APDL Eductation Resources/APDL Eductation Resources.iso/text/authors/marktwain/tomsawyer/CHAP20_35

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                           Chapter 19

                 The Cruelty of "I Didn't Think"


  TOM ARRIVED AT HOME in a dreary mood, and the first thing his aunt
said to him showed him that he had brought his sorrows to an
unpromising market:

  "Tom, I've a notion to skin you alive!"

  "Auntie, what have I done?"

  "Well, you've done enough. Here I go over to Sereny Harper, like
an old softy, expecting I'm going to make her believe all that rubbage
about that dream, when lo and behold you she'd found out from Joe that
you was over here and heard all the talk we had that night. Tom I
don't know what is to become of a boy that will act like that. It
makes me feel so bad to think you could let me go to Sereny Harper and
make such a fool of myself and never say a word."

  This was a new aspect of the thing. His smartness of the morning had
seemed to Tom a good joke before, and very ingenious. It merely looked
mean and shabby now. He hung his head and could not think of
anything to say for a moment. Then he said:

  "Auntie, I wish I hadn't done it- but I didn't think."

  "O, child you never think. You never think of anything but your
own selfishness. You could think to come all the way over here from
Jackson's Island in the night to laugh at our troubles, and you
could think to fool me with a lie about a dream; but you couldn't ever
think to pity us and save us from sorrow."

  "Auntie, I know now it was mean, but I didn't mean to be mean. I
didn't, honest. And besides I didn't come over here to laugh at you
that night."

  "What did you come for, then?"

  "It was to tell you not to be uneasy about us, because we hadn't got
drownded."

  "Tom, Tom, I would be the thankfullest soul in this world if I could
believe you ever had as good a thought as that, but you know you never
did- and I know it, Tom."

  "Indeed and 'deed I did, auntie- I wish I may never stir if I
didn't."

  "O, Tom, don't lie- don't do it. It only makes things a hundred
times worse."

  "It ain't a lie, auntie, it's the truth. I wanted to keep you from
grieving- that was all that made me come."

  "I'd give the whole world to believe that- it would cover up a power
of sins, Tom. I'd most be glad you'd run off and acted so bad. But
it ain't reasonable; because, why didn't you tell me, child?"

  "Why, you see, auntie, when you got to talking about the funeral,
I just got all full of the idea of our coming and hiding in the
church, and I couldn't somehow bear to spoil it. So I just put the
bark back in my pocket and kept mum."

  "What bark?"

  "The bark I had wrote on to tell you we'd gone pirating. I wish,
now, you'd waked up when I kissed you- I do, honest."

  The hard lines in his aunt's face relaxed and a sudden tenderness
dawned in her eyes.

  "Did you kiss me, Tom?"

  "Why yes I did."

  "Are you sure you did, Tom?"

  "Why yes I did, auntie- certain sure."

  "What did you kiss me for, Tom?"

  "Because I loved you so, and you laid there moaning and I was so
sorry."

  The words sounded like truth. The old lady could not hide a tremor
in her voice when she said:

  "Kiss me again, Tom!- and be off with you to school, now, and
don't bother me any more."

  The moment he was gone, she ran to a closet and got out the ruin
of a jacket which Tom had gone pirating in. Then she stopped, with
it in her hand, and said to herself.

  "No, I don't dare. Poor boy, I reckon he's lied about it- but it's a
blessed, blessed lie, there's such comfort come from it. I hope the
Lord- I know the Lord will forgive him, because it was such
good-heartedness in him to tell it. But I don't want to find out
it's a lie. I won't look."

  She put the jacket away, and stood by musing a minute. Twice she put
out her hand to take the garment again, and twice she refrained.
Once more she ventured, and this time she fortified herself with the
thought: "It's a good lie- it's a good lie- I won't let it grieve me."
So she sought the jacket pocket. A moment later she was reading
Tom's piece of bark through flowing tears and saying: "I could forgive
the boy, now, if he'd committed a million sins!"

                           Chapter 20

                  Tom Takes Becky's Punishment


  THERE WAS SOMETHING about Aunt Polly's manner, when she kissed
Tom, that swept away his low spirits and made him lighthearted and
happy again. He started to school and had the luck of coming upon
Becky Thatcher at the head of Meadow Lane. His mood always
determined his manner. Without a moment's hesitation he ran to her and
said:

  "I acted mighty mean to-day, Becky, and I'm so sorry. I won't
ever, ever do that way again, as long as ever I live- please make
up, won't you?"

  The girl stopped and looked him scornfully in the face:

  "I'll thank you to keep yourself to yourself, Mr. Thomas Sawyer.
I'll never speak to you again."

  She tossed her head and passed on. Tom was so stunned that he had
not even presence of mind enough to say "Who cares, Miss Smarty?"
until the right time to say it had gone by. So he said nothing. But he
was in a fine rage, nevertheless. He moped into the school-yard
wishing she were a boy, and imagining how he would trounce her if
she were. He presently encountered her and delivered a stinging remark
as he passed. She hurled one in return, and the angry breach was
complete. It seemed to Becky, in her hot resentment, that she could
hardly wait for school to "take in," she was so impatient to see Tom
flogged for the injured spelling-book. If she had had lingering notion
of exposing Alfred Temple, Tom's offensive fling had driven it
entirely away.

  Poor girl, she did not know how fast she was nearing trouble
herself. The master, Mr. Dobbins, had reached middle age with an
unsatisfied ambition. The darling of his desires was to be a doctor,
but poverty had decreed that he should be nothing higher than a
village schoolmaster. Every day he took a mysterious book out of his
desk and absorbed himself in it at times when no classes were
reciting. He kept that book under lock and key. There was not an
urchin in school but was perishing to have a glimpse of it, but the
chance never came. Every boy and girl had a theory about the nature of
that book; but no two theories were alike, and there was no way of
getting at the facts in the case. Now, as Becky was passing by the
desk, which stood near the door, she noticed that the key was in the
lock! It was a precious moment. She glanced around; found herself
alone, and the next instant she had the book in her hands. The title
page- Professor somebody's "Anatomy"- carried no information to her
mind; so she began to turn the leaves. She came at once upon a
handsomely engraved and colored frontispiece- a human figure, stark
naked. At that moment a shadow fell on the page and Tom Sawyer stepped
in at the door, and caught a glimpse of the picture. Becky snatched at
the book to close it, and had the hard luck to tear the pictured
page half down the middle. She thrust the volume into the desk, turned
the key, and burst out crying with shame and vexation.

  "Tom Sawyer, you are just as mean as you can be, to sneak up on a
person and look at what they're looking at."

  "How could I know you was looking at anything?"

  "You ought to be ashamed of yourself Tom Sawyer; you know you're
going to tell on me, and O, what shall I do, what shall I do! I'll
be whipped, and I never was whipped in school."

  Then she stamped her little foot and said:

  "Be so mean if you want to! I know something that's going to happen.
You just wait and you'll see! Hateful, hateful, hateful!"- and she
flung out of the house with a new explosion of crying.

  Tom stood still, rather flustered by this onslaught. Presently he
said to himself.

  "What a curious kind of a fool a girl is. Never been licked in
school! Shucks, what's a licking! That's just like a girl- they're so
thin-skinned and chicken-hearted. Well, of course I ain't going to
tell old Dobbins on this little fool, because there's other ways of
getting even on her, that ain't so mean; but what of it? Old Dobbins
will ask who it was tore his book. Nobody'll answer. Then he'll do
just the way he always does- ask first one and then t'other, and
when he comes to the right girl he'll know it, without any telling.
Girls' faces always tell on them. They ain't got any backbone.
She'll get licked. Well, it's a kind of a tight place for Becky
Thatcher, because there ain't any way out of it." Tom conned the thing
a moment longer and then added: "All right, though; she'd like to
see me in just such a fix- let her sweat it out!"

  Tom joined the mob of skylarking scholars outside. In a few
moments the master arrived and school "took in." Tom did not feel a
strong interest in his studies. Every time he stole a glance at the
girls' side of the room Becky's face troubled him. Considering all
things, he did not want to pity her, and yet it was all he could do to
help it. He could get up no exultation that was really worthy the
name. Presently the spelling-book discovery was made, and Tom's mind
was entirely full of his own matters for a while after that. Becky
roused up from her lethargy of distress and showed good interest in
the proceedings. She did not expect that Tom could get out of his
trouble by denying that he spilt the ink on the book himself, and
she was right. The denial only seemed to make the thing worse for Tom.
Becky supposed she would be glad of that, and she tried to believe she
was glad of it, but she found she was not certain. When the worst came
to the worst, she had an impulse to get up and tell on Alfred
Temple, but she made an effort and forced herself to keep still-
because, said she to herself, "he'll tell about me tearing the
picture, sure. I wouldn't say a word, not to save his life!"

  Tom took his whipping and went back to his seat not at all
brokenhearted, for he thought it was possible that he had
unknowingly upset the ink on the spelling-book himself, in some
skylarking bout- he had denied it for form's sake and because it was
custom, and had stuck to the denial from principle.

  A whole hour drifted by, the master sat nodding in his throne, the
air was drowsy with the hum of study. By and by, Mr. Dobbins
straightened himself up, yawned, then unlocked his desk, and reached
for his book, but seemed undecided whether to take it out or leave it.
Most of the pupils glanced up languidly, but there were two among them
that watched his movements with intent eyes. Mr. Dobbins fingered
his book absently for a while, then took it out and settled himself in
his chair to read! Tom shot a glance at Becky. He had seen a hunted
and helpless rabbit look as she did, with a gun leveled at its head.
Instantly he forgot his quarrel with her. Quick- something must be
done! done in a flash, too! But the very imminence of the emergency
paralyzed his invention. Good!- he had an inspiration! He would run
and snatch the book, spring through the door and fly. But his
resolution shook for one little instant, and the chance was lost-
the master opened the volume. If Tom only had the wasted opportunity
back again! Too late; there was no help for Becky now, he said. The
next moment the master faced the school. Every eye sunk under his
gaze. There was that in it which smote even the innocent with fear.
There was silence while one might count ten; the master was
gathering his wrath. Then he spoke:

  "Who tore this book?"

  There was not a sound. One could have heard a pin drop. The
stillness continued; the master searched face after face for signs
of guilt.

  "Benjamin Rogers, did you tear this book?"

  A denial. Another pause.

  "Joseph Harper, did you?"

  Another denial. Tom's uneasiness grew more and more intense under
the slow torture of these proceedings. The master scanned the ranks of
boys- considered a while, then turned to the girls:

  "Amy Lawrence?"

  A shake of the head.

  "Gracie Miller?"

  The same sign.

  "Susan Harper, did you do this?"

  Another negative. The next girl was Becky Thatcher. Tom was
trembling from head to foot with excitement and a sense of the
hopelessness of the situation.

  "Rebecca Thatcher," (Tom glanced at her face- it was white with
terror,)- "did you tear- no, look me in the face"- (her hands rose
in appeal)- "did you tear this book?"

  A thought shot like lightning through Tom's brain. He sprang to
his feet and shouted-

  "I done it!"

  The school stared in perplexity at this incredible folly. Tom
stood a moment, to gather his dismembered faculties; and when he
stepped forward to go to his punishment the surprise, the gratitude,
the adoration that shone upon him out of poor Becky's eyes seemed
pay enough for a hundred floggings. Inspired by the splendor of his
own act, he took without an outcry the most merciless flaying that
even Mr. Dobbins had ever administered; and also received with
indifference the added cruelty of a command to remain two hours
after school should be dismissed- for he knew who would wait for him
outside till his captivity was done, and not count the tedious time as
loss, either.

  Tom went to bed that night planning vengeance against Alfred Temple;
for with shame and repentance Becky had told him all, not forgetting
her own treachery; but even the longing for vengeance had to give way,
soon, to pleasanter musings, and he fell asleep at last, with
Becky's latest words lingering dreamily in his ear-

  "Tom, how could you be so noble!"

                           Chapter 21

             Eloquence- and the Master's Gilded Dome


  VACATION WAS APPROACHING. The schoolmaster, always sever, grew
severer and more exacting than ever, for he wanted the school to
make a good showing on "Examination" day. His rod and his ferule
were seldom idle now- at least among the smaller pupils. Only the
biggest boys, and young ladies of eighteen and twenty escaped lashing.
Mr. Dobbins's lashings were very vigorous ones, too; for although he
carried, under his wig, a perfectly bald and shiny head, he had only
reached middle age and there was no sign of feebleness in his
muscle. As the great day approached, all the tyranny that was in him
came to the surface; he seemed to take a vindictive pleasure in
punishing the least shortcomings. The consequence was, that the
smaller boys spent their days in terror and suffering and their nights
in plotting revenge. They threw away no opportunity to do the master a
mischief. But he kept ahead all the time. The retribution that
followed every vengeful success was so sweeping and majestic that
the boys always retired from the field badly worsted. At last they
conspired together and hit upon a plan that promised a dazzling
victory. They swore-in the sign-painter's boy, told him the scheme,
and asked his help. He had his own reasons for being delighted, for
the master boarded in his father's family and had given the boy
ample cause to hate him. The master's wife would go on a visit to
the country in a few days, and there would be nothing to interfere
with the plan; the master always prepared himself for great
occasions by getting pretty well fuddled, and the sign-painter's boy
said that when the dominie had reached the proper condition on
Examination Evening he would "manage the thing" while he napped in his
chair; then he would have him awakened at the right time and hurried
away to school.

  In the fullness of time the interesting occasion arrived. At eight
in the evening the school-house was brilliantly lighted, and adorned
with wreaths and festoons of foliage and flowers. The master sat
throned in his great chair upon a raised platform, with his blackboard
behind him. He was looking tolerably mellow. Three rows of benches
on each side and six rows in front of him were occupied by the
dignitaries of the town and by the parents of the pupils. To his left,
back of the rows of citizens, was a spacious temporary platform upon
which were seated the scholars who were to take part in the
exercises of the evening; rows of small boys, washed and dressed to an
intolerable state of discomfort; rows of gawky big boys; snow-banks of
girls and young ladies clad in lawn and muslin and conspicuously
conscious of their bare arms, their grandmothers' ancient trinkets,
their bits of pink and blue ribbon and the flowers in their hair.
All the rest of the house was filled with nonparticipating scholars.

  The exercises began. A very little boy stood up and sheepishly
recited, "You'd scarce expect one of my age to speak in public on
the stage, etc"- accompanying himself with the painfully exact and
spasmodic gestures which a machine might have used- supposing the
machine to be a trifle out of order. But he got through safely, though
cruelly scared, and got a fine round of applause when he made his
manufactured bow and retired.

  A little shame-faced girl lisped "Mary had a little lamb, etc.,"
performed a compassion-inspiring curtsy, got her meed of applause, and
sat down flushed and happy.

  Tom Sawyer stepped forward with conceited confidence and soared into
the unquenchable and indestructible "Give me liberty or give me death"
speech, with fine fury and frantic gesticulation, and broke down in
the middle of it. A ghastly stage-fright seized him, his legs quaked
under him and he was like to choke. True, he had the manifest sympathy
of the house- but he had the house's silence, too, which was even
worse than its sympathy. The master frowned, and this completed the
disaster. Tom struggled a while and then retired, utterly defeated.
There was a weak attempt at applause, but it died early.

  "The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck" followed; also "The Assyrian
Came Down," and other declaratory gems. Then there were reading
exercises, and a spelling fight. The meager Latin class recited with
honor. The prime feature of the evening was in order, now- original
"compositions" by the young ladies. Each in her turn stepped forward
to the edge of the platform, cleared her throat, held up her
manuscript (tied with dainty ribbon), and proceeded to read, with
labored attention to "expression" and punctuation. The themes were the
same that had been illuminated upon similar occasions by their mothers
before them, their grandmothers, and doubtless all their ancestors
in the female line clear back to the Crusades. "Friendship" was one;
"Memories of Other Days;" "Religion in History;" "Dream Land;" "The
Advantages of Culture;" "Forms of Political Government Compared and
Contrasted;" "Melancholy;" "Filial Love;" "Heart Longings," etc., etc.

  A prevalent feature in these compositions was a nursed and petted
melancholy; another was a wasteful and opulent gush of "fine
language;" another was a tendency to lug in by the ears particularly
prized words and phrases until they were worn entirely out; and a
peculiarity that conspicuously marked and marred them was the
inveterate and intolerable sermon that wagged its crippled tail at the
end of each and every one of them. No matter what the subject might
be, a brainracking effort was made to squirm it into some aspect or
other that the moral and religious mind could contemplate with
edification. The glaring insincerity of these sermons was not
sufficient to compass the banishment of the fashion from the
schools, and it is not sufficient to-day; it never will be sufficient
while the world stands, perhaps. There is no school in all our land
where the young ladies do not feel obliged to close their compositions
with a sermon; and you will find that the sermon of the most frivolous
and least religious girl in the school is always the longest and the
most relentlessly pious. But enough of this. Homely truth is
unpalatable.

  Let us return to the "Examination." The first composition that was
read was one entitled "Is this, then, Life?" Perhaps the reader can
endure an extract from it:


  In the common walks of life, with what delightful emotions does
the youthful mind look forward to some anticipated scene of festivity!
Imagination is busy sketching rose-tinted pictures of joy. In fancy,
the voluptuous votary of fashion sees herself amid the festive throng,
"the observed of all observers." Her graceful form, arrayed in snowy
robes, is whirling through the mazes of the joyous dance; her eye is
brightest, her step is lightest in the gay assembly.

  In such delicious fancies time quickly glides by, and the welcome
hour arrives for her entrance into the elysian world, of which she has
had such bright dreams. How fairy-like does every thing appear to
her enchanted vision! Each new scene is more charming than the last.
But after a while she finds that beneath this goodly exterior, all
is vanity: the flattery which once charmed her soul, now grates
harshly upon her ear; the ball-room has lost its charms; and with
wasted health and embittered heart, she turns away with the conviction
that earthly pleasures cannot satisfy the longings of the soul!


  And so forth and so on. There was a buzz of gratification from
time to time during the reading, accompanied by whispered ejaculations
of "How sweet!" "How eloquent!" "So true!" etc., and after the thing
had closed with a peculiarly afflicting sermon the applause was
enthusiastic.

  Then arose a slim, melancholy girl, whose face had the "interesting"
paleness that comes of pills and indigestion, and read a "poem." Two
stanzas of it will do:


        A MISSOURI MAIDEN'S FAREWELL TO ALABAMA


        ALABAMA, good-bye! I love thee well!

          But yet for awhile do I leave thee now!

        Sad, yes, sad thoughts of thee my heart doth swell,

          And burning recollections throng my brow!

        For I have wandered through thy flowery woods;

          Have roamed and read near Tallapoosa's stream;

        Have listened to Tallassee's warring floods,

          And wooed on Coosa's side Aurora's beam.


        Yet shame I not to bear an o'er-full heart,

          Nor blush to turn behind my tearful eyes;

        'Tis from no stranger land I now must part,

          'Tis to no strangers left I yield these sighs.

         Welcome and home were mine within this State,

           Whose vales I leave- whose spires fade fast from me;

         And cold must be mine eyes, and heart, and tete,

           When, dear Alabama! they turn cold on thee!


  There were very few there who knew what "tete" meant, but the poem
was very satisfactory, nevertheless.

  Next appeared a dark-complexioned, black-eyed, black-haired young
lady, who paused an impressive moment, assumed a tragic expression,
and began to read in a measured, solemn tone.


                             A VISION


  Dark and tempestuous was night. Around the throne on high not a
single star quivered; but the deep intonations of the heavy thunder
constantly vibrated upon the ear; whilst the terrific lightning
revelled in angry mood through the cloudy chambers of heaven,
seeming to scorn the power exerted over its terror by the
illustrious Franklin! Even the boisterous winds unanimously came forth
from their mystic homes, and blustered about as if to enhance by their
aid the wildness of the scene.

  At such a time, so dark, so dreary, for human sympathy my very
spirit sighed; but instead thereof,


    "My dearest friend, my counsellor, my comforter and guide-

     My joy in grief, my second bliss in joy," came to my side.


  She moved like one of those bright beings pictured in the sunny
walks of fancy's Eden by the romantic and young, a queen of beauty
unadorned save by her own transcendent loveliness. So soft was her
step, it failed to make even a sound, and but for the magical thrill
imparted by her genial touch, as other unobtrusive beauties, she would
have glided away unperceived- unsought. A strange sadness rested
upon her features, like icy tears upon the robe of December, as she
pointed to the contending elements without, and bade me contemplate
the two beings presented.


  This nightmare occupied some ten pages of manuscript and wound up
with a sermon so destructive of all hope to non-Presbyterians that
it took the first prize. This composition was considered to be the
very finest effort of the evening. The mayor of the village, in
delivering the prize to the author of it, made a warm speech in
which he said that it was by far the most "eloquent" thing he had ever
listened to, and that Daniel Webster himself might well be proud of
it.

  It may be remarked, in passing, that the number of compositions in
which the word "beauteous" was over-fondled, and human experience
referred to as "life's page," was up to the usual average.

  Now the master, mellow almost to the verge of geniality, put his
chair aside, turned his back to the audience, and began to draw a
map of America on the blackboard, to exercise the geography class
upon. But he made a sad business of it with his unsteady hand, and a
smothered titter rippled over the house. He knew what the matter was
and set himself to right it. He sponged out lines and re-made them;
but he only distorted them more than ever, and the tittering was
more pronounced. He threw his entire attention upon his work, now,
as if determined not to be put down by the mirth. He felt that all
eyes were fastened upon him; he imagined he was succeeding, and yet
the tittering continued; it even manifestly increased. And well it
might. There was a garret above, pierced with a scuttle over his head;
and down through this scuttle came a cat, suspended around the
haunches by a string; she had a rag tied about her head and jaws to
keep her from mewing; as she slowly descended she curved upward and
clawed at the string, she swung downward and clawed at the
intangible air. The tittering rose higher and higher- the cat was
within six inches of the absorbed teacher's head- down, down, a little
lower, and she grabbed his wig with her desperate claws, clung to it
and was snatched up into the garret in an instant with her trophy
still in her possession! And how the light did blaze abroad from the
master's bald pate- for the sign-painter's boy had gilded it!

  That broke up the meeting. The boys were avenged. Vacation had come.

                           Chapter 22

                   Huck Finn Quotes Scripture


  TOM JOINED THE NEW ORDER of Cadets of Temperance, being attracted by
the showy character of their "regalia." He promised to abstain from
smoking, chewing and profanity as long as he remained a member. Now he
found out a new thing- namely, that to promise not to do a thing is
the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very
thing. Tom soon found himself tormented with a desire to drink and
swear; the desire grew to be so intense that nothing but the hope of a
chance to display himself in his red sash kept him from withdrawing
from the order. Fourth of July was coming; but he soon gave that up-
gave it up before he had worn his shackles over forty-eight hours- and
fixed his hopes upon old Judge Frazer, justice of the peace, who was
apparently on his death-bed and would have a big public funeral, since
he was so high an official. During three days Tom was deeply concerned
about the judge's condition and hungry for news of it. Sometimes his
hopes ran high- so high that he would venture to get out his regalia
and practice before the looking-glass. But the judge had a most
discouraging way of fluctuating. At last he was pronounced upon the
mend- and then convalescent. Tom was disgusted; and felt a sense of
injury, too. He handed in his resignation at once- and that night
the judge suffered a relapse and died. Tom resolved that he would
never trust a man like that again.

  The funeral was a fine thing. The Cadets paraded in a style
calculated to kill the late member with envy. Tom was a free boy
again, however- there was something in that. He could drink and swear,
now- but found to his surprise that he did not want to. The simple
fact that he could, took the desire away, and the charm of it.

  Tom presently wondered to find that his coveted vacation was
beginning to hang a little heavily on his hands.

  He attempted a diary- but nothing happened during three days, and so
he abandoned it.

  The first of all the negro minstrel shows came to town, and made a
sensation. Tom and Joe Harper got up a band of performers and were
happy for two days.

  Even the Glorious Fourth was in some sense a failure, for it
rained hard, there was no procession in consequence, and the
greatest man in the world (as Tom supposed) Mr. Benton, an actual
United States Senator, proved an overwhelming disappointment- for he
was not twenty-five feet high, nor even anywhere in the neighborhood
of it.

  A circus came. The boys played circus for three days afterward in
tents made of rag carpeting- admission, three pins for boys, two for
girls- and then circusing was abandoned.

  A phrenologist and a mesmerizer came- and went again and left the
village duller and drearier than ever.

  There were some boys-and-girls' parties, but they were so few and so
delightful that they only made the aching voids between ache the
harder.

  Becky Thatcher was gone to her Constantinople home to stay with
her parents during vacation- so there was no bright side to life
anywhere.

  The dreadful secret of the murder was a chronic misery. It was a
very cancer for permanency and pain.

  Then came the measles.

  During two long weeks Tom lay a prisoner, dead to the world and
its happenings. He was very ill, he was interested in nothing. When he
got upon his feet at last and moved feebly down town, a melancholy
change had come over everything and every creature. There had been a
"revival," and everybody had "got religion"; not only the adults,
but even the boys and girls. Tom went about, hoping against hope for
the sight of one blessed sinful face, but disappointment crossed him
everywhere. He found Joe Harper studying a Testament, and turned sadly
away from the depressing spectacle. He sought Ben Rogers, and found
him visiting the poor with a basket of tracts. He hunted up Jim
Hollis, who called his attention to the precious blessing of his
late measles as a warning. Every boy he encountered added another
ton to his depression; and when, in desperation, he flew for refuge at
last to the bosom of Huckleberry Finn and was received with a
scriptural quotation, his heart broke and he crept home and to bed
realizing that he alone of all the town was lost, forever and forever.

  And that night there came on a terrific storm, with driving rain,
awful claps of thunder and blinding sheets of lightning. He covered
his head with the bedclothes and waited in a horror of suspense for
his doom; for he had not the shadow of a doubt that all this hubbub
was about him. He believed he had taxed the forbearance of the
powers above to the extremity of endurance and that this was the
result. It might have seemed to him a waste of pomp and ammunition
to kill a bug with a battery of artillery, but there seemed nothing
incongruous about the getting up such an expensive thunderstorm as
this to knock the turf from under an insect like himself.

  By and by the tempest spent itself and died without accomplishing
its object. The boy's first impulse was to be grateful, and reform.
His second was to wait- for there might not be any more storms.

  The next day the doctors were back; Tom had relapsed. The three
weeks he spent on his back this time seemed an entire age. When he got
abroad at last he was hardly grateful that he had been spared,
remembering how lonely was his estate, how companionless and forlorn
he was. He drifted listlessly down the street and found Jim Hollis
acting as judge in a juvenile court that was trying a cat for
murder, in the presence of her victim, a bird. He found Joe Harper and
Huck Finn up an alley eating a stolen melon. Poor lads! they- like
Tom- had suffered a relapse.

                           Chapter 23

                  The Salvation of Muff Potter


  AT LAST the sleepy atmosphere was stirred- and vigorously: the
murder trial came on in the court. It became the absorbing topic of
village talk immediately. Tom could not get away from it. Every
reference to the murder sent a shudder to his heart, for his
troubled conscience and fears almost persuaded him that these
remarks were put forth in his hearing as "feelers"; he did not see how
he could be suspected of knowing anything about the murder, but
still he could not be comfortable in the midst of this gossip. It kept
him in a cold shiver all the time. He took Huck to a lonely place to
have a talk with him. It would be some relief to unseal his tongue for
a little while; to divide his burden of distress with another
sufferer. Moreover, he wanted to assure himself that Huck had remained
discreet.

  "Huck, have you ever told anybody about- that?"

  "'Bout what?"

  "You know what."

  "O- 'course I haven't."

  "Never a word?"

  "Never a solitary word, so help me. What makes you ask?"

  "Well, I was afeard."

  "Why Tom Sawyer, we wouldn't be alive two days if that got found
out. You know that."

  Tom felt more comfortable. After a pause:

  "Huck, they couldn't anybody get you to tell, could they?"

  "Get me to tell? Why if I wanted that half-breed devil to drownd
me they could get me to tell. They ain't no different way."

  "Well, that's all right, then. I reckon we're safe as long as we
keep mum. But let's swear again, anyway. It's more surer."

  "I'm agreed."

  So they swore again with dread solemnities.

  "What is the talk around, Huck? I've heard a power of it."

  "Talk? Well, it's just Muff Potter, Muff Potter, Muff Potter all the
time. It keeps me in a sweat, constant, so's I want to hide som'ers."

  "That's just the same way they go on round me. I reckon he's a
goner. Don't you feel sorry for him, sometimes?"

  "Most always- most always. He ain't no account; but then he hain't
ever done anything to hurt anybody. Just fishes a little, to get money
to get drunk on- and loafs around considerable; but lord we all do
that- leastways most of us,- preachers and such like. But he's kind of
good- he give me half a fish, once, when there warn't enough for two;
and lots of times he's kind of stood by me when I was out of luck."

  "Well, he's mended kites for me, Huck, and knitted hooks on to my
line. I wish we could get him out of there."

  "My! we couldn't get him out Tom. And besides, It wouldn't do any
good; they'd ketch him again."

  "Yes- so they would. But I hate to hear 'em abuse him so like the
dickens when he never done- that."

  "I do too, Tom. Lord, I hear 'em say he's the bloodiest-looking
villain in this country, and they wonder he wasn't ever hung before."

  "Yes, they talk like that, all the time. I've heard 'em say that
if he was to get free they'd lynch him."

  "And they'd do it, too."

  The boys had a long talk, but it brought them little comfort. As the
twilight drew on, they found themselves hanging about the neighborhood
of the little isolated jail, perhaps with an undefined hope that
something would happen that might clear away their difficulties. But
nothing happened; there seemed to be no angels or fairies interested
in this luckless captive.

  The boys did as they had often done before- went to the cell grating
and gave Potter some tobacco and matches. He was on the ground floor
and there were no guards.

  His gratitude for their gifts had always smote their consciences
before- it cut deeper than ever, this time. They felt cowardly and
treacherous to the last degree when Potter said:

  "You've ben mighty good to me, boys- better'n anybody else in this
town. And I don't forget it, I don't. Often I says to myself, says
I, 'I used to mend all the boys' kites and things, and show 'em
where the good fishin' places was, and befriend 'em what I could, and
now they've all forgot old Muff when he's in trouble; but Tom don't,
and Huck don't- they don't forget him,' says I, 'and I don't forget
them.' Well, boys, I done an awful thing- drunk and crazy at the
time- that's the only way I account for it- and now I got to swing for
it, and it's right. Right, and best, too I reckon- hope so, anyway.
Well, we won't talk about that. I don't want to make you feel bad;
you've befriended me. But what I want to say, is, don't you ever get
drunk- then you won't ever get here. Stand a little furder west- so-
that's it; it's a prime comfort to see faces that's friendly when a
body's in such a muck of trouble, and there don't none come here but
yourn. Good friendly faces- good friendly faces. Git up on one
another's backs and let me touch 'em. That's it. Shake hands- yourn'll
come through the bars, but mine's too big. Little hands, and weak- but
they've helped Muff Potter a power, and they'd help him more if they
could."

  Tom went home miserable, and his dreams that night were full of
horrors. The next day and the day after, he hung about the court room,
drawn by an almost irresistible impulse to go in, but forcing
himself to stay out. Huck was having the same experience. They
studiously avoided each other. Each wandered away, from time to
time, but the same dismal fascination always brought them back
presently. Tom kept his ears open when idlers sauntered out of the
courtroom, but invariably heard distressing news- the toils were
closing more and more relentlessly around poor Potter. At the end of
the second day the village talk was to the effect that Injun Joe's
evidence stood firm and unshaken, and that there was not the slightest
question as to what the jury's verdict would be.

  Tom was out late, that night, and came to bed through the window. He
was in a tremendous state of excitement. It was hours before he got to
sleep. All the village flocked to the courthouse the next morning, for
this was to be the great day. Both sexes were about equally
represented in the packed audience. After a long wait the jury filed
in and took their places; shortly afterward, Potter, pale and haggard,
timid and hopeless, was brought in, with chains upon him, and seated
where all the curious eyes could stare at him; no less conspicuous was
Injun Joe, stolid as ever. There was another pause, and then the judge
arrived and the sheriff proclaimed the opening of the court. The usual
whisperings among the lawyers and gathering together of papers
followed. These details and accompanying delays worked up an
atmosphere of preparation that was as impressive as it was
fascinating.

  Now a witness was called who testified that he found Muff Potter
washing in the brook, at an early hour of the morning that the
murder was discovered, and that he immediately sneaked away. After
some further questioning, counsel for the prosecution said-

  "Take the witness."

  The prisoner raised his eyes for a moment, but dropped them again
when his own counsel said-

  "I have no questions to ask him."

  The next witness proved the finding of the knife near the corpse.
Counsel for the prosecution said:

  "Take the witness."

  "I have no questions to ask him." Potter's lawyer replied.

  A third witness swore he had often seen the knife in Potter's
possession.

  "Take the witness."

  Counsel for Potter declined to question him. The faces of the
audience began to betray annoyance. Did this attorney mean to throw
away his client's life without an effort?

  Several witnesses deposed concerning Potter's guilty behavior when
brought to the scene of the murder. They were allowed to leave the
stand without being cross-questioned.

  Every detail of the damaging circumstances that occurred in the
graveyard upon that morning which all present remembered so well,
was brought out by credible witnesses, but none of them were
cross-examined by Potter's lawyer. The perplexity and
dissatisfaction of the house expressed itself in murmurs and
provoked a reproof from the bench. Counsel for the prosecution now
said:

  "By the oaths of citizens whose simple word is above suspicion, we
have fastened this awful crime beyond all possibility of question,
upon the unhappy prisoner at the bar. We rest our case here."

  A groan escaped from poor Potter, and he put his face in his hands
and rocked his body softly to and fro, while a painful silence reigned
in the courtroom. Many men were moved, and many women's compassion
testified itself in tears. Counsel for the defense rose and said:

  "Your honor, in our remarks at the opening of this trial, we
foreshadowed our purpose to prove that our client did this fearful
deed while under the influence of a blind and irresponsible delirium
produced by drink. We have changed our mind. We shall not offer that
plea." [Then to the clerk]: "Call Thomas Sawyer!" A puzzled
amazement awoke in every face in the house, not even excepting
Potter's. Every eye fastened itself with wondering interest upon Tom
as he rose and took his place upon the stand. The boy looked wild
enough, for he was badly scared. The oath was administered.

  "Thomas Sawyer, where were you on the seventeenth of June, about the
hour of midnight?"

  Tom glanced at Injun Joe's iron face and his tongue failed him.
The audience listened breathless, but the words refused to come. After
a few moments, however, the boy got a little of his strength back, and
managed to put enough of it into his voice to make part of the house
hear:

  "In the graveyard!"

  "A little bit louder, please. Don't be afraid. You were-"

  "In the graveyard."

  A contemptuous smile flitted across Injun Joe's face.

  "Were you anywhere near Horse Williams's grave?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Speak up- just a trifle louder. How near were you?"

  "Near as I am to you."

  "Were you hidden, or not?"

  "I was hid."

  "Where?"

  "Behind the elms that's on the edge of the grave."

  Injun Joe gave a barely perceptible start.

  "Any one with you?"

  "Yes, sir. I went there with-"

  "Wait- wait a moment. Never mind mentioning your companion's name.
We will produce him at the proper time. Did you carry anything there
with you?"

  Tom hesitated and looked confused.

  "Speak out my boy- don't be diffident. The truth is always
respectable. What did you take there?"

  "Only a- a- dead cat."

  There was a ripple of mirth, which the court checked.

  "We will produce the skeleton of that cat. Now my boy, tell us
everything that occurred- tell it in your own way- don't skip
anything, and don't be afraid."

    Tom began- hesitatingly at first, but as he warmed to his
subject his words flowed more and more easily; in a little while every
sound ceased but his own voice; every eye fixed itself upon him;
with parted lips and bated breath the audience hung upon his words,
taking no note of time, rapt in the ghastly fascinations of the
tale. The strain upon pent emotion reached its climax when the boy
said-

  "-and as the doctor fetched the board around and Muff Potter fell,
Injun Joe jumped with the knife and-"

  Crash! Quick as lightning the half-breed sprang for a window, tore
his way through all opposers, and was gone!

                           Chapter 24

               Splendid Days and Fearsome Nights


  TOM WAS A GLITTERING HERO once more- the pet of the old, the envy of
the young. His name even went into immortal print, for the village
paper magnified him. There were some that believed he would be
President, yet, if he escaped hanging.

  As usual, the fickle, unreasoning world took Muff Potter to its
bosom and fondled him as lavishly as it had abused him before. But
that sort of conduct is to the world's credit; therefore it is not
well to find fault with it.

  Tom's days were days of splendor and exultation to him, but his
nights were seasons of horror. Injun Joe infested all his dreams,
and always with doom in his eye. Hardly any temptation could
persuade the boy to stir abroad after nightfall. Poor Huck was in
the same state of wretchedness and terror, for Tom had told the
whole story to the lawyer the night before the great day of the trial,
and Huck was sore afraid that his share in the business might leak
out, yet, notwithstanding Injun Joe's flight had saved him the
suffering of testifying in court. The poor fellow had got the attorney
to promise secrecy, but what of that? Since Tom's harassed
conscience had managed to drive him to the lawyer's house by night and
wring a dread tale from lips that had been sealed with the dismalest
and most formidable of oaths, Huck's confidence in the human race
was well-nigh obliterated. Daily Muff Potter's gratitude made Tom glad
he had spoken; but nightly he wished he had sealed up his tongue.

  Half the time Tom was afraid Injun Joe would never be captured;
the other half he was afraid he would be. He felt sure he never
could draw a safe breath again until that man was dead and he had seen
the corpse.

  Rewards had been offered, the country had been scoured, but no Injun
Joe was found. One of those omniscient and awe-inspiring marvels, a
detective, came up from St. Louis, moused around, shook his head,
looked wise, and made that sort of astounding success which members of
that craft usually achieve. That is to say he "found a clue." But
you can't hang a "clue" for murder and so after that detective had got
through and gone home, Tom felt just as insecure as he was before.

  The slow days drifted on, and each left behind it a slightly
lightened weight of apprehension.

                           Chapter 25

                  Seeking the Buried Treasure


  THERE COMES A TIME in every rightly constructed boy's life when he
has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.
This desire suddenly came upon Tom one day. He sallied out to find Joe
Harper, but failed of success. Next he sought Ben Rogers; he had
gone fishing. Presently he stumbled upon Huck Finn the Red-Handed.
Huck would answer. Tom took him to a private place and opened the
matter to him confidentially. Huck was willing. Huck was always
willing to take a hand in any enterprise that offered entertainment
and required no capital, for he had a troublesome superabundance of
that sort of time which is not money.

  "Where'll we dig?" said Huck.

  "O, most anywhere."

  "Why, is it hid all around?"

  "No indeed it ain't. It's hid in mighty particular places, Huck-
sometimes on islands, sometimes in rotten chests under the end of a
limb of an old dead tree, just where the shadow falls at midnight; but
mostly under the floor in ha'nted houses."

  "Who hides it?"

  "Why robbers, of course- who'd you reckon? Sunday-school
sup'rintendents?"

  "I don't know. If 'twas mine I wouldn't hide it; I'd spend it and
have a good time."

  "So would I. But robbers don't do that way. They always hide it
and leave it there."

  "Don't they come after it any more?"

  "No, they think they will, but they generally forget the marks, or
else they die. Anyway it lays there a long time and gets rusty; and by
and by somebody finds an old yellow paper that tells how to find the
marks- a paper that's got to be ciphered over about a week because
it's mostly signs and hy'rogliphics."

  "Hyro- which?"

  "Hy'rogliphics- pictures and things, you know, that don't seem to
mean anything."

  "Have you got one of them papers, Tom?"

  "No."

  "Well then, how you going to find the marks?"

  "I don't want any marks. They always bury it under a ha'nted house
or on an island, or under a dead tree that's got one limb sticking
out. Well, we've tried Jackson's Island a little, and we can try it
again some time; and there's the old ha'nted house up the
Still-House branch, and there's lots of dead-limb trees- dead loads of
'em."

  "Is it under all of them?"

  "How you talk! No!"

  "Then how you going to know which one to go for?"

  "Go for all of 'em!"

  "Why Tom, it'll take all summer."

  "Well, what of that? Suppose you find a brass pot with a hundred
dollars in it, all rusty and gray, or a rotten chest full of di'monds.
How's that?"

  Huck's eyes glowed.

  "That's bully. Plenty bully enough for me. Just you gimme the
hundred dollars and I don't want no di'monds."

  "All right. But I bet you I ain't going to throw off on di'monds.
Some of 'em's worth twenty dollars apiece- there ain't any, hardly,
but's worth six bits or a dollar."

  "No! Is that so?"

  "Cert'nly- anybody'll tell you so. Hain't you ever seen one, Huck?"

  "Not as I remember."

  "O, kings have slathers of them."

  "Well, I don't know no kings, Tom."

  "I reckon you don't. But if you was to go to Europe you'd see a raft
of 'em hopping around."

  "Do they hop?"

  "Hop?- you granny! No!"

  "Well what did you say they did, for?"

  "Shucks, I only meant you'd see 'em- not hopping, of course- what do
they want to hop for?- but I mean you'd just see 'em- scattered
around, you know, in a kind of a general way. Like that old
hump-backed Richard."

  "Richard? What's his other name?"

  "He didn't have any other name. Kings don't have any but a given
name."

  "No?"

  "But they don't."

  "Well, if they like it, Tom, all right; but I don't want to be a
king and have only just a given name, like a nigger. But say- where
you going to dig first?"

  "Well, I don't know. S'pose we tackle that old dead-limb tree on the
hill t'other side of Still-House branch?"

  So they got a crippled pick and a shovel, and set out on their
three-mile tramp. They arrived hot and panting, and threw themselves
down in the shade of a neighboring elm to rest and have a smoke.

  "I like this," said Tom.

  "So do I."

  "Say, Huck, if we find a treasure here, what you going to do with
your share?"

  "Well I'll have pie and a glass of soda every day, and I'll go to
every circus that comes along. I bet I'll have a gay time."

  "Well ain't you going to save any of it?"

  "Save it? What for?"

  "Why so as to have something to live on, by and by."

  "O, that ain't any use. Pap would come back to thish-yer town some
day and get his claws on it if I didn't hurry up, and I tell you
he'd clean it out pretty quick. What you going to do with yourn, Tom?"

  "I'm going to buy a new drum, and a sure-'nough sword, and a red
neck-tie and a bull pup, and get married."

  "Married!"

  "That's it."

  "Tom, you- why you ain't in your right mind."

  "Wait- you'll see."

  "Well that's the foolishest thing you could do, Tom. Look at pap and
my mother. Fight? Why they used to fight all the time. I remember,
mighty well."

  "That ain't anything. The girl I'm going to marry won't fight."

  "Tom, I reckon they're all alike. They'll all comb a body. Now you
better think 'bout this a while. I tell you you better. What's the
name of the gal?"

  "It ain't a gal at all- it's a girl."

  "It's all the same, I reckon; some says gal, some says girl-
both's right, like enough. Anyway, what's her name, Tom?"

  "I'll tell you some time- not now."

  "All right- that'll do. Only if you get married I'll be more
lonesomer than ever."

  "No you won't. You'll come and live with me. Now stir out of this
and we'll go to digging."

  They worked and sweated for half an hour. No result. They toiled
another half-hour. Still no result. Huck said:

  "Do they always bury it as deep as this?"

  "Sometimes- not always. Not generally. I reckon we haven't got the
right place."

  So they chose a new spot and began again. The labor dragged a
little, but still they made progress. They pegged away in silence
for some time. Finally Huck leaned on his shovel, swabbed the beaded
drops from his brow with his sleeve, and said:

  "Where you going to dig next, after we get this one?"

  "I reckon maybe we'll tackle the old tree that's over yonder on
Cardiff Hill back of the widow's."

  "I reckon that'll be a good one. But won't the widow take it away
from us, Tom? It's on her land."

  "She take it away! Maybe she'd like to try it once. Whoever finds
one of these hid treasures, it belongs to him. It don't make any
difference whose land it's on."

  That was satisfactory. The work went on. By and by Huck said:-

  "Blame it, we must be in the wrong place again. What do you think?"

  "It is mighty curious Huck. I don't understand it. Sometimes witches
interfere. I reckon maybe that's what's the trouble now."

  "Shucks, witches ain't got no power in the daytime."

  "Well, that's so. I didn't think of that. Oh, I know what the matter
is! What a blamed lot of fools we are! You got to find out where the
shadow of the limb falls at midnight, and that's where you dig!"

  "Then consound it, we've fooled away all this work for nothing.
Now hang it all, we got to come back in the night. It's an awful
long way. Can you get out?"

  "I bet I will. We've got to do it to-night, too, because if somebody
sees these holes they'll know in a minute what's here and they'll go
for it."

  "Well, I'll come around and meow to night."

  "All right. Let's hide the tools in the bushes."

  The boys were there that night, about the appointed time. They sat
in the shadow waiting. It was a lonely place, and an hour made
solemn by old traditions. Spirits whispered in the rustling leaves,
ghosts lurked in the murky nooks, the deep baying of a hound floated
up out of the distance, an owl answered with his sepulchral note.
The boys were subdued by these solemnities, and talked little. By
and by they judged that twelve had come; they marked where the
shadow fell, and began to dig. Their hopes commenced to rise. Their
interest grew stronger, and their industry kept pace with it. The hole
deepened and still deepened, but every time their hearts jumped to
hear the pick strike upon something, they only suffered a new
disappointment. It was only a stone or a chunk. At last Tom said:-

  "It ain't any use, Huck, we're wrong again."

  "Well but we can't be wrong. We spotted the shadder to a dot."

  "I know it, but then there's another thing."

  "What's that?"

  "Why we only guessed at the time. Like enough it was too late or too
early."

  Huck dropped his shovel.

  "That's it," said he. "That's the very trouble. We got to give
this one up. We can't ever tell the right time, and besides this
kind of thing's too awful, here this time of night with witches and
ghosts a-fluttering around so. I feel as if something's behind me
all the time; and I'm afeard to turn around, becuz maybe there's
others in front a-waiting for a chance. I been creeping all over, ever
since I got here."

  "Well, I've been pretty much so, too, Huck. They most always put
in a dead man when they bury a treasure under a tree, to look out
for it."

  "Lordy!"

  "Yes, they do. I've always heard that."

  "Tom I don't like to fool around much where there's dead people. A
body's bound to get into trouble with 'em, sure."

  "I don't like to stir 'em up, either, Huck. S'pose this one here was
to stick his skull out and say something!"

  "Don't, Tom! It's awful."

  "Well it just is. Huck, I don't feel comfortable a bit."

  "Say, Tom, let's give this place up, and try somewheres else."

  "All right, I reckon we better."

  "What'll it be?"

  Tom considered a while; and then said-

  "The ha'nted house. That's it!"

  "Blame it, I don't like ha'nted houses, Tom. Why they're a dem sight
worse'n dead people. Dead people might talk, maybe, but they don't
come sliding around in a shroud, when you ain't noticing, and peep
over your shoulder all of a sudden and grit their teeth, the way a
ghost does. I couldn't stand such a thing as that, Tom- nobody could."

  "Yes, but Huck, ghosts don't travel around only at night. They won't
hender us from digging there in the daytime."

  "Well that's so. But you know mighty well people don't go about that
ha'nted house in the day nor the night."

  "Well, that's mostly because they don't like to go where a man's
been murdered, anyway- but nothing's ever been seen around that
house except in the night- just some blue lights slipping by the
windows- no regular ghosts."

  "Well where you see one of them blue lights flickering around,
Tom, you can bet there's a ghost mighty close behind it. It stands
to reason. Becuz you know that they don't anybody but ghosts use 'em."

  "Yes, that's so. But anyway they don't come around in the daytime,
so what's the use of our being afeared?"

  "Well, all right. We'll tackle the ha'nted house if you say so-
but I reckon it's taking chances."

  They had started down the hill by this time. There in the middle
of the moonlit valley below them stood the "ha'nted" house, utterly
isolated, its fences gone long ago, rank weeds smothering the very
doorsteps, the chimney crumbled to ruin, the window-sashes vacant, a
corner of the roof caved in. The boys gazed a while, half expecting to
see a blue light flit past a window; then talking in a low tone, as
befitted the time and the circumstances, they struck far off to the
right, to give the haunted house a wide berth, and took their way
homeward through the woods that adorned the rearward side of Cardiff
Hill.

                           Chapter 26

                Real Robbers Seize the Box of Gold


  ABOUT NOON THE NEXT DAY the boys arrived at the dead tree; they
had come for their tools. Tom was impatient to go to the haunted
house; Huck was measurably so, also- but suddenly said-

  "Looky-here, Tom, do you know what day it is?"

  Tom mentally ran over the days of the week, and then quickly
lifted his eyes with a startled look in them-

  "My! I never once thought of it, Huck!"

  "Well I didn't neither, but all at once it popped onto me that it
was Friday."

  "Blame it, a body can't be too careful, Huck. We might a got into an
awful scrape, tackling such a thing on a Friday."

  "Might! Better say we would! There's some lucky days, maybe, but
Friday ain't."

  "Any fool knows that. I don't reckon you was the first that found it
out, Huck."

  "Well, I never said I was, did I? And Friday ain't all, neither. I
had a rotten bad dream last night- dreampt about rats."

  "No! Sure sign of trouble. Did they fight?"

  "No."

  "Well that's good, Huck. When they don't fight it's only a sign that
there's trouble around, you know. All we got to do is to look mighty
sharp and keep out of it. We'll drop this thing for to-day, and
play. Do you know Robin Hood, Huck?"

  "No. Who's Robin Hood?"

  "Why he was one of the greatest men that was ever in England- and
the best. He was a robber."

  "Cracky, I wisht I was. Who did he rob?"

  "Only sheriffs and bishops and rich people and kings, and such like.
But he never bothered the poor. He loved 'em. He always divided up
with 'em perfectly square."

  "Well, he must 'a' ben a brick."

  "I bet you he was, Huck. Oh, he was the noblest man that ever was.
They ain't any such men now, I can tell you. He could lick any man
in England, with one hand tied behind him; and he could take his yew
bow and plug a ten-cent piece every time, a mile and a half."

  "What's a yew bow?"

  "I don't know. It's some kind of a bow, of course. And if he hit
that dime only on the edge he would set down and cry- and curse. But
we'll play Robin Hood- it's noble fun. I'll learn you."

  "I'm agreed."

  So they played Robin Hood all the afternoon, now and then casting
a yearning eye down upon the haunted house and passing a remark
about the morrow's prospects and possibilities there. As the sun began
to sink into the west they took their way homeward athwart the long
shadows of the trees and soon were buried from sight in the forests of
Cardiff Hill.

  On Saturday, shortly after noon, the boys were at the dead tree
again. They had a smoke and a chat in the shade, and then dug a little
in their last hole, not with great hope, but merely because Tom said
there were so many cases where people had given up a treasure after
getting down within six inches of it, and then somebody else had
come along and turned it up with a single thrust of a shovel. The
thing failed this time, however, so the boys shouldered their tools
and went away feeling that they had not trifled with fortune but had
fulfilled all the requirements that belong to the business of
treasure-hunting.

  When they reached the haunted house there was something so weird and
grisly about the dead silence that reigned there under the baking sun,
and something so depressing about the loneliness and desolation of the
place, that they were afraid, for a moment, to venture in. Then they
crept to the door and took a trembling peep. They saw a weed grown,
floorless room, unplastered, an ancient fireplace, vacant windows, a
ruinous staircase; and here, there, and everywhere, hung ragged and
abandoned cobwebs. They presently entered, softly, with quickened
pulses; talking in whispers, ears alert to catch the slightest
sound, and muscles tense and ready for instant retreat.

  In a little while familiarity modified their fears and they gave the
place a critical and interested examination, rather admiring their own
boldness, and wondering at it, too. Next they wanted to look upstairs.
This was something like cutting off retreat, but they got to daring
each other, and of course there could be but one result- they threw
their tools into a corner and made the ascent. Up there were the
same signs of decay. In one corner they found a closet that promised
mystery, but the promise was a fraud- there was nothing in it. Their
courage was up now and well in hand. They were about to go down and
begin work when-

  "Sh!" said Tom.

  "What is it?" whispered Huck, blanching with fright.

  "Sh!....... There!...... Hear it?"

  "Yes!..... O, my! Let's run!"

  "Keep still! Don't you budge! They're coming right toward the door."

  The boys stretched themselves upon the floor with their eyes to knot
holes in the planking, and lay waiting, in a misery of fear.

  "They've stopped...... No- coming...... Here they are. Don't whisper
another word, Huck. My goodness, I wish I was out of this!"

  Two men entered. Each boy said to himself. "There's the old deaf and
dumb Spaniard that's been about town once or twice lately- never saw
t'other man before."

  "T'other" was a ragged, unkempt creature, with nothing very pleasant
in his face. The Spaniard was wrapped in a serape; he had bushy
white whiskers; long white hair flowed from under his sombrero, and he
wore green goggles. When they came in, "t'other" was talking in a
low voice; they sat down on the ground, facing the door, with their
backs to the wall, and the speaker continued his remarks. His manner
became less guarded and his words more distinct as he proceeded:

  "No," said he, "I've thought it all over, and I don't like it.
It's dangerous."

  "Dangerous!" grunted the "deaf and dumb" Spaniard,- to the vast
surprise of the boys. "Milksop!"

  This voice made the boys gasp and quake. It was Injun Joe's! There
was silence for some time. Then Joe said:

  "What's any more dangerous than that job up yonder- but nothing's
come of it."

  "That's different. Away up the river so, and not another house
about. 'Twon't ever be known that we tried, anyway, long as we
didn't succeed."

  "Well, what's more dangerous than coming here in the day time?-
anybody would suspicion us that saw us."

  "I know that. But there warn't any other place as handy after that
fool of a job. I want to quit this shanty. I wanted to yesterday, only
it warn't any use trying to stir out of here, with those infernal boys
playing over there on the hill right in full view."

  "Those infernal boys," quaked again under the inspiration of this
remark, and thought how lucky it was that they had remembered it was
Friday and concluded to wait a day. They wished in their hearts they
had waited a year.

  The two men got out some food and made a luncheon. After a long
and thoughtful silence, Injun Joe said:

  "Look here, lad- you go back up the river where you belong. Wait
there till you hear from me. I'll take the chances on dropping into
this town just once more, for a look. We'll do that 'dangerous' job
after I've spied around a little and think things look well for it.
Then for Texas! We'll leg it together!"

  This was satisfactory. Both men presently fell to yawning, and Injun
Joe said:

  "I'm dead for sleep! It's your turn to watch."

  He curled down in the weeds and soon began to snore. His comrade
stirred him once or twice and he became quiet. Presently the watcher
began to nod; his head drooped lower and lower, both men began to
snore now.

  The boys drew a long, grateful breath. Tom whispered-

  "Now's our chance- come!"

  Huck said:

  "I cant- I'd die if they was to wake."

  Tom urged- Huck held back. At last Tom rose slowly and softly, and
started alone. But the first step he made wrung such a hideous creak
from the crazy floor that he sank down almost dead with fright. He
never made a second attempt. The boys lay there counting the
dragging moments till it seemed to them that time must be done and
eternity growing gray; and then they were grateful to note that at
last the sun was setting.

  Now one snore ceased. Injun Joe sat up, stared around- smiled grimly
upon his comrade, whose head was drooping upon his knees- stirred
him up with his foot and said-

  "Here! You're a watchman, ain't you! All right, though-nothing's
happened."

  "My! have I been asleep?"

  "O, partly, partly. Nearly time for us to be moving, pard. What'll
we do with what little swag we've got left?"

  "I don't know- leave it here as we've always done, I reckon. No
use to take it away till we start south. Six hundred and fifty in
silver's something to carry."

  "Well- all right- it won't matter to come here once more."

  "No- but I'd say come in the night as we used to do- it's better."

  "Yes; but look here; it may be a good while before I get the right
chance at that job; accidents might happen; 'tain't in such a very
good place; we'll just regularly bury it- and bury it deep."

  "Good idea," said the comrade, who walked across the room, knelt
down, raised one of the rearward hearthstones and took out a bag
that jingled pleasantly. He subtracted from it twenty or thirty
dollars for himself and as much for Injun Joe and passed the bag to
the latter, who was on his knees in the corner, now, digging with
his bowie knife.

  The boys forgot all their fears, all their miseries in an instant.
With gloating eyes they watched every movement. Luck!- the splendor of
it was beyond all imagination! Six hundred dollars was money enough to
make half a dozen boys rich! Here was treasure-hunting under the
happiest auspices- there would not be any bothersome uncertainty as to
where to dig. They nudged each other every moment- eloquent nudges and
easily understood, for they simply meant- "O, but ain't you glad now
we're here!"

  Joe's knife struck upon something.

  "Hello!" said he.

  "What is it?" said his comrade.

  "Half-rotten plank- no it's a box, I believe. Here- bear a hand
and we'll see what it's here for. Never mind, I've broke a hole."

  He reached his hand in and drew it out-

  "Man, it's money!"

  The two men examined the handful of coins. They were gold. The
boys above were as excited as themselves, and as delighted.

  Joe's comrade said-

  "We'll make quick work of this. There's an old rusty pick over
amongst the weeds in the corner the other side of the fire-place- I
saw it a minute ago."

  He ran and brought the boys' pick and shovel. Injun Joe took the
pick, looked it over critically, shook his head, muttered something to
himself, and then began to use it. The box was soon unearthed. It
was not very large; it was iron bound and had been very strong
before the slow years had injured it. The men contemplated the
treasure a while in blissful silence.

  "Pard, there's thousands of dollars here," said Injun Joe.

  "'Twas always said that Murrel's gang used around here one
summer," the stranger observed.

  "I know it," said Injun Joe; "and this looks like it, I should say."

  "Now you won't need to do that job."

  The half-breed frowned. Said he-

  "You don't know me. Least you don't know all about that thing.
'Tain't robbery altogether- it's revenge!" and a wicked light flamed
in his eyes. "I'll need your help in it. When it's finished- then
Texas. Go home to your Nance, and your kids, and stand by till you
hear from me."

  "Well- if you say so, what'll we do with this- bury it again?"

  "Yes." [Ravishing delight overhead.] "No! by the great Sachem,
no!" [Profound distress overhead.] "I'd nearly forgot. That pick had
fresh earth on it!" [The boys were sick with terror in a moment.]
"What business has a pick and a shovel here? What business with
fresh earth on them? Who brought them here- and where are they gone?
Have you heard anybody?- seen anybody? What! bury it again and leave
them to come and see the ground disturbed? Not exactly- not exactly.
We'll take it to my den."

  "Why of course! Might have thought of that before. You mean Number
One?"

  "No- Number Two- under the cross. The other place is bad- too
common."

  "All right. It's nearly dark enough to start."

  Injun Joe got up and went about from window to window cautiously
peeping out. Presently he said:

  "Who could have brought those tools here? Do you reckon they can
be upstairs?"

  The boys' breath forsook them. Injun Joe put his hand on his
knife, halted a moment, undecided, and then turned toward the
stairway. The boys thought of the closet, but their strength was gone.
The steps came creaking up the stairs- the intolerable distress of the
situation woke the stricken resolution of the lads- they were about to
spring for the closet, when there was a crash of rotten timbers and
Injun Joe landed on the ground amid the debris of the ruined stairway.
He gathered himself up cursing, and his comrade said:

  "Now what's the use of all that? If it's anybody, and they're up
there, let them stay there- who cares? If they want to jump down, now,
and get into trouble, who objects? It will be dark in fifteen minutes-
and then let them follow us if they want to. I'm willing. In my
opinion, whoever hove those things in here caught a sight of us and
took us for ghosts or devils or something. I'll bet they're running
yet."

  Joe grumbled a while; then he agreed with his friend that what
daylight was left ought to be economized in getting things ready for
leaving. Shortly afterward they slipped out of the house in the
deepening twilight, and moved toward the river with their precious
box.

  Tom and Huck rose up, weak but vastly relieved, and stared after
them through the chinks between the logs of the house. Follow? Not
they. They were content to reach ground again without broken necks,
and take the townward track over the hill. They did not talk much.
They were too much absorbed in hating themselves- hating the ill
luck that made them take the spade and the pick there. But for that,
Injun Joe never would have suspected. He would have hidden the
silver with the gold to wait there till his "revenge" was satisfied,
and then he would have had the misfortune to find that money turn up
missing. Bitter, bitter luck that the tools were ever brought there!

  They resolved to keep a lookout for that Spaniard when he should
come to town spying out for chances to do his revengeful job, and
follow him to "Number Two," wherever that might be. Then a ghastly
thought occurred to Tom:

  "Revenge? What if he means us, Huck!"

  "O, don't!" said Huck, nearly fainting.

  They talked it all over, and as they entered town they agreed to
believe that he might possibly mean somebody else- at least that he
might at least mean nobody but Tom, since only Tom had testified.

  Very, very small comfort it was to Tom to be alone in danger!
Company would be a palpable improvement, he thought.

                           Chapter 27

                    Trembling on the Trail


  THE ADVENTURE OF THE DAY mightily tormented Tom's dreams that night.
Four times he had his hands on that rich treasure and four times it
wasted to nothingness in his fingers as sleep forsook him and
wakefulness brought back the hard reality of his misfortune. As he lay
in the early morning recalling the incidents of his great adventure,
he noticed that they seemed curiously subdued and far away- somewhat
as if they had happened in another world, or in a time long gone by.
Then it occurred to him that the great adventure itself must be a
dream! There was one very strong argument in favor of this idea-
namely, that the quantity of coin he had seen was too vast to be real.
He had never seen as much as fifty dollars in one mass before, and
he was like all boys of his age and station in life, in that he
imagined that all references to "hundreds" and "thousands" were mere
fanciful forms of speech, and that no such sums really existed in
the world. He never had supposed for a moment that so large a sum as a
hundred dollars was to be found in actual money in anyone's
possession. If his notions of hidden treasure had been analyzed,
they would have been found to consist of a handful of real dimes and a
bushel of vague, splendid, ungraspable dollars.

  But the incidents of his adventure grew sensibly sharper and clearer
under the attrition of thinking them over, and so he presently found
himself leaning to the impression that the thing might not have been a
dream, after all. This uncertainty must be swept away. He would snatch
a hurried breakfast and go and find Huck.

  Huck was sitting on the gunwale of a flatboat, listlessly dangling
his feet in the water and looking very melancholy. Tom concluded to
let Huck lead up to the subject. If he did not do it, then the
adventure would be proved to have been only a dream.

  "Hello, Huck!"

  "Hello, yourself."

  [Silence, for a minute.]

  "Tom, if we'd a left the blame tools at the dead tree, we'd 'a'
got the money. O, ain't it awful!"

  "'Tain't a dream, then, 'tain't a dream! Somehow I most wish it was.
Dog'd if I don't, Huck."

  "What ain't a dream?"

  "O, that thing yesterday. I been half thinking it was."

  "Dream! If them stairs hadn't broke down you'd 'a' seen how much
dream it was! I've had dreams enough all night- with that patch-eyed
Spanish devil going for me all through 'em- rot him!"

  "No, not rot him. Find him! Track the money!"

  "Tom, we'll never find him. A feller don't have only one chance
for such a pile- and that one's lost. I'd feel mighty shaky if I was
to see him, anyway."

  "Well, so'd I; but I'd like to see him, anyway- and track him out-
to his Number Two."

  "Number Two- yes, that's it. I ben thinking 'bout that. But I
can't make nothing out of it. What do you reckon it is?"

  "I dono. It's too deep. Say, Huck- maybe it's the number of a
house!"

  "Goody!...... No, Tom, that ain't it. If it is, it ain't in this
onehorse town. They ain't no numbers here."

  "Well, that's so. Lemme think a minute. Here- it's the number of a
room- in a tavern, you know!"

  "O, that's the trick! They ain't only two taverns. We can find out
quick."

  "You stay here, Huck, till I come."

  Tom was off at once. He did not care to have Huck's company in
public places. He was gone half an hour. He found that in the best
tavern, No. 2 had long been occupied by a young lawyer, and was
still so occupied. In the less ostentatious house No. 2 was a mystery.
The tavern-keeper's young son said it was kept locked all the time,
and he never saw anybody go into it or come out of it except at night;
he did not know any particular reason for this state of things; had
had some little curiosity, but it was rather feeble; had made the most
of the mystery by entertaining himself with the idea that that room
was "ha'nted"; had noticed that there was a light in there the night
before.

  "That's what I've found out, Huck. I reckon that's the very No. 2
we're after."

  "I reckon it is, Tom. Now what you going to do?"

  "Lemme think."

  Tom thought a long time. Then he said:

  "I'll tell you. The back door of that No. 2 is the door that comes
out into that little close alley between the tavern and the old
rattle-trap of a brick store. Now you get hold of all the door-keys
you can find, and I'll nip all of Auntie's and the first dark night
we'll go there and try 'em. And mind you keep a lookout for Injun Joe,
because he said he was going to drop into town and spy around once
more for a chance to get his revenge. If you see him, you just
follow him; and if he don't go to that No. 2, that ain't the place."

  "Lordy I don't want to foller him by myself!"

  "Why it'll be night, sure. He mightn't ever see you- and if he
did, maybe he'd never think anything."

  "Well, if it's pretty dark I reckon I'll track him. I dono- I
dono. I'll try."

  "You bet I'll follow him, if it's dark, Huck. Why he might 'a' found
out he couldn't get his revenge, and be going right after that money."

  "It's so, Tom, it's so. I'll foller him; I will, by jingoes!"

  "Now you're talking! Don't you ever weaken, Huck, and I won't."

                           Chapter 28

                    In the Lair of Injun Joe


  THAT NIGHT Tom and Huck were ready for their adventure. They hung
about the neighborhood of the tavern until after nine, one watching
the alley at a distance and the other the tavern door. Nobody
entered the alley or left it; nobody resembling the Spaniard entered
or left the tavern door. The night promised to be a fair one; so Tom
went home with the understanding that if a considerable degree of
darkness came on, Huck was to come and "meow," whereupon he would slip
out and try the keys. But the night remained clear, and Huck closed
his watch and retired to bed in an empty sugar-hogshead about twelve.

  Tuesday the boys had the same ill luck. Also Wednesday. But Thursday
night promised better. Tom slipped out in good season with his
aunt's old tin lantern, and a large towel to blindfold it with. He hid
the lantern in Huck's sugar-hogshead and the watch began. An hour
before midnight the tavern closed up and its lights (the only ones
thereabouts) were put out. No Spaniard had been seen. Nobody had
entered or left the alley. Everything was auspicious. The blackness of
darkness reigned, the perfect stillness was interrupted only by
occasional mutterings of distant thunder.

  Tom got his lantern, lit it in the hogshead, wrapped it closely in
the towel, and the two adventurers crept in the gloom toward the
tavern. Huck stood sentry and Tom felt his way into the alley. Then
there was a season of waiting anxiety that weighed upon Huck's spirits
like a mountain. He began to wish he could see a flash from the
lantern- it would frighten him, but it would at least tell him that
Tom was alive yet. It seemed hours since Tom had disappeared. Surely
he must have fainted; maybe he was dead; maybe his heart had burst
under terror and excitement. In his uneasiness Huck found himself
drawing closer and closer to the alley; fearing all sorts of
dreadful things, and momentarily expecting some catastrophe to
happen that would take away his breath. There was not much to take
away, for he seemed only able to inhale it by thimblefuls, and his
heart would soon wear itself out, the way it was beating. Suddenly
there was a flash of light and Tom came tearing by him:

  "Run!" said he; "run, for your life!"

  He needn't have repeated it; once was enough; Huck was making thirty
or forty miles an hour before the repetition was uttered. The boys
never stopped till they reached the shed of a deserted slaughter-house
at the lower end of the village. Just as they got within its shelter
the storm burst and the rain poured down. As soon as Tom got his
breath he said:

  "Huck, it was awful! I tried two of the keys, just as soft as I
could; but they seemed to make such a power of racket that I
couldn't hardly get my breath I was so scared. They wouldn't turn in
the lock, either. Well, without noticing what I was doing, I took hold
of the knob, and open comes the door! It warn't locked! I hopped in,
and shook off the towel, and, great Caesar's ghost!"

  "What!- what'd you see, Tom!"

  "Huck, I most stepped onto Injun Joe's hand!"

  "No!"

  "Yes! He was laying there, sound asleep on the floor, with his old
patch on his eye and his arms spread out."

  "Lordy, what did you do? Did he wake up?"

  "No, never budged. Drunk, I reckon. I just grabbed that towel and
started!"

  "I'd never 'a' thought of the towel, I bet!"

  "Well, I would. My aunt would make me mighty sick if I lost it."

  "Say, Tom, did you see that box?"

  "Huck, I didn't wait to look around. I didn't see the box, I
didn't see the cross. I didn't see anything but a bottle and a tin cup
on the floor by Injun joe; yes, and I saw two barrels and lots more
bottles in the room. Don't you see, now, what's the matter with that
ha'nted room?"

  "How?"

  "Why it's with whisky! Maybe all the Temperance Taverns have got a
ha'nted room, hey Huck?"

  "Well I reckon maybe that's so. Who'd 'a' thought such a thing?
But say, Tom, now's a mighty good time to get that box, if Injun joe's
drunk."

  "It is, that! You try it!"

  Huck shuddered.

  "Well, no- I reckon not."

  "And I reckon not, Huck. Only one bottle alongside of Injun Joe
ain't enough. If there'd been three, he'd be drunk enough and I'd do
it."

  There was a long pause for reflection, and then Tom said:

  "Looky-here, Huck, less not try that thing any more till we know
Injun Joe's not in there. It's too scary. Now if we watch every night,
we'll be dead sure to see him go out, some time or other, and then
we'll snatch that box quicker'n lightning."

  "Well, I'm agreed, I'll watch the whole night long, and I'll do it
every night, too, if you'll do the other part of the job."

  "All right, I will. All you got to do is to trot up Hooper street
a block and meow- and if I'm asleep, you throw some gravel at the
window and that'll fetch me."

  "Agreed, and good as wheat!"

  "Now Huck, the storm's over, and I'll go home. It'll begin to be
daylight in a couple of hours. You go back and watch that long, will
you?"

  "I said I would, Tom, and I will. I'll ha'nt that tavern every night
for a year! I'll sleep all day and I'll stand watch all night."

  "That's all right. Now where you going to sleep?"

  "In Ben Rogers's hayloft. He let's me, and so does his pap's
nigger man, Uncle Jake. I tote water for Uncle Jake whenever he
wants me to, and anytime I ask him he gives me a little something to
eat if he can spare it. That's a mighty good nigger, Tom. He likes me,
becuz I don't ever act as if I was above him. Sometimes I've set right
down and eat with him. But you needn't tell that. A body's got to do
things when he's awful hungry he wouldn't want to do as a steady
thing."

  "Well, if I don't want you in the daytime, Huck, I'll let you sleep.
I won't come bothering around. Any time you see something's up, in the
night, just skip right around and meow."

                           Chapter 29

                      Huck Saves the Widow


  THE FIRST THING Tom heard on Friday morning was a glad piece of
news- Judge Thatcher's family had come back to town the night
before. Both Injun Joe and the treasure sunk into secondary importance
for a moment, and Becky took the chief place in the boy's interest. He
saw her and they had an exhausting good time playing "hi-spy" and
"gully-keeper" with a crowd of their schoolmates. The day was
completed and crowned in a peculiarly satisfactory way: Becky teased
her mother to appoint the next day for the long-promised and
long-delayed picnic, and she consented. The child's delight was
boundless; and Tom's not more moderate. The invitations were sent
out before sunset, and straightway the young folks of the village were
thrown into a fever of preparation and pleasurable anticipation. Tom's
excitement enabled him to keep awake until a pretty late hour, and
he had good hopes of hearing Huck's "meow," and of having his treasure
to astonish Becky and the picnickers with, next day; but he was
disappointed. No signal came that night.

  Morning came, eventually, and by ten or eleven o'clock a giddy and
rollicking company were gathered at Judge Thatcher's, and everything
was ready for a start. It was not the custom for elderly people to mar
picnics with their presence. The children were considered safe
enough under the wings of a few young ladies of eighteen and a few
young gentlemen of twenty-three or thereabouts. The old steam ferry
boat was chartered for the occasion; presently the gay throng filed up
the main street laden with provision baskets. Sid was sick and had
to miss the fun; Mary remained at home to entertain him. The last
thing Mrs. Thatcher said to Becky, was-

  "You'll not get back till late. Perhaps you'd better stay all
night with some of the girls that live near the ferry landing, child."

  "Then I'll stay with Susy Harper, mamma."

  "Very well. And mind and behave yourself and don't be any trouble."

  Presently, as they tripped along, Tom said to Becky:

  "Say- I'll tell you what we'll do. 'Stead of going to Joe Harper's
we'll climb right up the hill and stop at the Widow Douglas's.
She'll have ice cream! She has it 'most every day- dead loads of it.
And she'll be awful glad to have us."

  "O, that will be fun!"

  Then Becky reflected a moment and said:

  "But what will mamma say?"

  "How'll she ever know?"

  The girl turned the idea over in her mind, and said reluctantly:

  "I reckon it's wrong- but-"

  "But shucks! Your mother won't know, and so what's the harm? All she
wants is that you'll be safe; and I bet you she'd 'a' said go there if
she'd 'a' thought of it. I know she would!"

  The widow Douglas's splendid hospitality was a tempting bait. It and
Tom's persuasions presently carried the day. So it was decided to
say nothing to anybody about the night's programme. Presently it
occurred to Tom that maybe Huck might come this very night and give
the signal. The thought took a deal of the spirit out of his
anticipations. Still he could not bear to give up the fun at Widow
Douglas's. And why should he give it up, he reasoned- the signal did
not come the night before, so why should it be any more likely to come
to-night? The sure fun of the evening outweighed the uncertain
treasure; and boy like, he determined to yield to the stronger
inclination and not allow himself to think of the box of money another
time that day.

  Three miles below town the ferry boat stopped at the mouth of a
woody hollow and tied up. The crowd swarmed ashore and soon the forest
distances and craggy heights echoed far and near with shoutings and
laughter. All the different ways of getting hot and tired were gone
through with, and by and by the rovers straggled back to camp
fortified with responsible appetites, and then the destruction of
the good things began. After the feast there was a refreshing season
of rest and chat in the shade of spreading oaks. By and by somebody
shouted-

  "Who's ready for the cave?"

  Everybody was. Bundles of candles were produced, and straightway
there was a general scamper up the hill. The mouth of the cave was
up the hillside- an opening shaped like a letter A. Its massive
oaken door stood unbarred. Within was a small chamber, chilly as an
ice-house, and walled by Nature with solid limestone that was dewy
with a cold sweat. It was romantic and mysterious to stand here in the
deep gloom and look out upon the green valley shining in the sun.
But the impressiveness of the situation quickly wore off, and the
romping began again. The moment a candle was lighted there was a
general rush upon the owner of it; a struggle and a gallant defense
followed, but the candle was soon knocked down or blown out, and
then there was a glad clamor of laughter and a new chase. But all
things have an end. By and by the procession went filing down the
steep descent of the main avenue, the flickering rank of lights
dimly revealing the lofty walls of rock almost to their point of
junction sixty feet overhead. This main avenue was not more than eight
or ten feet wide. Every few steps other lofty and still narrower
crevices branched from it on either hand- for McDougal's cave was
but a vast labyrinth of crooked aisles that ran into each other and
out again and led nowhere. It was said that one might wander days
and nights together through its intricate tangle of rifts and
chasms, and never find the end of the cave; and that he might go down,
and down, and still down, into the earth, and it was just the same-
labyrinth underneath labyrinth, and no end to any of them. No man
"knew" the cave. That was an impossible thing. Most of the young men
knew a portion of it, and it was not customary to venture much
beyond this known portion. Tom Sawyer knew as much of the cave as
any one.

  The procession moved along the main avenue some three-quarters of
a mile, and then groups and couples began to slip aside into branch
avenues, fly along the dismal corridors, and take each other by
surprise at points where the corridors joined again. Parties were able
to elude each other for the space of half an hour without going beyond
the "known" ground.

  By and by, one group after another came straggling back to the mouth
of the cave, panting, hilarious, smeared from head to foot with tallow
drippings, daubed with clay, and entirely delighted with the success
of the day. Then they were astonished to find that they had been
taking no note of time and that night was about at hand. The
clanging bell had been calling for half an hour. However, this sort of
close to the day's adventures was romantic and therefore satisfactory.
When the ferry boat with her wild freight pushed into the stream,
nobody cared sixpence for the wasted time but the captain of the
craft.

  Huck was already upon his watch when the ferry boat's lights went
glinting past the wharf. He heard no noise on board, for the young
people were as subdued and still as people usually are who are
nearly tired to death. He wondered what boat it was, and why she did
not stop at the wharf- and then he dropped her out of his mind and put
his attention upon his business. The night was growing cloudy and
dark. Ten o'clock came, and the noise of vehicles ceased, scattered
lights began to wink out, all straggling foot passengers
disappeared, the village betook itself to its slumbers and left the
small watcher alone with the silence and the ghosts. Eleven o'clock
came, and the tavern lights were put out; darkness everywhere, now.
Huck waited what seemed a weary long time, but nothing happened. His
faith was weakening. Was there any use? Was there really any use?
Why not give it up and turn in?

  A noise fell upon his ear. He was all attention in an instant. The
alley door closed softly. He sprang to the corner of the brick
store. The next moment two men brushed by him, and one seemed to
have something under his arm. It must be that box! So they were
going to remove the treasure. Why call Tom now? It would be absurd-
the men would get away with the box and never be found again. No, he
would stick to their wake and follow them; he would trust to the
darkness for security from discovery. So communing with himself,
Huck stepped out and glided along behind the men, cat-like, with
bare feet, allowing them to keep just far enough ahead not to be
invisible.

  They moved up the river street three blocks, then turned to the left
up a cross street. They went straight ahead, then, until they came
to the path that led up Cardiff Hill; this they took. They passed by
the old Welchman's house, half way up the hill without hesitating, and
still climbed upward. Good, thought Huck, they will bury it in the old
quarry. But they never stopped at the quarry. They passed on, up the
summit. They plunged into the narrow path between the tall sumach
bushes, and were at once hidden in the gloom. Huck closed up and
shortened his distance, now, for they would never be able to see
him. He trotted along a while; then slackened his pace, fearing he was
gaining too fast; moved on a piece, then stopped altogether; listened;
no sound; none, save that he seemed to hear the beating of his own
heart. The hooting of an owl came from over the hill- ominous sound!
But no footsteps. Heavens, was everything lost! He was about to spring
with winged feet, when a man cleared his throat not four feet from
him! Huck's heart shot into his throat, but he swallowed it again; and
then he stood there shaking as if a dozen agues had taken charge of
him at once, and so weak that he thought he must surely fall to the
ground. He knew where he was. He knew he was within five steps of
the stile leading into Widow Douglas's grounds. Very well, he thought,
let them bury it there; it won't be hard to find.

  Now there was a voice- a very low voice- Injun Joe's:

  "Damn her, maybe she's got company- there's lights, late as it is."

  "I can't see any."

  This was that stranger's voice- the stranger of the haunted house. A
deadly chill went to Huck's heart- this, then, was the "revenge"
job! His thought was, to fly. Then he remembered that the Widow
Douglas had been kind to him more than once, and maybe these men
were going to murder her. He wished he dared venture to warn her;
but he knew he didn't dare- they might come and catch him. He
thought all this and more in the moment that elapsed between the
stranger's remark and Injun Joe's next- which was-

  "Because the bush is in your way. Now- this way- now you see,
don't you?"

  "Yes. Well there is company there, I reckon. Better give it up."

  "Give it up, and I just leaving this country forever! Give it up and
maybe never have another chance. I tell you again, as I've told you
before, I don't care for her swag- you may have it. But her husband
was rough on me- many times he was rough on me- and mainly he was
the justice of the peace that jugged me for a vagrant. And that
ain't all. It ain't a millionth part of it! He had me horsewhipped!-
horsewhipped in front of the jail, like a nigger!- with all the town
looking on! HORSEWHIPPED!- do you understand? He took advantage of
me and died. But I'll take it out of her."

  "O, don't kill her! Don't do that!"

  "Kill? Who said anything about killing? I would kill him if he was
here; but not her. When you want to get revenge on a woman you don't
kill her- bosh! you go for her looks. You slit her nostrils- you notch
her ears like a sow's!"

  "By God, that's-"

  "Keep your opinion to yourself! It will be safest for you. I'll
tie her to the bed. If she bleeds to death, is that my fault? I'll not
cry, if she does. My friend, you'll help in this thing- for my sake-
that's why you're here- I mightn't be able alone. If you flinch, I'll
kill you. Do you understand that? And if I have to kill you, I'll kill
her- and then I reckon nobody'll ever know much about who done this
business."

  "Well, if it's got to be done, let's get at it. The quicker the
better- I'm all in a shiver."

  "Do it now? And company there? Look here- I'll get suspicious of
you, first thing you know. No- we'll wait till the lights are out-
there's no hurry."

  Huck felt that a silence was going to ensue- a thing still more
awful than any amount of murderous talk; so he held his breath and
stepped gingerly back; planted his foot carefully and firmly, after
balancing, one-legged, in a precarious way and almost toppling over,
first on one side and then on the other. He took another step back,
with the same elaboration and the same risks; then another and
another, and- a twig snapped under his foot! His breath stopped and he
listened. There was no sound- the stillness was perfect. His gratitude
was measureless. Now he turned in his tracks, between the walls of
sumach bushes- turned himself as carefully as if he were a ship- and
then stepped quickly but cautiously along. When he emerged at the
quarry he felt secure, and so he picked up his nimble heels and
flew. Down, down he sped, till he reached the Welchman's. He banged at
the door, and presently the heads of the old man and his two
stalwart sons were thrust from windows.

  "What's the row there? Who's banging? What do you want?"

  "Let me in- quick! I'll tell everything."

  "Why who are you?"

  "Huckleberry Finn- quick, let me in!"

  "Huckleberry Finn, indeed! It ain't a name to open many doors, I
judge! But let him in, lads, and let's see what's the trouble."

  "Please don't ever tell I told you," were Huck's first words when he
got in. "Please dont- I'd be killed, sure- but the Widow's been good
friends to me sometimes, and I want to tell- I will tell if you'll
promise you won't ever say it was me."

  "By George he has got something to tell, or he wouldn't act so!"
exclaimed the old man; "out with it and nobody here'll ever tell,
lad."

  Three minutes later the old man and his sons, well armed, were up
the hill, and just entering the sumach path on tip-toe, their
weapons in their hands. Huck accompanied them no further. He hid
behind a great boulder and fell to listening. There was a lagging,
anxious silence, and then all of a sudden there was an explosion of
firearms and a cry.

  Huck waited for no particulars. He sprang away and sped down the
hill as fast as his legs could carry him.

                           Chapter 30

                   Tom and Becky in the Cave


  THE EARLIEST SUSPICION of dawn appeared on Sunday morning, Huck came
groping up the hill and rapped gently at the old Welchman's door.
The inmates were asleep but it was a sleep that was set on a
hair-trigger, on account of the exciting episode of the night. A
call came from a window-

  "Who's there!"

  Huck's scared voice answered in a low tone:

  "Please let me in! It's only Huck Finn!"

  "It's a name that can open this door night or day, lad!- and
welcome!"

  These were strange words to the vagabond boy's ears, and the
pleasantest he had ever heard. He could not recollect that the closing
word had ever been applied in his case before. The door was quickly
locked, and he entered. Huck was given a seat and the old man and
his brace of tall sons speedily dressed themselves.

  "Now my boy I hope you're good and hungry, because breakfast will be
ready as soon as the sun's up, and we'll have a piping hot one, too-
make yourself easy about that! I and the boys hoped you'd turn up
and stop here last night."

  "I was awful scared," said Huck, "and I run. I took out when the
pistols went off, and I didn't stop for three mile. I've come now
becuz I wanted to know about it, you know; and I come before
daylight becuz I didn't want to run acrost them devils, even if they
was dead."

  "Well, poor chap, you do look as if you'd had a hard night of it-
but there's a bed here for you when you've had your breakfast. No,
they ain't dead, lad- we are sorry enough for that. You see we knew
right where to put our hands on them, by your description; so we crept
along on tip-toe till we got within fifteen feet of them- dark as a
cellar that sumach path was- and just then I found I was going to
sneeze. It was the meanest kind of luck! I tried to keep it back,
but no use- 'twas bound to come, and it did come! I was in the lead
with my pistol raised, and when the sneeze started those scoundrels
a-rustling to get out of the path, I sung out, 'Fire, boys!' and
blazed away at the place where the rustling was. So did the boys.
But they were off in a jiffy, those villains, and we after them,
down through the woods. I judge we never touched them. They fired a
shot apiece as they started, but their bullets whizzed by and didn't
do us any harm. As soon as we lost the sound of their feet we quit
chasing, and went down and stirred up the constables. They got a posse
together, and went off to guard the river bank, and as soon as it is
light the sheriff and a gang are going to beat up the woods. My boys
will be with them presently. I wish we had some sort of description of
those rascals- 'twould help a good deal. But you couldn't see what
they were like, in the dark, lad, I suppose?"

  "O, yes, I saw them down town and follered them."

  "Splendid! Describe them- describe them, my boy!"

  "One's the old deaf and dumb Spaniard that's ben around here once or
twice, and t'other's a mean looking ragged-"

  "That's enough, lad, we know the men! Happened on them in the
woods back of the widow's one day, and they slunk away. Off with
you, boys, and tell the sheriff- get your breakfast to-morrow
morning!"

  The Welchman's sons departed at once. As they were leaving the
room Huck sprang up and exclaimed:

  "O, please don't tell anybody it was me that blowed on them! O,
please!"

  "All right if you say it, Huck, but you ought to have the credit
of what you did."

  "O, no, no! Please don't tell!"

  When the young men were gone, the old Welchman said-

  "They won't tell- and I won't. But why don't you want it known?"

  Huck would not explain, further than to say that he already knew too
much about one of those men and would not have the man know that he
knew anything against him for the whole world- he would be killed
for knowing it, sure.

  The old man promised secrecy once more, and said:

  "How did you come to follow these fellows, lad? Were they looking
suspicious?"

  Huck was silent while he framed a duly cautious reply. Then he said:

  "Well, you see, I'm a kind of a hard lot,- least everybody says
so, and I don't see nothing agin it- and sometimes I can't sleep much,
on accounts of thinking about it and sort of trying to strike out a
new way of doing. That was the way of it last night. I couldn't sleep,
and so I come along up street 'bout midnight, a-turning it all over,
and when I got to that old shackly brick store by the Temperance
Tavern, I backed up agin the wall to have another think. Well, just
then along comes these two chaps slipping along close by me, with
something under their arm and I reckoned they'd stole it. One was
a-smoking, and t'other one wanted a light; so they stopped right
before me and the cigars lit up their faces and I see that the big one
was the deaf and dumb Spaniard, by his white whiskers and the patch on
his eye, and t'other one was a rusty, ragged looking devil."

  "Could you see the rags by the light of the cigars?"

  This staggered Huck for a moment. Then he said:

  "Well, I don't know- but somehow it seems as if I did."

  "Then they went on, and you-"

  "Follered 'em- yes. That was it. I wanted to see what was up- they
sneaked along so. I dogged 'em to the widder's stile, and stood in the
dark and heard the ragged one beg for the widder, and the Spaniard
swear he'd spile her looks just as I told you and your two-"

  "What! The deaf and dumb man said all that!"

  Huck had made another terrible mistake! He was trying his best to
keep the old man from getting the faintest hint of who the Spaniard
might be, and yet his tongue seemed determined to get him into trouble
in spite of all he could do. He made several efforts to creep out of
his scrape, but the old man's eye was upon him and he made blunder
after blunder. Presently the Welchman said:

  "My boy, don't be afraid of me. I wouldn't hurt a hair of your
head for all the world. No- I'd protect you- I'd protect you. This
Spaniard is not deaf and dumb; you've let that slip without
intending it; you can't cover that up now. You know something about
that Spaniard that you want to keep dark. Now trust me- tell me what
it is, and trust me- I won't betray you."

  Huck looked into the old man's honest eyes a moment, then bent
over and whispered in his ear-

  "'Tain't a Spaniard- it's Injun Joe!"

  The Welchman almost jumped out of his chair. In a moment he said:

  "It's all plain enough, now. When you talked about notching ears and
slitting noses I judged that that was your own embellishment,
because white men don't take that sort of revenge. But an Injun!
That's a different matter altogether."

  During breakfast the talk went on, and in the course of it the old
man said that the last thing which he and his sons had done, before
going to bed, was to get a lantern and examine the stile and its
vicinity for marks of blood. They found none, but captured a bulky
bundle of-

  "Of WHAT?" If the words had been lightning they could not have
leaped with a more stunning suddenness from Huck's blanched lips.
His eyes were staring wide, now, and his breath suspended- waiting for
the answer. The Welchman started- stared in return- three seconds-
five seconds- ten- then replied-

  "Of burglar's tools. Why what's the matter with you?"

  Huck sank back, panting gently, but deeply, unutterably grateful.
The Welchman eyed him gravely, curiously- and presently said-

  "Yes, burglar's tools. That appears to relieve you a good deal.
But what did give you that turn? What were you expecting we'd found?"

  Huck was in a close place- the inquiring eye was upon him- he would
have given anything for material for a plausible answer- nothing
suggested itself- the inquiring eye was boring deeper and deeper- a
senseless reply offered- there was no time to weigh it, so at a
venture he uttered it- feebly:

  "Sunday-school books, maybe."

  Poor Huck was too distressed to smile, but- the old man laughed
loud and joyously, shook up the details of his anatomy from head to
foot, and ended by saying that such a laugh was money in a man's
pocket, because it cut down the doctor's bills like everything. Then
he added:

  "Poor old chap, you're white and jaded- you ain't well a bit- no
wonder you're a little flighty and off your balance. But you'll come
out of it. Rest and sleep will fetch you out all right, I hope."

  Huck was irritated to think he had been such a goose and betrayed
such a suspicious excitement, for he had dropped the idea that the
parcel brought from the tavern was the treasure, as soon as he had
heard the talk at the widow's stile. He had only thought it was not
the treasure, however- he had not known that it wasn't- and so the
suggestion of a captured bundle was too much for his
self-possession. But on the whole he felt glad the little episode
had happened, for now he knew beyond all question that that bundle was
not the bundle, and so his mind was at rest and exceedingly
comfortable. In fact everything seemed to be drifting just in the
right direction, now; the treasure must be still in No. 2, the men
would be captured and jailed that day, and he and Tom could seize
the gold that night without any trouble or any fear of interruption.

  Just as breakfast was completed there was a knock at the door.
Huck jumped for a hiding place, for he had no mind to be connected
even remotely with the late event. The Welchman admitted several
ladies and gentlemen, among them the widow Douglas, and noticed that
groups of citizens were climbing up the hill- to stare at the stile.
So the news had spread.

  The Welchman had to tell the story of the night to the visitors. The
widow's gratitude for her preservation was outspoken.

  "Don't say a word about it, madam. There's another that you're
more beholden to than you are to me and my boys, maybe, but he don't
allow me to tell his name. We wouldn't have been there but for him."

  Of course this excited a curiosity so vast that it almost
belittled the main matter- but the Welchman allowed it to eat into the
vitals of his visitors, and through them be transmitted to the whole
town, for he refused to part with his secret. When all else had been
learned, the widow said:

  "I went to sleep reading in bed and slept straight through all
that noise. Why didn't you come and wake me?"

  "We judged it warn't worth while. Those fellows warn't likely to
come again- they hadn't any tools left to work with, and what was
the use of waking you up and scaring you to death? My three negro
men stood guard at your house all the rest of the night. They've
just come back."

  More visitors came, and the story had to be told and re-told for a
couple of hours more.

  There was no Sabbath-school during day-school vacation, but
everybody was early at church. The stirring event was well
canvassed. News came that not a sign of the two villains had been
yet discovered. When the sermon was finished, Judge Thatcher's wife
dropped alongside of Mrs. Harper as she moved down the aisle with
the crowd and said:

  "Is my Becky going to sleep all day? I just expected she would be
tired to death."

  "Your Becky?"

  "Yes,"- with a startled look,- "didn't she stay with you last
night?"

  "Why, no."

  Mrs. Thatcher turned pale, and sank into a pew, just as Aunt
Polly, talking briskly with a friend, passed by. Aunt Polly said:

  "Good morning, Mrs. Thatcher. Good morning, Mrs. Harper. I've got
a boy that's turned up missing. I reckon my Tom staid at your house
last night- one of you. And now he's afraid to come to church. I've
got to settle with him."

  Mrs. Thatcher shook her head feebly and turned paler than ever.

  "He didn't stay with us," said Mrs. Harper, beginning to look
uneasy. A marked anxiety came into Aunt Polly's face.

  "Joe Harper, have you seen my Tom this morning?"

  "No'm."

  "When did you see him last?"

  Joe tried to remember, but was not sure he could say. The people had
stopped moving out of church. Whispers passed along, and a boding
uneasiness took possession of every countenance. Children were
anxiously questioned, and young teachers. They all said they had not
noticed whether Tom and Becky were on board the ferry boat on the
homeward trip; it was dark; no one thought of inquiring if any one was
missing. One young man finally blurted out his fear that they were
still in the cave! Mrs. Thatcher swooned away; Aunt Polly fell to
crying and wringing her hands.

  The alarm swept from lip to lip, from group to group, from street to
street, and within five minutes the bells were wildly clanging and the
whole town was up! The Cardiff Hill episode sank into instant
insignificance, the burglars were forgotten, horses were saddled,
skiffs were manned, the ferry boat ordered out, and before the
horror was half an hour old, two hundred men were pouring down
high-road and river toward the cave.

  All the long afternoon the village seemed empty and dead. Many women
visited Aunt Polly and Mrs. Thatcher and tried to comfort them. They
cried with them, too, and that was still better than words. All the
tedious night the town waited for news; but when the morning dawned at
last, all the word that came was, "Send more candles- and send
food." Mrs. Thatcher was almost crazed; and Aunt Polly also. Judge
Thatcher sent messages of hope and encouragement from the cave, but
they conveyed no real cheer.

  The old Welchman came home toward daylight, spattered with candle
grease, smeared with clay, and almost worn out. He found Huck still in
the bed that had been provided for him, and delirious with fever.
The physicians were all at the cave, so the Widow Douglas came and
took charge of the patient. She said she would do her best by him,
because, whether he was good, bad, or indifferent, he was the
Lord's, and nothing that was the Lord's was a thing to be neglected.
The Welchman said Huck had good spots in him, and the widow said-

  "You can depend on it. That's the Lord's mark. He don't leave it
off. He never does. Puts it somewhere on every creature that comes
from His hands."

  Early in the forenoon parties of jaded men began to straggle into
the village, but the strongest of the citizens continued searching.
All the news that could be gained was that remotenesses of the
cavern were being ransacked that had never been visited before; that
every corner and crevice was going to be thoroughly searched; that
wherever one wandered through the maze of passages, lights were to
be seen flitting hither and thither in the distance, and shoutings and
pistol shots sent their hollow reverberations to the ear down the
somber aisles. In one place, far from the section usually traversed by
tourists, the names "BECKY & TOM" had been found traced upon the rocky
wall with candle smoke, and near at hand a grease-soiled bit of
ribbon. Mrs. Thatcher recognized the ribbon and cried over it. She
said it was the last relic she should ever have of her child; and that
no other memorial of her could ever be so precious, because this one
parted latest from the living body before the awful death came. Some
said that now and then, in the cave, a far-away speck of light would
glimmer, and then a glorious shout would burst forth and a score of
men go trooping down the echoing aisle- and then a sickening
disappointment always followed; the children were not there; it was
only a searcher's light.

  Three dreadful days and nights dragged their tedious hours along,
and the village sank into a hopeless stupor. No one had heart for
anything. The accidental discovery, just made, that the proprietor
of the Temperance Tavern kept liquor on his premises, scarcely
fluttered the public pulse, tremendous as the fact was. In a lucid
interval, Huck feebly led up to the subject of taverns, and finally
asked- dimly dreading the worst- if anything had been discovered at
the Temperance Tavern since he had been ill?

  "Yes." said the widow.

  Huck started up in bed, wild-eyed:

  "What! What was it?"

  "Liquor!- and the place has been shut up. Lie down, child- what a
turn you did give me!"

  "Only tell me just one thing- only just one- please! Was it Tom
Sawyer that found it?"

  The widow burst into tears.

  "Hush, hush, child, hush! I've told you before, you must not talk.
You are very, very sick!"

  Then nothing but liquor had been found; there would have been a
great powwow if it had been the gold. So the treasure was gone
forever- gone forever! But what could she be crying about? Curious
that she should cry.

  These thoughts worked their dim way through Huck's mind, and under
the weariness they gave him he fell asleep. The widow said to herself:

  "There- he's asleep, poor wreck. Tom Sawyer find it! Pity but
somebody could find Tom Sawyer! Ah, there aint many left, now,
that's got hope enough, or strength enough, either, to go on
searching."

                           Chapter 31

                      Found and Lost Again


  NOW TO RETURN to Tom and Becky's share in the picnic. They tripped
along the murky aisles with the rest of the company, visiting the
familiar wonders of the cave- wonders dubbed with rather
over-descriptive names, such as "The Drawing-Room," "The Cathedral,"
"Aladdin's Palace," and so on. Presently the hide-and-seek
frolicking began, and Tom and Becky engaged in it with zeal until
the exertion began to grow a trifle wearisome; then they wandered down
a sinuous avenue holding their candles aloft and reading the tangled
web-work of names, dates, post-office addresses and mottoes with which
the rocky walls had been frescoed (in candle smoke). Still drifting
along and talking, they scarcely noticed that they were now in a
part of the cave whose walls were not frescoed. They smoked their
own names under an overhanging shelf and moved on. Presently they came
to a place where a little stream of water, trickling over a ledge
and carrying a limestone sediment with it, had, in the slow-dragging
ages, formed a laced and ruffled Niagara in gleaming and
imperishable stone. Tom squeezed his small body behind it in order
to illuminate it for Becky's gratification. He found that it curtained
a sort of steep natural stairway which was enclosed between narrow
walls, and at once the ambition to be a discoverer seized him. Becky
responded to his call, and they made a smoke-mark for future guidance,
and started upon their quest. They wound this way and that, far down
into the secret depths of the cave, made another mark, and branched
off in search of novelties to tell the upper world about. In one place
they found a spacious cavern, from whose ceiling depended a
multitude of shining stalactites of the length and circumference of
a man's leg; they walked all about it, wondering and admiring, and
presently left it by one of the numerous passages that opened into it.
This shortly brought them to a bewitching spring, whose basin was
encrusted with a frost work of glittering crystals; it was in the
midst of a cavern whose walls were supported by many fantastic pillars
which had been formed by the joining of great stalactites and
stalagmites together, the result of the ceaseless water-drip of
centuries. Under the roof vast knots of bats had packed themselves
together, thousands in a bunch; the lights disturbed the creatures and
they came flocking down by hundreds, squeaking and darting furiously
at the candles. Tom knew their ways and the danger of this sort of
conduct. He seized Becky's hand and hurried her into the first
corridor that offered; and none too soon, for a bat struck Becky's
light out with its wing while she was passing out of the cavern. The
bats chased the children a good distance; but the fugitives plunged
into every new passage that offered, and at last got rid of the
perilous things. Tom found a subterranean lake, shortly, which
stretched its dim length away until its shape was lost in the shadows.
He wanted to explore its borders, but concluded that it would be
best to sit down and rest a while, first. Now, for the first time, the
deep stillness of the place laid a clammy hand upon the spirits of the
children. Becky said-

  "Why, I didn't notice, but it seems ever so long since I heard any
of the others."

  "Come to think, Becky, we are away down below them- and I don't know
how far away north, or south, or east, or whichever it is. We couldn't
hear them here."

  Becky grew apprehensive.

  "I wonder how long we've been down here, Tom. We better start back."

  "Yes, I reckon we better. P'raps we better."

  "Can you find the way, Tom? It's all a mixed-up crookedness to me."

  "I reckon I could find it- but then the bats. If they put both our
candles out it will be an awful fix. Let's try some other way, so as
not to go through there."

  "Well. But I hope we won't get lost. It would be so awful!" and
the girl shuddered at the thought of the dreadful possibilities.

  They started through a corridor, and traversed it in silence a
long way, glancing at each new opening, to see if there was anything
familiar about the look of it; but they were all strange. Every time
Tom made an examination, Becky would watch his face for an encouraging
sign, and he would say cheerily-

  "O, it's all right. This ain't the one, but we'll come to it right
away!"

  But he felt less and less hopeful with each failure, and presently
began to turn off into diverging avenues at sheer random, in the
desperate hope of finding the one that was wanted. He still said it
was "all right," but there was such a leaden dread at his heart,
that the words had lost their ring and sounded just as if he had said,
"All is lost!" Becky clung to his side in an anguish of fear, and
tried hard to keep back the tears, but they would come. At last she
said:

  "O, Tom, never mind the bats, let's go back that way! We seem to get
worse and worse off all the time."

  Tom stopped.

  "Listen!" said he.

  Profound silence; silence so deep that even their breathings were
conspicuous in the hush. Tom shouted. The call went echoing down the
empty aisles and died out in the distance in a faint sound that
resembled a ripple of mocking laughter.

  "O, don't do it again, Tom, it is too horrid," said Becky.

  "It is horrid, but I better, Becky; they might hear us, you know;"
and he shouted again.

  The "might" was even a chillier horror than the ghostly laughter, it
so confessed a perishing hope. The children stood still and
listened; but there was no result. Tom turned upon the back track at
once, and hurried his steps. It was but a little while before a
certain indecision in his manner revealed another fearful fact to
Becky- he could not find his way back!

  "O, Tom, you didn't make any marks!"

  "Becky I was such a fool! Such a fool! I never thought we might want
to come back! No- I can't find the way. It's all mixed up."

  "Tom, Tom, we're lost! we're lost! We never can get out of this
awful place! O, why did we ever leave the others!"

  She sank to the ground and burst into such a frenzy of crying that
Tom was appalled with the idea that she might die, or lose her reason.
He sat down by her and put his arms around her; she buried her face in
his bosom, she clung to him, she poured out her terrors, her
unavailing regrets, and the far echoes turned them all to jeering
laughter. Tom begged her to pluck up hope again, and she said she
could not. He fell to blaming and abusing himself for getting her into
this miserable situation; this had a better effect. She said she would
try to hope again, she would get up and follow wherever he might
lead if only he would not talk like that any more. For he was no
more to blame than she, she said.

  So they moved on, again- aimlessly- simply at random- all they could
do was to move, keep moving. For a little while, hope made a show of
reviving- not with any reason to back it, but only because it is its
nature to revive when the spring has not been taken out of it by age
and familiarity with failure.

  By and by Tom took Becky's candle and blew it out. This economy
meant so much! Words were not needed. Becky understood, and her hope
died again. She knew that Tom had a whole candle and three or four
pieces in his pockets- yet he must economize.

  By and by, fatigue began to assert its claims; the children tried to
pay no attention, for it was dreadful to think of sitting down when
time was grown to be so precious; moving, in some direction, in any
direction, was at least progress and might bear fruit; but to sit down
was to invite death and shorten its pursuit.

  At last Becky's frail limbs refused to carry her farther. She sat
down. Tom rested with her, and they talked of home, and the friends
there, and the comfortable beds and above all, the light! Becky cried,
and Tom tried to think of some way of comforting her, but all his
encouragements were grown threadbare with use, and sounded like
sarcasms. Fatigue bore so heavily upon Becky that she drowsed off to
sleep. Tom was grateful. He sat looking into her drawn face and saw it
grow smooth and natural under the influence of pleasant dreams; and by
and by a smile dawned and rested there. The peaceful face reflected
somewhat of peace and healing into his own spirit, and his thoughts
wandered away to bygone times and dreamy memories. While he was deep
in his musings, Becky woke up with a breezy little laugh- but it was
stricken dead upon her lips, and a groan followed it.

  "O, how could I sleep! I wish I never never had waked! No! No, I
don't, Tom! Don't look so! I won't say it again."

  "I'm glad you've slept, Becky; you'll feel rested, now, and we'll
find the way out."

  "We can try, Tom; but I've seen such a beautiful country in my
dream. I reckon we are going there."

  "Maybe not, maybe not. Cheer up, Becky, and let's go on trying."

  They rose up and wandered along, hand in hand and hopeless. They
tried to estimate how long they had been in the cave, but all they
knew was that it seemed days and weeks, and yet it was plain that this
could not be, for their candles were not gone yet. A long time after
this- they could not tell how long- Tom said they must go softly and
listen for dripping water- they must find a spring. They found one
presently, and Tom said it was time to rest again. Both were cruelly
tired, yet Becky said she thought she could go on a little farther.
She was surprised to hear Tom dissent. She could not understand it.
They sat down, and Tom fastened his candle to the wall in front of
them with some clay. Thought was soon busy; nothing was said for
some time. Then Becky broke the silence:

  "Tom, I am so hungry!"

  Tom took something out of his pocket.

  "Do you remember this?" said he.

  Becky almost smiled.

  "It's our wedding cake, Tom."

  "Yes- I wish it was as big as a barrel, for it's all we've got."

  "I saved it from the picnic for us to dream on, Tom, the way
grown-up people do with wedding cake- but it'll be our-"

  She dropped the sentence where it was. Tom divided the cake and
Becky ate with good appetite, while Tom nibbled at his moiety. There
was abundance of cold water to finish the feast with. By and by
Becky suggested that they move on again. Tom was silent a moment. Then
he said:

  "Becky, can you bear it if I tell you something?"

  Becky's face paled, but she said she thought she could.

  "Well then, Becky, we must stay here, where there's water to
drink. That little piece is our last candle!"

    Becky gave loose to tears and wailings. Tom did what he could to
comfort her but with little effect. At length Becky said:

  "Tom!"

  "Well, Becky?"

  "They'll, miss us and hunt for us!"

  "Yes they will! Certainly they will!"

  "Maybe they're hunting for us now, Tom?"

  "Why I reckon maybe they are. I hope they are."

  "When would they miss us, Tom?"

  "When they get back to the boat, reckon."

  "Tom, it might be dark, then- would they notice we hadn't come?"

  "I don't know. But anyway, your mother would miss you as soon as
they got home."

  A frightened look in Becky's face brought Tom to his senses and he
saw that he had made a blunder. Becky was not to have gone home that
night! The children became silent and thoughtful. In a moment a new
burst of grief from Becky showed Tom that the thing in his mind had
struck hers also- that the Sabbath morning might be half spent
before Mrs. Thatcher discovered that Becky was not at Mrs. Harper's.

  The children fastened their eyes upon their bit of candle and
watched it melt slowly and pitilessly away; saw the half inch of
wick stand alone at last; saw the feeble flame rise and fall, climb
the thin column of smoke, linger at its top a moment, and then- the
horror of utter darkness reigned!

  How long afterward it was that Becky came to a slow consciousness
that she was crying in Tom's arms, neither could tell. All that they
knew was, that after what seemed a mighty stretch of time, both
awoke out of a dead stupor of sleep and resumed their miseries once
more. Tom said it might be Sunday, now- maybe Monday. He tried to
get Becky to talk, but her sorrows were too oppressive, all her
hopes were gone. Tom said that they must have been missed long ago,
and no doubt the search was going on. He would shout and maybe some
one would come. He tried it; but in the darkness the distant echoes
sounded so hideously that he tried it no more.

  The hours wasted away, and hunger came to torment the captives
again. A portion of Tom's half of the cake was left; they divided
and ate it. But they seemed hungrier than before. The poor morsel of
food only whetted desire.

  By and by Tom said:

  "Sh! Did you hear that?"

  Both held their breath and listened. There was a sound like the
faintest, far-off shout. Instantly Tom answered it, and leading
Becky by the hand, started groping down the corridor in its direction.
Presently he listened again; again the sound was heard, and apparently
a little nearer.

  "It's them!" said Tom; "they're coming! Come along, Becky- we're all
right now!"

  The joy of the prisoners was almost overwhelming. Their speed was
slow, however, because pitfalls were somewhat common, and had to be
guarded against. They shortly came to one and had to stop. It might be
three feet deep, it might be a hundred- there was no passing it, at
any rate. Tom got down on his breast and reached as far down as he
could. No bottom. They must stay there and wait until the searchers
came. They listened; evidently the distant shoutings were growing more
distant! a moment or two more and they had gone altogether. The
heartsinking misery of it! Tom whooped until he was hoarse, but it was
of no use. He talked hopefully to Becky; but an age of anxious waiting
passed and no sounds came again.

  The children groped their way back to the spring. The weary time
dragged on; they slept again, and awoke famished and woe-stricken. Tom
believed it must be Tuesday by this time.

  Now an idea struck him. There were some side passages near at
hand. It would be better to explore some of these than bear the weight
of the heavy time in idleness. He took a kite-line from his pocket,
tied it to a projection, and he and Becky started, Tom in the lead,
unwinding the line as he groped along. At the end of twenty steps
the corridor ended in a "jumping-off place." Tom got down on his knees
and felt below, and then as far around the corner as he could reach
with his hands conveniently; he made an effort to stretch yet a little
further to the right, and at that moment, not twenty yards away, a
human hand, holding a candle, appeared from behind a rock! Tom
lifted up a glorious shout, and instantly that hand was followed by
the body it belonged to- Injun Joe's! Tom was paralyzed; he could
not move. He was vastly gratified, the next moment, to see the
"Spaniard" take to his heels and get himself out of sight. Tom
wondered that Joe had not recognized his voice and come over and
killed him for testifying in court. But the echoes must have disguised
the voice. Without doubt, that was it, he reasoned. Tom's fright
weakened every muscle in his body. He said to himself that if he had
strength enough to get back to the spring he would stay there, and
nothing should tempt him to run the risk of meeting Injun Joe again.
He was careful to keep from Becky what it was he had seen. He told her
he had only shouted "for luck."

  But hunger and wretchedness rise superior to fears in the long
run. Another tedious wait at the spring and another long sleep brought
changes. The children awoke tortured with a raging hunger. Tom
believed that it must be Wednesday or Thursday or even Friday or
Saturday, now, and that the search had been given over. He proposed to
explore another passage. He felt willing to risk Injun Joe and all
other terrors. But Becky was very weak. She had sunk into a dreary
apathy and would not be roused. She said she would wait, now, where
she was, and die- it would not be long. She told Tom to go with the
kite-line and explore if he chose; but she implored him to come back
every little while and speak to her; and she made him promise that
when the awful time came, he would stay by her and hold her hand until
all was over.

  Tom kissed her, with a choking sensation in his throat, and made a
show of being confident of finding the searchers or an escape from the
cave; then he took the kite-line in his hand and went groping down one
of the passages on his hands and knees, distressed with hunger and
sick with bodings of coming doom.

                           Chapter 32

                   "Turn Out! They're Found!"


  TUESDAY AFTERNOON CAME, and waned to the twilight. The village of
St. Petersburg still mourned. The lost children had not been found.
Public prayers had been offered up for them, and many and many a
private prayer that had the petitioner's whole heart in it; but
still no good news came from the cave. The majority of the searchers
had given up the quest and gone back to their daily avocations, saying
that it was plain the children could never be found. Mrs. Thatcher was
very ill, and a great part of the time delirious. People said it was
heart-breaking to hear her call her child, and raise her head and
listen a whole minute at a time, then lay it wearily down again with a
moan. Aunt Polly had drooped into a settled melancholy, and her gray
hair had grown almost white. The village went to its rest on Tuesday
night, sad and forlorn.

  Away in the middle of the night a wild peal burst from the village
bells, and in a moment the streets were swarming with frantic
half-clad people, who shouted, "Turn out! turn out! they're found!
they're found!" Tin pans and horns were added to the din, the
population massed itself and moved toward the river, met the
children coming in an open carriage drawn by shouting citizens,
thronged around it, joined its homeward march, and swept magnificently
up the main street roaring huzzah after huzzah!

  The village was illuminated; nobody went to bed again; it was the
greatest night the little town had ever seen. During the first half
hour a procession of villagers filed through Judge Thatcher's house,
seized the saved ones and kissed them, squeezed Mrs. Thatcher's
hand, tried to speak but couldn't- and drifted out raining tears all
over the place.

  Aunt Polly's happiness was complete, and Mrs. Thatcher's nearly
so. It would be complete, however, as soon as the messenger dispatched
with the great news to the cave should get the word to her husband.
Tom lay upon a sofa with an eager auditory about him and told the
history of the wonderful adventure, putting in many striking additions
to adorn it withal; and closed with a description of how he left Becky
and went on an exploring expedition; how he followed two avenues as
far as his kite-line would reach; how he followed a third to the
fullest stretch of the kite-line, and was about to turn back when he
glimpsed a far-off speck that looked like daylight; dropped the line
and groped toward it, pushed his head and shoulders through a small
hole and saw the broad Mississippi rolling by! And if it had only
happened to be night he would not have seen that speck of daylight and
would not have explored that passage any more! He told how he went
back for Becky and broke the good news and she told him not to fret
her with such stuff, for she was tired, and knew she was going to die,
and wanted to. He described how he labored with her and convinced her;
and how she almost died for joy when she had groped to where she
actually saw the blue speck of daylight; how he pushed his way out
at the hole and then helped her out; how they sat there and cried
for gladness; how some men came along in a skiff and Tom hailed them
and told them their situation and their famished condition; how the
men didn't believe the wild tale at first, "because," said they,
"you are five miles down the river below the valley the cave is in"-
then took them aboard, rowed to a house, gave them supper, made them
rest till two or three hours, after dark and then brought them home.

  Before day-dawn, Judge Thatcher and the handful of searchers with
him were tracked out, in the cave, by the twine clues they had
strung behind them, and informed of the great news.

  Three days and nights of toil and hunger in the cave were not to
be shaken off at once, as Tom and Becky soon discovered. They were
bedridden all of Wednesday and Thursday, and seemed to grow more and
more tired and worn, all the time. Tom got about, a little, on
Thursday, was downtown Friday, and nearly as whole as ever Saturday;
but Becky did not leave her room until Sunday, and then she looked
as if she had passed through a wasting illness.

  Tom learned of Huck's sickness and went to see him on Friday, but
could not be admitted to the bedroom; neither could he on Saturday
or Sunday. He was admitted daily after that, but was warned to keep
still about his adventure and introduce no exciting topic. The widow
Douglas stayed by to see that he obeyed. At home Tom learned of the
Cardiff Hill event; also that the "ragged man's" body had eventually
been found in the river near the ferry landing; he had been drowned
while trying to escape, perhaps.

  About a fortnight after Tom's rescue from the cave, he started off
to visit Huck, who had grown plenty strong enough, now, to hear
exciting talk, and Tom had some that would interest him, he thought.
Judge Thatcher's house was on Tom's way, and he stopped to see
Becky. The Judge and some friends set Tom to talking, and some one
asked him ironically if he wouldn't like to go to the cave again.
Tom said yes, he thought he wouldn't mind it. The judge said:

  "Well, there are others just like you, Tom, I've not the least
doubt. But we have taken care of that. Nobody will get lost in that
cave any more."

  "Why?"

  "Because I had its big door sheathed with boiler iron two weeks ago,
and triple-locked- and I've got the keys."

  Tom turned as white as a sheet.

  "What's the matter, boy! Here, run, somebody! Fetch a glass of
water!"

  The water was brought and thrown into Tom's face.

  "Ah, now you're all right. What was the matter with you, Tom?"

  "O, judge, Injun Joe's in the cave!"

                           Chapter 33

                     The Fate of Injun Joe


  WITHIN A FEW MINUTES the news had spread, and a dozen were on
their way to McDougal's cave, at, well filled with passengers, soon
followed. Tom Sawyer was in the skiff that bore Judge Thatcher.

  When the cave door was unlocked a sorrowful sight presented itself
in the dim twilight of the place. Injun Joe lay stretched upon the
ground, dead, with his face close to the crack of the door, as if
his longing eyes had been fixed, to the latest moment, upon the
light and the cheer of the free world outside. Tom was touched, for he
knew by his own experience how this wretch had suffered. His pity
was moved, but nevertheless he felt an abounding sense of relief and
security, now, which revealed to him in a degree which he had not
fully appreciated before how vast a weight of dread had been lying
upon him since the day he lifted his voice against this
bloody-minded outcast.

  Injun Joe's bowie knife lay close by, its blade broken in two. The
great foundation-beam of the door had been chipped and hacked through,
with tedious labor; useless labor, too, it was, for the native rock
formed a sill outside it, and upon that stubborn material the knife
had wrought no effect; the only damage done was to the knife itself.
But if there had been no stony obstruction there the labor would
have been useless still, for if the beam had been wholly cut away
Injun joe could not have squeezed his body under the door, and he knew
it. So he had only hacked that place in order to be doing something-
in order to pass the weary time- in order to employ his tortured
faculties. Ordinarily one could find half a dozen bits of candle stuck
around in the crevices of this vestibule, left there by tourists;
but there were none now. The prisoner had searched them out and
eaten them. He had also contrived to catch a few bats, and these,
also, he had eaten, leaving only their claws. The poor unfortunate had
starved to death. In one place near at hand, a stalagmite had been
slowly growing up from the ground for ages, builded by the
water-drip from a stalactite overhead. The captive had broken off
the stalagmite, and upon the stump had placed a stone, wherein he
had scooped a shallow hollow to catch the precious drop that fell once
in every three minutes with the dreary regularity of a clock-tick- a
dessert spoonful once in four and twenty hours. That drop was
falling when the Pyramids were new; when Troy fell; when the
foundations of Rome were laid; when Christ was crucified; when the
Conqueror created the British empire; when Columbus sailed; when the
massacre at Lexington was "news." It is falling now; it will still
be falling when all these things shall have sunk down the afternoon of
history, and the twilight of history, and the twilight of tradition,
and been swallowed up in the thick night of oblivion. Has everything a
purpose and a mission? Did this drop fall patiently during five
thousand years to be ready for this flitting human insect's need?
and has it another important object to accomplish ten thousand years
to come? No matter. It is many and many a year since the hapless
half-breed scooped out the stone to catch the priceless drops, but
to this day the tourist stares longest at that pathetic stone and that
slow dropping water when he comes to see the wonders of McDougal's
cave. Injun Joe's Cup stands first in the list of the cavern's
marvels; even "Aladdin's Palace" cannot rival it.

  Injun Joe was buried near the mouth of the cave; and people
flocked there in boats and wagons from the towns and from all the
farms and hamlets for seven miles around; they brought their children,
and all sorts of provisions, and confessed that they had had almost as
satisfactory a time at the funeral as they could have had at the
hanging.

  This funeral stopped the further growth of one thing- the petition
to the Governor for Injun Joe's pardon. The petition had been
largely signed; many tearful and eloquent meetings had been held,
and a committee of sappy women been appointed to go in deep mourning
and wail around the governor and implore him to be a merciful ass
and trample his duty under foot. Injun Joe was believed to have killed
five citizens of the village, but what of that? If he had been Satan
himself there would have been plenty of weaklings ready to scribble
their names to a pardon-petition, and drip a tear on it from their
permanently impaired and leaky water-works.

  The morning after the funeral Tom took Huck to a private place to
have an important talk. Huck had learned all about Tom's adventure
from the Welchman and the widow Douglas, by this time, but Tom said he
reckoned there was one thing they had not told him; that thing was
what he wanted to talk about now. Huck's face saddened. He said:

  "I know what it is. You got into No. 2 and never found anything
but whisky. Nobody told me it was you; but I just knowed it must 'a'
ben you, soon as I heard 'bout that whisky business; and I knowed
you hadn't got the money becuz you'd 'a' got at me some way or other
and told me even if you was mum to everybody else. Tom, something's
always told me we'd never get holt of that swag."

  "Why Huck, I never told on that tavern-keeper. You know his You know
his tavern was all right the Saturday I went to the picnic. Don't
you remember you was to watch there that night?"

  "O, yes! Why it seems 'bout a year ago. It was that very night
that I follered Injun Joe to the widder's."

  "You followed him?"

  "Yes- but you keep mum. I reckon Injun Joe's left friends behind
him, and I don't want souring on me and doing me mean tricks. If it
hadn't ben for me he'd be down in Texas now, all right."

  Then Huck told his entire adventure in confidence to Tom, who had
only heard of the Welchman's part of it before.

  "Well," said Huck, presently, coming back to the main question,
"whoever nipped the whisky in No. 2, nipped the money too, I reckon-
anyways it's a goner for us, Tom."

  "Huck, that money wasn't ever in No. 2!"

  "What!" Huck searched his comrade's face keenly. "Tom, have you
got on the track of that money again?"

  "Huck, it's in the cave!"

  Huck's eyes blazed.

  "Say it again, Tom!"

  "The money's in the cave!"

  "Tom,- honest injun, now- is it fun, or earnest?"

  "Earnest, Huck- just as earnest as ever I was in my life. Will you
go in there with me and help get it out?"

  "I bet I will! I will if it's where we can blaze our way to it and
not get lost."

  "Huck, we can do that without the least little bit of trouble in the
world."

  "Good as wheat! What makes you think the money's-"

  "Huck, you just wait till we get in there. If we don't find it
I'll agree to give you my drum and everything I've got in the world. I
will, by jings."

  "All right- it's a whiz. When do you say?"

  "Right now, if you say it. Are you strong enough?"

  "Is it far in the cave? I ben on my pins a little, three or four
days, now, but I can't walk more'n a mile, Tom- least I don't think
I could."

  "It's about five mile into there the way anybody but me would go,
Huck, but there's a mighty short cut that they don't anybody but me
know about. Huck, I'll take you right to it in a skiff. I'll float the
skiff down there, and I'll pull it back again all by myself. You
needn't ever turn your hand over."

  "Less start right off, Tom."

  "All right. We want some bread and meat, and our pipes, and a little
bag or two, and two or three kite-strings, and some of these
newfangled things they call lucifer matches. I tell you many's the
time I wished I had some when I was in there before."

  A trifle after noon the boys borrowed a small skiff from a citizen
who was absent, and got under way at once. When they were several
miles below "Cave Hollow," Tom said:

  "Now you see this bluff here looks all alike all the way down from
the cave hollow- no houses, no wood-yards, bushes all alike. But do
you see that white place up yonder where there's been a landslide?
Well that's one of my marks. We'll get ashore, now."

  They landed.

  "Now Huck, where we're a-standing you could touch that hole I got
out of with a fishing-pole. See if you can find it."

  Huck searched all the place about, and found nothing. Tom proudly
marched into a thick clump of sumach bushes and said-

  "Here you are! Look at it, Huck; it's the snuggest hole in this
country. You just keep mum about it. All along I've been wanting to be
a robber, but I knew I'd got to have a thing like this, and where to
run across it was the bother. We've got it now, and we'll keep it
quiet, only we'll let Joe Harper and Ben Rogers in- because of
course there's got to be a Gang, or else there wouldn't be any style
about it. Tom Sawyer's Gang- it sounds splendid, don't it, Huck?"

  "Well it just does, Tom. And who'll we rob?"

  "O, most anybody. Waylay people- that's mostly the way."

  "And kill them?"

  "No- not always. Hide them in the cave till they raise a ransom."

  "What's a ransom?"

  "Money. You make them raise all they can, off'n their friends; and
after you've kept them a year, if it ain't raised then you kill
them. That's the general way. Only you don't kill the women. You
shut up the women, but you don't kill them. They're always beautiful
and rich, and awfully scared. You take their watches and things, but
you always take your hat off and talk polite. They ain't anybody as
polite as robbers- you'll see that in any book. Well the women get
to loving you, and after they've been in the cave a week or two
weeks they stop crying and after that you couldn't get them to
leave. If you drove them out they'd turn right around and come back.
It's so in all the books."

  "Why it's real bully, Tom. I b'lieve it's better'n to be a pirate."

  "Yes, it's better in some ways, because it's close to home and
circuses and all that."

  By this time everything was ready and the boys entered the hole, Tom
in the lead. They toiled their way to the farther end of the tunnel,
then made their spliced kite-strings fast and moved on. A few steps
brought them to the spring and Tom felt a shudder quiver all through
him. He showed Huck the fragment of candle-wick perched on a lump of
clay against the wall, and described how he and Becky had watched
the flame struggle and expire.

  The boys began to quiet down to whispers, now, for the stillness and
gloom of the place oppressed their spirits. They went on, and
presently entered and followed Tom's other corridor until they reached
the "jumping-off place." The candles revealed the fact that it was not
really a precipice, but only a steep clay hill twenty or thirty feet
high. Tom whispered-

  "Now I'll show you something, Huck."

  He held his candle aloft and said-

  "Look as far around the corner as you can. Do you see that? There-
on the big rock over yonder- done with candle smoke."

  "Tom, it's a cross!"

  "Now where's your Number Two? 'Under the cross,' hey? Right yonder's
where I saw Injun joe poke up his candle, Huck!"

  Huck stared at the mystic sign a while, and then said with a shaky
voice-

  "Tom, less git out of here!"

  "What! and leave the treasure?"

  "Yes- leave it. Injun Joe's ghost is round about there, certain."

  "No it ain't, Huck, no it ain't. It would ha'nt the place where he
died- away out at the mouth of the cave- five mile from here."

  "No, Tom, it wouldn't. It would hang round the money. I know the
ways of ghosts, and so do you."

  Tom began to fear that Huck was right. Misgivings gathered in his
mind. But presently an idea occurred to him-

  "Looky-here Huck, what fools we're making of ourselves! Injun
Joe's ghost ain't a-going to come around where there's a cross!"

  The point was well taken. It had its effect.

  "Tom I didn't think of that. But that's so. It's luck for us, that
cross is. I reckon we'll climb down there and have a hunt for that
box."

  Tom went first, cutting rude steps in the clay hill as he descended.
Huck followed. Four avenues opened out of the small cavern which the
great rock stood in. The boys examined three of them with no result.
They found a small recess in the one nearest the base of the rock,
with a pallet of blankets spread down in it; also an old suspender,
some bacon rind, and the well gnawed bones of two or three fowls.
But there was no money box. The lads searched and re-searched this
place, but in vain. Tom said:

  "He said under the cross. Well, this comes nearest to being under
the cross. It can't be under the rock itself, because that sets
solid on the ground."

  They searched everywhere once more, and then sat down discouraged.
Huck could suggest nothing. By and by Tom said:

  "Looky-here, Huck, there's foot-prints and some candle grease on the
clay about one side of this rock, but not on the other sides. Now
what's that for? I bet you the money is under the rock. I'm going to
dig in the clay."

  "That ain't no bad notion, Tom!" said Huck with animation.

  Tom's "real Barlow" was out at once, and he had not dug four
inches before he struck wood.

  "Hey, Huck!- you hear that?"

  Huck began to dig and scratch now. Some boards were soon uncovered
and removed. They had concealed a natural chasm which led under the
rock. Tom got into this and held his candle as far under the rock as
he could, but said he could not see to the end of the rift. He
proposed to explore. He stooped and passed under; the narrow way
descended gradually. He followed its winding course, first to the
right, then to the left, Huck at his heels. Tom turned a short
curve, by and by, and exclaimed-

  "My goodness, Huck, looky-here!"

  It was the treasure box, sure enough, occupying a snug little
cavern, along with an empty powder keg, a couple of guns in leather
cases, two or three pairs of old moccasins, a leather belt, and some
other rubbish well soaked with the water-drip.

  "Got it at last!" said Huck, plowing among the tarnished coins
with his hand. "My, but we're rich, Tom!"

  "Huck, I always reckoned we'd get it. It's just too good to believe,
but we have got it, sure! Say- let's not fool around here. Let's snake
it out. Lemme see if I can lift the box."

  It weighed about fifty pounds. Tom could lift it, after an awkward
fashion, but could not carry it conveniently.

  "I thought so," he said; "they carried it like it was heavy, that
day at the ha'nted house. I noticed that. I reckon I was right to
think of fetching the little bags along."

  The money was soon in the bags and the boys took it up to the
cross-rock.

  "Now less fetch the guns and things," said Huck.

  "No, Huck- leave them there. They're just the tricks to have when we
go to robbing. We'll keep them there all the time, and we'll hold
our orgies there, too. It's an awful snug place for orgies."

  "What's orgies?"

  "I dono. But robbers always have orgies, and of course we've got
to have them, too. Come along, Huck, we've been in here a long time.
It's getting late, I reckon. I'm hungry, too. We'll eat and smoke when
we get to the skiff."

  They presently emerged into the clump of sumach bushes, looked
warily out, found the coast clear, and were soon lunching and
smoking in the skiff. As the sun dipped toward the horizon they pushed
out and got under way. Tom skimmed up the shore through the long
twilight, chatting cheerily with Huck, and landed shortly after dark.

  "Now Huck," said Tom, "we'll hide the money in the loft of the
widow's wood-shed, and I'll come up in the morning and we'll count
it and divide, and then we'll hunt up a place out in the woods for
it where it will be safe. Just you lay quiet here and watch the
stuff till I run and hook Benny Taylor's little wagon; I won't be gone
a minute."

  He disappeared, and presently returned with the wagon, put the two
small sacks into it, threw some old rags on top of them, and started
off, dragging his cargo behind him. When the boys reached the
Welchman's house, they stopped to rest. Just as they were about to
move on, the Welchman stepped out and said:

  "Hallo, who's that?"

  "Huck and Tom Sawyer."

  "Good! Come along with me, boys, you keeping everybody waiting.
Here- hurry up, trot ahead- I'll haul the wagon for you. Why, it's not
as light as it might be. Got bricks in it?- or old metal?"

  "Old metal," said Tom.

  "I judged so; the boys in this town will take more trouble and
fool away more time, hunting up six bits' worth of old iron to sell to
the foundry than they would to make twice the money at regular work.
But that's human nature- hurry along, hurry along!"

  The boys wanted to know what the hurry was about.

  "Never mind; you'll see, when we get to the Widow Douglas's."

  Huck said with some apprehension- for he was long used to being
falsely accused-

  "Mr. Jones, we haven't been doing nothing."

  The Welchman laughed.

  "Well, I don't know, Huck, my boy. I don't know about that. Ain't
you and the widow good friends?"

  "Yes. Well, she's ben good friends to me, any ways."

  "All right, then. What do you want to be afraid for?"

  This question was not entirely answered in Huck's slow mind before
he found himself pushed, along with Tom, into Mrs. Douglas's
drawing-room. Mr. Jones left the wagon near the door and followed.

  The place was grandly lighted, and everybody that was of any
consequence in the village was there. The Thatchers were there, the
Harpers, the Rogerses, Aunt Polly, Sid, Mary, the minister, the
editor, and a great many more, and all dressed in their best. The
widow received the boys as heartily as any one could well receive
two such looking beings. They were covered with clay and candle
grease. Aunt Polly blushed crimson with humiliation, and frowned and
shook her head at Tom. Nobody suffered half as much as the two boys
did, however. Mr. Jones said:

  "Tom wasn't at home, yet, so I gave him up; but I stumbled on him
and Huck right at my door, and so I just brought them along in a
hurry."

  "And you did just right," said the widow:- "Come with me, boys."

  She took them to a bed chamber and said:

  "Now wash and dress yourselves. Here are two new suits of clothes-
shirts, socks, everything complete. They're Huck's- no, no thanks,
Huck- Mr. Jones bought one and I the other. But they'll fit both of
you. Get into them. We'll wait- come down when you are slicked up
enough."

  Then she left.

                           Chapter 34

                         Floods of Gold


  HUCK SAID:

  "Tom, we can slope, if we can find a rope. The window ain't high
from the ground."

  "Shucks, what do you want to slope for?"

  "Well I ain't used to that kind of a crowd. I can't stand it. I
ain't going down there, Tom."

  "O, bother! It ain't anything. I don't mind it a bit. I'll take care
of you."

  Sid appeared.

  "Tom," said he, "Auntie has been waiting for you all the
afternoon. Mary got your Sunday clothes ready, and everybody's been
fretting about you. Say- ain't this grease and clay, on your clothes?"

  "Now Mr. Siddy, you just 'tend to your own business. What's all this
blow-out about, anyway?"

  "It's one of the widow's parties that she's always having. This time
it's for the Welchman and his sons, on account of that scrape they
helped her out of the other night. And say- I can tell you something,
if you want to know."

  "Well, what?"

  "Why old Mr. Jones is going to try to spring something on the people
here to-night, but I overheard him tell auntie to-day about it, as a
secret, but I reckon it's not much of a secret now. Everybody knows-
the widow, too, for all she tries to let on she don't. Oh, Mr. Jones
was bound Huck should be here- couldn't get along with his grand
secret without Huck, you know!"

  "Secret about what, Sid?"

  "About Huck tracking the robbers to the widow's. I reckon Mr.
Jones was going to make a grand time over his surprise, but I bet
you it will drop pretty flat."

  Sid chuckled in a very contented and satisfied way.

  "Sid, was it you that told?"

  "O, never mind who it was. Somebody told- that's enough."

  "Sid, there's only one person in this town mean enough to do that,
and that's you. If you had been in Huck's place you'd 'a' sneaked down
the hill and never told anybody on the robbers. You can't do any but
mean things, and you can't bear to see anybody praised for doing
good ones. There- no thanks, as the widow says"- and Tom cuffed
Sid's ears and helped him to the door with several kicks. "Now go
and tell auntie if you dare- and to-morrow you'll catch it!"

  Some minutes later the widow's guests were at the supper table,
and a dozen children were propped up at little side tables in the same
room, after the fashion of that country and that day. At the proper
time Mr. Jones made his little speech, in which he thanked the widow
for the honor she was doing himself and his sons, but said that
there was another person whose modesty-

  And so forth and so on. He sprung his secret about Huck's share in
the adventure in the finest dramatic manner he was master of, but
the surprise it occasioned was largely counterfeit and not as
clamorous and effusive as it might have been under happier
circumstances. However, the widow made a pretty fair show of
astonishment, and heaped so many compliments and so much gratitude
upon Huck that he almost forgot the nearly intolerable discomfort of
his new clothes in the entirely intolerable discomfort of being set up
as a target for everybody's gaze and everybody's laudations.

  The widow said she meant to give Huck a home under her roof and have
him educated; and that when she could spare the money she would
start him in business in a modest way. Tom's chance was come. He said:

  "Huck don't need it. Huck's rich!"

  Nothing but a heavy strain upon the good manners of the company kept
back the due and proper complimentary laugh at this pleasant joke. But
the silence was a little awkward. Tom broke it-

  "Huck's got money. Maybe you don't believe it, but he's got lots
of it. O, you needn't smile- I reckon I can show you. You just wait
a minute."

  Tom ran out of doors. The company looked at each other with a
perplexed interest- and inquiringly at Huck, who was tongue-tied.

  "Sid, what ails Tom?" said Aunt Polly. "He- well, there ain't ever
any making of that boy out. I never-"

  Tom entered, struggling with the weight of his sacks, and Aunt Polly
did not finish her sentence. Tom poured the mass of yellow coin upon
the table and said-

  "There- what did I tell you? Half of it's Huck's and half of it's
mine!"

  The spectacle took the general breath away. All gazed, nobody
spoke for a moment. Then there was a unanimous call for an
explanation. Tom said he could furnish it, and he did. The tale was
long, but brim full of interest. There was scarcely an interruption
from anyone to break the charm of its flow. When he had finished,
Mr. Jones said-

  "I thought I had fixed up a little surprise for this occasion, but
it don't amount to anything now. This one makes it sing mighty
small, I'm willing to allow."

  The money was counted. The sum amounted to a little over twelve
thousand dollars. It was more than any one present had ever seen at
one time before, though several persons were there who were worth
considerably more than that in property.

                           Chapter 35

                  Respectable Huck Joins the Gang


  THE READER MAY REST SATISFIED that Tom's and Huck's windfall made
a mighty stir in the poor little village of St. Petersburg. So vast
a sum, all in actual cash, seemed next to incredible. It was talked
about, gloated over, glorified, until the reason of many of the
citizens tottered under the strain of the unhealthy excitement.
Every "haunted" house in St. Petersburg and the neighboring villages
was dissected, plank by plank, and its foundations dug up and
ransacked for hidden treasure- and not by boys, but men- pretty grave,
unromantic men, too, some of them. Wherever Tom and Huck appeared they
were courted, admired, stared at. The boys were not able to remember
that their remarks had possessed weight before; but now their
sayings were treasured and repeated; everything they did seemed
somehow to be regarded as remarkable; they had evidently lost the
power of doing and saying commonplace things; moreover, their past
history was raked up and discovered to bear marks of conspicuous
originality. The village paper published biographical sketches of
the boys.

  The widow Douglas put Huck's money out at six per cent, and Judge
Thatcher did the same with Tom's at Aunt Polly's request. Each lad had
an income, now, that was simply prodigious- a dollar for every
week-day in the year and half of the Sundays. It was just what the
minister got- no, it was what he was promised- he generally couldn't
collect it. A dollar and a quarter a week would board, lodge and
school a boy in those old simple days- and clothe him and wash him,
too, for that matter.

  Judge Thatcher had conceived a great opinion of Tom. He said that no
commonplace boy would ever have got his daughter out of the cave. When
Becky told her father, in strict confidence, how Tom had taken her
whipping at school, the Judge was visibly moved; and when she
pleaded grace for the mighty lie which Tom had told in order to
shift that whipping from her shoulders to his own, the Judge said with
a fine outburst that it was a noble, a generous, a magnanimous lie-
a lie that was worthy to hold up its head and march down through
history breast to breast with George Washington's lauded Truth about
the hatchet! Becky thought her father had never looked so tall and
so superb as when he walked the floor and stamped his foot and said
that. She went straight off and told Tom about it.

  Judge Thatcher hoped to see Tom a great lawyer or a great soldier
some day. He said he meant to look to it that Tom should be admitted
to the National Military Academy and afterwards trained in the best
law school in the country, in order that he might be ready for
either career or both.

  Huck Finn's wealth and the fact that he was now under the widow
Douglas's protection, introduced him into society- no, dragged him
into it, hurled him into it- and his sufferings were almost more
then he could bear. The widow's servants kept him clean and neat,
combed and brushed, and they bedded him nightly in unsympathetic
sheets that had not one little spot or stain which he could press to
his heart and know for a friend. He had to eat with knife and fork; he
had to use napkin, cup and plate; he had to learn his book, he had
to go to church; he had to talk so properly that speech was become
insipid in his mouth; whithersoever he turned, the bars and shackles
of civilization shut him in and bound him hand and foot.

  He bravely bore his miseries three weeks, and then one day turned up
missing. For forty-eight hours the widow hunted for him everywhere
in great distress. The public were profoundly concerned; they searched
high and low, they dragged the river for his body. Early the third
morning Tom Sawyer wisely went poking among some old empty hogsheads
down behind the abandoned slaughter-house, and in one of them he found
the refugee. Huck had slept there; he had just breakfasted upon some
stolen odds and ends of food, and was lying off, now, in comfort
with his pipe. He was unkempt, uncombed, and clad in the same old ruin
of rags that had made him picturesque in the days when he was free and
happy. Tom routed him out, told him the trouble he had been causing,
and urged him to go home. Huck's face lost its tranquil content, and
took a melancholy cast. He said:

  "Don't talk about it, Tom. I've tried it, and it don't work; it
don't work, Tom. It ain't for me; I ain't used to it. The widder's
good to me, and friendly; but I can't stand them ways. She makes me
git up just at the same time every morning; she makes me wash, they
comb me all to thunder; she won't let me sleep in the wood-shed; I got
to wear them blamed clothes that just smothers me, Tom; they don't
seem to any air git through 'em, somehow; and they're so rotten nice
that I can't set down, nor lay down, nor roll around anywher's; I
hain't slid on a cellar-door for- well, it 'pears to be years; I got
to go to church and sweat and sweat- I hate them ornery sermons! I
can't ketch a fly in there, I can't chaw, I got to wear shoes all
Sunday. The widder eats by a bell; she goes to bed by a bell; she gits
up by a bell- everything's so awful reg'lar a body can't stand it."

  "Well, everybody does that way, Huck."

  "Tom, it don't make no difference. I ain't everybody, and I can't
stand it. It's awful to be tied up so. And grub comes too easy- I
don't take no interest in vittles, that way. I got to ask, to go
a-fishing; I got to ask, to go in a-swimming- dern'd if I hain't got
to ask to do everything. Well, I'd got to talk so nice it wasn't no
comfort- I'd got to go up in the attic and rip out a while, every day,
to git a taste in my mouth, or I'd a died, Tom. The widder wouldn't
let me smoke; she wouldn't let me yell, she wouldn't let me gape,
nor stretch, nor scratch, before folks-" [Then with a spasm of special
irritation and injury],- "And dad fetch it, she prayed all the time! I
never see such a woman! I had to shove, Tom- I just had to. And
besides, that school's going to open, and I'd a had to go to it- well,
I wouldn't stand that, Tom. Looky-here, Tom, being rich ain't what
it's cracked up to be. It's just worry and worry, and sweat and sweat,
and a-wishing you was dead all the time. Now these clothes suits me,
and this bar'l suits me, and I ain't ever going to shake 'em any more.
Tom, I wouldn't ever got into all this trouble if it hadn't 'a' ben
for that money; now you just take my sheer of it along with your'n,
and gimme a ten-center sometimes- not many times, becuz I don't give a
dem for a thing 'thout it's tollable hard to git- and you go and beg
off for me with the widder."

  "O, Huck, you know I can't do that. 'Tain't fair; and besides if
you'll try this thing just a while longer you'll come to like it."

  "Like it! Yes- the way I'd like a hot stove if I was to set on it
long enough. No, Tom, I won't be rich, and I won't live in them cussed
smothery houses. I like the woods, and the river, and hogsheads, and
I'll stick to 'em, too. Blame it all! just as we'd got guns, and a
cave, and all just fixed to rob, here this dem foolishness has got
to come up and spile it all!"

  Tom saw his opportunity-

  "Looky-here, Huck, being rich ain't going to keep me back from
turning robber."

  "No! O, good-licks, are you in real dead-wood earnest, Tom?"

  "Just as dead earnest as I'm a-sitting here. But Huck, we can't
let you into the gang if you ain't respectable, you know."

  Huck's joy was quenched.

  "Can't let me in, Tom? Didn't you let me go for a pirate?"

  "Yes, but that's different. A robber is more high-toned than what
a pirate is- as a general thing. In most countries they're awful
high up in the nobility- dukes and such."

  "Now Tom, hain't you always ben friendly to me? You wouldn't shet me
out, would you, Tom? You wouldn't do that, now, would you, Tom?"

  "Huck, I wouldn't want to, and I don't want to- but what would
people say? Why they'd say, 'Mph! Tom Sawyer's Gang! pretty low
characters in it!' They'd mean you, Huck. You wouldn't like that,
and I wouldn't."

  Huck was silent for some time, engaged in a mental struggle. Finally
he said:

  "Well, I'll go back to the widder for a month and tackle it and
see if I can come to stand it, if you'll let me b'long to the gang,
Tom."

  "All right, Huck, it's a whiz! Come along, old chap, and I'll ask
the widow to let up on you a little, Huck."

  "Will you Tom- now will you? That's good. If she'll let up on some
of the roughest things, I'll smoke private and cuss private, and crowd
through or bust. When you going to start the gang and turn robbers?"

  "O, right off. We'll get the boys together and have the initiation
to-night, maybe."

  "Have the which?"

  "Have the initiation."

  "What's that?"

  "It's to swear to stand by one another, and never tell the gang's
secrets, even if you're chopped all to flinders, and kill anybody
and all his family that hurts one of the gang."

  "That's gay- that's mighty gay, Tom, I tell you."

  "Well I bet it is. And all that swearing's got to be done at
midnight, in the lonesomest, awfulest place you can find- a ha'nted
house is the best, but they're all ripped up now."

  "Well, midnight's good, anyway, Tom."

  "Yes, so it is. And you've got to swear on a coffin, and sign it
with blood."

  "Now that's something like! Why it's a million times bullier than
pirating. I'll stick to the widder till I rot, Tom; and if I git to be
a reg'lar ripper of a robber, and everybody talking 'bout it, I reckon
she'll be proud she snaked me in out of the wet."
CONCLUSION

                         Conclusion.


  SO ENDETH THIS CHRONICLE. It being strictly a history of a boy, it
must stop here; the story could not go much further without becoming
the history of a man. When one writes a novel about grown people, he
knows exactly where to stop- that is, with a marriage; but when he
writes of juveniles, he must stop where he best can.

  Most of the characters that perform in this book still live, and are
prosperous and happy. Some day it may seem worth while to take up
the story of the younger ones again and see what sort of men and women
they turned out to be; therefore it will be wisest not to reveal any
of that part of their lives at present.



                              THE END