 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 FIN by Mark Twain, CHAPTER XXII They swammed up toward Cherburn's house, a whooping and raging-lock engines, and everything had to clear the way or get run over and tropped to mush, and it was awful to see. Children was healing ahead of the mop, screaming and trying to get out of the way, and every window along the road was full of women's heads, and there was nigger boys in every tree, and bucks and winches looking over every fence, and as soon as the mop would get nearly to them they would break and scattle back out of reach. Lots of the women and girls was crying and taken on, scared most to death. They swammed up in front of Cherburn's parents as thick as they could jam together, and you couldn't hear yourself think for the noise. It was a little twenty-foot yard. Some sung out, Tear down the fence! Tear down the fence! Then there was a racket of ripping and tearing and smashing, and down she goes, and the front wall of the crowd begins to roll in like a wave. Just then Cherburn steps out onto the roof of his little front porch with a double-barrel gun in his hand and takes his stand, perfectly calm and deliberate, not saying a word. The racket stopped, and the wave sucked back. Cherburn never said a word, just stood there, looking down. The stillness was awful, creepy and uncomfortable. Cherburn run his eyes slow along the crowd, and wherever it struck the people tried a little to out-gaze him, but they couldn't. They dropped their eyes and looked sneaky. Then pretty soon Cherburn sort of laughed. Not the pleasant kind, but the kind that makes you feel like when you are eating bread that's got sand in it. Then he says, slow and scornful. The idea of you lynching anybody. It's amusing. The idea of you thinking you had pluck enough to lynch a man. Because you're brave enough to tar and feather poor friendless cast-out women that come along here, did that make you think you had grit enough to lay your hands on a man? Why, a man's safe in the hands of ten thousand of your kind, as long as it's daytime and you're not behind him. Do I know you? I know you clear through was born and raised in the south, and I've lived in the north, so I know the average all around. The average man's a-coward. In the north he lets anybody walk over him that it wants to, and goes home and prays for a humble spirit to bear it. In the south one man all by himself has stopped a stage full of men in the daytime and robbed a lot. Your newspapers call you a brave people so much that you think you are braver than any other people, whereas you're just as brave and no braver. Why don't your juries hang murderers? Because they're afraid the man's friends will shoot them in the back, in the dark, and it's just what they would do. So they always acquit, and then a man goes in the night, with a hundred masked cowards at his back and lynches the rascal. Your mistake is that you didn't bring a man with you. That's one mistake, and the other is that you didn't come in the dark and fetch your masks. You brought part of a man, Buck Hartness there, and if you hadn't had him to start you, you'd have taken it out and blowing. You didn't want to come. The average man don't like trouble and danger. You don't like trouble and danger. But if only half a man, like Buck Hartness there, shouts, Linch him, lynch him. You're afraid to back down. Afraid you'll be found out to be what you are, cowards. And so you raise a yell, and hang yourselves on to that half a man's coat-tail, and come raging up here, swearing what big things you're going to do. The pitifulest thing out is a mob. That's what an army is, a mob. They don't fight with courage that's born in them, but with courage that's borrowed from their mass and from their officers. But a mob without any man at the head of it is beneath pitifulness. Now the thing for you to do is to droop your tails and go home and crawl in a hole. If any real lynching's going to be done it will be done in the dark, southern fashion, and when they come they'll bring their masks and fetch a man along. Now leave and take your half a man with you, tossing his gun up across his left arm and cocking it when he says this. The crowd washed back sudden, and then broke all apart, and went tearing off every which way, and Buck Harkness he healed it after them, looking tolerable cheap. I could've stayed if I wanted to, but I didn't want to. I went to the circus and loafed around the back side till the watchman went by, and then dived in under the tent. I had my twenty dollar gold piece and some other money, but I reckoned I'd better save it, because there ain't no telling how soon you're going to need it, away from home and amongst strangers that way. You can't be too careful. I ain't opposed to spending money on circuses when there ain't no other way, but there ain't no use in wasting it on them. It was a real bully circus. It was the splendidest sight that ever was when they all come riding in, two by two, a gentleman and lady side by side, the men just in their drawers and undershirts and no shoes nor stirrups, and resting their hands on their thighs easy and comfortable. There must have been twenty of them, and every lady with a lovely complexion and perfectly beautiful, and looking just like a gang of real sure enough queens, and dressing clothes that cost millions of dollars and just littered with diamonds. It was a powerful fine sight. I never seen anything so lovely. And then one by one they got up and stood, and went a-weaving around the ring so gentle and wavy and graceful, the men looking ever so tall and airy and straight, with their heads bobbing and skimming along, way up there under the tent-roof, and every lady's rose-leafy dress flap and soft and silky around her hips, and she looking like the most loveliest parasol. And then faster and faster they went, all of them dancing, first one foot out in the air and then the other, the horses leaning more and more, and the ringmaster going round and round the center pole, cracking his whip and shouting, high, high, and the clown cracking jokes behind him. And by and by all hands dropped the reins, and every lady put her knuckles on her hips, and every gentleman folded his arms, and then how the horses did lean over and hump themselves. And so one after the other they all skipped off into the ring, and made the sweetest bow I ever see, and then scampered out, and everybody clapped their hands, and just about went wild. Well, all through the circus they'd done the most astonishing things, and all the time that clown carried on so it most killed the people. The ringmaster could never say a word to him, but he was back at him quick as a wink, with the funniest things our body ever said, and how he ever could think of so many of them, and so sudden and so pat was what I couldn't no way understand. Why, I couldn't have thought of them in a year. And by and by a drunk man tried to get into the ring, said he wanted to ride, said he could ride as well as anybody that ever was. They argued and tried to keep him out, but he wouldn't listen, and the whole show come to a stand still. Then the people begun to holler at him and make fun of him, and that made him mad, and he'd begun to rip and tear. So that stirred up the people, and a lot of men began to pile down off of the benches and swarm towards the ring, saying, knock him down, throw him out! And one or two women begun to scream. So then the ringmaster he made a little speech, and said he hoped there wouldn't be no disturbance, and if the man would promise, he would make no more trouble, he would let him ride if he thought he could stay on the horse. So everybody laughed, said all right, and the man got on. The minute he was on, the horse begun to rip and tear and jump and convort around, with two circus men hanging on to his bridle trying to hold him, and the drunk man hanging on to his neck, and his heels flying in the air every jump, and the whole crowd of people standing up shouting and laughing till tears rolled down. And at last, sure enough, all the circus men could do, the horse broke loose, and away he went like the very nation, round and round the ring, with that sot laying down on him and hanging to his neck, with first one leg hanging most to the ground on one side, and then to other one on to the other side, and the people just crazy. It warn't funny to me, though, I was all of a tremble to see his danger, but pretty soon he struggled up a straddle and grabbed the bridle a-reeling this way and that, and the next minute he sprung up and dropped the bridle and stood, and the horse was going like a house of fire, too. He just stood up there, a sailor round as easy and comfortable as if he weren't ever drunk in his life, and then he began to pull off his clothes and sling them. He shed them so thick they kind of clogged up the air, and altogether he shed seventeen suits. And then there he was, slim and handsome, and dressed the gaudiest and prettiest you ever saw, and he lit into that horse with his whip and made him fairly hum, and finally skipped off and made his bow and danced off to the dressing-room, and everybody just to hallow with pleasure and astonishment. Then the ringmaster he see how he had been fooled, and he was the sickest ringmaster you ever see, I reckon, while it was one of his own men. He had really got up that joke all out of his own head and never led on to nobody. Well, I felt sheepish enough to be took in so, but I wouldn't have been in that ringmaster's place not for a thousand dollars. I don't know. There may be bullier circuses than what that one was, but I never struck them yet. Anyways, it was plenty good enough for me, and wherever I run across it it can have all of my custom every time. Well, that night we had our show, but there weren't only about twelve people there, just enough to pay expenses. And they laughed all the time, and that made the Duke mad, and everybody left anyway before the show was over but one boy which was asleep. So the Duke said these Arkansas lunkheads couldn't come up to Shakespeare. What they wanted was low comedy, and maybe something rather worse than low comedy, he reckoned. He said he could size their style. So next morning he got some big sheets of wrapping paper and some black paint, and drawed off some hand-bills and stuck them up all over the village. The bills said, At the courthouse, for three nights only, the world-renowned tragedians David Garrick the Younger and Edmund Cain the Elder, of the London and Continental theatres, in their thrilling tragedy of The King's Camel-Eppard, or the Royal Nonsuch, admission fifty cents. Then at the bottom was the biggest line of all, which said, Ladies and children not admitted. There, says he, if that line don't fetch them, I don't know Arkansas. THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FIN, by Mark Twain, Chapter 23 Well, all day him and the King was hard at it, rigging up a stage and a curtain and a row of candles for footlights, and that night the house was jam-full of men in no time. When the place couldn't hold no more, the Duke he quit tending door and went around the back way and come on to the stage, and stood up before the curtain and made a little speech, and praised up this tragedy, and said it was the most thrillingest one that ever was, and so he went on a bragging about the tragedy, and about Edmund Cain the Elder, which was to play the main principal part in it, and at last when he got everybody's expectations up high enough, he rolled up the curtain, and the next minute the King come a prancing out on all fours naked, and he was painted all over, ring-streaked and striped, all sorts of colors as splendid as a rainbow, and, but never mind the rest of his outfit, it was just wild, but it was awful funny. The people most killed themselves laughing, and when the King got done capering and capered off behind the scenes, they roared and clapped and stormed and hawhad till he come out and done it over again, and after that they made him do it another time. Well it would make a cow laugh to see the shines that old idiot cut. Then the Duke he lets the curtain down and bows to the people, and says the great tragedy will be performed only two nights more on account of pressing London engagements where the seats is all sold already for it in Drury Lane, and then he makes them another bow, and says if he has succeeded in pleasing them and instructing them, he will be deeply obliged if they will mention it to their friends and get them to come and see it. Twenty people sings out, What? Is it over? Is that all? The Duke says yes. Then there was a fine time. He sings out, Sold, and rose up mad, and was it going for that stage and them Tragedians? But a big fine-looking man jumps up on a bench and shouts, Hold on, just a word, gentlemen. They stop to listen. We are sold, mighty badly sold, but we don't want to be the laughing stock of this whole town, I reckon, and never hear the last of this thing as long as we live. No. What we want is to go out of here quiet, and talk this show up, and sell the rest of the town. Then we'll all be in the same boat. Ain't that sensible? You bet it is. The judge is right. Everybody sings out. All right, then. Not a word about any sell. Go along home, and advise everybody to come and see the tragedy. Last day you couldn't hear nothing around that town, but how splendid that show was. House was jammed again that night, and we sold this crowd the same way. When me and the king and the Duke got home to the raft, we all had a supper, and by it and by it about midnight, then made Jim and me back her out and float her down the middle of the river, and fetch her in and hide her about two miles below town. The third night the house was crammed again, and there weren't newcomers this time, but people that was at the show the other two nights. I stood by the Duke at the door, and I see that every man that went in had his pockets bulging, or something muffled up under his coat, and I see it want no perfumery neither, not by a long sight. I smelt sickly eggs by the barrel, and rotten cabbages and such things, and if I know the signs of a dead cat being around, and I bet I do, there was sixty-four of them went in. I shoved in there for a minute, but it was too various for me. I couldn't stand it. Well, when the place couldn't hold no more people, the Duke he'd give a fellow a quarter, and told him to tend door for him a minute, and then he started to ramp for the stage door, eye after him. But the minute we turned the corner and was in the dark he says, Walk fast now, till you get away from the houses, and then shin for the raft like the Dickens was after you. I'd done it, and he'd done the same. We struck the raft at the same time, and in less than two seconds we was gliding downstream, all dark and still, and edging towards the middle of the river, nobody saying a word. I reckon the poor king was in for a gaudy time of it with the audience, but nothing of the sort. Pretty soon he crawls out from under the wigwam, and says, Well, how'd the old thing pound out this time, Duke? He hadn't been uptown at all. We never showed a light till we was about ten miles below the village. Then we lit up and had a supper, and the king and the Duke fairly laughed their bones loose over the way they'd serve them people. The Duke says, Greenhorns, flatheads, I knew the first house would keep mum and let the rest of the town get roped in, and I knew they'd lay for us the third night, and consider it was their turn now. Well, it is their turn, and I'd give something to know how much they'd take for it. I would just like to know how they're putting in their opportunity. They can turn it into a picnic if they want to. They brought plenty provisions. Them rapscayans took in four hundred and sixty-five dollars in that three nights. I never see money hauled in by the wagon-load like that before. By and by, when they was asleep and snoring, Jim says, Don't it surprise you the way them kings carry his own hook? No, I says, it don't. Why don't it hook? Well it don't, because it's in the breed. I reckon they're all alike. But hook, these kings aren't as regular rapscayans, does just what they is, they's regular rapscayans. Well, that's what I'm a-saying. All kings is mostly rapscayans as far as I can make out. Just that so. You read about them once, you'll see. Look at Henry VIII. This is a Sunday school superintendent to him. And look at Charles II, and Louis XIV, and Louis XV, and James II, and Edward II, and Richard III, and forty more. Besides all them Saxon-Heptarchies that used to rip around so in old times and raise cane, my! You ought to seen old Henry VIII when he was in bloom. He was a blossom. He used to marry a new wife every day, and chop off her head next morning. And he would do it just as indifferent as if he were ordering up eggs. Fetch up, delguin, he says. They fetch her up. Next morning, chop off her head. And they chop it off. Fetch up, Jane Shore, he says. And up she comes. Next morning, chop off her head. And they chop it off. Ring up, fair Rossamoon. Fair Rossamoon answers the bell. Next morning, chop off her head. And he made every one of them tell a tale every night, and he kept that up till he had hogged a thousand and one tales that way. And then he put them all in a book, and called it Dome's Day Book, which was a good name, and stated the case. You don't know King's Jim, but I know them, and this old rip of iron is one of the cleanest eyes struck in history. Well, Henry, he takes a notion he wants to get up some trouble with this country. How does he go at it? Give notice? Give the country a show? No. All of a sudden he heaves all the tea in Boston Harbour overboard, and whacks out a declaration of independence, and dares them to come on. That was his style. He never give anybody a chance. He had suspicions of his father, the Duke of Wellington. Well, what did he do? Ask him to show up? No. Drowned at him in a butt of Mamsey, like a cat. Suppose people left money laying around where he was. What did he do? He collared it. Suppose he contracted to do a thing, and you paid him, and didn't sit down there and see that he'd done it. What did he do? He always done the other thing. Suppose he opened his mouth. What then? If he didn't shut it up powerful quick, he'd lose a lie every time. That's the kind of a bug Henry was, and if we'd had him along instead of our kings, he'd have fooled that town to a heap worse than ours done. I don't say that I aren't his lambs, because there ain't when you come right down to the cold facts, but there ain't nothing to that old ram anyway. All I say is, kings is kings, and you got to make allowances. Take them all around. They're a mighty honour a lot. It's the way they're raised. But this one do smell so like the nation-hook. Well, they all do, Jim. We can't help the way a king smells. History don't tell no way. Now to Duke, he's a terrible lackler man in some ways. Yes, a Duke's different. But not very different. This one's a middling hard lot for a Duke. When he's drunk there ain't no nearsighted man could tell him from a king. Well, anyways, I don't hanker for no more of them, huck. These is all I can stand. It's the way I feel, too, Jim. But we've got them on our hands, and we've got to remember what they are and make allowances. Sometimes I wish I could hear of a country that's out of kings. What was the use to tell Jim these weren't real kings and dukes? It wouldn't have done no good. And besides, it was just as I said, you couldn't tell them from the real kind. I went to sleep, and Jim didn't call me when it was my turn. He often done that. When I waked up, just to daybreak, he was sitting there with his head down, betwixt his knees, moaning and mourning to himself. I didn't take notice nor let on. I knowed what it was about. He was thinking about his wife and his children, way up yonder, and he was low and homesick, because he had never been away from home before in his life. And I do believe he cared just as much for his people as white folks does for theirs. He don't seem natural, but I reckon it's so. He was often moaning and mourning that way nights, when he judged I was asleep, and saying, Poe little Lisbeth, poe little Johnny, it's mighty hard. I expect I ain't ever going to see you no more, no more. He was a mighty good-nigger, Jim was. But this time I somehow got to talking to him about his wife and young ones, and by and by he says, What makes me feel so bad at this time is because I hear something over yonder on the bank like a whack or a slam while ago, and it mind me at a time I treat my little Lisbeth so ornery. She wanted only about four years old, and she took the scarlet fever and had a powerful rough spell, but she got well, and one day she was standing around, and I says to her, I says, Shut the door. She never done it, just stood there, kind of smiling up at me. It made me mad, and I says again, Might aloud, I says, Don't you hear me? Shut the door. She just stood the same way, kind of smiling up. I was a-boiling. I says, I lay, I'll make you mine. And with that I fetch her a slap-side-the-head that sawed her sprawling. Then I went into the other room, and it's gone about ten minutes, and when I come back there was that door a-standin' open yet, and that child standing most right in it, a-looking down in morning, and the tears running down. My, but I was mad. I was a-goin' for the child, but just then it was a door that opened inwards. Just then long come to win and slams it too, behind a child, kerb-blam, and my land the child never move. My breath most hop out of me, and I feel so, so. I don't know how I feel. I crope out all the trembling, and crope around and open the door easy and slow, and poke my head in behind the child, soft and still. And all of a sudden I says, pow, just as loud as I could yell. She never budge. Oh, huck, I bust out a cryin' and grab her up in my arms and say, Oh, the poor little thing, the Lord God Almighty, forgive poor old Jim, because he'd never want to forgive his self as long as he's alive. Oh, she was plumb, deep and dumb, huck, plumb, deep and dumb, and I've been a-treatin' her so. 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 24 Next day, towards night, we laid up under a little willow tow-head out in the middle, where there was a village on each side of the river, and the duke and the cane began to lay out a plan for workin' them towns. Jim he spoke to the duke, and said he hoped it wouldn't take but a few hours, because it got mighty heavy and tiresome to him when he had to lay all day in the wigwam tied with rope. You see, when we left him all alone we had to tie him, because if anybody happened on to him all by himself and not tied, it wouldn't look much like he was a runaway nigger, you know. So the duke said it was kind of hard to have to lay roped all day, and he'd cipher out some way to get round it. He was uncommon bright, the duke was, and he soon struck it. He dressed Jim up in King Lear's outfit. It was a long, curtain-calico gown, and a white horsehair wig and whiskers, and then he took his theatre-paint and painted Jim's face and hands and ears and neck all over a dead, dull, solid blue, like a man that's been drowned in nine days. Blamed if he wasn't the horriblest-looking outrage I ever see, then the duke took and wrote out a sign on a shingle sew, sick Arab, but harmless when not out of his head. And he nailed that shingle to a lath and stood the lath up four or five foot in front of the wigwam. Jim was satisfied. He said it was a sight better than lying tied a couple of years every day and trembling all over every time there was a sound. The duke told him to make himself free and easy, and if anybody ever come meddling around he must hop out of the wigwam and carry on a little, and fetch a howler to like a wild beast, and he reckoned they would light out and leave him alone. Which was sound enough judgment, but you take the average man and he wouldn't wait for him to howl. While he didn't only look like he was dead, he looked considerable more than that. These Rapskians wanted to try the none such again, because there was so much money in it, but they judged it wouldn't be safe, because maybe the news might have worked along down by this time. They couldn't hit no project that suited exactly. So at last the duke said he reckoned he'd lay off and work his brains an hour or two, and see if he couldn't put up something on the Arkansas village. And the king he allowed he would drop over to the other village without any plan, but just trust in Providence to lead him the profitable way. Meaning the devil, I reckon. We had all bought store clothes where was stopped last, and now the king put his on, he told me to put mine on. I'd done it, of course. King's duds was all black, and he did look real swell and starchy. I never know how clothes could change a body before. Why, before he looked like the onerous old rip that ever was, but now when he'd take off his new white beaver and make a bow and do a smile, he looked that grand and good and pious that you'd say he had walked right out of the ark, and maybe was old Leviticus himself. King cleaned up the canoe, and I got my paddle ready. There was a big steamboat laying over the shore way up under the point, about three miles above the town, been there a couple hours taken on freight. Says the king. See, and how I'm dressed, I reckon maybe I'd better arrive down from St. Louis, or Cincinnati, or some other big place. Go forth, steamboat huckleberry, we'll come down to the village on her. I didn't have to be ordered twice to go and take a steamboat ride. I fetched the shore a half a mile above the village, and then went scooting along the bluff bank in the easy water. Pretty soon we come to a nice innocent-looking young country jake, sitting on a log, swabbing the sweat off of his face, for it was powerful warm weather, and he had a couple of big carpet bags by him. Runner knows in shore, says the king. I'd done it. Where are you bound, full young man? Further steamboat, going to Orleans. Get aboard, says the king. Hold on a minute. My servant will help you with them bags. Jump out and help the gentleman at office. Me and me, I see. I'd done so, and then we all three started on again. The young chap was mighty thankful, saying it was tough work toting his baggage such weather. He asked the king where he was going, and the king told him he'd come down the river and landed at the other village this morning, and now he was going up a few miles to see an old friend on a farm up there. The young fella says, When I first see you, I say to myself, it's Mr. Wilk, sure, and he come mighty near getting here in time. But then I says, No, I reckon it ain't him, or else he wouldn't be paddling up the river. You ain't him, are you? No, my name's Blodgett. Alexander Blodgett. Reverend Alexander Blodgett, I suppose I must say, as in one of the Lord's poor servants. But still, I'd just as able to be sorry for Mr. Wilkes for not arriving in time, all the same if he's missed anything by it, which I hope he hasn't. Well, he don't miss any property by it, because he'll get that all right. But he's missed seeing his brother Peter die, which he may at mine, nobody can tell as to that. But his brother would've given anything in this world to see him before he died. Never talked about nothing else all these three weeks, hadn't seen him since they was boys together, and hadn't ever seen his brother William at all. That's a deep and dumb one. William ain't more than thirty or thirty-five. Peter and George were the only ones that come out here. George was the merry brother. Him and his wife both died last year. Harvey and William's the only ones that's left now, and, as I was saying, they haven't got here in time. Did anybody send them wood? Oh, yes, about a month or two ago when Peter was first took. As Peter said, then, that he sort of felt like he weren't going to get well this time. You see, he was pretty old, and George's girls were too young to be much company for him, except Mary Jane, the red-headed one. And so he was kind of lonesome after George and his wife died, and didn't seem to care much to live. He most desperately wanted to see Harvey, and William, too, for that matter, because he was one of them kind that can't bear to make a will. He left a letter behind for Harvey, and said he'd told in it where his money was hid, and how he wanted the rest of the property divided up so George's girls would be all right. For George didn't leave nothing. And that letter was all they could get him to put a pen to. Why do you reckon Harvey don't come? Where does he live? Oh, he lives in England. Sheffield. Preachers there. Hasn't ever been in this country. He hadn't had any too much time. And besides, he mightn't have got the letter at all, you know. Too bad. Too bad he couldn't have lived to see his brother's poor soul. You going to Orleans, you say? Yes, but that ain't only a part of it. I'm going in a ship next Wednesday for Rio de Janeiro, where my uncle is. It's a pretty long journey, but it'll be lovely, wished I was going. Is Mary Jane the oldest? How old is the others? Mary Jane's 19, Susan's 15, and Joanna's about 14. That's the one that gives herself the good works and has a hairlip. Poor things to be left alone in the cold world, so. Well, they could be worse off. Oh, Peter had friends, and they ain't going to let them come to know harm. There's Hobson, the Baptist preacher, and Deacon Lot-Hove, and Ben Rucker, and Abner Shackleford, and Levi Bell, the lawyer, and Dr. Robinson and their wives, and the widow Bartley, and, well, there's a lot of them, but these are the ones that Peter was thickest with and used to write about sometimes when he wrote home. So Harvey'll know where to look for friends when he gets here. Well, the old man went on asking questions till he just fairly emptied that young fellow. Blamed if he didn't inquire about everybody and everything in that blessed town, and all about the Wilks's and about Peter's business, which was a tanner, and about George's, which was a carpenter, and about Harvey's, which was a disentering minister, and so on, and so on. Then he says, What did you want to walk all the way up to the steamboat for? Because she's a big old lean's boat, and I was feared she might stop there. When they're deep they won't stop for hail. A Cincinnati boat will, but this is a St. Louis one. Was Peter Wilks well off? Oh, yes, pretty well off. He had houses and land, and it's reckoned he left three or four thousand in cash hit up somewheres. When did you say he died? I didn't say, but it was last night. Funeral to-morrow, likely. Yes, about the middle of the day. Well, it's all terrible sad, but we've all got to go one time or another, so what we want to do is to be prepared, then we're all right. Yes, sir, it's the best way, Ma used to always say that. When we struck the boat she was about done loading, and pretty soon she got off. The king never said nothing about going aboard, so I lost my ride after all. When the boat was gone the king made me paddle up another mile to a lonesome place, and then he got ashore and says, Now hustle back right off, and fetch the duke up here and the new carpet-bags, and if he's gone over to the other side go over there and get him, and tell him to get himself up regardless, shove along now. I can see what he was up to, but I never said nothing, of course. When I got back with the duke we hid the canoe, and then they sat down on a log, and the king told him everything, just like the young fellow had said it, every last word of it. And all the time he was doing it he tried to talk like an Englishman, and he'd done it pretty well, too, for slouch. I can't imitate him, and so I ain't going to try to, but he really done it pretty good, then he says, How are you on the deep and dumb, Bilgewater? The duke said, leave him alone for that, said he had played a deep and dumb person on the histrionic boards. So then they waited for a steamboat. About the middle of the afternoon a couple of little boats come along, but they didn't come from high enough up the river. But last there was a big one, and they hailed her. She sent out her yall, and we went aboard, and she was from Cincinnati, and when they found we only wanted to go four or five miles they was booming mad, and gave us a cussing, and said they wouldn't land us. But the king was calm, he says. If gentlemen can afford to pair a dollar a mile apiece to be took on and put off in a yall, a steamboat can afford to carry him, can't it? So they softened down and said it was all right, and when we got to the village they yalled us ashore. About two dozen men flocked down when they see the yall are coming, and when the king says, Can any of you gentlemen tell me where Mr. Peter Wilkes lives? They give a glance at one another, and nodded their heads as much as to say, What did I tell you? Then one of them says, kind of soft and gentle. I'm sorry, sir, but the best we can do is to tell you where he did live yesterday evening. Then as winking the oner old creature went on to smash, and fell up against the man, and put his chin on his shoulder, and cried down his back, and says, Alas, alas, our poor brother, gone! And we never got to see him. Oh, it's too, too hard! Then he turns around, blubbering, and makes a lot of idiotic signs to the duke on his hands, and blamed if he didn't drop a carpet-bag and bust out a cryin', if they weren't the beatin'est lot, them two frauds, that ever I struck. Well the men gathered round and sympathized with them, and set all sorts of kind things to them, and carried their carpet-bags up the hill for them, and let them lean on them and cry, and told the king all about his brother's last moments, and the king he told it all over again on his hands to the duke, and both of them took on about that dead tana like they'd lost the twelve disciples. Well, if ever I struck anything like it, I'm a nigger! It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race. 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 25 The news was all over town in two minutes, and you could see the people tearing down on the run from every which way, some of them puttin' on their coats as they come. Pretty soon we was in the middle of a crowd, and the noise of the tramping was like a soldier march. When the windows and door-yards was full and every minute somebody would say over a fence, Is it them? And somebody trottin' along with the gang would answer back and say, You bet it is! When we got to the house the street in front of it was packed, and the three girls was standin' in the door. Mary Jane was red-headed, but that don't make no difference. She was most awful beautiful, and her face and her eyes were all lit up like glory. She was so glad her uncles was come. The king he spread his arms, and Mary Jane she jumped for them, and the hairlip jumped for the duke, and there they had it. Everybody most, least ways women, cried for joy to see them meet again at last, and have such good times. Then the king he hunched the duke private. I see him do it, and then he looked around and see the coffin over in the corner on two chairs. So then him and the duke, with a hand across each other's shoulder, and to other hand to the eyes, walked slow and solemn over there. Everybody droppin' back to give them room, and all the talk and noise stoppin'. People sayin' shh, and all the men takin' their hats off and droopin' their heads, so you coulda heard a pinfall. And when they got there, they bent over and looked in the coffin and took one side, and then they bust out a cryin' so you coulda heard them to all leans most, and then they put the arms around each other's necks, and hung their chins over each other's shoulders, and then for three minutes, or maybe four, I'd never seen two men leak the way they done. And mind ya, everybody was doin' the same, and the place was that damp I never see anything like it. Then one of them got on one side of the coffin, and the other on the other side, and they kneeled down and rested their foreheads on the coffin, and led on to pray all to themselves. Well, when it come to that it worked the crowd like you never see anything like it, and everybody broke down and went to sobbin' right out loud. And poor girls, too, and every woman, nearly, went up to the girls without sayin' a word, and kissed them solemn on the forehead, and then put their hand on their head, and looked up towards the sky, with the tears runnin' down, and then busted out and went off sobbin' and swabbin' and give the next woman a show, I never see anything so disgusting. Well, by and by the King he gets up and comes forward a little, and works himself up and slobbers out a speech all full of tears and flap-doodle about it's been a sore trial for him and his poor brother to lose the diseased, and to miss seein' diseased alive after the long journey of four thousand mile. But it's a trial that's sweetened and sanctified to us by this dear sympathy and these holy tears, and so we thanks them out of his heart and out of his brother's heart, because out of their mouths they can't, words being too weak and cold, and all that sort of rotten slush, till it was just sickenin' it. And then he blubbers out a pious goody goody amen, and turns himself loose and goes to cry it fit to bust. And the minute the words were out of his mouth somebody over in the crowd struck up the doxologer, and everybody joined in with all their might, and it just warmed you up and made you feel as good as church lettin' out. Music is a good thing, and after all that soul-butter and hog-wash I never see it freshen up things so, and sound so honest and bully. Then the King begins to work his jaw again, and says how him and his nieces would be glad if a few of the main principal friends of the family would take supper here with them this evening, and help set up with the ashes of the diseased, and says if his poor brother lay in yonder could speak, he knows who he would name, for they was names that was very dear to him, and mentioned often in his letters, and so he will name the same to it, as follows, Viz Reverend Mr. Hobson, and Deacon Lot-Hovey, and Mr. Ben Rucker, and Abner Shackleford, and Levi Bell, and Dr. Robinson, and their wives, and the widow Bartley. Reverend Hobson and Dr. Robinson was down to the end of the town, hunting together, that is, I mean the doctor was shipping a sick man to the other world, and the preacher was pointing him right. Lawyer Bell was a way up to Louisville on business, but the rest was on hand, and so they all come and shook hands with the King, thanked him, and talked to him, and then they shook hands with the duke, and didn't say nothing, but just kept a smiling, and bopping the heads, like a parcel of sap heads, while he made all sorts of signs with his hands, and said gu, gu, gu, gu, gu, all the time, like a baby that can't talk. So the King he blattered along, and managed to inquire about pretty much everybody and dog in town by his name, and mentioned all sorts of little things that happened one time or another in the town, or to George's family, or to Peter, and he always let on that Peter wrote him the things, but that was a lie. He got every blessed one of them out of that young flathead that we canoeed up to the steamboat. Then Mary Jane she fetched the letter her father left behind, and the King he read it out loud and cried over it. It give the dwelling house and three thousand dollars gold to the girls, and it give the ten-yard, which was doing a good business, along with some other houses and land worth about seven thousand, and three thousand dollars in gold to Harvey and William, and told where the six thousand cash was hid down Sella. So these two frauds said they go and fetch it up, and have everything square and above board, told me to come with a candle. We shut the cellar door behind us, and when they found the bag they spilled it out on the floor, and it was a lovely sight all them yeller-boys. My, the way the King's eyes did shine. He slaps the Duke on the shoulder and says, Oh, this ain't bullen or nothing. Oh, no, I reckon not. Why, Billy, it beats the none such, don't it? The Duke allowed it did. They pawed the yeller-boys and sifted them through their fingers and let them jingle down on the floor. And the King says, It ain't no use talking, being brothers to a rich dead man and representatives of fur and heirs that God's left is the line for you and me, Bilge. This year comes of trust and deprovinance. It's the best way in the long run. I've tried them all, and there ain't no better way. Most everybody would have been satisfied with the pile and took it on trust, but, no, they must count it. So they counts it, and it comes out four hundred and fifteen dollars short, says the King. Durn him, I wonder what he done with that four hundred and fifteen dollars. They worried over that a while, and ransacked all around for it. Then the Duke says, Well, he was a pretty sick man, and likely he made a mistake. I reckon that's the way of it. The best way is to let it go and keep still about it. We can spare it. Oh, shucks, yes, we can spare it. I don't hear nothing about that. It's the count I'm thinking about. We want to be awful square and open aboveboard here, you know. We want to lug this here money upstairs and count it before everybody. Then there ain't nothing suspicious. But when the dead man says the six thousand dollars, you know, we don't want to hold on, says the Duke. Let's make up the deficit, and he begun to haul out yaller boys out of his pocket. It's a most amazing good idea, Duke. You have got a rattling clever head on you, says the King. Blessed if the old nonsuch ain't a-helping us out again. And he begun to haul out yaller jackets and stack them up. It most busted them, but they made up the six thousand clean and clear. Say, says the Duke, I've got another idea. Let's go upstairs and count this money and then take and give it to the girls. Good land, Duke, let me hug you. It's the most dazzling idea that ever a man struck. You have certainly got the most astonishing head I ever see. Oh, this is the boss-dodge. There ain't no mistake about it. Let him fetch along their suspicions now if they want to. This'll lay them out. When we got upstairs, everybody gathered round the table, and the King he counted it and stacked it up, three hundred dollars in a pile, twenty elegant little piles. Everybody looked hungry at it, and licked their chops. Then they raked it into the bag again, and I see the King begin to swell himself up for another speech. He says, Friends all, my poor brother that lays yonder has done generous by them that's left behind in the veil of sorrows. He has done generous by these year poor little lambs that he loved and sheltered, and that's left fatherless and motherless. Yes, and we that knowed him knowed that he would have done more generous by them if he hadn't been afeared a wound in his dear William and me. Now, wouldn't he? There ain't no question about it in my mind. Well, then, what kind of brothers would it be that'd stand in his way at such a time? And what kind of uncles would it be that'd rob? Yes, rob! Such poor sweet lambs as these that he loves so at such a time. If I know William, and I think I do, he, well, I'll just ask him. He turns around and begins to make a lot of signs to the Duke with his hands, and the Duke he looks at him stupid and leather-headed awhile, that all of a sudden he seems to catch his meaning and jumps for the King goo-gooing with all his might for joy, and hugs him about fifteen times before he lets up. Then the King says, I knowed it, I reckon that it convinced any by the way he feels about it. Here, Mary Jane, Susan, Joe Jenner, take the money. Take it all. It's the gift to him that lays yonder, cold but joyful. Mary Jane, she went for him. Susan and the hair-lip went for the Duke, and then such another huggin' and kissin' I never see yet. And everybody crowded up with the tears in their eyes, and most shook the hands off of them frauds, sayin' all the time, you dear good souls, how lovely, how could you? Well, then, pretty soon all hands got to talkin' about the diseased again, and how good he was, and what a loss he was, and all that. And before long a big iron-job man worked himself in there from outside, and stood a-listnin' and lookin' and not sayin' anything, and nobody sayin' anything to him, either, because the King was talkin' and they was all busy listenin'. The King was sayin' in the middle of somethin' he'd started in on. They'd be in particular friends of the diseased. That's why they're invited here this evening. But tomorrow we want all to come, everybody, for he respected everybody, he liked everybody, and so it's fittin' that his funeral orgies should be public. And so he went a-moonin' on and on, likin' to hear himself talk. And every little while he fetched in his funeral orgies again, till the Duke he couldn't stand it no more, and he writes on a little scrap of paper, "'Obsuqueeze, you old fool!' and folds it up, and goes to goo-gooin' and reachin' it over people's heads to him. The King he reads it and puts it in his pocket and says, "'Poor William, afflicted as he is, his heart's always right. Asked me to invite everybody to come to the funeral. Wants me to make him all welcome. But he needin' to worried it was just what I was at.' Then he weaves along again, perfectly calm, and goes to dropin' in his funeral orgies again every now and then, just like he'd done before. And when he'd done it the third time he says, "'I say orgies, not because it's the common term, because it ain't. Obsuqueeze bein' the common term, but because orgies is the right term. Obsuqueeze ain't usin' England no more now, it's gone out. We say orgies now in England. orgies is better, because it means the thing you're after more exact. It's the word that's made up out of the Greek orgo, outside, open, abroad. And the Hebrew jesem, to plant, cover up, hence inter. So you see, funeral orgies as an open or public funeral.' He was the worst I ever struck. Well, the iron job man he left right in his face. Everybody was shocked. Everybody says, "'Why, doctor!' and Abner Shackaport says, "'Why, Robinson, ain't you heard the news? This is Harvey Wilkes.' The king he smiled eager, shoved out his flapper, and says, "'Is it my poor brother's dear good friend in physician? I—' "'Keep your hands off of me,' says the doctor. "'You talk like an Englishman, don't you? It's the worst imitation I ever heard. You, Peter Wilkes' brother, you're a fraud, that's what you are.' Well, how they all took on. They crowded round the doctor and tried to quiet him down, and tried to explain to him and tell him how Harvey did show it in forty ways that he was Harvey, and knowed everybody by name, and the names of the very dogs, and begged him not to hurt Harvey's feelings and the poor girl's feelings and all that. But it won't no use. He stormed right along, and said any man that pretended to be an Englishman and couldn't imitate the lingo no better than what he did, was a fraud and a liar. The poor girl's was hanging to the king and crying, and all of a sudden the doctor ups and turns on them. He says, "'I was your father's friend, and I'm your friend, and I warn you as a friend, and an honest one that wants to protect you and keep you out of harm and trouble. To turn your backs on that scoundrel I have nothing to do with him.' The ignorant tramp, with his idiotic Greek and Hebrew, as he calls it, he is the thinnest kind of an impostor, has come here with a lot of empty names and facts which he picked up somewheres, and you take them for proofs, and are helped to fool yourselves by these foolish friends here who ought to know better. Mary Jane Wilkes, you know me for your friend, and for your unselfish friend, too. Now listen to me. Turn this pitiful rascal out. I beg you to do it. Will you?" Mary Jane straightens herself up, and my but she was handsome. She says, "'Here is my answer.' She hove up the bag of money and put it in the king's hands, and says, "'Take this six thousand dollars and invest it for me and my sisters any way you want to, and don't give us no receipt for it.' Then she put her arm around the king on one side, and Susan and the hair-lip done the same on the other. Everybody clapped their hands and stomped on the floor like a perfect storm, whilst the king held up his head and smiled proud. The doctor says, "'All right. I wash my hands of the matter. But I warn you all that a time is coming when you're going to feel sick whenever you think of this day.' And away he went. "'All right, doctor,' says the king, kind of mocking him. We'll try and get him to send for you, which made him all laugh, and they said it was a prime good hit.'" Well, when they was all gone the king he asked Mary Jane how they was off for spare rooms, and she said she had one spare room which would do for Uncle William, and she'd give her own room to Uncle Harvey, which was a little bigger, and she would turn into the room with her sisters and sleep on a cot. And up Garrett was a little cubby with a pallet in it. The king said the cubby would do for his valley, meaning me. So Mary Jane took us up, and she showed them their rooms, which was plain but nice. She said she'd have her frocks and a lot of other traps took out of her room if they was in Uncle Harvey's way, but he said they weren't. The frocks was hung along the wall, and before them was a curtain made out of calico that hung down to the floor. There was an old hair-trunk in one corner, and a guitar box in another, and all sorts of little knick-knacks and gym-cracks around, like girls brisking up a room with. The king said it was all the more homely and more pleasanter for these fixings, and so don't disturb them. The duke's room was pretty small, but plenty good enough, and so was my cubby. That night they had a big supper, and all them men and women were there, and I stood behind the king and the duke's chairs and waited on them, and the niggers waited on the rest. Mary Jane, she said at the head of the table, was Susan alongside of her, and said how bad the biscuits was, and how mean the preserves was, and how ornery and tough the fried chickens was, and all that kind of rot, the way women always do for the four south compliments. And the people all knowed everything was tip-top and said so, said, How do you get biscuits to brown so nice? And where for the land sex did you get these amazing pickles, and all that kind of humbug talky-talk, just the way people always does at a supper, you know. And when it was all done, me and the hare-lip had supper in the kitchen off of the leavens, whilst the others was helping the niggers clean up the things. The hare-lip she got to pump in me about England, and blessed if I didn't think the ice was getting mighty thin sometimes, she says, Did you ever see the king? Who, William Forth? Well, I bet I have he goes to our church. I know he was dead years ago, but I never let on. So when I says he goes to our church, she says, What, regular? Yes, regular. His pew's right over opposite Arne, on to other side of the pulpit. I thought he lived in London? Well, he does. Where would he live? But I thought you lived in Sheffield. I see I was up a stump. I had to let on to get choked with a chicken bone, so it was get time to think how to get down again. Then I says, I mean he goes to our church regular when he's in Sheffield. That's only in the summertime when he comes there to take the sea-baths. Why, how you talk, Sheffield ain't on the sea? Well, who said it was? Why, you did. I didn't You did? I didn't. You did. I never said nothing of the kind. Well, what did you say then? Said he come to take the sea-baths. That's what I said. Well, then, how is he going to take the sea-baths if it ain't on the sea? Look here, I says. Did you ever see any Congress water? Yes. Well, did you have to go to Congress to get it? Why, no. Well, neither does William Forth have to go to the sea to get a sea-bath. How does he get it, then? Gets it the way people down here gets Congress water, in barrels. There in the palace at Sheffield they've got furnaces, and he wants his water hot. They can't buy all that amount of water away off there at the sea. They haven't got no conveniences for it. Oh, I see now you might have said that in the first place and saved time. When she said that, I see I was out of the woods again, and so I was comfortable and glad. Next, she says, Do you go to church, too? Yes, regular. Where do you sit? Why, in our pew. Whose pew? Why, our and your Uncle Harvey's. His, and what does he want with a pew? Once it is set in, what did you reckon he wanted with it? Why, I thought he'd be in the pulpit. Right him, I forgot he was a preacher. I see I was up a stump again, so I played another chicken bone and got another think. Then I says, Blame it, do you suppose there ain't but one preacher to a church? Why, what do they want with more? What, to preach before a king? I never see such a girl as you. They don't have no less than seventeen. Seventeen, my land! Why, I wouldn't set out such a string as that, not if I never got to glory. It must take him a week. Shucks, they don't all of them preach the same day, only one of them. Well, then, what does the rest of them do? Oh, nothing much. Lull around, past the plate, and one thing or another, but mainly they don't do nothing. Well, then, what are they for? Why, therefore, style. Don't you know nothing? Well, I don't want to know no such foolishness as that. How is servants treated in England? Do they treat them better than we treat our niggers? No. A servant ain't nobody there. They treat them worse than dogs. Don't they give them holidays the way we do? Christmas and New Year's week and Fourth of July? Oh, just listen. A body could tell you ain't ever been to England by that. Why, here, I, I, why, Joanna, they never see a holiday from year's end to year's end. Never go to the circus, nor theatre, nor nigger shows, nor no-es. Nor church, nor church. But you always went to church. Well, I was gone up again. I forgot I was the old man's servant. But next minute I whirled in on a kind of an explanation how a valley was different from a common servant and had to go to church whether he wanted to or not, and sat with a family on account of its being the law. But I didn't do it pretty good, and when I got done I see she warn't satisfied. She says, Honest engine, now, ain't you been telling me a lot of lies? Honest engine, says I. None of it at all? None of it at all. Not a lie in it, says I. Lay your hand on this book and say it. I see it warn't nothing but a dictionary, so I laid my hand on it and said it. So then she looked a little better satisfied and says, Well, then I'll believe some of it, but I hope to gracious if I'll believe the rest. What is it that you won't believe, Joe? says Mary Jane, stepping in with Susan behind her. It ain't right nor kind to you to talk so to him and him a stranger in so far from his people. How would you like to be treated so? That's always your way, ma'am. Always sailing in to help somebody before they hurt. I ain't done nothing to him. He's told some stretchers, I reckon, and I said I wouldn't swallow it all. And that's every bit and grain I did say. I reckon he can stand a little thing like that, can't he? I don't care whether it was little nor whether it was big. He's here in our house and a stranger, and it wasn't good of you to say it. If you was in his place it would make you feel ashamed. And so you oughtn't to say a thing to another person that will make them feel ashamed. Why, ma'am, he said it don't make no difference what he said. That ain't the thing. The thing is for you to treat him kind and not be saying things to make him remember he ain't in his own country and amongst his own folks. I says to myself, this is a girl that I'm letting that old reptile rob her of her money. Then Susan she waltz'd in, and if you'll believe me, she did give hair-lip hark from the tomb. This is I to myself, and this is another one that I'm letting him rob her of her money. Then Mary Jane she took another inning and went in sweet and lovely again, which was her way, but when she got done there weren't hardly anything left to old poor hair-lip. So she hollered. All right, then, says the other girls, you just ask his pardon. She done it, too, and she done it beautiful. She done it so beautiful it was good to hear, and I wished I could tell her a thousand lies so she could do it again. I says to myself, this is another one that I'm letting him rob her of her money. And when she got through they all just laid their cells out to make me feel at home and know I was amongst friends. I felt so ornery and low down and mean that I says to myself, my mind's made up. I'll have that money for them or bust. So then I lit out. For bed, I said, meaning some time or another, when I got by myself, I went to thinkin' the thing over. I says to myself, shall I go to that doctor, private, and blow on these frauds? No, that won't do. He might tell who told him, then the king and the duke would make it warm for me. Shall I go private and tell Mary Jane? No, I doesn't do it. Her face would give them a hint, sure. They've got the money, and they'd slide right out and get away with it. If she was to fetch and help, I'd get mixed up in the business before it was done with, I judge. No. There ain't no good way but one. I got to steal that money, somehow, and I got to steal it some way that they won't get suspicion that I'd done it. They've got a good thing here, and they ain't a going to leave till they've played this family and this town for all their worth. So I'll find a chance time enough. I'll steal it and hide it, and buy and buy when I'm away down the river. I'll write a letter and tell Mary Jane where it's hid. But I better hide it to-night if I can, because the doctor maybe hasn't led up as much as he lets on he has. He might scare them out of here yet. So thinks I. I'll go and search them rooms. Upstairs the hall was dark, but I found the duke's room and started to paw around it with my hands. But I recollected it wouldn't be much like the king to let anybody else take care of that money but his own self. So then I went to his room and begun to paw around there. But I see I couldn't do nothing without a candle, and I dastard light one, of course. So I judged I've got to do the other thing, lay for them an eavesdrop. About that time I hears their footsteps coming, and was going to skip under the bed. I reached for it, but it wasn't where I thought it would be. But I touched the curtain to hid Mary Jane's frocks, so I jumped him behind that and snuggled in amongst the gowns, and stood there perfectly still. They come in and shut the door, and the first thing the duke done was to get down and look under the bed. Then I was glad I hadn't found the bed when I wanted it. And yet, you know, it's kind of natural to hide under the bed when you're up to anything private. They sat down then, and the king says, Well, what is it? And cut it middling short, because it's better for us to be down there or whooping up the mornin' than up here givin' them a chance to talk us over. Well, this is it, Capit. I ain't easy. I ain't comfortable. That doctor lays all my mind. I wanted to know your plans. I've got a notion, and I think it's a sound one. What is it, duke? That we better glide out of this before three in the mornin' and clip it down the river with what we've got. Especially, seeing we got it so easy, givin' back to us, flung at our heads, as you may say, when of course we're allowed to have to steal it back. I'm for knockin' off and lightin' out. That made me feel pretty bad. About an hour or two ago it would have been a little different, but now it made me feel bad and disappointed. The king rips out and says, What, and not sell out the rest of the property? March off like a parcel of fools and leave eight or nine thousand dollars worth of property or layin' around just sufferin' to be scooped in? And all good saleable stuff, too. The duke, he grumbled, said the bag of gold was enough, and he didn't want to go no deeper, didn't want to rob a lot of orphans of everything they had. Why, how you talk, says the king. We shan't rob them of nothing at all but just this money. The people that buy us the property is the sufferers, because as soon as it's found out that we didn't own it, which won't be long after we've slid, the sale won't be valid, and it'll all go back to the estate. These year orphans will get their house back again, and that's enough for them, their young and spry, and can easily earn a livin'. They ain't a gonna suffer. Why, just think, there's thousands and thousands that ain't nigh so well off. Bless you, they ain't got nothing to complain of. Well, the king he talked him blind. So at last he give in and said all right, but said he believed it was plain foolishness to stay and that doctor hangin' over them. But the king says, cuss the doctor. What do we care for him? Ain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain't that a big enough majority in any town? So they got ready to go downstairs again. The duke says, I don't think we put that money in a good place. That cheered me up. I'd begun to think I warn't gonna get a hint of no kind to help me. The king says, why? Because Mary Jane will be in mourning from this out. And first you know the nigger that does up the rooms will get in order to box these duds up and put them away. And do you reckon a nigger can run across money and not borrow some of it? Your head's level again, duke, says the king. And he comes a fumbling under the cut in two or three foot from where I was. I stuck tight to the wall and kept mighty still, though quivery. And I wondered what them fellows would say to me if they'd catch me. And I tried to think what I'd better do if they did catch me. But the king he got the bag before I could think more than about half a thought. And he never suspicioned I was around. They took and shoved the bag through a rip in the straw tick that was under the feather-bed, and crammed it in a foot or two amongst the straw, and said it was all right now, because a nigger only makes up the feather-bed, and don't turn over the straw tick only about twice a year, and so it wanted no danger of getting stole now. But I knowed better. I had it out of there before they were half way downstairs. I groped along up to my cubby and hid it there till I could get a chance to do better. I judged I better hide it outside of the house somewheres, because if they missed it they would give the house a good ransacking. I knowed that very well. Then I turned in, with my clothes all on, but I couldn't have gone to sleep if I had wanted to. I was in such a sweat to get through with the business. By and by I heard the king and the duke come up, so I rolled off my pallet and laid with my chin at the top of my ladder, and waited to see if anything was going to happen. But nothing did. So I held on till all the late sounds had quit and the early ones hadn't begun yet, and then I slipped down the ladder. I crept to their doors and listened. They were snoring. So I tiptoed along and got downstairs all right. There weren't a sound anywheres. I peeped through a crack of the dining-room door and see the men that was watching the corpse all sound asleep on their chairs. The door was open into the pallet where the corpse was laying and there was a candle in both rooms. I passed along and the parlor door was open, but I see there warn't nobody in there but the remains of Peter. So I shoved on by. But the front door was locked and the key wasn't there. Just then I heard somebody coming down the stairs back behind me. I run in the parlor and took a swift look around and the only place I see to hide the bag was in the coffin. The lid was shoved along about a foot, showing the dead man's face down in there, with a wet cloth over it and his shroud on. I tucked the money bag in under the lid just down beyond where his hands was crossed, which made me creep. There was so cold, and then I run back across the room and in behind the door. The person coming was Mary Jane. She went to the coffin very soft and kneeled down and looked in. Then she put up her handkerchief and I see she begun to cry, though I couldn't hear her and her back was to me. I slid out, and as I passed the dining-room I thought I'd make sure them watchers hadn't seen me, so I looked through the crack and everything was all right. They hadn't stirred. I slipped up to bed, feeling rather blue on accounts of the thing playing out that way after I took so much trouble and run so much risk about it. Says I, if it could stay where it is, all right, because when we get down the river a hundred mile or two I could write back to Mary Jane, and she could dig him up again and get it. But that ain't the thing that's going to happen. The thing that's going to happen is the money will be found when they come to screw on the lid. Then the king will get it again, and it'll be a long day before he gives anybody another chance to smooch it from him. Of course I wanted to slide down and get it out of there, but I dastard try it. Every minute it was getting earlier now, and pretty soon some of them watches would begin to stir, and I might get catched. Catched was six thousand dollars in my hands that nobody hadn't hired me to take care of. I don't wish to be mixed up in no such business as that, I says to myself. When I got downstairs in the mornin' the parlor was shut up, and the watches was gone. They want nobody around but the family and the widow Bartley and our tribe. I watched their faces to see if anything had been happening, but I couldn't tell. Towards the middle of the day the undertaker come with his man, and they set the coffin in the middle of the room on a couple of chairs, and then set all our chairs in rows, and borrowed more from the neighbors till the hall and the parlor and the dining room was full. I see the coffin lid was the way it was before, but I dastard go to look in under it with folks around. Then the people begun to flock in, and the beats and the girls took seats in the front row at the head of the coffin, and for half an hour the people filed around slow, in single rank, and looked down at the dead man's face a minute, and some dropped in a tear. It was all very still and solemn. Only the girls and the beats hold an anchor juice to their eyes, and keepin' their heads bent, and sobbing a little. There warn't no other sound but the scraping of the feet on the floor and blowing noses, because people always blows them more at a funeral than they do at other places except church. When the place was packed full, the undertaker he slid around in his black gloves with his softy, soothering ways, putting on the last touches, and getting people and things all ship-shape and comfortable, and makin' no more sound than a cat. He never spoke. He moved people around. He squeezed in late ones. He opened up passageways, and done it with nods and signs with his hands. Then he took his place over against the wall. He was the softest, glidingest, stealthiest man I ever see, and there warn't no more smile to him than there is to a ham. They had borrowed a melodium, a sick one, and when everything was ready a young woman sat down and worked it, and it was pretty squeaky and colloquy, and everybody joined in and sung, and Peter was the only one that had a good thing according to my notion. Then the reverend Hobson opened up, slow and solemn, and begun to talk. And straight off the most outrageous row busted out in the cellar a body ever heard. It was only one dog, but he made a most powerful racket, and he kept it up right along. The parson he had to stand there over the coffin and wait. You couldn't hear yourself think. It was right down awkward, and nobody didn't seem to know what to do. But pretty soon they see that long-legged undertaker make a sign to the preacher as much as to say, Don't you worry, just depend on me. Then he stooped down and begun to glide along the wall, just his shoulders showing over the people's heads. So he glided along, and the pow-wow and racket getting more and more outrageous all the time. Then at last, when he had gone around two sides of the room, he disappears down cellar. Then in about two seconds we heard a whack, and the dog he finished up with a most amazing howl or two, and then everything was dead still. And the parson begun his solemn talk where he left off. In a minute or two here comes this undertaker's back and shoulders gliding along the wall again. And so he glided and glided around three sides of the room, and then rose up and shaded his mouth with his hands, and stretched his neck out towards the preacher over the people's heads and says in a kind of a coarse whisper, He had a rat! Then he drooped down and glided along the wall again to his place. You could see it was a great satisfaction to the people because naturally they wanted to know. A little thing like that don't cost nothing, and it's just the little things that makes a man to be looked up to and liked. There weren't no more popular men in town than what that undertaker was. Well, the funeral sermon was very good, but parson long and tiresome, and then the king he shoved in and got off some of his usual rubbage, and at last the job was through, and the undertaker begun to sneak up on the coffin with his screwdriver. I was in a sweat, then, and watched him pretty keen. But he never meddled at all, just slid the lid along as soft as mush, and screwed it down tight and fast. So there I was. I didn't know whether the money was in there or not. So, says I, suppose somebody has hogged that bag on the sly. Now how do I know whether to write to Mary Jane or not? Suppose she dug him up and didn't find nothing. What would she think of me? Blame it, I says. I might get hunted up and jailed. I'd better lay low and keep dark and not write at all. Things awful mixed now. Trying to better it, I've worsened it a hundred times, and I wish to goodness I'd just let it alone. Dad fetched the whole business. They buried him, and we'd come back home, and I went to watch and faces again. I couldn't help it, and I couldn't rest easy. But nothing come of it, the faces didn't tell me nothing. The king he visited around in the evening and sweetened everybody up, and made himself ever so friendly, and he'd give out the idea that his congregation over in England would be in a sweat about him, so we must hurry and settle up the estate right away, and leave for home. He was very sorry he was so pushed, and so was everybody. They wished he could stay longer, but they said they could see it couldn't be done. And he said, of course, him and William would take the girls home with them, and that pleased everybody too, because then the girls would be well fixed, and amongst their own relations. And it pleased the girls too. Tickled them so they clean forgot they ever had a trouble in the world, and told him to sell out as quick as he wanted to, they will be ready. Then poor things was that glad and happy it made my heart ache to see them getting fooled and lied to so, but I didn't see no safe way for me to chip in and change the general tune. Well, blamed if the king didn't build the house and the niggers and all the property for auction straight off, sailed two days after the funeral, but anybody could buy a private beforehand if they wanted to. So the next day after the funeral, along about noontime, the girl's joy got the first jolt. A couple of nigger traders come along, and the king sold them the niggers reasonable, for three-day drafts, as they called it, and away they went, the two sons up the river to Memphis, and their mother down the river to Orleans. I thought them poor girls and them niggers would break their hearts for grief. They cried around each other, and took on so it most made me down sick to see it. The girls said they hadn't ever dreamed of seeing the family separated or sold away from the town. I can't ever get it out of my memory. The sight of them poor, miserable girls and niggers hanging around each other's necks and crying, and I reckon I couldn't have stood it at all, but would have had a bust out and tell on our gang if I hadn't knowed the sale warn't no account and the niggers would be back home in a week or two. The thing made a big stir in the town, too, and a good many come out flat-footed and said it was scandalous to separate the mother and the children that way. It injured the frauds some, but the old fool he bulled right along, spite of all the duke could say or do, and I'd tell you the duke was powerful uneasy. Next day was auction day. About broad day in the morning, the king and the duke come up in the garret and woke me up, and I see by their look that there was trouble. The king says, Was you in my room night before last? Know your majesty, which was the way I always called him when nobody but our gang warn't around. Was you in there yesterday or last night? Know your majesty. Honor bright now, no lies. Honor bright, your majesty, I'm telling you the truth. I ain't been in near your room since Miss Mary Jane took you and the duke and showed it to you. The duke says, Have you seen any one else go in there? Know your grace, not as I remember, I believe. Stop and think. I studied a while and see my chance. Then I says, Well, I see the niggers go in there several times. Both of them give a little jump and look like they hadn't ever expected it and then like they had. Then the duke says, What, all of them? Know, lease-wise, not all at once. That is, I don't think I ever see them all come out at once but just one time. Hello, when was that? It was the day we had the funeral. In the morning. It went early because I overslept. I was just starting down the ladder and I see them. Well, go on. Go on. What did they do? How did they act? They didn't do nothing and they didn't act any way much as far as I see. They tiptoed away. So I seen easy enough that they'd shoved in there to do up your majesty's room or something supposing you was up and found you ward up and so they was hoping to slide out of the way of trouble without waking you up if they hadn't already waked you up. Great guns, this is a go, says the king, and both of them look pretty sick and tolerable silly. They stood there a-thinking and scratching their heads a minute, and the duke he bust into a kind of a little raspy chuckle and says, It does beat all how neat the niggers played their hand. They led on to be sorry they was going out of this region, and I believe they was sorry, and so did you and so did everybody. Don't ever tell me any more that a nigger ain't got any histrionic talent. Why, the way they played that thing it would fool anybody. In my opinion there's a fortune in them. If I had capital and a theatre I wouldn't want a better lay out than that. And here we've gone and sold them for a song. Yes, and ain't privileged to sing the song yet. Say, where is that song, that draft? In the bank four to be collected, where would it be? Well, that's all right then, thank goodness. As I kind of timid like. Is there something gone wrong? The king whirls on me and rips out, None of your business. You keep your head shut and mind your own affairs, if you got any. Long as you're in this town don't you forget that, you hear? Then he says to the duke, We got to just swallow it and say nothing. Mum's the word for us. As they were starting down the ladder the duke he chuckles again and says, Quick sales and small profits. It's a good business, yes. The king snarls around on him and says, I was trying to do for the best and selling them out so quick. If the profits had turned out to be none lacking considerable and none to carry, is it my fault any more on its own? Well, they'd be in this house yet and we wouldn't if I could have got my advice listened to. The king sass back as much as was safe for him and then swapped around and lit into me again. He'd give me down the banks for not coming and telling him I'd see the niggers come out of his room acting that way. Said any fool when a node something was up. Then Walt's didn't cussed himself a while and said it all come of him not laying late and taking his natural rest that morning. And he'd be blamed if he'd have a do it again. So they went off a jawing and I felt dreadful glad I'd worked it all off onto the niggers and yet hadn't done the niggers no harm by it. 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 FIN. By Mark Twain. CHAPTER XXVIII By and by it was getting uptime. So I come down the ladder and started for downstairs. But as I come to the girls' room the door was open and I see Mary Jane's sitting by her old-hair trunk, which was open, and she'd been packing things in it. Get ready to go to England. But she had stopped now with a folded gown in her lap and had her face in her hands crying. I felt awful bad to see it. Of course anybody would. I went in there and says, Miss Mary Jane, you can't have bear to see people in trouble and I can't. Most always. Tell me about it. So she'd done it. And it was the niggers. I just expected it. She said the beautiful trip to England was most about spoiled for her. She didn't know how she was ever going to be happy there, knowing the mother and the children weren't ever going to see each other no more, and then busted out bitterer than ever, and flung up her hands and says, Oh, dear, dear, to think they aren't ever going to see each other any more! But they will, and inside of two weeks and I know it, says I. It was out before I could think. And before I could budge, she throws her arms around my neck and told me to say it again, say it again, say it again! I see I had spoke too sudden and said too much, and was in a close place. I asked her to let me think a minute, and she sat there very impatient and excited and handsome, but looking kind of happy and eased up, like a person that's had a tooth pulled out. So I went to study in and out. I says to myself, I reckon a body that ups and tells the truth when he is in a tight place is taking considerable many risks, though I ain't had no experience and can't say for certain. But it looks so to me, anyway, and yet here's a case where I'm blessed if it don't look to me like the truth is better and actually safer than a lie. I must lay it by in my mind and think it over some time or other. It's so kind of strange and irregular. I never seen nothing like it. Well, I says to myself at last, I'm going to chance it. I'll up and tell the truth this time, though it does seem most like sitting down on a can of powder and touching it off just to see where you'll go to. Then I says, Miss Mary Jane, is there any place out of town, a little ways where you could go and stay three or four days? Yes, Mr. Lothropes, why? Never mind why yet. If I tell you how I know the niggers will see each other again inside of two weeks here in this house and prove how I know it, will you go to Mr. Lothropes and stay four days? Four days, she says. I'll stay a year. All right, I says. I don't want nothing more out of you than just your word. I'd rather have it than another man's kiss the Bible. She smiled and reddened up very sweet, and I says, If you don't mind it, I'll shut the door and bolt it. Then I come back and sit down again and says, Don't you holler. Just sit still and take it like a man. I got to tell the truth, and you want to brace up, Miss Mary, because it's a bad kind, and going to be hard to take, but there ain't no help for it. These uncles of Yorne ain't no uncles at all. There are a couple of frauds, regular deadbeats. There, now we're over the worst of it, you can stand the rest, Midland Easy. It jolted her up like everything, of course, but I was over the shoal water now, so I went right along, her eyes ablazin' higher and higher all the time, and told her every blame thing, from where we first struck that young fool going up to the steamboat, clear through to where she flung herself on to the king's breast at the front door, and he kissed her sixteen or seventeen times, and then up she jumps with her face afire like sunset and says, The brute! Come, don't waste a minute, not a second we'll have them tarred and feathered and flung in the river. Says I. Certainly, but do you mean before you go to Mr. Lothrop, sir? Oh, she says. What am I thinkin' about? She says, and sit right down again. Don't mind what I said, please don't. You won't now, will you? Layin' her silky hand on mine in that kind of a way that I said I would die first. I never thought. I was so stirred up, she says. Now go on, and I won't do so any more. You tell me what to do, and whatever you say, I'll do it. Well, I says. It's a rough gang, them two frauds, and I'm fixed so I've got to travel with them a while longer, whether I want to or not. I'd rather not tell you why, and if you was to blow on them this town would get me out of their claws, and I'd be all right, but there'd be another person that you don't know about who'd be in big trouble. Well, we got to save him, ain't we? Of course. Well, then we won't blow on them. Sayin' them words put a good idea in my head. I see how maybe I could get me and Jim rid of the frauds, get them jailed here, and then leave. But I didn't want to run the raft in the day time without anybody aboard to ask her questions but me, so I didn't want the plan to begin work until pretty late to-night. I says. Miss Mary Jane, I'll tell you what we'll do, and you won't have to stay at Mr. Lothrop so long another. How far is it? A little short of four miles, right out in the country back here. Well, that'll answer. Now you go along out there, and lay low till nine or half past to-night, and then get them to fetch you home again. Tell them you've thought of somethin'. If you get here before eleven put a candle in this window, and if I don't turn up wait till eleven, and then if I don't turn up it means I'm gone and out of the way and safe. Then you come out and spread the news around and get these beats jailed. Good, she says, I'll do it. And if it just happens so that I don't get away but get took up along with them, you must up and say I told you the whole thing beforehand and you must stand by me all you can. Stand by you. Indeed I will. They shan't touch a hair of your head, she says, and I see her nostril spread and her eyes snap when she said it too. If I get away I shan't be here, I says, to prove these rap scallions ain't your uncles, and I couldn't do it if I was here. I could swear they was beats and bummers, that's all, though that's worth somethin'. Well, there's others can do that better than what I can, and they're people that ain't going to be doubted as quick as I'd be. I tell you how to find them. Give me a pencil and a piece of paper. There. Royal Nonsuch Bricksville. Put it away, and don't lose it. When the court wants to find out somethin' about these two, let them send up to Bricksville and say they've got the men that played the Royal Nonsuch, and ask for some witnesses, while you'll have that entire town down here before you can hardly wink, Miss Mary, and they'll come up boilin' too. I judge we have got everything fixed about right now, so I says, Just let the auction go right along, and don't worry. Nobody don't have to pay for the things they buy till a whole day after the auction on accounts of the short notice, and they ain't goin' out of this till they get that money, and the way we've fixed it the sale ain't goin' to count, and they ain't goin' to get no money. It's just like the way it was with the niggers. It warn't no sale, and the niggers will be back before long. Why, they can't collect the money for the niggers yet. They're in the worst kind of affix, Miss Mary. Well, she says, I'll run down to breakfast now, and then I'll start straight for Mr. Lotharps. Deed, that ain't the ticket, Miss Mary Jane, I says. By no manner of means go before breakfast. Why, what did you reckon I wanted you to go with all for, Miss Mary? Well, I never thought, and come to think, I don't know, what was it? Why, it's because you ain't one of these leather-faced people. I don't want no better book than what your face is. A body can sit down and read it off like coarse print. Do you reckon you can go and face your uncles when they come to kiss you good mornin' and never there there don't? Yes, I'll go before breakfast. I'll be glad to. And leave my sisters with them? Yes, never mind about them. They've got to stand it yet a while. They might suspicion something if all of you was to go. I don't want you to see them, nor your sisters, nor nobody in this town. If a neighbor was to ask how is your uncles this mornin' your face would tell something. No, you go right along, Miss Mary Jane, and I'll fix it with all of them. I'll tell Miss Susan to give your love to your uncles, and say you've went away for a few hours before to get a little rest and change, or to see a friend, and you'll be back to-night or early in the mornin'. I've come to see a friend is all right, but I won't have my love given to them. Well, then it shan't be. It was well enough to tell her so, no harm in it. It was only a little thing to do and no trouble, and it's the little things that smooth people roads the most down here below. It would make Mary Jane comfortable, and it wouldn't cost nothing. Then I says, There's one more thing, that bag of money. Well, they've got that, and it makes me feel pretty silly to think how they got it. No, you're out there, they ain't got it. Why, who's got it? I wish I know'd, but I don't. I had it because I stole it from them, and I stole it to give it to you, and I know where I hid it, but I'm afraid it ain't there no more. I'm awful sorry, Miss Mary Jane. I'm just as sorry as I can be, but I'd done the best I could. I did honest. I come nigh gettin' caught, and I had to shove it into the first place I come to and run, and it warn't a good place. Oh, stop blaming yourself. It's too bad to do it, and I won't allow it. You couldn't help it? It wasn't your fault. Where did you hide it? I didn't want to send her thinkin' about her troubles again, and I couldn't seem to get my mouth to tell her what would make her see that corpse lying in the coffin with that bag of money on his stomach. So for a minute I didn't say nothin'. Then I says, I'd rather not tell you where I put it, Miss Mary Jane, if you don't mind, let me off. But I'll write it for you on a piece of paper, and you can read it along the road to Mr. Lothrop's if you want to. Do you reckon that'll do? Oh, yes. So I wrote. I put it in the coffin. It was in there when you was cryin' there away in the night. I was behind the door, and I was mighty sorry for you, Miss Mary Jane. It made my eyes water a little to remember her cryin' there all by herself in the night. And them devils lying there right under her own roof, shamin' her and robbin' her, and when I folded it up and give it to her, I see the water comin' to her eyes, too. And she shook me by the hand hard, and says, Goodbye. I'm gonna do everything just as you've told me, and if I don't ever see you again, I shan't ever forget you, and I'll think of you all many and many a time, and I'll pray for you, too. And she was gone. Pray for me. I reckoned if she'd know me, she'd take a job that was more nearer her size. But I bet she'd done it just the same. She was just that kind. She had the grit to pray for Judas if she took the notion there weren't no back down to her, I judge. You may say what you want to, but in my opinion she had more sand in her than any girl I ever see. In my opinion she was just full of sand. It sounds like flattery, but it ain't no flattery, and when it comes to beauty and goodness, too, she lays over them all. I hain't ever seen her since that time that I see her go out that door. No, I hain't ever seen her since, but I reckon I've thought of her many and many a million times, and of her sayin' she would pray for me. And if ever I'd have thought it would do any good for me to pray for her, blamed if I wouldn't have done it or bust. Well, Mary Jane, she lit out the back way, I reckon, because nobody see her go. When I struck Susan in the hairlip I says, What's the name of them people over on the other side of the river that you all goes to see sometimes? They says, There's several, but it's the proctors mainly. That's the name, I says, I most forgot it. Well, Miss Mary Jane, she told me to tell you she's gone over there in a dreadful hurry. One of them sick. Which one? I don't know. Lease ways I kinda forget, but I think it's six alive. I hope it ain't Hannah. I'm sorry to say it, I says, but Hannah's the very one. My goodness, and she's so well only last week. Is she took bad? It ain't no name for it. They sit up with her all night, Miss Mary Jane said, and they don't think she'll last many hours. Only think of that now. What's the matter with her? I couldn't think of anything reasonable right off that way. So I says, Mumps. Mumps, your granny, they don't set up with people that's got the mumps. They don't, don't they? You better bet they do with these mumps. These mumps is different. It's a new kind, Miss Mary Jane said. How's it a new kind? Because it's mixed up with other things. What other things? Well, measles and hooping cough, and ellipsa plus, and consumption and yellow janders and brain fever, and I don't know what all. My land, and they call it the mumps. That's what Miss Mary Jane said. Well, what in the nation do they call it the mumps for? Why, because it is the mumps. That's what it starts with. Well, there ain't no sense in it. A body might stump his toe and take poison and fall down the well and break his neck and bust his brains out, and somebody come along and ask what killed him, and some numbskull up and say, Why, he stumped his toe. Would there be any sense in that? No, and there ain't no sense in this and other. Is it catching? Is it catching? Why, how you talk? Is a harrow catching in the dark? If you don't hitch on to one tooth, you're bound to on another, ain't you? And you can't get away with that tooth without fetching the whole harrow along, can you? Well, these kind of mumps is a kind of a harrow, as you may say, and it ain't no slouch of a harrow another. You come to get it hitched on good. Well, it's awful, I think, says the hairlip. I go to Uncle Harvey, and, oh yes, I says, I would, of course I would, I wouldn't lose no time. Well, why wouldn't you? Just look at it a minute, and maybe you can see. Ain't your uncles a bleach to get along home to England as fast as they can? And do you reckon they've been mean enough to go off and leave you to go all that journey by yourselves? You know they'll wait for you? So far so good. Your Uncle Harvey's a preacher, ain't he? Very well, then. Is a preacher going to deceive a steamboat clerk? Is he going to deceive a ship clerk? So is to get them to let Miss Mary Jane go aboard? Now you know he ain't. What will he do then? Why, he'll say, it's a great pity, but my church matters has got to get along the best way they can, for my niece has been exposed to the dreadful pluribus una mumps, and so it's my bounden duty to sit down here and wait the three months it takes to show on her if she's got it. But never mind if you think it's best to tell your Uncle Harvey, shucks, and stay fooling around here when we could all be having good times in England whilst we was waiting to find out whether Mary Jane's got it or not. Why, you talk like a muggins. Well, anyway, maybe you better tell some of the neighbors. Listen at that now. You do beat all for natural stupidness. Can't you see that they go and tell? There ain't no way but just to not tell anybody at all. Well, maybe you're right. Yes, I judge you all right. But I reckon we ought to tell Uncle Harvey she's gone out a while anyway, so he won't be uneasy about her. Yes, Miss Mary Jane, she wanted you to do that. She says, tell them to give Uncle Harvey and William my love and a kiss, and say I've run over the river to see Mr... Miss... What is the name of that rich family your Uncle Peter used to think so much of? I mean the one that... Why, you must mean the apt thoughts, ain't it? Of course, bother them kinds of names. A body can't ever seem to remember them half the time somehow. Yes, she said, says she had to run over before to ask the apt thoughts to be sure and come to the auction and buy this house, because she allowed her Uncle Peter would rather they had it than anybody else, and she's going to stick to them till they say they'll come. And then, if she ain't too tired, she's coming home, and if she is she'll be home in the morning anyway. She said, don't say nothing about the Procters, but only about the apt thoughts, which be perfectly true, because she is going there to speak about their buy in the house, I know it because she told me so herself. All right, they said, and cleared out to lay for the uncles and give them the love and the kisses and tell them the message. Everything was all right now. The girls wouldn't say nothing because they wanted to go to England, and the King and the Duke would rather marry Jane was off working for the auction than around in reach of Dr. Robinson. I felt very good. I judged I had done it pretty neat. I reckoned Tom Sawyer couldn't have done it no neater himself. Of course he would have thrown more style into it, but I can't do that very handy, not being brung up to it. Well, they held the auction in the public square, long towards the end of the afternoon, and it strung along, and strung along, and the old man he was on hand and looking his level poisonous, up there alongside of the auctioneer, and chipping in a little scripture now and then, or a little goody-goody saying of some kind, and the Duke he was around goo-gooing for sympathy all he knowed how, and just spreading his self generally. But by and by the thing dragged through, everything was sold, nothing but a little old trifling lot in the graveyard. So they got to work that off. I never seen such a draught as the King was for wanting to swallow everything. Well, whilst they was at it, a steamboat landed, and in about two minutes up comes the crowd of whooping and yelling and laughing and carrying on and singing out, Here's your opposition-line, here's your two sets' heirs to old Peter Wilkes, and you pays your money, and you takes your choice. End of chapter.