CHAPTER XXXIV.

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

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

"No! Where?"

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

"Yes."

"What did you think the vittles was for?"

"For a dog."

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

"Why?"

"Because part of it was watermelon."

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

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

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

"Ready?"

"Yes," I says.

"All right -- bring it out."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes."

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

"Yes."

"WELL, then."

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

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

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

Tom says:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes."

I hunched Tom, and whispers:

"You going, right here in the daybreak? THAT
warn't the plan."

"No, it warn't; but it's the plan NOW."

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

"Why, HUCK! En good LAN'! ain' dat Misto Tom?"

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

"Why, de gracious sakes! do he know you genl-
men?"

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

"Does WHO know us?"

"Why, dis-yer runaway nigger."

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

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

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

"Well, that's mighty curious. WHO sung out?
WHEN did he sing out? WHAT did he sing out?"
And turns to me, perfectly ca'm, and says, "Did
YOU hear anybody sing out?"

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

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

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

"Did you sing out?"

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

"Not a word?"

"No, sah, I hain't said a word."

"Did you ever see us before?"

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

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

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

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

Tom give him a dime, and said we wouldn't tell no-
body; and told him to buy some more thread to tie up
his wool with; and then looks at Jim, and says:

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

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

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

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

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

"What do we want of a saw?"

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

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

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

I says:

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

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

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

"For what?" I says.

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

"Good land!" I says; "why, there ain't NO neces-
sity for it. And what would you want to saw his leg
off for, anyway?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Borrow a shirt, too."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That ain't nothing; we can get him some."

"Can't nobody READ his plates."

"That ain't got anything to DO with it, Huck Finn.
All HE'S got to do is to write on the plate and throw
it out. You don't HAVE to be able to read it. Why,
half the time you can't read anything a prisoner writes
on a tin plate, or anywhere else."

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

"Why, blame it all, it ain't the PRISONER'S plates."

"But it's SOMEBODY'S plates, ain't it?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Tools?" I says.

"Yes."

"Tools for what?"

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

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

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

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

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

"A couple of case-knives."

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

"Yes."

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

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

"I don't know."

"Well, guess."

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

"THIRTY-SEVEN YEAR -- and he come out in China.
THAT'S the kind. I wish the bottom of THIS fortress
was solid rock."

"JIM don't know nobody in China."

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

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

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

"How long will it take, Tom?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Gimme a CASE-KNIFE."

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

He was always just that particular. Full of principle.

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

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

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

So he done it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tom says:

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

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

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

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

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

"HANNEL 'm, Mars Sid? What IS you a-talkin'
'bout? I wouldn' lay de weight er my finger on
um, not f'r ten hund'd thous'n billion dollars, I
wouldn't."
<--split-->
CHAPTER XXXVII.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Why, what else is gone, Sally?"

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

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

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

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

"Missus, dey's a sheet gone."

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

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

"Oh, DO shet up! -- s'pose the rats took the SHEET?
WHERE'S it gone, Lize?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She says:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I know, but --"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jim says:

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

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

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

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

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

"On the scutcheon we'll have a bend OR in the
dexter base, a saltire MURREY in the fess, with a dog,
couchant, for common charge, and under his foot a
chain embattled, for slavery, with a chevron VERT in a
chief engrailed, and three invected lines on a field
AZURE, with the nombril points rampant on a dancette
indented; crest, a runaway nigger, SABLE, with his
bundle over his shoulder on a bar sinister; and a
couple of gules for supporters, which is you and me;
motto, MAGGIORE FRETTA, MINORE OTTO. Got it out of a
book -- means the more haste the less speed."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   1. Here a captive heart busted.
   2. Here a poor prisoner, forsook by the world
      and friends, fretted his sorrowful life.
   3. Here a lonely heart broke, and a worn spirit
      went to its rest, after thirty-seven years
      of solitary captivity.
   4. Here, homeless and friendless, after
      thirty-seven years of bitter captivity,
      perished a noble stranger, natural son of 
      Louis XIV.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You got any spiders in here, Jim?"

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

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

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

Tom thought a minute or two, and says:

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

"Keep what, Mars Tom?"

"Why, a rattlesnake."

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

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

"TAME it!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"One er dem big cat-tail-lookin' mullen-stalks would
grow in heah, Mars Tom, I reck'n, but she wouldn't
be wuth half de trouble she'd coss."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What's them?" I says.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"All right, I ain't saying nothing; I'm the servant-
girl. Who's Jim's mother?"

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

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

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

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

   Beware. Trouble is brewing. Keep a sharp lookout.
                                        UNKNOWN FRIEND.

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

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


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

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

"Where's the butter?"

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

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

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

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

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

"You been down cellar?"

"Yes'm."

"What you been doing down there?"

"Noth'n."

"NOTH'N!"

"No'm."

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

"I don't know 'm."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His eyes just blazed; and he says:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Say it, Jim."

So he says:

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

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

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

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

So I said I would, and left, and Jim was to hide in
the woods when he see the doctor coming till he was
gone again.
<--split-->
CHAPTER XLI.

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

"Who is your folks?" he says.

"The Phelpses, down yonder."

"Oh," he says. And after a minute, he says:

"How'd you say he got shot?"

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

"Singular dream," he says.

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

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

"What three?"

"Why, me and Sid, and -- and -- and THE GUNS;
that's what I mean."

"Oh," he says.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"But how in the nation'd they ever GIT that grind-
stone IN there, ANYWAY? 'n' who dug that-air HOLE? 'n'
who --"

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

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

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

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

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

"Well, it does beat --"

"Laws alive, I never --"

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

"HOUSE-thieves as well as --"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Did I give you the letter?"

"What letter?"

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

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

"Well, I must a forgot it."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Somebody says:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It's all right," I says.

"And JIM?"

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

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

I was going to say yes; but she chipped in and says:
"About what, Sid?"

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

"What whole thing?"

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

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

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

"Mercy sakes!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tom looks at me very grave, and says:

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

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

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

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

"What DOES the child mean?"

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

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

"Well, that IS a question, I must say; and just like
women! Why, I wanted the ADVENTURE of it; and I'd
a waded neck-deep in blood to -- goodness alive, AUNT
POLLY!"

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

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

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

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

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

So I done it. But not feeling brash.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You, Tom!"

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

"Don t you what ME, you impudent thing -- hand
out them letters."

"What letters?"

"THEM letters. I be bound, if I have to take a-
holt of you I'll --"

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

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

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

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


CHAPTER THE LAST

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

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

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

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

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

Jim says, kind of solemn:

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

I says:

"Why, Jim?"

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

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

"Doan' you 'member de house dat was float'n down
de river, en dey wuz a man in dah, kivered up, en I
went in en unkivered him and didn' let you come in?
Well, den, you kin git yo' money when you wants it,
kase dat wuz him."

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

                       THE END