Who's Jim's mother?"

  "I'm his mother. I'll hook a gown from Aunt Sally."

  "Well, then, you'll have to stay in the cabin when me and Jim
leaves."

  "Not much. I'll stuff Jim's clothes full of straw and lay it on
his bed to represent his mother in disguise, and Jim'll take Aunt
Sally's gown off of me and wear it, and we'll all evade together. When
a prisoner of style escapes, it's called an evasion. It's always
called so when a king escapes, frinstance. And the same with a
king's son; it don't make no difference whether he's a natural one
or an unnatural one."

  So Tom he wrote the nonnamous letter, and I smouched the yaller
wench's frock, that night, and put it on, and shoved it under the
front door, the way Tom told me to. It said:


    Beware, Trouble is brewing. Keep a sharp lookout.

                                      UNKNOWN FRIEND


  Next night, we stuck a picture which Tom drawed in blood, of a skull
and crossbones, on the front door; and next night another one of a
coffin, on the back door. I never see a family in such a sweat. They
couldn't a been worse scared if the place had a been full of ghosts
laying for them behind everything and under the beds and shivering
through the air. If a door banged, Aunt Sally she jumped, and said
"ouch!" if anything fell, she jumped and said "ouch!" if you
happened to touch her, when she warn't noticing, she done the same;
she couldn't face noway and be satisfied, because she allowed there
was something behind her every time-so she was always a whirling
around, sudden, and saying "ouch," and before she'd get two-thirds
around, she'd whirl back again, and say it again; and she was afraid
to go to bed, but she dasn't set up. So the thing was working very
well, Tom said; he said he never see a thing work more satisfactory.
He said it showed it was done right.

  So he said, now for the grand bulge! So the very next morning at the
streak of dawn we got another letter ready, and was wondering what
we better do with it, because we heard them say at supper they was
going to have a nigger on watch at both doors all night. Tom he went
down the lightning-rod to spy around; and the nigger at the back
door was asleep, and he stuck it in the back of his neck and come
back. This letter said:


  Don't betray me, I wish to be your friend. There is a desprate
gang of cutthroats from over in the Ingean Territory going to steal
your runaway nigger to-night, and they have been trying to scare you
so as you will stay in the house and not bother them. I am one of
the gang, but have got religgion and wish to quit it and lead a honest
life again, and will betray the helish design. They will sneak down
from northards, along the fence, at midnight exact, with a false
key, and go in the nigger's cabin to get him. I am to be off a piece
and blow a tin horn if I see any danger; but stead of that, I will
BA like a sheep soon as they get in and not blow at all; then whilst
they are getting his chains loose, you slip there and lock them in,
and can kill them at your leasure. Don't do anything but just the
way I am telling you, if you do they will suspicion something and
raise whoopjamboreehoo. I do not wish any reward but to know I have
done the right thing.

                                  UNKNOWN FRIEND

  CHAPTER FORTY


  We was feeling pretty good, after breakfast, and took my canoe and
went over the river a fishing, with a lunch, and had a good time,
and took a look at the raft and found her all right, and got home late
to supper, and found them in such a sweat and worry they didn't know
which end they was standing on, and made us go right off to bed the
minute we was done supper, and wouldn't tell us what the trouble
was, and never let on a word about the new letter, but didn't need to,
because we knowed as much about it as anybody did, and as soon as we
was half up stairs and her back was turned, we slid for the cellar
cubboard and loaded up a good lunch and took it up to our room and
went to bed, and got up about half-past eleven, and Tom put on Aunt
Sally's dress that he stole and was going to start with the lunch, but
says:

  "Where's the butter?"

  "I laid out a hunk of it," I says, "on a piece of corn-pone."

  "Well, you left it laid out, then- it ain't here."

  "We can get along without it," I says.

  "We can get along with it, too," he says; "just you slide down
cellar and fetch it. And then mosey right down the lightning-rod and
come along. I'll go and stuff the straw into Jim's clothes to
represent his mother in disguise, and be ready to ba like a sheep
and shove soon as you get there."

  So out he went, and down cellar went I. The hunk of butter, big as a
person's fist, was where I had left it, so I took up the slab of
corn-pone with it on, and blowed out my light, and started up
stairs, very stealthy, and got up to the main floor all right, but
here comes Aunt Sally with a candle, and I clapped the truck in my
hat, and clapped my hat on my head, and the next second she see me;
and she says:

  "You been down cellar?"

  "Yes'm."

  "What you been doing down there?"

  "Noth'n."

  "Noth'n!"

  "No'm."

  "Well, then, what possessed you to go down there, this time of
night?"

  "I don't know'm."

  "You don't know? Don't answer me that way, Tom, I want to know
what you been doing down there."

  "I hain't been doing a single thing, Aunt Sally, I hope to
gracious if I have."

  I reckoned she'd let me go, now, and as a generl thing she would;
but I spose there was so many strange things going on she was just
in a sweat about every little thing that warn't yard-stick straight;
so she says, very decided:

  "You just march into that setting-room and stay there till I come.
You been up to something you no business to, and I lay I'll find out
what it is before I'm done with you."

  So she went away as I opened the door and walked into the
setting-room. My, but there was a crowd there! Fifteen farmers, and
every one of them had a gun. I was most powerful sick, and slunk to
a chair and set down. They was setting around, some of them talking
a little, in a low voice, and all of them fidgety and uneasy, but
trying to look like they warn't; but I knowed they was, because they
was always taking off their hats, and putting them on, and
scratching their heads, and changing their seats, and fumbling with
their buttons. I warn't easy myself, but I didn't take my hat off, all
the same.

  I did wish Aunt Sally would come, and get done with me, and lick me,
if she wanted to, and let me get away and tell Tom how we'd overdone
this thing, and what a thundering hornet's nest we'd got ourselves
into, so we could stop fooling around, straight off, and clear out
with Jim before these rips got out of patience and come for us.

  At last she come, and begun to ask me questions, but I couldn't
answer them straight, I didn't know which end of me was up; because
these men was in such a fidget now, that some was wanting to start
right now and lay for them desperadoes, and saying it warn't but a few
minutes to midnight; and others was trying to get them to hold on
and wait for the sheep-signal; and here was aunty pegging away at
the questions, and me a shaking all over and ready to sink down in
my tracks I was that scared; and the place getting hotter and
hotter, and the butter beginning to melt and run down my neck and
behind my ears; and pretty soon, when one of them says, "I'm for going
and getting in the cabin first, and right now, and catching them
when they come," I most dropped; and a streak of butter come a
trickling down my forehead, and Aunt Sally she see it, and turns white
as a sheet, and says:

  "For the land's sake what is the matter with the child!- he's got
the brain fever as shore as you're born, and they're oozing out!"

  And everybody runs to see, and she snatches off my hat, and out
comes the bread, and what was left of the butter, and she grabbed
me, and hugged me, and says:

  "Oh, what a turn you give me! and how glad and grateful I am it
ain't no worse; for luck's against us, and it never rains but it
pours, and when I see that truck I thought we'd lost you, for I knowed
by the color and all, it was just like your brains would be if-
Dear, dear, whyd'nt you tell me that was what you'd been down there
for, I wouldn't a cared. Now cler out to bed, and don't lemme see no
more of you till morning!"

  I was up stairs in a second, and down the lightning-rod in another
one, and shinning through the dark for the lean-to. I couldn't
hardly get my words out, I was so anxious; but I told Tom as quick
as I could, we must jump for it, now, and not a minute to lose- the
house full of men, yonder, with guns!

  His eyes just blazed; and he says:

  "No!- is that so? Ain't it bully! Why, Huck, if it was to do over
again, I bet I could fetch two hundred! If we could put it off till-"

  "Hurry! hurry!" I says. "Where's Jim?"

  "Right at your elbow; if you reach out your arm you can touch him.
He's dressed, and everything's ready. Now we'll slide out and give the
sheep-signal."

  But then we heard the tramp of men, coming to the door, and heard
them begin to fumble with the padlock; and heard a man say:

  "I told you we'd be too soon; they haven't come- the door is locked.
Here, I'll lock some of you into the cabin and you lay for in the dark
and kill when they come; and the rest scatter around a piece, and
listen if you can hear 'em coming."

  So in they come, but couldn't see us in the dark, and most trod on
us whilst we was hustling to get under the bed. But we got under all
right, and out through the hole, swift but soft- Jim first, me next,
and Tom last, which was according to Tom's orders. Now we was in the
lean-to, and heard trampings close by outside. So we crept to the
door, and Tom stopped us there and put his eye to the crack, but
couldn't make out nothing, it was so dark; and whispered and said he
would listen for the steps to get further, and when he nudged us Jim
must glide out first, and him last. So he set his ear to the crack and
listened, and listened, and listened, and the steps a scraping around,
out there, all the time; and at last he nudged us, and we slid out,
and stooped down, not breathing, and not making the least noise, and
slipped stealthy towards the fence, in Injun file, and got to it,
all right, and me and Jim over it; but Tom's britches catched fast
on a splinter on the top rail, and then he heard the steps coming,
so he had to pull loose, which snapped the splinter and made a
noise; and as he dropped in our tracks and started, somebody sings
out:

  "Who's that? Answer, or I'll shoot!"

  But we didn't answer; we just unfurled our heels and shoved. Then
there was a rush, and a bang, bang, bang! and the bullets fairly
whizzed around us! We heard them sing out:

  "Here they are! They've broke for the river! after 'em, boys! And
turn loose the dogs!"

  So here they come, full tilt. We could hear them, because they
wore boots, and yelled, but we didn't wear no boots, and didn't
yell. We was in the path to the mill; and when they got pretty close
onto us, we dodged into the bush and let them go by, and then
dropped in behind them. They'd had all the dogs shut up, so they
wouldn't scare off the robbers; but by this time somebody had let them
loose, and here they come, making pow-wow enough for a million; but
they was our dogs; so we stopped in our tracks till they catched up;
and when they see it warn't nobody but us, and no excitement to
offer them, they only just said howdy, and tore right ahead towards
the shouting and clattering; and then we up steam again and whizzed
along after them till we was nearly to the mill, and then struck up
through the bush to where my canoe was tied, and hopped in and
pulled for dear life towards the middle of the river, but didn't
make no more noise than we was obleeged to. Then we struck out, easy
and comfortable, for the island where my raft was; and we could hear
them yelling and barking at each other all up and down the bank,
till we was so far away the sounds got dim and died out. And when we
stepped onto the raft, I says:

  "Now, old Jim, you're a free man again, and I bet you won't ever
be a slave no more."

  "En a mighty good job it wuz, too, Huck. It 'uz planned beautiful,
en it 'uz done beautiful; en dey ain't nobody kin git up a plan
dat's mo' mixed-up en splendid den what dat one wuz."

  We was all as glad as we could be, but Tom was the gladdest of
all, because he had a bullet in the calf of his leg.

  When me and Jim heard that, we didn't feel so brash as what we did
before. It was hurting him considerble, and bleeding; so we laid him
in the wigwam and tore up one of the duke's shirts for to bandage him,
but he says:

  "Gimme the rags, I can do it myself. Don't stop, now; don't fool
around here, and the evasion booming along so handsome; man the
sweeps, and set her loose! Boys, we done it elegant!- 'deed we did.
I wish we'd a had the handling of Louis XVI, there wouldn't a been
no 'Son of Saint Louis, ascend to heaven!' wrote down in his
biography: no, sir, we'd a whooped him over the border-that's what
we'd a done with him- and done it just as slick as nothing at all,
too. Man the sweeps- man the sweeps!"

  But me and Jim was consulting- and thinking. And after we'd
thought a minute, I says:

  "Say it, Jim."

  So he says:

  "Well, den, dis is de way it look to me, Huck. Ef it wuz him dat 'uz
bein' sot free, en one er de boys wuz to git shot, would he say, 'Go
on en save me, nemmine 'bout a doctor f'r to save dis one? Is dat like
Mars Tom Sawyer? Would he say dat? You bet he wouldn't! Well, den,
is Jim gwyne to say it? No, sah- I doan' budge a step out'n dis place,
'dout a doctor; not if it's forty year!"

  I knowed he was white inside, and I reckoned he'd say what he did
say- so it was all right, now, and I told Tom I was agoing for a
doctor. He raised considerble row about it, but me and Jim stuck to it
and wouldn't budge; so he was for crawling out and setting the raft
loose himself; but we wouldn't let him. Then he give us a piece of his
mind- but it didn't do no good.

  So when he see me getting the canoe ready, he says:

  "Well, then, if you're bound to go, I'll tell you the way to do,
when you get to the village. Shut the door, and blindfold the doctor
tight and fast, and make him swear to be silent as the grave, and
put a purse full of gold in his hand, and then take and lead him all
around the back alleys and everywheres, in the dark, and then fetch
him here in the canoe, in a roundabout way amongst the islands, and
search him and take his chalk away from him, and don't give it back to
him till you get him back to the village, or else he will chalk this
raft so he can find it again. It's the way they all do."

  So I said I would, and left, and Jim was to hide in the woods when
he see the doctor coming, till he was gone again.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE


  The doctor was an old man; a very nice, kind-looking old man, when I
got him up. I told him me and my brother was over on Spanish Island
hunting, yesterday afternoon, and camped on a piece of a raft we
found, and about midnight he must a kicked his gun in his dreams,
for it went off and shot him in the leg, and we wanted him to go
over there and fix it and not say nothing about it, nor let anybody
know, because we wanted to come home this evening, and surprise the
folks.

  "Who is your folks?" he says.

  "The Phelpses, down yonder."

  "Oh," he says. And after a minute, he says: "How'd you say he got
shot?"

  "He had a dream," I says, "and it shot him."

  "Singular dream," he says.

  So he lit up his lantern, and got his saddle-bags, and we started.
But when he see the canoe, he didn't like the look of her- said she
was big enough for one, but didn't look pretty safe for two. I says:

  "Oh, you needn't be afeard, sir, she carried the three of us, easy
enough."

  "What three?"

  "Why me and Sid, and- and- the guns; that's what I mean."

  "Oh," he says.

  But he put his foot on the gunnel, and rocked her; and shook his
head, and said he reckoned he'd look around for a bigger one. But they
was all locked and chained; so he took my canoe, and said for me to
wait till he come back, or I could hunt around further, or maybe I
better go down home and get them ready for the surprise, if I wanted
to. But I said I didn't; so I told him just how to find the raft,
and then he started.

  I struck an idea, pretty soon. I says to myself, spos'n he can't fix
that leg just in three shakes of a sheep's tail, as the saying is?
spos'n it takes him three or four days? What are we going to do?-
lay around there till he lets the cat out of the bag? No, sir, I
know what I'll do. I'll wait, and when he comes back, if he says
he's got to go any more, I'll get down there, too, if I swim; and
we'll take and tie him, and keep him, and shove out down the river;
and when Tom's done with him, we'll give him what it's worth, or all
we got, and then let him get shore.

  So then I crept into a lumber pile to get some sleep; and next
time I waked up the sun was away up over my head! I shot out and
went for the doctor's house, but they told me he'd gone away in the
night, some time or other, and warn't back yet. Well, thinks I, that
looks powerful bad for Tom, and I'll dig out for the island, right
off. So away I shoved, and turned the corner, and nearly rammed my
head into Uncle Silas's stomach! He says:

  "Why, Tom! Where you been, all this time, you rascal?"

  "I hain't been nowheres," I says, "only just hunting for the runaway
nigger- me and Sid."

  "Why, where ever did you go?" he says. "Your aunt's been mighty
uneasy."

  "She needn't," I says, "because we was all right. We followed the
men and the dogs, but they out-run us, and we lost them; but we
thought we heard them on the water, so we got a canoe and took out
after them, and crossed over but couldn't find nothing of them; so
we cruised along up-shore till we got kind of tired and beat out;
and tied up the canoe and went to sleep, and never waked up till about
an hour ago, then we paddled over here to hear the news, and Sid's
at the post-office to see what he can hear, and I'm a branching out to
get something to eat for us, and then we're going home."

  So then we went to the post-office to get "Sid"; but just as I
suspicioned, he warn't there; so the old man he got a letter out of
the office, and we waited a while longer but Sid didn't come; so the
old man said come along, let Sid foot it home, or canoe-it, when he
got done fooling around- but we would ride. I couldn't get him to
let me stay and wait for Sid; and he said there warn't no use in it,
and I must come along, and let Aunt Sally see we was all right.

  When we got home, Aunt Sally was that glad to see me she laughed and
cried both, and hugged me, and give me one of them lickings of hern
that don't amount to shucks, and said she'd serve Sid the same when he
come.

  And the place was plumb full of farmers and farmers' wives, to
dinner; and such another clack a body never heard. Old Mrs.
Hotchkiss was the worst; her tongue was agoing all the time. She says:

  "Well, Sister Phelps, I've ransacked that-air cabin over an' I
b'lieve the nigger was crazy. I says so to Sister Damrell- didn't I,
Sister Damrell- s'I, he's crazy, s'I- them's the very words I said.
You all hearn me: he's crazy, s'I; everything shows it, s'I. Look at
that-air grindstone, s'I; want to tell me't any cretur 'ts in his
right mind's agoin' to scrabble all them crazy things onto a
grindstone, s'I? Here sich'n sich a person busted his heart; 'n'
here so 'n' so pegged along for thirty-seven year, 'n' all that-
natcherl son o' Louis somebody, 'n' sich everlast'n rubbage. He's
plumb crazy, s'I; it's what I says in the fust place, it's what I says
in the middle, 'n' it's what I says last 'n' all the time- the
nigger's crazy- crazy's Nebokoodneezer, s'I."

  "An' look at that-air ladder made out'n rags, Sister Hotchkiss,"
says old Mrs. Damrell, "what in the name o' goodness could he ever
want of-"

  "The very words I was a-sayin' no longer ago th'n this minute to
Sister Utterback, 'n' she'll tell you so herself. Sh-she, look at
that-air rag ladder, sh-she; 'n' s'I, yes, look at it, s'I- what could
he a wanted of it, s'I. Sh-she, Sister Hotchkiss, sh-she-"

  "But how in the nation'd they ever git that grindstone in there,
anyway? 'n' who dug that-air hole? 'n' who-"

  "My very words, Brer Penrod! I was a-sayin'- pass that air sasser o'
m'lasses, won't ye?- I was a-sayin' to Sister Dunlap, jist this
minute, how did they git that grindstone in there, s'I. Without
help, mind you- 'thout help! Thar's wher' 'tis. Don't tell me, s'I;
there wuz help, s'I; 'n' ther' wuz a plenty help, too, s'I; ther's ben
a dozen a-helpin' that nigger, 'n' I lay I'd skin every last nigger on
this place, but I'd find out who done it, s'I; 'n' moreover, s'I-"

  "A dozen says you!- forty couldn't a done everything that's been
done. Look at them case-knife saws and things, how tedious they've
been made; look at that bed-leg sawed off with 'm, a week's work for
six men; look at that nigger made out'n straw on the bed; and look
at-"

  "You may well say it, Brer Hightower! It's jist as I was a-sayin' to
Brer Phelps, his own self. S'e, what do you think of it, Sister
Hotchkiss, s'e? think o' what, Brer Phelps, s'I? think o' that bed-leg
sawed off that a way, s'e? think of it, s'I? I lay it never sawed
itself off, s'I- somebody sawed it, s'I; that's my opinion, take it or
leave it, it mayn't be no'count, s'I, but sich as 't is, it's my
opinion, s'I, 'n' if anybody k'n start a better one, s'I, let him do
it, s'I, that's all. I says to Sister Dunlap, s'I-"

  "Why, dog my cats, they must a ben a house-full o' niggers in
there every night for four weeks, to a done all that work, Sister
Phelps. Look at that shirt- every last inch of it kivered over with
secret Africa writ'n done with blood! Must a ben a raft uv 'm at it
right along, all the time, amost. Why, I'd give two dollars to have it
read to me; 'n' as for the niggers that wrote it, I 'low I'd take
'n' lash 'm t'll-"

  "People to help him, Brother Marples! Well, I reckon you'd think so,
if you'd a been in this house for a while back. Why, they've stole
everything they could lay their hands on- and we a watching, all the
time, mind you. They stole that shirt right off o' the line! and as
for that sheet they made the rag ladder out of ther' ain't no
telling how many times they didn't steal that; and flour, and candles,
and candlesticks, and spoons, and the old warming-pan, and most a
thousand things that I disremember, now, and my new calico dress;
and me, and Silas, and my Sid and Tom on the constant watch day and
night, as I was a telling you, and not a one of us could catch hide
nor hair, nor sight nor sound of them; and here at the last minute, lo
and behold you, they slides right in under our noses, and fools us,
and not only fools us but the Injun Territory robbers too, and
actuly gets away with that nigger, safe and sound, and that with
sixteen men and twenty-two dogs right on their very heels at that very
time! I tell you, it just bangs anything I ever heard of. Why, sperits
couldn't a done better, and been no smarter. And I reckon they must
a been sperits- because, you know our dogs, and ther' ain't no better;
well, them dogs never even got on the track of 'm once! You explain
that to me, if you can!- any of you!"

  "Well, it does beat-"

  "Laws alive, I never-"

  "So help me, I wouldn't a be-"

  "House thieves as well as-"

  "Goodnessgracioussakes, I'd a ben afeard to live in sich a-"

  "'Fraid to live!- why, I was that scared I dasn't hardly go to
bed, or get up, or lay down, or set down, Sister Ridgeway. Why, they'd
steal the very- why, goodness sakes, you can guess what kind of a
fluster I was in by the time midnight come, last night. I hope to
gracious if I warn't afraid they'd steal some o' the family! I was
just to that pass, I didn't have no reasoning faculties no more. It
looks foolish enough, now, in the day-time; but I says to myself,
there's my two poor boys asleep, 'way up stairs in that lonesome room,
and I declare to goodness I was that uneasy 't I crep' up there and
locked 'em in! I did. And anybody would. Because, you know, when you
get scared, that way, and it keeps running on, and getting worse and
worse, all the time, and your wits get to addling, and you get to
doing all sorts o' wild things, and by-and-by you think to yourself,
spos'n I was a boy, and was away up there, and the door ain't
locked, and you-" She stopped, looking kind of wondering, and then she
turned her head around slow, and when her eye lit on me- I got up
and took a walk.

  Says I to myself, I can explain better how we come to not be in that
room this morning, if I go out to one side and study over it a little.
So I done it. But I dasn't go fur, or she'd a sent for me. And when it
was late in the day, the people all went, and then I come in and
told her the noise and shooting waked up me and "Sid," and the door
was locked, and we wanted to see the fun, so we went down the
lightning-rod, and both of us got hurt a little, and we didn't never
want to try that no more. And then I went on and told her all what I
told Uncle Silas before; and then she said she'd forgive us, and maybe
it was all right enough anyway, and about what a body might expect
of boys, for all boys was a pretty harum-scarum lot, as fur as she
could see; and so, as long as no harm hadn't come of it, she judged
she better put in her time being grateful we was alive and well and
she had us still, stead of fretting over what was past and done. So
then she kissed me, and patted me on the head, and dropped into a kind
of brown study; and pretty soon jumps up, and says:

  "Why, lawsamercy, it's most night, and Sid not come yet! What has
become of that boy?"

  I see my chance; so I skips up and says:

  "I'll run right up to town and get him," I says.

  "No you won't," she says. "You'll stay right wher'you are; one's
enough to be lost at a time. If he ain't here to supper, your uncle'll
go."

  Well, he warn't there to supper; so right after supper uncle went.

  He come back about ten, a little bit uneasy; hadn't run across Tom's
track. Aunt Sally was a good deal uneasy; but Uncle Silas he said
there warn't no occasion to be- boys will be boys, he said, and you'll
see this one turn up in the morning, all sound and right. So she had
to be satisfied. But she said she'd set up for him a while, anyway,
and keep a light burning, so he could see it.

  And then when I went up to bed she come up with me and fetched her
candle, and tucked me in, and mothered me so good I felt mean, and
like I couldn't look her in the face; and she set down on the bed
and talked with me a long time, and said what a splendid boy Sid
was, and didn't seem to want to ever stop talking about him; and
kept asking me every now and then, if I reckoned he could a got
lost, or hurt, or maybe drownded, and might be laying at this
minute, somewheres, suffering or dead, and she not by him to help him,
and so the tears would drip down, silent, and I would tell her that
Sid was all right, and would be home in the morning, sure; and she
would squeeze my hand, or maybe kiss me, and tell me to say it
again, and keep on saying it, because it done her good, and she was in
so much trouble. And when she was going away, she looked down in my
eyes, so steady and gentle, and says:

  "The door ain't going to be locked, Tom; and there's the window
and the rod; but you'll be good, won't you? And you won't go? For my
sake."

  Laws knows I wanted to go, bad enough, to see about Tom, and was all
intending to go; but after that, I wouldn't a went, not for kingdoms.

  But she was on my mind, and Tom was on my mind; so I slept very
restless. And twice I went down the rod, away in the night, and
slipped around front, and see her setting there by her candle in the
window with her eyes towards the road and the tears in them; and I
wished I could do something for her, but I couldn't, only to swear
that I wouldn't never do nothing to grieve her any more. And the third
time, I waked up at dawn, and slid down, and she was there yet, and
her candle was most out, and her old gray head was resting on her
hand, and she was asleep.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO


  The old man was up town again, before breakfast, but couldn't get no
track of Tom; and both of them set at the table, thinking, and not
saying nothing, and looking mournful, and their coffee getting cold,
and not eating anything. And by-and-by the old man says:

  "Did I give you the letter?"

  "What letter?"

  "The one I got yesterday out of the post-office."

  "No, you didn't give me no letter."

  "Well, I must a forgot it."

  So he rummaged his pockets, and then went off somewheres where he
had laid it down, and fetched it, and give it to her. She says:

  "Why, it's from St. Petersburg-it's from Sis."

  I allowed another walk would do me good; but I couldn't stir. But
before she could break it open, she dropped it and run- for she see
something. And so did I. It was Tom Sawyer on a mattress; and that old
doctor; and Jim, in her calico dress, with his hands tied behind
him; and a lot of people. I hid the letter behind the first thing that
come handy, and rushed. She flung herself at Tom, crying, and says:

  "Oh, he's dead, he's dead, I know he's dead!"

  And Tom he turned his head a little, and muttered something or
other, which showed he warn't in his right mind; then she flung up her
hands, and says:

  "He's alive, thank God! And that's enough!" and she snatched a
kiss of him, and flew for the house to get the bed ready, and
scattering orders right and left at the niggers and everybody else, as
fast as her tongue could go, every jump of the way.

  I followed the men to see what they was going to do with Jim; and
the old doctor and Uncle Silas followed after Tom into the house.
The men was very huffy, and some of them wanted to hang Jim, for an
example to all the other niggers around there, so they wouldn't be
trying to run away, like Jim done, and making such a raft of
trouble, and keeping a whole family scared most to death for days
and nights. But the others said, don't do it, it wouldn't answer at
all, he ain't our nigger, and his owner would turn up and make us
pay for him, sure. So that cooled them down a little, because the
people that's always the most anxious for to hang a nigger that hain't
done just right, is always the very ones that ain't the most anxious
to pay for him when they've got their satisfaction out of him.

  They cussed Jim considerble, though, and give him a cuff or two,
side the head, once in a while, but Jim never said nothing, and he
never let on to know me, and they took him to the same cabin, and
put his own clothes on him, and chained him again, and not to no
bed-leg, this time, but to a big staple drove into the bottom log, and
chained his hands, too, and both legs, and said he warn't to have
nothing but bread and water to eat, after this, till his owner come or
he was sold at auction, because he didn't come in a certain length
of time, and filled up our hole, and said a couple of farmers with
guns must stand watch around about the cabin every night, and a
bull-dog tied to the door in the day-time; and about this time they
was through with the job and was tapering off with a kind of generl
good-bye cussing, and then the old doctor comes and takes a look,
and says:

  "Don't be no rougher on him than you're obleeged to, because he
ain't a bad nigger. When I got to where I found the boy, I see I
couldn't cut the bullet out without some help, and he warn't in no
condition for me to leave, to go and get help; and he got a little
worse and a little worse, and after a long time he went out of his
head, and wouldn't let me come anigh him, any more, and said if I
chalked his raft he'd kill me, and no end of wild foolishness like
that, and I see I couldn't do anything at all with him; so I says, I
got to have help, somehow; and the minute I says it, out crawls this
nigger from somewheres, and says he'll help, and he done it, too,
and done it very well. Of course I judged he must be a runaway nigger,
and there I was! and there I had to stick, right straight along all
the rest of the day, and all night. It was a fix, I tell you! I had
a couple of patients with the chills, and of course, I'd of liked to
run up to town and see them, but I dasn't, because the nigger might
get away, and then I'd be to blame; and yet never a skiff come close
enough for me to hail. So there I had to stick, plumb till daylight
this morning; and I never see a nigger that was a better nuss or
faithfuller, and yet he was resking his freedom to do it, and was
all tired out, too, and I see plain enough he'd been worked main hard,
lately. I liked the nigger for that; I tell you, gentlemen, a nigger
like that is worth a thousand dollars- and kind treatment, too. I
had everything I needed, and the boy was doing as well there as he
would a done at home- better, maybe, because it was so quiet; but
there I was, with both of 'm on my hands; and there I had to stick,
till about dawn this morning; then some men in a skiff come by, and as
good luck would have it, the nigger was setting by the pallet with his
head propped on his knees, sound asleep; so I motioned them in, quiet,
and they slipped up on him and grabbed him and tied him before he
knowed what he was about, and we never had no trouble. And the boy
being in a kind of a flighty sleep, too, we muffled the oars and
hitched the raft on, and towed her over very nice and quiet, and the
nigger never made the least row nor said a word, from the start. He
ain't no bad nigger, gentlemen; that's what I think about him."

  Somebody says:

  "Well, it sounds very good, doctor, I'm obleeged to say."

  Then the others softened up a little, too, and I was mighty thankful
to that old doctor for doing Jim that good turn; and I was glad it was
according to my judgment of him, too; because I thought he had a
good heart in him and was a good man, the first time I see him. Then
they all agreed that Jim had acted very well, and was deserving to
have some notice took of it, and reward. So every one of them
promised, right out and hearty, that they wouldn't cuss him no more.

  Then they come out and locked him up. I hoped they was going to
say he could have one or two of the chains took off, because they
was rotten heavy, or could have meat and greens with his bread and
water, but they didn't think of it, and I reckoned it warn't best
for me to mix in, but I judged I'd get the doctor's yarn to Aunt
Sally, somehow or other, as soon as I'd got through the breakers
that was laying just ahead of me. Explanations, I mean, of how I
forgot to mention about Sid being shot, when I was telling how him and
me put in that dratted night paddling around hunting the runaway
nigger.

  But I had plenty time. Aunt Sally she stuck to the sickroom all
day and all night; and every time I see Uncle Silas mooning around,
I dodged him.

  Next morning I heard Tom was a good deal better, and they said
Aunt Sally was gone to get a nap. So I slips to the sick-room, and
if I found him awake I reckoned we could put up a yarn for the
family that would wash. But he was sleeping, and sleeping very
peaceful, too; and pale, not fire-faced the way he was when he come.
So I set down and laid for him to wake. In about a half an hour,
Aunt Sally comes gliding in, and there I was, up a stump again! She
motioned me to be still, and set down by me, and begun to whisper, and
said we could all be joyful now, because all the symptoms was first
rate, and he'd been sleeping like that for ever so long, and looking
better and peacefuller all the time, and ten to one he'd wake up in
his right mind.

  So we set there watching, and by-and-by he stirs a bit, and opened
his eyes very natural, and takes a look, and says:

  "Hello, why I'm at home! How's that? Where's the raft?"

  "It's all right," I says.

  "And Jim?"

  "The same," I says, but couldn't say it pretty brash. But he never
noticed, but says:

  "Good! Splendid! Now we're all right and safe! Did you tell Aunty?"

  I was going to say yes; but she chipped in and says:

  "About what, Sid?"

  "Why, about the way the whole thing was done."

  "What whole thing?"

  "Why, the whole thing. There ain't but one; how we set the runaway
nigger free- me and Tom."

  "Good land! Set the run- What is the child talking about! Dear,
dear, out of his head again!"

  "No, I ain't out of my HEAD; I know all what I'm talking about. We
did set him free- me and Tom. We laid out to do it, and we done it.
And we done it elegant, too." He'd got a start, and she never
checked him up, just set and stared and stared, and let him clip
along, and I see it warn't no use for me to put in. "Why, Aunty, it
cost us a power of work- weeks of it- hours and hours, every night,
whilst you was all asleep. And we had to steal candles, and the sheet,
and the shirt, and your dress, and spoons, and tin plates, and
case-knives, and the warming-pan, and the grindstone, and flour, and
just no end of things, and you can't think what work it was to make
the saws, and pens, and inscriptions, and one thing or another, and
you can't think half the fun it was. And we had to make up the
pictures of coffins and things, and nonnamous letters from the
robbers, and get up and down the lightningrod, and dig the hole into
the cabin, and make the rope-ladder and send it in cooked up in a pie,
and send in spoons and things to work with, in your apron pocket-"

  "Mercy sakes!"

  -and load up the cabin with rats and snakes and so on, for company
for Jim; and then you kept Tom here so long with the butter in his hat
that you come near spiling the whole business, because the men come
before we was out of the cabin, and we had to rush, and they heard
us and let drive at us, and I got my share, and we dodged out of the
path and let them go by, and when the dogs come they warn't interested
in us, but went for the most noise, and we got our canoe, and made our
raft, and was all safe, and Jim was a free man, and we done it all
by ourselves, and wasn't it bully, Aunty!"

  "Well, I never heard the likes of it in all my born days! So it
was you, you little rapscallions, that's been making all this trouble,
and turned everybody's wits clean inside out and scared us all most to
death. I've as good a notion as ever I had in my life, to take it
out o' you this very minute. To think, here I've been, night after
night, a- you just get well once, you young scamp, and I lay I'll
tan the Old Harry out o' both o' ye!"

  But Tom, he was so proud and joyful, he just couldn't hold in, and
his tongue just went it- she a-chipping in, and spitting fire all
along, and both of them going it at once, like a cat-convention; and
she says:

  "Well, you get all the enjoyment you can out of it now, for mind I
tell you if I catch you meddling with him again-"

  "Meddling with who?" Tom says, dropping his smile and looking
surprised.

  "With who? Why, the runaway nigger, of course. Who'd you reckon?"

  Tom looks at me very grave, and says:

  "Tom, didn't you just tell me he was all right? Hasn't he got away?"

  "Him?" says Aunt Sally; "the runaway nigger? 'Deed he hasn't.
They've got him back, safe and sound, and he's in that cabin again, on
bread and water, and loaded down with chains, till he's claimed or
sold!"

  Tom rose square up in bed, with his eye hot, and his nostrils
opening and shutting like gills, and sings out to me:

  "They hain't no right to shut him up! Shove!- and don't you lose a
minute. Turn him loose! he ain't no slave; he's as free as any
cretur that walks this earth!"

  "What does the child mean?"

  "I mean every word I say, Aunt Sally, and if somebody don't go, I'll
go. I've knowed him all his life, and so has Tom, there. Old Miss
Watson died two months ago, and she was ashamed she ever was going
to sell him down the river, and said so; and she set him free in her
will."

  "Then what on earth did you want to set him free for, seeing he
was already free?"

  "Well that is a question, I must say; and just like women! Why, I
wanted the adventure of it; and I'd a waded neckdeep in blood to-
goodness alive, Aunt Polly!"

  If she warn't standing right there, just inside the door, looking as
sweet and contented as an angel half-full of pie, I wish I may never!

  Aunt Sally jumped for her, and most hugged the head off of her,
and cried over her, and I found a good enough place for me under the
bed, for it was getting pretty sultry for us, seemed to me. And I
peeped out, and in a little while Tom's Aunt Polly shook herself loose
and stood there looking across at Tom over her spectacles- kind of
grinding him into the earth, you know. And then she says:

  "Yes, you better turn y'r head away- I would if I was you, Tom."

  "Oh, deary me!" says Aunt Sally; "is he changed so? Why, that
ain't Tom, it's Sid; Tom's- Tom's- why, where is Tom? He was here a
minute ago."

  "You mean where's Huck Finn- that's what you mean! I reckon I hain't
raised such a scamp as my Tom all these years, not to know him when
I see him. That would be a pretty howdy-do. Come out from under that
bed, Huck Finn."

  So I done it. But not feeling brash.

  Aunt Sally she was one of the mixed-upest looking persons I ever
see; except one, and that was Uncle Silas, when he come in, and they
told it all to him. It kind of made him drunk, as you may say, and
he didn't know nothing at all the rest of the day, and preached a
prayer-meeting sermon that night that give him a rattling
ruputation, because the oldest man in the world couldn't a
understood it. So Tom's Aunt Polly, she told all about who I was,
and what; and I had to up and trill how I was in such a tight place
when Mrs. Phelps took me for Tom Sawyer- she chipped in and says, "Oh,
go on and call me Aunt Sally, I'm used to it, now, and 'taint no
need to change"- that when Aunt Sally took me for Tom Sawyer, I had to
stand it- there warn't no other way, and I knowed he wouldn't mind,
because it would be nuts for him, being a mystery, and he'd make an
adventure out of it and be perfectly satisfied. And so it turned
out, and he let on to be Sid, and made things as soft as he could
for me.

  And his Aunt Polly she said Tom was right about old Miss Watson
setting Jim free in her will; and so, sure enough, Tom Sawyer had gone
and took all that trouble and bother to set a free nigger free! and
I couldn't ever understand, before, until that minute and that talk,
how he could help a body set a nigger free, with his bringing-up.

  Well, Aunt Polly she said that when Aunt Sally wrote to her that Tom
and Sid had come, all right and safe, she says to herself:

  "Look at that, now! I might have expected it, letting him go off
that way without anybody to watch him. So now I got to go and trapse
all the way down the river, eleven hundred mile, and find out what
that creetur's up to, this time; as long as I couldn't seem to get any
answer out of you about it."

  "Why, I never heard nothing from you," says Aunt Sally.

  "Well, I wonder! Why, I wrote to you twice, to ask you what you
could mean by Sid being here."

  "Well, I never got 'em, Sis."

  Aunt Polly, she turns around slow and severe, and says:

  "You, Tom!"

  "Well- what?" he says, kind of pettish.

  "Don't you what me, you impudent thing- hand out them letters."

  "What letters?"

  "Them letters. I be bound, if I have to take aholt of you I'll-"

  "They're in the trunk. There, now. And they're just the same as they
was when I got them out of the office. I hain't looked into them, I
hain't touched them. But I knowed they'd make trouble, and I thought
if you warn't in no hurry, I'd-"

  "Well, you do need skinning, there ain't no mistake about it. And
I wrote another one to tell you I was coming; and I spose he-"

  "No, it come yesterday; I hain't read it yet, but it's all right,
I've got that one."

  I wanted to offer to bet two dollars she hadn't, but I reckoned
maybe it was just as safe to not to. So I never said nothing.

  CHAPTER THE LAST


  The first time I catched Tom, private, I asked him what was his
idea, time of the evasion?- what it was he'd planned to do if the
evasion worked all right and he managed to set a nigger free that
was already free before? And he said, what he had planned in his head,
from the start, if we got Jim out all safe, was for us to run him down
the river, on the raft, and have adventures plumb to the mouth of
the river, and then tell him about his being free, and take him back
up home on a steamboat, in style, and pay him for his lost time, and
write word ahead and get out all the niggers around, and have them
waltz him into town with a torchlight procession and a brass band, and
then he would be a hero, and so would we. But I reckened it was
about as well the way it was.

  We had Jim out of the chains in no time, and when Aunt Polly and
Uncle Silas and Aunt Sally found out how good he helped the doctor
nurse Tom, they made a heap of fuss over him, and fixed him up
prime, and give him all he wanted to eat, and a good time, and nothing
to do. And we had him up to the sick-room; and had a high talk; and
Tom give Jim forty dollars for being prisoner for us so patient, and
doing it up so good, and Jim was pleased most to death, and busted
out, and says:

  "Dah, now, Huck, what I tell you?- what I tell you up dah on Jackson
islan'? I tole you I got a hairy breas', en what's de sign un it; en I
tole you I ben rich wunst, en gwineter to be rich agin; en it's come
true; en heah she is! Dab, now! doan' talk to me- signs is signs, mine
I tell you; en I knowed jis' 's well 'at I 'uz gwineter be rich agin
as I's a stannin heah dis minute!"

  And then Tom he talked along, and talked along, and says, le's all
three slide out of here, one of these nights, and get an outfit, and
go for howling adventures amongst the Injuns, over in the Territory,
for a couple of weeks or two; and I says, all right, that suits me,
but I ain't got no money for to buy the outfit, and I reckon I
couldn't get none from home, because it's likely pap's been back
before now, and got it all away from Judge Thatcher and drunk it up.

  "No, he hain't," Tom says; "it's all there, yet- six thousand
dollars and more; and your pap hain't ever been back since. Hadn't
when I come away, anyhow."

  Jim says, kind of solemn:

  "He ain't a comin' back no mo', Huck."

  I says:

  "Why, Jim?"

  "Nemmine why, Huck- but he ain't comin' back no mo'."

  But I kept at him; so at last he says:

  "Doan' you 'member de house dat was float'n down de river, en dey
wuz a man in dah, kivered up, en I went in en unkivered him and didn't
let you come in? Well, den, you k'n git yo' money when you wants it;
kase dat wuz him."

  Tom's most well, now, and got his bullet around his neck on a
watch-guard for a watch, and is always seeing what time it is, and
so there ain't nothing more to write about, and I am rotten glad of
it, because if I'd a knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I
wouldn't a tackled it and ain't agoing to no more. But I reckon I
got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt
Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can't stand it.
I been there before.

                           THE END. YOURS TRULY, HUCK FINN