 They was fetched in a very nice-looking old gentleman along, and a nice-looking younger one with his right arm and a sling, and my souls how'd the people yelled and laughed and kept it up. But I didn't see no joke about it, and I judged it would strain the duke and the king's sum to see any. I reckon they'd turned pale. But no, nary a pale did they turn. The duke he never let on he's suspicion what was up, but just went a goo-gooing around, happy and satisfied, like a jug that's googling out buttermilk. And as for the king he just gazed and gazed down sorrowful on them newcomers like it give him the stomach ache in his very heart to think there could be such frauds and rascals in the world. Oh, he'd done it admirable. Lots of the principal people gathered round the king that let him see they was on his side. That old gentleman that had just come looked all puzzled to death. Pretty soon he'd begun to speak, and I see straight off he pronounced like an Englishman. Not the king's way, though the king's was pretty good for an imitation. I can't give the old gents words. No, I can't imitate him. But he turned around to the crowd and says, about like this, This is a surprise to me which I wasn't looking for. And I'll acknowledge, candid and frank, I ain't very well fixed to meet it and answer it. For my brother and me has had misfortunes. He's broke his arm, and our baggage got put off at a town above here last night, in the night by mistake. I am Peter Wilkes's brother Harvey, and this is his brother William, which can't hear nor speak, and can't even make signs to amount to much. Now he's got only one hand to work them with. We are who we say we are, and in a day or two, when I get the baggage, I can prove it. But up till then I won't say nothing more, but go to the hotel and wait. So him and the new dummy started off, and the king he laughs and blithers out, broke his arm, very likely ain't it, and very convenient too, for a fraud that's got to make signs and ain't learnt how. Lost their baggage. That's mighty good, and mighty ingenious under the circumstances. And so he laughed again, and so did everybody else, except three or four, or maybe half a dozen. One of these was that doctor. Another one was a sharp-looking gentleman, with a carpet-bag of the old-fashioned kind made out of carpet stuff that had just come off of the steamboat and was talking to him in a low voice, and glancing towards the king now and then and out in their heads. It was Levi Bell, the lawyer that was gone up to Louisville, and another one was a big rough husky that come along and listened to all the old gentlemen said, and was listening to the king now. And when the king got done, this husky up and says, Say, looky here, if you owe Harvey Wilkes, when did you come to this town? Day before the funeral, friend, says the king. But what time of day? In the evening about an hour or two before sundown. How'd you come? I come down on the Susan Powell from Cincinnati. Well, then how'd you come to be up at the point in the morning in a canoe? I warn't up at the point in the morning. It's a lie. Several of them jumped for him, begged him not to talk that way to an old man and a preacher. Preacher behanged, he's a fraud and a liar. He was up at the point that morning. I live up there, don't I? Well, I was up there, and he was up there. I see him there. He come in a canoe, along with Tim Collins and a boy. The doctor, he up and says, Would you know the boy again if you was to see him behinds? I reckon I would, but I don't know. Why, yonder he is now. I know him perfectly easy. It was me he pointed at. The doctor says, Neighbors, I don't know whether the new couple is frauds or not, but if these two ain't frauds, I am an idiot. That's all. I think it's our duty to see that they don't get away from here till we've looked into this thing. Come along, Heinz. Come along the rest of you. We'll take these fellows to the tavern, and affront them with the other couple, and I reckon we'll find out something before we get through. It was nuts for the crowd, though maybe not for the king's friends, so we all started. It was about sundown. The doctor he led me along by the hand, and was plenty kind enough, but he never let go my hand. We all got in a big room in the hotel, and lit up some candles and fetched in the new couple. First the doctor says, I don't wish to be too hard on these two men, but I think they're frauds, and they may have complices that we don't know nothing about. If they have, won't the complices get away with that bag of gold Peter Wilkes left? It ain't unlikely. If these men ain't frauds, they won't object to sending for that money and letting us keep it till they prove they're all right. Ain't that so? Everybody agreed to that. So I judged they had our gang in a pretty tight place right at the out-start. But the king he only looks sorrowful and says, Gentlemen, I wish the money was there, but I ain't got no disposition to throw anything in the way of a fair, open, out-and-out investigation of this miserable business. But last the money ain't there. You can send and see if you want to. Where is it, then? Well, when my niece gave it to me to keep for her, I took and hid it inside of the straw-tick of my bed, not wishing to bank it for the few days we'd be here, and considering the bed as safe place, we not be in use to the niggers, and supposing them honest, like servants in England. The niggers stole it the very next morning after I went downstairs, and when I sold them I hadn't missed the money yet, so they got clean away with it. My servant here can tell you about it, gentlemen. The doctor and Savile said, Sharks! And I see nobody didn't altogether believe him. One man asked me if I see the niggers steal it. I said, No, but I see them sneaking out of the room and hustling away, and I never thought nothing, only I reckon they was afraid they had waked up my master and was trying to get away before he made trouble with them. That was all they asked me. Then the doctor whirls on me and says, Are you English, too? I says yes, and him and some others laughed, and says, Stuff! Well, then they sailed into the general investigation, and there we had it, up and down, hour in, hour out, and nobody never said a word about supper, nor ever seemed to think about it, and so they kept it up, and kept it up, and it was the worst mixed-up thing you ever see. They made the king tell his yarn, and they made the old gentleman tell hisen. And anybody but a lot of prejudiced chuckleheads would have seen that the old gentleman was spinning truth and the other one lies, and by and by they had me up to tell what I knowed. The king he give me a left-handed look out of the corner of his eye, and so I knowed enough to talk on the right side. I begun to tell about Sheffield, and how we lived there, and all about the English Wilks's, and so on. But I didn't get pretty furred till the doctor begun to laugh, and leave I bell the lawyer says. Said down, my boy, I wouldn't strain myself if I was you. I reckon you ain't used to lying. It don't seem to come handy. What you want is practice. You do it pretty awkward. I didn't care nothing for the compliment, but I was glad to be let off, anyway. The doctor he started to say something in turns and says, If you've been in town at first, leave I bell. The king broke in and reached out his hand and says, Why is this my poor, dead brother's old friend that he's wrote so often about? The lawyer and him shook hands, and the lawyer smiled and looked pleased, and they talked right along awhile, and then got to one side and talked low. And at last the lawyer speaks up and says, That'll fix it. I'll take the order and send it along with your brothers, and then they'll know it's all right. So they got some paper and a pen, and the king he set down and twisted his head to one side, and charred his tongue, and scrawled off something. Then they give the pen to the duke, and then for the first time the duke looks sick. But he took the pen and wrote. So then the lawyer turns to the new old gentleman and says, You and your brother, please write a line or two and sign your names. The old gentleman wrote, but nobody couldn't read it. The lawyer looked powerful, astonished, and says, Well, it beats me, and snaked a lot of old letters out of his pocket, and examined them, and then examined the old man's writing, and then them again, and then says, These old letters is from Harvey Wilkes, and here's these two handwritings, and anybody can see they didn't write them. The king and the duke looked sold and foolish, I tell you, to see how the lawyer had took them in. And here's this old gentleman's hand writing, and anybody can tell easy enough he didn't write them. Fact is the scratches he makes ain't properly writing at all. Now here's some letters from the new old gentleman says, If you please, let me explain. Nobody can read my hand but my brother there, so he copies for me. It's his hand you've got there, not mine. Well, says the lawyer. This is the state of things. I've got some of William's letters, too. So if you'll get him to write a line or so we can come. He can't write with his left hand, says the old gentleman. If he could use his right hand you would see that he wrote his own letters and mine, too. Look at both, please, they're by the same hand. The lawyer done it, and says, I believe it so, and if it ain't so there's a heap stronger resemblance than I'd noticed before, anyway. Well, well, well, I thought we was right on the track of a solution but it's gone to grass partly. But anyway, one thing is proved. These two ain't either of them Wilks's. And he wagged his head towards the king and the duke. Well, what do you think? That mule-headed old fool wouldn't give in then. Indeed he wouldn't. Said it warn't no fair test. Said his brother William was the cussidest joker in the world, and hadn't tried to write. He, see William, was going to play one of his jokes the minute he put the pen to paper. And so he warmed up and went warbling right along till he was actually beginning to believe what he was saying himself. But pretty soon the new gentleman broke in and says, I've thought of something. Is there anybody here that helped to lay out the late Peter Wilks for burying? Yes, says somebody. Me and Ab Turner done it. We're both here. Then the old man turns toward the king and says, Perhaps this gentleman can tell me what was tattooed on his breast. Blamed if the king didn't have to brace up mighty quick or he'd a squish down like a bluff bank that the river has cut under. It took him so sudden. In mind you, it was the thing that was calculated to make most anybody squished to get fetched such a solid one as that without any notice. Because how was he going to know what was tattooed on the man? He whitened a little. He couldn't help it. And it was mighty still in there. And everybody bent on a little forwards and gazing at him. Says I to myself, now he'll throw up the sponge. There ain't no more use. Well, did he? A body can't hardly believe it, but he didn't. I reckon he thought he could keep the thing up till he tired them people out so they'd thin out and him and the Duke could break loose and get away. Anyway, he sat there. Pretty soon he begun to smile and says, Hmm. It's a very tough question, ain't it? Yes, sir, I can tell you what's tattooed on his breast. It's just a small, thin, blue arrow. That's what it is. If you don't look close, you can't see it. Now what do you say? Hey? Well, I never see anything like that old blister for clean out and out cheek. The new old gentleman turns brisk towards Ab Turner and his part, and his eye lights up like he judged he got the king this time and says, There, you heard what he said. Was there any such mark on Peter Wilkes' breast? Both of them spoke up and says, We didn't see no such mark. Good, says the old gentleman. Now what you did see on his breast was a small, dim P and a B, which is an initial he dropped when he was young, and a W with dashes between them, so P dash B dash W. And he marked them that way on a piece of paper. Come, ain't that what you saw? Both of them spoke up again and says, No, we didn't. We didn't see any marks at all. Well, everybody was in a state of mind now, and they sing out the whole violin of them's frauds. Let's duck them. Let's drown them. Let's ride them on a rail. I was whooping at once, and there was a ratham pow-wow. But the lawyer he jumps on the table and yells and says, Gentlemen, gentlemen. Hear me just a word, just a single word, if you please. There's one way yet. Let's go and dig up the corpse and look. That took them. Hooray! They all shouted, and was starting right off. But the lawyer and the doctor sung out, Hold on, hold on. Collar all these four men and the boy and fetch them along, too. We'll do it. They all shouted. And if we don't find them marks, we'll lynch the whole gang. I was scared now, I tell you. But there warn't no getting away, you know. They gripped us all, and marched us right along, straight for the graveyard, which was a mile and a half down the river, and the whole town at our heels, for we made noise enough, and it was only nine in the evening. As we went by our house, I wished I hadn't set Mary Jane out of town, because now if I could tip her the wink she'd light out and save me, and blow on our deadbeats. Well, we swarmed along down the river-road, just carrying on like wildcats, and to make it more scary the sky was darking up, and the lightning began to wink and flitter, and the wind to shiver amongst the leaves. This was the most awful trouble and most dangerous some I ever was in, and I was kind of stunned. Everything was going so different from what I had allowed for. Instead of being fixed so I could take my own time if I wanted to, and see all the fun, and have Mary Jane at my back to save me, and set me free when the clothes fit come. Here was nothing in the world betwixt me and sudden death but just them tattoo-marks, if they didn't find them. I couldn't bear to think about it, and yet somehow I couldn't think about nothing else. It got darker and darker, and it was a beautiful time to give the crowd the slip, but that big husky had me by the wrist. Hines, and a body might as well try to give a golyard the slip. He dragged me right along. He was so excited, and I had to run to keep up. When they got there they swarmed into the graveyard and washed over it like an overflow. And when they got to the grave they found they had about a hundred times as many shovels as they wanted, but nobody hadn't thought to fetch a lantern. But they sailed in the digging anyway by the flicker of the lightning, and sent a man to the nearest house a half a mile off to borrow one. So they dug, and dug like everything, and it got awful dark, and the rain started, and the wind swished and swushed along, and the lightning come brisker in brisker, and the thunder boomed. But then people never took no notice of it. They was so full of this business. In one minute you could see everything and every face in that big crowd, and the shovel pulls the dirt sailing up out of the grave, and the next second the dark wiped it all out, and you couldn't see nothing at all. At last they got out the coffin, and begun to unscrew the lid, and then another such crowding and shouldering and shoving as there was to screw gin and get a sight you never see. And in the dark, that way it was awful. Hines he hurt my wrist dreadful pulling and tugging so, and I reckon he clean forgot I was in the world he was so excited and panting. All of a sudden the lightning let go a perfect sleuce of white glare, and somebody sings out, By the living jingo here's the bag of gold on his breast. Hines let out a whoop like everybody else, and dropped my wrist and gave a big surge to bust his way in and get a look, and the way I lit out and shinned for the road in the dark there ain't nobody can tell. I had the road all to myself, and I fairly flew. Least ways I had it all to myself except the solid dark, and the now and then glares, and the buzzing of the rain, and the thrashing of the wind, and the splitting of the thunder. And sure as you are born I did clip it along. When I struck the town I see there warn't nobody out in the storm, so I never hunted for no back streets, but humped it straight through the main one. And when I begun to get towards our house I aim my eye and set it. No light there, the house all dark, which made me feel sorry and disappointed I didn't know why. But at last just as I was sailing by, flash comes the light in Mary Jane's window, and my heart swelled up sudden like to bust, and the same second the house and all was behind me in the dark and warn't ever going to be before me no more in this world. She was the best girl I ever see, and had the most sand. The minute I was far enough above the town to see I could make the toe-head I begun to look sharp for a boat to borrow, and the first time the lightning showed me one that wasn't chained I snatched it and shoved. It was a canoe, and warn't fasten with nothing but a rope. The toe-head was a rattling big distance off, a way out there in the middle of the river, but I didn't lose no time, and when I struck the raft at last I was so fagged I would have just laid down to blow and gasp if I could have afforded it. But I didn't, as I sprung aboard I sung out, Out with you, Jim, and set her loose! Glory be to goodness, we're shut of them! Jim lit out, and was coming for me with both arms spread he was so full of joy, but when I glimpsed him in the lightning my heart shot up in my mouth and went overboard backwards, for I forgot he was old King Lear and a drownded A-Rab, all in one, and it most scared the livers and lights out of me. But Jim fished me out, and was going to hug me, and bless me, and so on, he was so glad I was back, and we were shut of the King and the Duke, but I says, not now! Have it for breakfast! Have it for breakfast! Cut loose and let her slide! So in two seconds away we went, a-sliding down the river, and it did seem so good to be free again, and all by ourselves on the big river, and nobody to bother us. I had to skip around a bit, and jump up and crack my heels a few times, I couldn't help it, but about the third crack I noticed a sound that I knowed mighty well, and held my breath and listened and waited, and sure enough, when the next flash busted out over the water, here they come, and just laying to their oars and making their skiff hum, it was the King and the Duke. So I willed right down on to the planks then and give up, and it was all I could do to keep from cryin' and a chapter. This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording is by Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Chapter 30. When they got aboard the King went for me, and shook me by the collar, and says, Trying to give us the slip, was ye, ye pup? Tired of our company, hey? I says, Know, ye majesty, we warn't. Please don't, ye majesty. Quick then, and tell us what was your idea, or I'll shake the insides out of you. Honest, I tell ye everything just as it happened, ye majesty. The man that had a hold of me was very good to me, and kept saying he had a boy about as big as me that died last year, and he was sorry to see a boy in such a dangerous fix. And when they was all took by surprise by finding the gold, and made a rush for the coffin, he lets go of me, and whispers, Heal it now, or they'll hang ya, sure. And I lit out. He didn't seem no good for me to stay. I couldn't do nothin', and I didn't want to be hung if I could get away. So I never stopped runnin' till I found the canoe, and when I got here I told Jim to hurry, or they'd catch me and hang me yet, and said I was afeard you and the Duke wasn't alive now, and I was awful sorry, and so was Jim, and was awful glad when we'd see you comin', and you may ask Jim if I didn't. Jim said it was so, and the king told him to shut up, and said, Oh yes, it's mighty likely. And shook me up again, and said he reckoned he'd drowned me. But the Duke says, Let go of the boy, you old idiot. Would you have done any different? Did you inquire around for him when you got loose? I don't remember it. So the king let go of me, and begun to cuss that town and everybody in it. But the Duke says, You better a blame sight give yourself a good cussin' for you're the one that's entitled to it most. You ain't done a thing from the start that had any sense in it, except comin' out so cool and cheeky with that imaginary blue arrow-mark. That was bright, it was right down bully, and it was the thing that saved us. For if it hadn't been for that, they'd a-jailed us till them Englishman's baggage come, and then the penitentiary, you bet. But that trick took him to the graveyard, and the gold done us a still bigger kindness, for if the excited fools hadn't let go all halts and made that rush to get a look, we'd a-slept in our cravats tonight. Cravats warranted to wear, too, longer than we'd need them. They was still a minute, thinkin', then the king says, kind of absent-minded like. Huh! And we reckon the niggers stole it. That made me squirm. Yes, says the duke kind of slow and deliberate and sarcastic. We did. After about a half a minute the king draws out. Least ways, I did. The duke says the same way. On the contrary, I did. The king kind of ruffles up and says, Looky here, Bilgewater, what were you referring to? The duke says, pretty brisk. When it comes to that, maybe you'll let me ask, what was you referring to? Shucks, says the king very sarcastic. But I don't know, maybe you was asleep and didn't know what you was about. The duke bristles up now and says, Oh, let up on this cussed nonsense. Do you take me for a blameful? Don't you reckon I know who hid that money in that coffin? Yes, sir, I know you do know, because you've done it yourself. It's a lie, and the duke went for him. The king sings out, Take your hands off, let go of my throat, I'll take it all back. The duke says, Well, you just own up first that you did hide that money there, and tended to give me the slip one of these days, and come back and dig it up and have it all to yourself. Wait just a minute, duke. Answer me this one question honest and fair. If you didn't put the money there, say it, and I'll believe you and take back everything I said. You old scoundrel, I didn't, and you know I didn't. There now. Well, then, I'll believe you. But answer me only just this one more. Now, don't get mad. Didn't you have it in your mind to hook the money and hide it? The duke never said nothing for a little bit. Then he says, Well, I don't care if I did. I didn't do it anyway. But you not only had it in mind to do it, but you'd done it. I wished I'd never die if I'd done it, duke, and that's honest. I won't say I warn't it going to do it, because it was, but you, I mean somebody, got in ahead of me. It's a lie. You done it, and you got to say you done it, or the king-begunned girl, and then he gasped out, Nuff, I own up. I was very glad to hear him say that. It made me feel much more easier than what I was feeling before. So the duke took his hands off and says, If you ever deny it again, I'll drown you. It's well for you to sit there and blubber like a baby. It's fitting for you after the way you have acted. I never seen such an old ostrich for wanting to gobble everything, and I had trusted you all the time, like you was my own father. You ought to have been ashamed of yourself to stand by and hear it saddle on to a lot of poor niggers, and you never say a word for them. It makes me feel ridiculous to think I was soft enough to believe that rubbish. Cush you, I can see now why you was so anxious to make up the deficit. You wanted to get what money I'd got out of the non-such in one thing or another and scoop it all. The king says timid and still a snufflin. Why, duke, it was you that said make up the deficit, it warned me. Dry up, I don't want to hear no more out of you, says the duke. And now you see what you got by it. They got all their own money back and all of ourn but a shackler too, besides. Go long to bed, and don't you deficit me no more deficits, long as you live. So the king sneaked into the wigwam and took to his bottle for comfort, and for long the duke tackled his bottle, and so in about a half an hour they was as thick as thieves again, and the tighter they got, the lovinger they got, and went off a snoring in each other's arms. They both got powerful mellow, but I noticed the king didn't get mellow enough to forget to remember to not deny about hiding the money back again. That made me feel easy and satisfied. Of course, when they got the snoring we had a long gavel, and I told Jim everything. CHAPTER 31 We dassen't stop again at any town for days and days, kept right along down the river. We was down south in the warm weather now, in a mighty long ways from home. We had begun to come to trees with Spanish moss on them, hanging down from the limbs like long gray beards. It was the first I ever see it growing, and it made the woods look solemn and dismal. So now the frauds reckon they was out of danger, and they had begun to work the villages again. First they'd done a lecture on temperance, but they didn't make enough for them both to get drunk on. Then in another village they started a dance in school, but they didn't know no more how to dance than a kangaroo does, so the first prance they made, the general public jumped in and pranced them out of town. Another time they tried to go at yellow-cushion, but they didn't yellow-cute long till the audience got up and give them a solid good cussing and made them skip out. They tackled missionarying, amesmerizing, and doctrine, and telling fortunes and little everything, but they couldn't seem to have no luck. So at last they got just about dead broke, and laid about the raft as she floated along, thinking and thinking, never saying nothing, by the half a day at a time, and dreadful blue and desperate. And at last they took a change and began to lay their heads together in the wigwam and talk low and confidential two or three hours at a time. Jim and me got uneasy. We didn't like the look of it. We judged they were studying up some kind of worse devil-tree than ever. We turned it over and over, and at last we made up our minds they was going to break into somebody's house or store, or was going into the counterfeit money business or something. So then we was pretty scared, and made up an agreement that we wouldn't have nothing in the world to do with such actions, and if we ever got the least show we would give them the cold shake and clear out and leave them behind. Well early one morning we hid the raft in a good, safe place about two miles below a little bit of a shabby village named Poxville. And the king he went ashore and told us all to stay hid whilst he went up the town and smelt around to see if anybody had got any wind of the royal none such there yet. "'House to rob,' you mean,' says Ida myself, and when you get through robbing it you'll come back here and wonder what has become of me and Jim and the raft, and you'll have to take it out and wander it. And he said if he weren't back by midday the Duke and me would know it was all right, and we was to come along. So we stayed where we was. The Duke he fretted and sweated around and was in a mighty sour way. He scolded us for everything, and we couldn't seem to do nothing right. He found fault with every little thing. Something was a-brewing, sure. I was good and glad when midday come and no king. We could have a change anyway, and maybe a chance for the chance on top of it. So me and the Duke went up to the village and hunted round there for the king. And by and by we found him in the back room of a little load-doggery, very tight, and a lot of loafers bully-ragging him for sport, and he a-cussing and a-threatening with all his mind, and so tight he couldn't walk and couldn't do nothing to them. The Duke he begun to abuse him for an old fool, and the king begun to sass back. And the minute they was fairly at it, I lit out and shook the reefs out of my hind legs, and spun down the river road like a deer, for I see our chance. And I made up my mind that it would be a long day before they ever see me and Jim again. I got down there all out of breath, but loaded up with joy, and sung out, "'Sit or loose, Jim, we're all right now!' But there warn't no answer. And nobody come out of the wigwam. Jim was gone. I set up a shout, and then another, and then another one, and run this way and that in the woods, whooping and screeching. But it warn't no use. Old Jim was gone. Then I sat down and cried, I couldn't help it. But I couldn't sit still long. Pretty soon I went out on the road, trying to think what I better do, and I run across the boy walkin', and asked him if he'd seen a strange nigger dressed so and so, and he says, "'Yes.' "'Whereabouts?' says I. "'Down to Silas Phelps Place, two mile below here. He's a runaway nigger, and they've got him. Was you looking for him?' "'You bet I ain't.' I run across him in the woods about an hour or two ago, and he said if I hollered he'd cut my livers out, and told me to lay down and stay where I was, and I'd done it. Been there ever since. I feared to come out.' "'Well,' he says, you needn't be afraid no more because they've got him. He run off from down south, somewheres.' "'It's a good job they got him.' "'Well, I reckon there's two hundred dollars reward on him. It's like picking up money out of the road.' "'Yes, it is, and I could have had it if I'd been big enough. I see him first. Who nailed him?' It was an old fella, a stranger, and he sold out his chance in him for forty dollars, because he's got to go up the river and can't wait. Think of that now. You bet I'd wait if it was seven years.' "'That's me every time,' says I. But maybe his chance ain't worth no more than that if he'll sell it so cheap. Maybe there's something ain't straight about it.' "'But it is, though, straight as a string. I see the hand-bill myself. It tells all about him, to a dot. Pates him like a picture. Tells the plantation he's from, below New Orleans. No Surrey Bob! There ain't no trouble about that speculation, you betcha. Say, give me a charred tobacco, won't ya?' I didn't have none, so he left. I went to the raft and sat down in the wigwam to think. But I couldn't come to nothing. I thought till I wore my head sore. But I couldn't see no way out of the trouble. After all this long journey, and after all we'd done for them scoundrels, here it was all come to nothing, and everything all busted up and ruined, because they could have the heart to serve Jim such a trick as that, and make him a slave again all his life, and amongst strangers, too, for forty dirty dollars. Once I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for Jim to be a slave at home where his family was, as long as he got to be a slave, and so I better write a letter to Tom Sawyer, tell him to tell Miss Watson where he was. But I soon give up that notion for two things. She'd be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness full even her, and so she'd sell him straight down the river again. And if she didn't, everybody naturally despises an ungrateful nigger, and they'd make Jim feel it all the time. And so he'd feel honoured and disgraced. And then think of me. It would get all around that Huck Finn helped a nigger to get his freedom, and if I was ever to see anybody from that town again I'd be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame. That's just the way. A person does a low down thing, and then he don't want to take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide it ain't no disgrace. That was my fix, exactly. The more I studied about this the more my conscience went to grinded me, and the more wicked and low down in honour I got the feeling. And it lasts when it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in the face, and let me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up there in heaven, whilst I was stealing a poor old woman's nigger that had never done me no harm, and now was showing me there's one that's always on the lookout, and ain't it going to allow no such miserable do-ins to go only just so fur and no further? I almost dropped in my tracks I was so scared. Well, I tried the best I could to kind of soften it up somehow for myself by saying I was brung up wicked, and so I weren't so much to blame, but something inside of me kept saying, there was a Sunday school you could have gone to it, and if you'd have done it they'd have learnt you there that people that acts as I've been acting about that nigger goes to everlasting fire. It made me shiver, and I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I couldn't try to quit being the kind of a boy I was and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn't come. Why wouldn't they? It warn't no use to try and hide it from him, nor from me, neither. I knowed very well why they wouldn't come. It was because my heart warn't right. It was because I warn't square. It was because I was playing double. I was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth say I would do the right thing, and the clean thing, and go right to that nigger's owner and tell where he was. But deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and he noted. You can't pray a lie. I found that out. So I was full of trouble, full as I could be, and didn't know what to do. At last I had an idea, and I says I'll go and write the letter, and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing the way I felt his light as a feather right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and sat down and wrote. Miss Watson, your runaway nigger gym is down here two miles below Pikesville, and Mr. Phelps has got him, and he will give him up for the reward if you send. I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and sat there thinking, thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking, and got the thinking over our trip down the river. And I see Jim before me all the time, in the day, and in the night time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we have floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his head, instead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping. And see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog, and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was, and such like times, he would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was. And at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had smallpox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he's got now. And then I happened to look around and see that paper. It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a trembling, because I got to decide for ever betwixt two things, and I noted. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself, All right, then, I'll go to hell, and tore it up. It was awful thoughts, and awful words, but they were said, and I let them stay sad, and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head, and said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line being brung up to it, and the other wart. For a start I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again, and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too, because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog. Then I sat to thinking over how to get at it, and turned over some considerable many ways in my mind, and at last fixed up a plan that suited me. So then I took the barrens of a woody island that was down the river apiece, and as soon as it was fairly dark I crept out with my raft and went for it, and hid it there, and then turned in. I slept the night through, and got up before it was light, and had my breakfast, and put all my store-clothes, and tied up some others and one thing or another in a bundle, and took the canoe and cleared for shore. I landed below where I judged was Phelps's place, and hid my bundle in the woods, and then filled up the canoe with water, and loaded rocks into her and sunk her where I could find her again when I wanted her, about a quarter of a mile below a little steam sawmill that was on the bank. Then I struck up the road, and when I passed the mill I see a sign on it, Phelps's sawmill, and when I come to the farmhouses two or three hundred yards further along I kept my eyes peeled, but didn't see nobody around, although it was good daylight now. But I didn't mind because I didn't want to see nobody just yet, I only wanted to get the lay of the land. According to my plan I was going to turn up there from the village, not from below, so I just took a look and shoved along straight for town. Well, the very first man I see when I got there was the Duke. He was sticking up a bill for the Royal Nonsuch, three-night performance, like that other time. They had the cheek them frauds. I was right on him before I could shirk. He looked astonished, and says, Hello, where'd you come from? Then he says, kind of glad and eager. Where's the raft? Got her in a good place? I says, Why, that's just what I was going to ask your grace. Then he didn't look so joyful, and says, What was your idea for asking me? he says. Well, I says, When I see the King in that doggery yesterday I says to myself, We can't get him home for hours till he's soberer, so I went aloof and around town to put in the time and wait. A man up and off for me ten cents to help him pull a skiff over the river and back to fetch sheep, and so I went along. But when we was dragging him to the boat, and the man left me a hold of the rope and went behind him to shove him along, he was too strong for me and jerked loose and run, and we after him. We didn't have no dog, and so we had to chase him all over the country till we tired him out. We never got him till dark, then we fetched him over, and I started down for the raft. When I got there and see it was gone I says to myself, They got into trouble and had to leave, and they took my nigger, which is the only nigger I've got in the world, and now I'm in a strange country and ain't got no property no more, no nothing, and no way to make my living. So I sat down and cried. I slept in the woods all night. But what did become of the raft then? And Jim, poor Jim! Blamed if I know. That is what's become of the raft. That old fool has made a trade and got forty dollars, and when we found him in the doggery the loafers had matched half dollars with him and got every cent but what he'd spent for whiskey, and when I got him home late last night and found the raft gone we said, That little rascal has stole our raft and shook us, and run down the river. I wouldn't shake my nigger would I? The only nigger I had in the world and the only property? We never thought of that. Fact is I reckon we'd come to consider him our nigger. Yes, we did consider him so. Goodness knows we had trouble enough for him. So when we see the raft was gone and we flat broke there won't anything for it but to try the royal none such another shake. And I've pegged along ever since dry as a powder horn. Where's that ten cents? Give it here. I had considerable money, so I'd give him ten cents, but begged him to spend it for something to eat and give me some because it was all the money I had and I hadn't had nothing to eat since yesterday. He never said nothing. The next minute he whirls on me and says, Do you reckon that nigger would blow on us? We'd skin him if he'd done that. How can he blow? Hate he run off? No. That old fool sold him and never divided with me and the money's gone. Sold him, I says, and began to cry. Why, he was my nigger and that was my money. Where is he? I want my nigger. Well, you can't get your nigger, that's all, so dry up your blubbering. Lookie here, do you think you'd venture to blow on us? Blame if I think I'd trust you. Why, if you was to blow on us? He stopped, but I never see the Duke look so ugly out of his eyes before. I went on a whimpering and says, I don't want to blow on nobody and ain't got no time to blow know-how. I got to turn out and find my nigger. He looked kind of bothered and stood there with his bills fluttering on his arm, thinking and wriggling up his forehead. At last, he says, I'll tell you something, we got to be here three days. If you'll promise you won't blow and won't let the nigger blow, I'll tell you where to find him. So I promised, and he says, A farmer by the name of Silas F— and then he stopped. You see, he started to tell me the truth, but when he stopped that way and begun to study and think again, I reckon he was changing his mind. And so he was. He wouldn't trust me. He wanted to make sure of having me out of the way the whole three days. So pretty soon he says, The man at the bottom is named Abram Foster, Abram G Foster, and he lives forty miles back here in the country, on the road to Lafayette. All right, I says, I can walk it in three days, and I'll start this very afternoon. No you won't, you'll start now, and don't you lose any time about it, neither, nor do any gablin, by the way. Just keep a tight tongue in your head and move right along, and then you won't get into trouble with us, do you hear? That was the order I wanted. That was the one I played for. I wanted to be left free to work my plans. So clear out, he says, and you can tell Mr. Foster whatever you want to. Maybe you can get him to believe that Jim is your nigger. Some idiots don't require documents, least ways I've heard there's such down south here, and when you tell him the hand-bill and the reward's bogus, maybe he'll believe you when you explain to him what the idea was for getting him out. Go long now, and tell him anything you want to, but mind you don't work your jaw any between here and there. So I laughed, and struck for the back country. I didn't look around, but I kind of felt like he was watching me. But I knowed I could tire him out at that. I went straight out in the country as much as a mile before I stopped. Then I doubled back through the woods towards Phelps's. I reckoned I'd better start in all my plans straight off without fooling around, because I wanted to stop Jim's mouth till these fellas could get away. I didn't want no trouble with their kind. I'd seen all I wanted to of them, and wanted to get entirely shut of them. CHAPTER XXXII When I got there there was all still and Sunday-like, and hot and sun-shiny. The hands was gone to the fields, and there was them kind of faint dronins of bugs and flies in the air that makes it seem so lonesome and like everybody's dead and gone. And if a breeze fans along and quivers the leaves it makes you feel mournful, because you feel like it's spirits whispering. Spirits that's been dead over so many years, and you always think they're talking about you. As a general thing it makes a body wish he was dead, too, and done with it all. Phelps was one of these little one-horse cotton plantations, and they all look alike. A rail fence round a two-acre yard, a style made out of logs sawed off and upended in steps, like barrels of a different length, to climb over the fence with, and for the women to stand on when they are going to jump on to a horse. Some sickly grass patches in the big yard, but mostly it was bare and smooth, like an old hat with the nap rubbed off. Big double log house for the white folks, huge logs with a chink stopped up with mud or mortar, and these mud stripes been whitewashed some time or another. One log kitchen, with a big broad, open but roofed passage joining it to the house. Log smokehouse back of the kitchen. Three little log nigger cabins in a row to the other side of the smokehouse. One little hut all by itself, away down against the back fence, and some outbuildings down a piece to the other side. Ash hopper and big kettle to bile soap in by the little hut. Bench by the kitchen door, with bucket of water and a gourd. Hound asleep there in the sun. More hounds asleep round about. About three shade trees away off in a corner. Some current bushes and gooseberry bushes in one place by the fence. Outside of the fence a garden and a watermelon patch. Then the cotton fields begins, and after the fields the woods. I went around and clumb over the backstile by the ash hopper and started for the kitchen. When it got a little ways I heard the dim hum of a spinning wheel wailing along up and sinking along down again. And then I knowed for certain I wished I was dead, for that is the loadsmith's sound in the whole world. I went right along, not fixing up any particular plan, but just trusting the Providence to put the right words in my mouth when the time come. For I had noticed the Providence always did put the right words in my mouth if I left it alone. When it got half way, first one hound, and then another got up and went for me, and of course I stopped and faced them and kept still. And such another powwow as they made. In a quarter of a minute I was a kind of a hub of a wheel, as you may say. Spokes made out of dogs. Circle of fifteen of them packed together around me, with their necks and noses stretched up towards me, a barken and howling, and more are coming. You could see them sailing over fences and round corners from everywheres. A nigger woman come tearing out of the kitchen with a rolling pin in her hands, singing out, Be gone you tag! You spot! Be gone, sir! And she fetched first one and then another of them a clip and sent them howling. None the rest followed. And the next second half of them come back, wagging their tails around me and making friends with me. There ain't no harm in a hound, no how. And behind the woman comes a little nigger girl and two little nigger boys without anything on but tolling in shirts, and they hung on to their mother's gown, and peeped out from a rounder at me, bashful, the way they always do. And here comes the white woman running from the house, about forty-five or fifty-year-old, bare-headed, and her spinning stick in her hand. And behind her comes her little white children, acting the same way the little niggers was going. She was smiling all over so she could hardly stand and says, It's you at last! Ain't it? I out with a yesim, before I thought. She grabbed me and hugged me tight, and then grabbed me by both hands and shook and shook. And the tears come in her eyes and run down over, and she couldn't seem to hug and shake enough, and kept saying, You don't look as much like your mother as I reckon you would, but Law's sake, I don't care for that. I'm so glad to see you. Dear, dear, it does seem like I could eat you up. Children, it's your cousin Tom. Tell him howdy. But they ducked their heads and put their fingers in their mouths and hid behind her, so she run on. Lies, hurry up and get him a hot breakfast right away. Or did you get your breakfast on the boat? I said I had got it on the boat. So then she started for the house, leading me by the hand, and the children tagging after. When we got there she set me down in a split-bottom chair, and set herself down on a little low stool in front of me, holding both of my hands, and says, Now I can have a good look at you. And Law's and me, I've been hungry for it a many and a many a time. All these long years, and it's come at last. We've been expecting you a couple of days and more. What kept you? Boat, get a ground? Yes, I'm she. Don't say yes, I'm say Aunt Sally. Where'd she get a ground? I didn't rightly know what to say because I didn't know whether the boat would be coming up the river or down. But I'd go a good deal on instinct. And my instinct said she would be coming up from down toward Orleans. That didn't help me much, though, for I didn't know the names of bars down that way. I see I got to invent a bar, or forget the name of the one we got a ground on, or ah, now I struck an idea, and fetched it out. It warn't the grounding, that didn't keep us back but a little. We blowed out a cylinder head. Good gracious! Anybody hurt? No, kill the nigger. Well, it's lucky, because sometimes people do get hurt. Two years ago last Christmas, your Uncle Silas was coming up from the Orleans on the old Lally Rook, and she blowed out a cylinder head and crippled a man. And I think he died afterwards. He was a Baptist. Your Uncle Silas know'd a family in Baton Rouge that know'd his people very well. Yes, I remember now. He did die. Mortification set in, and they had to amputate him. But it didn't save him. Yes, it was mortification. That was it. He turned blue all over, and died in the hope of a glorious resurrection. They say he was a sight to look at. Your Uncle's been up to the town every day to fetch you, and he's gone again, not more than an hour ago. He'll be back any minute now. You must have met him on the road, didn't you? Oldish man with a, no, I didn't see nobody, Aunt Sally. The boat landed just at daylight, and I left my baggage on the wharf boat and went looking around the town and out of peace in the country, to put in the time, and not get here too soon. And so I come down the back way. Who'd you give the baggage to? Nobody. My child, it'll be stole. Not where I hid it, I reckon it won't, I says. How did you get your breakfast so early on the boat? It was kinder thin ice, but I says. The captain seemed me standing around and told me I better have something to eat before I went ashore. So he took me in the Texas to the office's lunch and gave me all I wanted. I was getting so uneasy I couldn't listen good. I had my mind on the children all the time. I wanted to get them out to one side and pump them a little, and find out who I was. But I couldn't get no show. Mrs. Phelps kept it up and run on so. Pretty soon she made the cold, chill streak all down my back because she says, But here we're running on this way, and you ain't told me a word about Sis, nor any of them. Now I'll rest my works a little, and you start up your own. Just tell me everything. Tell me all about them, all every one of them, and how they are, and what they're doing, and what they told you to tell me and every last thing you can think of. Well, I see I was up a stump, and up it good. Providence had stood by me this fur all right, but I was hard and tight, aground now. I see it warn't a bit of use to try to go ahead. I'd got to throw up my hand. So I says to myself, Here's another place where I got to risk the truth. I open my mouth to begin. But she grabbed me and hustled me in behind the bed and says, Here he comes. Stick your head down, Loa. There, that'll do it. You can't be seen now. Don't you let on your here. I'll play a joke on him. Children, don't you say a word. I see I was in a fix now. But it warn't no use to worry. There warn't nothing to do but just hold still, and try and be ready to stand from under when the lightning struck. I had just one little glimpse of the old gentleman when he'd come in, then the bed hit him. Mrs. Phelps she jumps for him and says, Has he come? No, says her husband. Goodness gracious! she says. What in the world can it become of him? I can't imagine, says the old gentleman, and I must say it makes me dreadful uneasy. Uneasy, she says. I'm ready to go distracted. He must to come. And you've missed him along the road. I know it so. Something tells me so. Why, Sally, I couldn't miss him along the road. You know that. But, oh, dear, dear, what will Sis say? He must to come. You must have missed him. He—oh, don't distress me any more and I'm already distressed. I don't know what in the world to make of it. I'm at my wit's end, and I don't mind acknowledging it. I'm right down scared. But there's no hope that he's come, for he couldn't come and me miss him. Sally, it's terrible. Just terrible. Something's happened to the boat, sure. Why, Silas, look yonder. Up the road. Ain't that somebody coming? He sprung to the window at the head of the bed, and that gave Mrs. Phelps the chance she wanted. She stooped down quick at the foot of the bed and give me a pool. And out I come. And when he turned back from the window, there she stood, a beaming and a smiling like a house of fire, and I standing pretty meek and sweaty alongside. The old gentleman stared and says, Why, who's that? Who do you reckon it is? I ain't no idea. Who is it? It's Tom Sawyer. By jinks I most slumped through the floor, but there warn't no time to swap knives. The old man grabbing by the hand it shook and kept on shaking, and all the time how the woman did dance around and laugh and cry, and then how they both did fire off questions about Sid and Mary and the rest of the tribe. But if they was joyful, it warn't nothing to what I was, for it was like being born again. I was so glad to find out who I was. Well, they froze to me for two hours, and at last, when my chin was so tired it couldn't hardly go no more, I had told them more about my family. I mean the Sawyer family, that never happened to any six Sawyer families. And I explained all about how we blowed out a cylinder head at the mouth of White River, and it took us three days to fix it, which was all right and worked first rate, because they didn't know but what it would take three days to fix it. If I'd have called it a bolt head it would have done just as well. Now I was feeling pretty comfortable all down one side, and pretty uncomfortable all up the other. Being Tom Sawyer was easy and comfortable, and it stayed easy and comfortable till by and by I hear a steamboat coughing along down the river. That assays to myself, suppose Tom Sawyer comes down on that boat, and suppose he steps in here any minute and sings out my name before I can throw him a wink to keep quiet. Well, I couldn't have it that way, it wouldn't do it all. I must go up the road and wail at him. So I told the folks I reckoned I would go up to town and fetch down my baggage. The old gentleman was forgoing along with me, but I said no, I could drive the horse myself, and I'd rather he wouldn't take no trouble about me. CHAPTER 33 So I started for town in the wagon, and when I was half way I see a wagon coming, and sure enough it was Tom Sawyer, and I stopped and waited till he'd come along. I says, hold on, and it stopped alongside, and his mouth opened up like a trunk, and stayed so, and he swallowed two or three times like a person that's got a dry throat, and then says, I ain't ever done you no harm, you knew that. So then what do you want to come back and haunt me for? I says, I ain't come back, I ain't been gone. When he heard my voice it righted him up some, but he warn't quite satisfied yet, he says. Don't you play nothin' on me, because I wouldn't on you, honest engine, you ain't a ghost? Honest engine, I ain't, I says. Well, that ought to settle it, of course, but I can't somehow seem to understand it no way. Lookie here, won't you ever murdered at all? No, I warn't ever murdered at all, I played it on them, you come in here and feel of me if you don't believe me. So he done it, and it satisfied him, and he was that glad to see me again he didn't know what to do, and he wanted to know all about it right off, because it was a grand adventure, and mysterious, and so it hit him where he lived. But I said, leave it alone till by and by, and told his driver to wait, and we drove off a little peace, and I told him the kind of a fix I was in, and what did he reckon we better do? He said, let him alone a minute, and don't disturb him. So he thought and thought, and pretty soon he says, It's all right, I've got it. Take my truck and your wagon, and let on its yarn, and you turn back and fool along slow so as to get to the house about the time you ought to, and I'll go towards town a peace, and take a fresh start, and get there a quarter or half an hour after you, and you needn't let on to know me at first. I says, All right, but wait a minute, there is one more thing, a thing that nobody don't know but me. And that is, there is a nigger here that I'm a trying to steal out of slavery, and his name is Jim, old Miss Watson's Jim. He says, What? Why Jim is—? He stopped and went to study it. I says, I know what you'll say, you'll say it's dirty, low-down business, but what if it is? I'm low-down, and I'm going to steal him, and I want you to keep mum and not let on, will you? His eye lit up, and he says, I'll help you steal him. Well, I'll let go all holts then, like I was shot. It was the most astonishing speech I ever heard, and I'm bound to say Tom Sawyer fell considerable in my estimation. Only I couldn't believe it. Tom Sawyer, a nigger-stealer. Oh, shucks, I says. You're joking. I ain't joking, neither. Well then, I says, joking or no joking, if you hear anything said about a runaway nigger, don't forget to remember that you don't know nothing about him, and I don't know nothing about him. Then we took the trunk and put it in my wagon, and he drove off his way, and I drove mine. But of course I forgot all about driving slow on accounts of being glad and full of thinking, so I got home a heap too quick for that length of a trip. The old gentleman was at the door, and he says, Why, this is wonderful. Whoever would have thought it was in that mare to do it. I wish we'd have timed her. And she ain't sweated a hair, not a hair. It's wonderful. Why, I wouldn't take a hundred dollars for that horse now, I wouldn't, honest, and yet I'd have sold her for fifteen before, and thought it was all she was worth. That's all he said. He was the innocentest, best-old soul I ever see. But it warn't surprising, because he warn't only just a farmer, he was a preacher too, and had a little one-horse log-church down back of the plantation, which he builded himself at his own expense for a church and school-house, and never charged nothing for his preaching, and it was worth it, too. There was plenty other farmer preachers like that, and done the same way, down south. In about half an hour, Tom's wagon drove up to the front style, and Aunt Sally she sees it through the window, because it was only about fifty yards, and says, Why, there's somebody come. I wonder who Tiz? Why, I do believe it's a stranger. Jimmy, that's one of the children, run and tell lies to put on another plate for dinner. Everybody made a rush for the front door, because, of course, a stranger don't come every year, and so he lays over the a la fever for interest when he does come. Tom was over the style and starting for the house. The wagon was spinning up the road for the village, and we was all bunched in the front door. Tom had his store-clothes on, and an audience, and that was always nuts for Tom Sawyer. In them circumstances it won't no trouble to him to throw in an amount of style that was suitable. He warned a boy to amici along up that yard like a sheep. No, he come calm and important like the ram. When he got a front of us he lifts his hat ever so gracious and dainty, like it was the lid of a box that had butterflies asleep in it, and he didn't want to disturb them, and says, Mr. Archibald Nichols, I presume? No, my boy, says the old gentleman. I'm sorry to say your driver has deceived you. Nichols's place is down a matter of three mile more. Come in, come in. Tom he took a look back over his shoulder and says, Too late, he's out of sight. Yes, he's gone, my son, and you must come in and eat your dinner with us, and then we'll hitch up and take you down to Nichols's. Oh, I can't make you so much trouble. I couldn't think of it. I'll walk. I don't mind the distance. But we won't let you walk. It wouldn't be a southern hospitality to do it. Come right in. Oh, do, says Aunt Sally. It ain't a bit of trouble to us, not a bit in the world. You must stay. It's a long, dusty three mile, and we can't let you walk. And besides, I've already told him to put on another plate when I see you coming. So you mustn't disappoint us. Come right in and make yourself at home. So Tom he thanked him very hearty and handsome, and let himself be persuaded and come in. And when he was in he said he was a stranger from Hicksville, Ohio, and his name was William Thompson, and he made another bow. Well, he run on and on and on, making up stuff about Hicksville and everybody in it he could invent. And I was getting a little nervous, and wondering how this was going to help me out of my scrape. And at last, still talking along, he reached over and kissed Aunt Sally right on the mouth, and then settled back again in his chair comfortable, and was going on talking. But she jumped up and wiped it off with the back of her hand, and says, You audacious puppy! He looked kind of hurt, and says, I'm surprised at you, ma'am. You're so—what do you reckon I am? I have a good notion to take it. Say, what did you mean by kissing me? He looked kind of humble, and says, I didn't mean nothing, ma'am. I didn't mean no harm. I thought you'd like it. Why, you born fool! She took up the spin and stick, and it looked like it was all she could do to keep from giving him a crack with it. What made you think I'd like it? Well, I don't know. Only they—they told me you would. They told you I would. Whoever told you is another lunatic. I never heard the beat of it. Who's they? Why, everybody, they all said so, ma'am. It was all she could do to hold in, and her eyes snapped, and her fingers worked like she wanted to scratch him, and she says, Who's everybody? Out with their names, or they'll be an idiot short. He got up and looked distressed, and fumbled his hat, and says, I'm sorry, and I warn't expecting it. They told me to. They all told me to. They all said kiss her, and said she'd like it. They all said it, every one of them. But I'm sorry, ma'am, and I won't do it no more. I won't, honest. You won't, will you? Well, I should reckon you won't. No, I'm honest about it. I won't ever do it again, till you ask me. Till I ask you? Well, I never see the beat of it in my born days. I lay you'll be the methuselum-numb skull of creation before ever I ask you, or the lax of you. Well, he says, It does surprise me so. I can't make it out somehow. They said you would, and I thought you would. But he stopped and looked around slow, like he wished he could run across a friendly eye somewheres, and fetched up on the old gentleman's, and says, Didn't you think she'd like me to kiss her, sir? Why, no, I—I—well, no, I believe I didn't. Then he looks on around the same way to me, and says, Tom, didn't you think Aunt Sally had opened out her arms, and say, Sid, Sawyer? My land, she says, breaking in and jumping for him. You impotent young rascal, the fool of body so! And was going to hug him, but he fended her off, and says, No, not till you've asked me first. So she didn't lose no time, but asked him, and hugged him, and kissed him over and over again, and then turned him over to the old man, and he took what was left. And after they got a little quiet again, she says, Why, dear me, I never see such a surprise. We weren't looking for you at all, but only Tom. Sis never wrote to me about anybody coming but him. It's because it warn't intended for any of us to come but Tom, he says. But I begged and begged, and at the last minute she let me come too. So, coming down the river, me and Tom thought it would be a first-rate surprise for him to come here to the house first, and for me to buy and buy, tag along and drop in, and let on to be a stranger. But it was a mistake, Aunt Sally. This ain't no healthy place for a stranger to come. No, not impudent whelps, said. You ought to have your jaws boxed. I ha'n't been so put out since I don't know when. But I don't care. I don't mind the terms. I'd be willing to stand a thousand such jokes to have you here. Well, to think of that performance. I don't do not. I was most putrefied with astonishment when you give me that smack. We had dinner out in that broad open passage betwixt the house and the kitchen. And there was things enough on that table for seven families. And all hot, too. None of your flabby, tough meat that's laid in a cupboard in a damp cellar all night tastes like a hunk of old cold cannibal in the morning. Uncle Salas he asked a pretty long blessing over it. But it was worth it. And it didn't cool it a bit neither, the way I've seen them kind of interruptions do lots of times. There was a considerable good deal of talk all the afternoon, and me and Tom was on the lookout all the time. But it warn't no use that it didn't happen to say nothing about any runaway nigger. And we was afraid to try to work up to it. But it supper at night one of the little boys says, Pa, may it Tom and Sid and me go to the show? No, says the old man. I reckon there ain't gonna be any. And you couldn't go if there was, because the runaway nigger told Burton and me all about that scandalous show. And Burton said he would tell the people. So I reckon they've drove the audacious loafers out of a town before this time. So there it was. But I couldn't help it. Tom and me was to sleep in the same room and bed. So, being tired, we big good night and went up to bed right after supper, and clump out of the window and down the lightning rod and shove for the town. But I didn't believe anybody was gonna give the king and the duke a hint. And so if I didn't hurry up and give them one they'd get into trouble, sure. On the road, Tom, he told me all about how it was reckoned I was murdered and how PAP disappeared pretty soon. Didn't come back no more. And what a stir there was when Jim run away. And I told Tom all about our royal non-such rapscallions and as much of the raft voyage as I had time to. And as we struck into the town and up through the middle of it, it was as much as half after eight then. Here comes a raging rush of people with torches and an awful whooping and yelling and banging tin pans and blowing horns. And we jumped to one side to let them go by. And as they went by I see they had the king and the duke a straddle of a rail. That is, I knowed it was the king and the duke, though they was all over tar and feathers, and didn't look like nothing in the world that was human. Just looked like a couple of monstrous big soldier plumes. Well, it made me sick to see it, and I was sorry for them poor pitiful rascals. It seemed like I couldn't ever feel any hardness against them any more in the world. It was a dreadful thing to see. Human beings can be awful cruel to one another. We see we was too late, couldn't do no good. We asked some stragglers about it, and they said everybody went to the show looking very innocent, and laid low and kept dark till the poor old king was in the middle of his covortance on the stage, then somebody give a signal, and the house rose up and went for them. So we poked along back home, and I weren't feeling so brash as I was before, but kind of ornery and humble and to blame somehow, though I hadn't done nothing. But that's always the way. It don't make no difference whether you do right or wrong. A person's conscience ain't got no sense, and just goes for him anyway. If I had a yowler dog that didn't know no more than a person's conscience does, I would poison him. It takes up more room than all the rest of a person's insides, and yet ain't no good know-how. Tom Sawyer, he says the same. CHAPTER XXXIV We stop talking and got the 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 vitals? Yes. What did you think the vitals was for? For a dog? Well, 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 watermelon. 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 up again when he come out. He fetched Uncle a key about the time we got up from table. Same key, I bet. Water melon 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. Not 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 could think of. I went to thinking how to 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, 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 day times and running nights the way me and Jim used to do before. Wouldn't that plan work? Work? Why, certainly it would work, like rats are fighting, but it's too blame-simple. There ain't nothing to it. What's the good of a plan that ain't no more trouble than that? It's as mild as goose milk. Why, Huck, it wouldn't make no more talk than breaking into a soap factory. I never said nothing because I warn't expect nothing different, but I knowed mighty well that whenever he got his plan ready it wouldn't have none of them objections to it. And it didn't. He told me what it was, and I see in a minute it was worth fifteen a 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 even in new bullinesses wherever he got a chance. And that is what he done. Well one thing was dead sure, and that was that Tom Sawyer was in earnest, and was actually going to help steal that nigger out of slavery. That was the thing that was too many for me. Here was a boy that was respectable and well-brung up, and had a character to lose, and folks at home that had characters, and he was bright and not leather-headed, and knowing and not ignorant, and not mean but kind, and yet here he was without any more pride or rightness or feeling than to stoop to this business and make himself a shame and his family a shame before everybody. I couldn't understand it no way at all. It was outrageous, and I knowed I ought to just up and tell him so, and so be his true friend, and let him quit the thing right where he was and save himself. And I did start to tell him, but he shut me up and says, Don't you reckon I know what I'm about? Don't I generally 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 ford 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, fuck-fin. Well, then, I says, How'd it do to saw him out the way I'd 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, let'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, went in, and shut it and struck a match, and see the shed were only built against a cabin and had no connection with it. And there weren't no floor to the shed, nor nothing in it but some old, rusty, played-out hose 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. That'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 grammatical enough for Tom Sawyer. No way would do him, but he must climb up the lightning-rod. But after he got 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 niggers that fed Jim. If it was Jim that was being fed. The niggers was just getting through breakfast and starting for the fields, and Jim's nigger was piling up a tin pan with bread and meat and things, and whilst the others was leaving the key come from the house. This nigger had a good-natured chuckle-headed face, and his wool was all tied up in little bunches with thread. That was to keep witches off. He said the witches was pestering him awful these nights, and making him see all kinds of strange things. And hear all kinds of strange words and noises, and he didn't believe he was ever witch so long before in his life. He got so worked up and got to running on so about his troubles he forgot all about what he'd been going to do. So Tom says, What's the vitals for? Gonna feed the dogs? The nigger kinda smiled around gradually over his face, like when you heave a brick bat in a mud-puddle, and he says, Yes, Marr said. A dog. Curious dog, too. Does you want to go and look at him? 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 could hardly see anything. It was so dark. But Jim was there, sure enough, and could see us, and he sings out, Why, hook, in good land, ain't that Mr. 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 have done it, because that nigger busted in and says, Why, the gracious sakes, do he know you gentlemen? We could see pretty well now. Tom, he looked at the nigger, steady and kind of wondered, and says, Does who know us? Why, this year, run away a nigger? I don't reckon he does, but what put that into your head? What put it there? Didn't he just his minutes 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 calm and says, Did you hear anybody sing out? Of course there won'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 seen him before and says, Did you sing out? No, sir, says Jim, I ain't said nothing, sir. Not a word? No, sir, I ain't said a word. Did you ever see us before? No, sir, not as I knowed on. So Tom turns to the nigger, which was looking wild and distressed and says kind of severe. What do you reckon's the matter with you anyway? What made you think somebody sung out? Oh, it's the dad blame witches, sir, and I wished I was dead, I do. They's always at it, sir, and they do most kill me. They scares me so. Please don't tell anybody about it, sir, or all Marsilus you'll scold me, because he say there ain't no witches. I just wish to goodness he was here now. Then what would he say? I just bet he couldn't find no way to get around it this time. But it's always just so. People that sought stays sought. They won't look into nothing and find it out for the cells, and when you find it out and tell them about it, they don't believe you. Tom gave him a dime and said we wouldn't tell nobody. 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, all particular if it was dark, because the witches went for him mostly in the dark, and it was good to have folks around then. End of chapter. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording is by Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, chapter 35. 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, it might get us into trouble. What we must have was a lot of them rotten chunks that's called fox-fire, and just makes us 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 it makes it so rotten-difficult to get up a difficult plan. There ain't no watchmen to be drugged. Now there ought to be a watchman. There ain't even a dog to give us sleep and mixture to. And there's Jim, chained by one leg with a ten-foot chain to the leg of his bed. What all you got to do is lift up the bedstead and slip off the chain. And Uncle Silas, he trusts everybody, hands the key to the pumpkin-headed nigger, and don't send nobody to watch the nigger. Jim could have 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 got. Anyhow, there's one thing. There's more otter 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 risky. 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 first chance we get. What do we want of a saw? What do we want of a saw? Hate we got to saw the leg of Jim's bed off so as to get the chain loose. Why, you just said a body could lift up the bedstead and slip the chain off. Well, if that ain't just like you, Huck Finn, you can get up the infant's scooliest ways of going at a thing. Why, hint you ever read any books at all? Bear in Trank, nor Casanova, nor Benvenuto Cellini, nor Henry IV, nor none of them heroes? Who ever heard of getting a prisoner loose in such an old matey way as that? No. The way all the best authorities does is to saw the bedleg in two, and leave it just so, and swallow the saw-dust so it can't be found, and put some dirt and grease around the sawed place so the very keenest centiscule can't see no sign of its being sawed, and thinks the bedleg 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 vassals, and they scoop you up and fling you across the saddle, and away you go to your native Languadoch, 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 we escape, we'll dig one. I says, what do we want of a moat when we're going to snake him out from under the cabin? But he never heard me. He had forgot me and everything else. He had his chin in his hand thinking. Pretty soon he sighs and shakes his head, then sighs again and says, No, it wouldn't do. There ain't necessity enough for it. For what, I says? Why, to saw Jim's leg off, he says. Good land, I says. Why, there ain't no necessity for it. And what 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 had 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 as regular. You want to be startin' somethin' fresh all the time. Suppose he don't do nothin' with it. Ain't it there in his bed for a clue after he's gone? And don't you reckon they'll want clues? 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 tearin' up our sheets to make Jim a rope ladder, we're goin' to get into trouble with Aunt Sally just as sure as you're born. Now the way I look at it, a Hickory Bark ladder don't cost nothin' and don't waste nothin' and it's 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 Hickory 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. Suppose 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 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 round the Dungeon Keep to pull pens out of you muggins. They always make their pens out of the hardest, toughest, troublesomeest piece of old brass candlestick or something like that. They can get their hands on. And it takes them weeks and weeks and months and months to file it out, too, because they've got to do it by rubbing it on the wall. They wouldn't use a goosequill if they had it. It ain't regular. Well then, what'll we make him the ink out of? He makes it out of iron rust and tears. But that's the common sort and women. The best authorities uses their own blood. Jim can do that. And when he wants to send any little common ordinary mysterious message to let the world know where he's captivated, he can write it on the bottom of a tin plate with a fork and throw it out of the window. The iron mask always done that, and it's a blame good way, too. Jim ain't got no tin plates. They feed him in a pan. That ain't 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, supposing 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. Long during the morning I borrowed a sheet and a white shirt off of the clothesline, 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 and 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 the 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, ordinary person would steal when he warn't a prisoner. So we allowed we would steal everything there was that would 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 have wanted it to hide a knife in and smuggle it to Jim to kill the Senescal with, it would have been all right. So I let it go with that, though I couldn't see no advantage in my representing a prisoner if I got to set down and chow 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 mornin' till everybody was settled down to business, and nobody inside 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'd come out, and we went and set down on the wood-pile to talk. He says, Everything's all right now except tools, and that's easy fixed. Tools, I says. 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 havin' 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 then might as well lend him the key and done with it? Picks and shovels, why they wouldn't furnish him 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, generally 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-Deaf 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 risk being as long as we ought to, because it may it 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 risk 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, and quick as we can, and after that we can let on to ourselves that we was at at 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 years. It wouldn't strain me none after I got my hand in. So I'll mosey along now and smooch a couple of case-knives. Smooch three, he says. We want one to make a saw out of. Tom, if it ain't unregular and irreligious to suggest it, I says, there's an old rusty saw-blade around yonder sticking under the weather-board and behind the smoke-house. He look kind of weary and discouraged like, and says, It ain't no use to try to learn you nothing, Huck. Run along and smooch the knives, three of them. So I had done it.