 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 FIN. by Mark Twain. CHAPTER XVII. In about a minute somebody spoke out of a window without putting his head out and says, Be done, boys. Who's there? I says, It's me. Who's me? George Jackson, sir. What do you want? I don't want nothing, sir. I only want to go long by, but the dogs won't let me. What are you prowling around here this time of night for, hey? I want prowling around, sir. I fell overboard off of the steamboat. Oh, you did, did you? Strike a light there, somebody. What did you say your name was? George Jackson, sir. I'm only a boy. Look here. If you're telling the truth, you needn't be afraid. Nobody'll hurt you. But don't try to budge. Stand right where you are. Rouse out Bob and Tom, some of you, and fetch the guns. George Jackson, is there anybody with you? No, sir. Nobody. I heard the people stirring around in the house now and see a light. The man's sung out. Snatch that light away, Betsey, you old fool. Ain't you got any sense? Put it on the floor behind the front door. Bob, if you and Tom are ready, take your places. Already. Now, George Jackson, do you know the Shepherdsons? No, sir. I never heard of them. Well, that may be so, and it may. Now, already. Step forward, George Jackson. And mine don't you hurry. Come mighty slow. If there's anybody with you, let him keep back. If he shows himself, he'll be shot. Come along now. Come slow. Push the door open yourself, just enough to squeeze in, do you hear? I didn't hurry. I couldn't if I wanted to. I took one slow step at a time. In the water sound only I thought I could hear my heart. The dogs were as still as the humans, but they followed a little behind me. When I got to the three locked doorsteps I heard them unlocking and unbarring and unbolting. I put my hand on the door and pushed it a little, and a little more till somebody said, There, that's enough. Put your head in. I'd done it, but I judged they would take it off. The candle was on the floor, and there they all was in looking at me, and me at them for about a quarter of a minute. Three big men with guns pointed at me, which may be wince, I tell you. The oldest, gray in about sixty, the other two thirty or more, all of them fine and handsome, and the sweetest old gray-haired lady, and back her two young women which I couldn't see right well. The old gentleman says, There, I reckon it's all right. Come in. As soon as I was in the old gentleman he locked the door and barred it and bolted it, and told the young men to come in with their guns, and they all went in a big parlor that had a new rag carpet on the floor, and got together in a corner that was out of the range of the front windows. There weren't none on the side. They held the candle and took a good look at me, and all said, Why, he ain't a Shepardson? No, there ain't any Shepardson about him. Then the old man said he hoped I wouldn't mind being searched for arms, because he didn't mean no harm by it. It was only to make sure. But he didn't pry into my pockets, but only felt outside with his hands, and said it was all right. He told me to make myself easy and at home and tell it all about myself. But the old lady says, Why, bless you, Saul! The poor thing's as wet as he can be, and don't you reckon it may be he's hungry? True for you, Rachel, I forgot. So the old lady says, Betsy, this was a nigger-woman, you fly round and get him something to eat as quick as you can, poor thing, and one of you girls go and wake up Buck and tell him, Oh, here he is, his self. Buck, take this little stranger and get the wet clothes off of him and dress him up in some of yours that's dry. Buck looked about as old as me, 13 or 14 or along there, though he's a little bigger than me. He hadn't on anything but a shirt, and he was very frowsy headed. He came in gapping and digging one fist into his eyes, and he was dragging a gun along with the other one. He says, Ain't there no Shepardsons around? They said no, it was a false alarm. Well, he says, If there had been some, I reckon I'd have got one. They all laughed, and Bob says, Why, Buck, they might have scalped us all. You've been so slow in coming. Well, nobody come after me, and it ain't right I'm always kept down. I don't get no show. Never mind, Buck, my boy, says the old man. You'll have show enough all in good time, don't you fret about that. Go along with you now, and do as your mother told you. When we got upstairs to his room he got me a coarse shirt and a roundabout and pants of his, and I put them on. While I was at it he asked me what my name was, but before I could tell him he started to tell me about a blue jay and a young rabbit he had catched on the woods day before yesterday, and he asked me where Moses was when the candle went out. I said I didn't know. I hadn't heard about it before, no way. Well, guess, he says. How am I going to guess, says I, when I never heard tell of it before. But you can guess, can't you? It's just as easy. Which candle? I says. Why any candle? he says. I don't know where he was, says I. Where was he? Why he was in the dark. That's where he was. Well, if you knowed where he was what did you ask me for? Why blame it it's a riddle, don't you see? Say, how long are you going to stay there? You got to stay always. We can just have booming times. They don't have no school now. Do you own a dog? I got a dog. He'll go in the river and bring out chips that you throw in. Do you like to comb up Sundays and all that kind of foolishness? You bet I don't, but ma, she makes me. Confound these old britches. I reckon I'd better put them on, but I'd rather not. It's so warm. Are you all ready? All right, come along, old horse. Cold corn-pone, cold corn-beef, butter and butter-milk. That is what they had for me down there, and there ain't nothing better than ever I've come across yet. Buck and his ma and all of them smoked cob-pipes, except the nigger-woman, which was gone, and the two young women. They all smoked and talked, and I eat and talked. The young women had quilts around them, and their hair down their backs. They all asked me questions, and I told them how Papp and me and all the family was living on a little farm down at the bottom of Arkansas, and my sister Mary Ann run off and got married and never was heard of no more. And Bill went to hunt them, and he weren't heard of no more. And Tom and Mort died, and then there weren't nobody but just me and Papp left. He was just trimmed down to nothing on account of his troubles, so when he died I took what there was left, because the farm didn't belong to us, started up the river, deck passage, and fell overboard, and that was how I come to be here. So they said I could have a home there as long as I wanted it. Then it was most daylight, and everybody went to bed, and I went to bed with Buck, and when I waked up in the morning, dreaded all I had forgot what my name was. So I laid there about an hour trying to think, and when Buck waked up I says, Can you spell Buck? Yes, he says. I bet you can't spell my name, says I. I bet you what you dare I can, says he. All right, says I. Go ahead. G-E-O-R-G-E-J-A-X-O-N. There now, he says. Well, says I. You done it, but I didn't think you could. It ain't no slouch of a name to spell, right off without studying. I set it down private because somebody might want me to spell it next, and so I wanted to be handy with it and rattle it off just like I was used to it. It was a mighty nice family, and a mighty nice house, too. I hadn't seen no house out in the country before that was so nice and had so much style. It didn't have an iron latch on the front door, nor a wooden one with a buckskin string, but a brass knob deterred the same as houses in town. There weren't no bed in the parlor, nor a sign of a bed, but heaps of parlors and towns has beds in them. There was a big fireplace that was bricked on the bottom, and the bricks was kept clean and red by pouring water on them and scrubbing them with another brick. Sometimes they wash them over with red water paint that they call Spanish Brown, same as they do in town. They had big brass dog irons that could hold up a saw-log. There was a clop on the middle of the mantelpiece, with a picture of a town painted on the bottom half of the glass front, and a round place in the middle of it for the sun, and you could see the pendulum swinging behind it. It was beautiful to hear that clock tick, and sometimes when one of these peddlers had been along and scoured her up and got her in good shape she would start in and strike a hundred and fifty before she got duckered out. They wouldn't took any money for her. Well there was a big outlandish parrot on each side of the clock made out of something like chalk, and painted up gaudy. By one of the parrots was a cat made of crockery, and a crockery dog by the other, and when you press down on them they squeak, but didn't open their mouths nor look different nor interested. They squeak through underneath. There was a couple of big wild turkey wing-fans spread out behind these things. On the table in the middle of the room was a kind of a lovely crockery basket that had apples and oranges and peaches and grapes piled up in it, which was much redder and yellower and prettier than real ones is, but they weren't real because you could see there was pieces that got chipped off and showed the white chalk, or whatever it was, underneath. This table had a cover made out of a beautiful oil cloth with a red and blue spread eagle painted on it, and a painted border all around. It come all the way from Philadelphia, they said. There were some books, too, bound up perfectly exact on each corner of the table. One was a big family Bible full of pictures. One was Pilgrim's progress. About a man that left his family it didn't say why. I read considerable in it now and then. The statements was interesting but tough. Another was Friendship's Offerant, full of beautiful stuff and poetry, but I didn't read the poetry. Another was Henry Clay's speeches, and another was Dr. Gunn's Family Medicine, which told you all about what to do if a body was sick or dead. There was a hymn-book and a lot of other books, and there was nice split-bottom chairs and perfectly sound, too, not bagged down in the middle and busted like an old basket. They had pictures hung on the walls, mainly Washington's and Lafayette's and Battles, and Helen Mary's, and one called San and the Declaration. There were some that they called crayons, which one of the daughters which was dead made her own self when she was only fifteen years old. They was different from any pictures I ever see before. Blacker mostly than is common. One was a woman in a slim black dress, belted small under the armpits, with bulges like a cabbage in the middle of the sleeves, and a large black scoop-shovel bonnet with a black veil, and white slim ankles crossed about with black tape, and very wee black slippers, like a chisel, and she was lean-impensive on a tomb-stone on her right elbow, under a weeping willa, and her other hand hanging down her side, holding a white handkerchief and a reticule. And underneath the picture it said, Shall I never see thee more alas. Another one was a young lady with her hair all combed up straight to the top of her head, and knotted there in front of a comb like a chair-back, and she was crying into a handkerchief, and had a dead bird laying on its back in her other hand with its heels up. And underneath the picture it said, I shall never hear thy sweet cheer-up more alas. And there was one where a young lady was at a window looking up at the moon, and tears running down her cheeks, and she had an open letter in one hand with black seal and wax showing on one edge of it, and she was mashing a locket with a chain to it against her mouth. And underneath the picture it said, It art thou gone, yes, thou art gone alas. And these was all nice pictures, I reckon, but it didn't somehow seem to take to them, because if ever I was down a little they always give me the phantoms. Everybody was sorry she died, because she had laid out a lot more of these pictures to do, and a body could see by what she had done what they had lost. But I reckoned that with her disposition she was having a better time in the graveyard. She was at work on what they said was her greatest picture when she took sick, and every day and every night it was her prayer to be allowed to live till she got it done, but she never got the chance. It was a picture of a young woman in long white gown, standing on the rail of a bridge all ready to jump off, with her hair all down her back, and looking up to the moon, and with the tears running down her face, and she had two arms folded across her breast, and two arms stretched out in front, and two more reaching up towards the moon, and the idea was to see which pair would look best and then scratch out all the other arms. But, as I was saying, she died before she got her mind made up, and now they kept this picture over the head of the bed in her room, and every time her birth they come they hung flowers on it. Other times it was hid with a little curtain. The young woman in the picture had a kind of a nice sweet face, but there were so many arms that made her look too spidery, seemed to me. This young girl kept scrapbook while she was alive, and used to pace obituaries and accidents, and cases of patient suffering in it out of the Presbyterian observer, and write poetry after them out of her own head. It was very good poetry. This is what she wrote down about a boy by the name of Stephen Dowling Botts, that fell down a well and was grounded. Ode to Stephen Dowling Botts, deceased! And did young Stephen sicken, and did young Stephen die, and did the sad hearts thicken, and did the mourners cry? No, such was not the face of young Stephen Dowling Botts, though sad hearts round him thickened, it was not from sickness shots. No whooping cough did rack his frame, nor measles drear with spots. Not these impaired the sacred name of Stephen Dowling Botts. Despised love struck not with woe that head of curly knots, nor stomach troubles laid him low, young Stephen Dowling Botts. Oh no, then list with tearful eye, whilst eye his fate do tell, his soul did from this cold world fly, by falling down a well. It got him out and emptied him, alas, it was too late. His spirit was gone for to sport aloft in the realms of the good and great. If Emmeline Granger-Food could make poetry like that before she was fourteen, there ain't no telling what she could have done by and by. Buck said she could rattle off poetry like nothing. She did never have to stop to think. He said she would slap down a line and if she couldn't find anything to rhyme with it, would just scratch it out and slap down another one and go ahead. She warn't particular, she could write about anything you choose to give her to write about, just so it was sadful. Every time a man died, or a woman died, or a child died, she would be on hand with her tribute before he was cold. She called them tributes. The neighbor said it was the doctor first, then Emmeline, then the undertaker. The undertaker never got in ahead of Emmeline but once, and then she hung fire on a rhyme for the dead person's name, which was Whistler. She warn't ever the same after that. She never complained, but she kind of pined away and did not live long. Poor thing! Many's the time I made myself go up to the little room that used to be hers, and get out her poor old scrapbook and read in it when her pictures had been aggravating me and I had soured on her a little. I liked all that family, dead ones and all, and warn't going to let anything come between us. Poor Emmeline made poetry about all the dead people when she was alive, and it didn't seem right that there warn't nobody to make some about her now she was gone. So I tried to sweat out a verse or two myself, but I couldn't seem to make it go, somehow. They kept Emmeline's room trim and nice, and all the things fixed in it just the way she liked to have them when she was alive, and nobody ever slept there. The old lady took care of the room herself. Now there was plenty of niggers, and she soured there a good deal and read her Bible there mostly. Well, as I was going to say about the parlor, there was beautiful curtains on the windows, white, with pictures painted on them of castles with vines all down the walls, and cattle coming down to drink. There was a little old piano, too, that had tin pans in it, I reckon, and nothing was ever so lovely as to hear the young lady sing, The Last Link is Broken, and play The Battle of Prague on it. The walls of all the rooms was plastered, and most had carpets on the floors, and the whole house was whitewashed on the outside. It was a double house, and the big open place betwixt them was roofed and floored, and sometimes the table was set there in the middle of the day, and it was a cool, comfortable place. Nothing could be better, and warn't the cooking good, and just bushels of it, too. 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 HUCKLEBURY FIN. by Mark Twain. CHAPTER XVIII. Colonel Grangevib was a gentleman, you see. He was a gentleman all over, and so was his family. He was well-born, as the saying is, and that's worth as much in a man as it is in a horse, so the widow Douglas said, and nobody ever denied that she was of the first aristocracy in our town. And Pap, he always said it, too, though he warn't no more quality than a mudcat himself. Colonel Grangevib was very tall and very slim, and had a darkish, pale complexion, not a sign of red in it anywheres. He was clean shaved every morning all over his thin face, and he had the thinnest kind of lips, and the thinnest kind of nostrils, and a high nose, and heavy eyebrows, and the blackest kind of eyes sunk so deep back that they seemed like they was looking out of caverns at you, as you may say. His forehead was high, and his hair was black and straight, and hung to his shoulders. His hands was long and thin, and every day of his life he put on a clean shirt and a full suit from head to foot, made out of linen so wide it hurt your eyes to look at it. And on Sundays he wore a blue tailcoat with brass buttons on it. He carried a mahogany cane with a silver head to it. There warn't no frivolousness about him, not a bit, and he warn't ever loud. He was as kind as he could be. You could feel that, you know, and so you had confidence. Sometimes he smiled, and it was good to see. But when he straightened himself up like a liberty pole, and the lighten had begun to flicker out from under his eyebrows, you wanted to climb a tree first, and find out what the matter was afterwards. He didn't ever have to tell anybody to mind their manners. Everybody was always good-mannered where he was. Everybody loved to have him around too. He was sunshine most always. I mean, he made it seem like good weather. When he turned into a cloud bank it was awful dark for half a minute, and that was enough. There wouldn't nothing go wrong again for a week. When him and the old lady came down in the morning all the family got up out of their chairs and gave them good day, and didn't sit down again till they had sat down. When Tom and Bob went to the sideboard where the decanter was, and mixed a glass of bitters and handed it to him, and he held it in his hand and waited till Tom's and Bob's was mixed, and then they bowed and said, Our duty to you, sir and madam. And they bowed the least bit in the world and said, Thank you. And so they drank, all three. And Bob and Tom poured a spoonful of water on the sugar and the mitre whiskey or apple brandy in the bottom of their tumblers, and give it to me and Buck, and we drank to the old people too. Bob was the oldest and Tom next. Tall, beautiful men with very broad shoulders and brown faces, and long black hair and black eyes. They dressed in white linen from head to foot, like the old gentleman, and wore broad Panama hats. Then there was Miss Charlotte. She was twenty-five and tall and proud and grand, but as good as she could be when she weren't stirred up. But when she was, she had a look that would make you will in your tracks, like her father. She was beautiful. So was her sister Miss Sophia. But it was a different kind. She was gentle and sweet like a dove, and she was only twenty. Each person had their own nigger to wait on them. Buck, too. My nigger had a monstrous easy time, because I weren't used to having anybody do anything for me. But Buck's was on the jump most of the time. This was all there was of the family now, but there used to be more. Three sons, they got killed, and Emmeline that died. The old gentleman owned a lot of farms and over a hundred niggers. Sometimes a stack of people would come there, horseback, from ten or fifteen mile around, and stay five or six days, and have such junkenins round about and on the river, and dances and picnics in the woods day-times, and balls at the house nights. These people was mostly Kenfolks of the family. The men brought their guns with them. It was a handsome lot of quality, I tell you. There was another clan of aristocracy round there, five or six families, mostly of the name of Shepardson. They was as high-toned and well-born and rich and grand as the tribe of Grangerfords. The Shepardsons and Grangerfords used the same steamboat landen, which was about two miles above our house. So sometimes when I went up there with a lot of our folks, I used to see a lot of the Shepardsons there on their fine horses. One day Buck and me was a way out in a woods, hunting, and heard a horse coming. We was crossing the road. Buck says, Quick, jump for the woods. We'd done it, and then peeped down the woods through the leaves. Pretty soon a splendid young man come galloping down the road, sat in his horse easy and looking like a soldier. He had his gun across his pommel. I had seen him before. It was young Harne Shepardson. I heard Buck's gun go off at my ear, and Harne's hat tumbled off from his head. He grabbed his gun and rode straight to the place where we was head. But we didn't wait. We started through the woods on a run. The words weren't thick, so I looked over my shoulder to dodge the bullet, and twice I seen Harne cover Buck with his gun. And then he rode away the way he come. To get his hat I reckon, but I couldn't see. Would never stop right until we got home. The old gentleman's eyes blazed a minute, to his pleasure mainly, I judged. Then his face sorta smoothed down, and he says, kind of gentle. I don't like that shooting from behind a bush. Why didn't you step into the room, my boy? The Shepardsons don't father. They always take advantage. Miss Charlotte she held her head up like a queen while Buck was telling his tale, and her nostrils spread and her eyes snapped. The two young men looked dark, but never said nothing. Miss Sophia she turned pale, but the color come back when she found the man weren't hurt. Soon as I could get a buck down by the corn-cribs under the trees by ourselves, I says, Did you want to kill him, Buck? Well, I bet I did. What did he do to you? Him? Ain't ever done nothing to me. Well, then, what did you want to kill him for? Why, nothing, only it's on account of the feud. What's a feud? Why, where was you raised? Don't you know what a feud is? Never heard of it before. Tell me about it. Well, says Buck, a feud is this way. A man has a quarrel with another man and kills him. Then that other man's brother kills him. Then the other brothers on both sides go for one another. Then the cousins chip in, and by and by everybody's killed off, and there ain't no more feud. But it's kind of slow and takes a long time. Has this one been going on long, Buck? Well, I should reckon it started thirty years ago, or summers are along there. There was trouble about something, and then a lawsuit to settle it, and the suit went again one of the men, and so he up and shot the man the one the suit, which he would naturally do, of course. Anybody would. What was the trouble about, Buck? Land? I reckon maybe. I don't know. Well, who done the shooting? Was it a Grangerford or a Shepardson? Laws, how do I know? It was so long ago. Don't anybody know? Oh yes, Paul knows, I reckon, and some of the other old people, but they don't know now what the row was about in the first place. Has there been many killed, Buck? Yes, right, smart chance of funerals, but they don't always kill. Paul's got a few buck shot in him, but he don't mind it because he don't weigh much. Anyway, Bob's been carved up some with a buoy, and Tom's been hurt once or twice. Has anybody been killed this year, Buck? Yes, we got one, and they got one. About three months ago my cousin, Bud, fourteen-year-old, was riding through the woods on the other side of the river, and didn't have no weapon with him, which was blame foolishness, and in a lonesome place he hears a horse that's coming behind him, and sees old Baldi Shepardson, linking after him with his gun in his hand and his white hair flying in the wind, and instead of jumping off and taking to the brush, Bud loud he had run him. So they had it, and dug for five mile or more. The old man again and all the time. So at last Bud's seen it warn't any use, so he stopped and faced around so as to have the bullet holes in front, you know, and the old man he rode up and shot him down. But he didn't get much chance to enjoy his luck, for inside of a week our folks laid him out. I reckon that old man was a coward, Buck. I reckon he warn't a coward, not by blame sight. There ain't a coward amongst them Shepardsons, not a one. And there ain't no coward amongst the Grangerfords either. Why, that old man kept up his end in a fight one day for half an hour against three Grangerfords, and come out winter. They was all a horseback. He lit off of his horse and got behind a little wood pile, and kept his horse before him to stop the bullets. But the Grangerfords stayed on their horses, and capered around the old man, and peppered away at him, and he peppered away at them. Him and his horse both went home pretty leaky and crippled. But the Grangerfords had to be fetched home, and one of them was dead, and another died the next day. No, sir, if a body is out hunting for cowards, he don't want to fool away any time amongst them Shepardsons, because they don't breed any of that kind. Next Sunday we all went to church. About three mile, everybody a horseback. The men took their guns along, so did Buck, and kept them between their knees, or stood them handy against the wall. The Shepardsons done the same. It was pretty ornery preaching, all about brotherly love and such like tiresomeness. But everybody said it was a good discernment, and they all talked it over going home, and had such a powerful lot to say about faith and good works and free grace and pre-for or destination. And I don't know what all, that it did seem to me to be one of the roughest Sundays I had run across yet. About an hour after dinner everybody was dozing around, summing their chairs and summing their rooms, and it got to be pretty dull. Buck and a dog was stretched out on the grass and the sun, sound asleep. I went up to our room and judged I would take a nap myself. I found that sweet Miss Sophia is standing in her door, which was next to ours, and she took me in her room and shot the door very soft, and asked me if I liked her, and I said I did. And she asked me if I would do something for her and not tell anybody, and I said I would. Then she said she'd forgot her testament and left it in the seat at church between two other books, and would I slip out quiet and go there and fetch it to her, and not say nothing to nobody? I said I would. So I slid out and slipped off up the road, and there warn't anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two, for there warn't any lock on the door, and hogs lights a punchin' floor in summertime because it's cool. If you notice, most folks don't go to church only when they've got to, but a hog is different. Says I to myself something's up. It ain't natural for a girl to be in such a sweat about a testament. So I give it a shake, and I'll drops a little piece of paper with half-pass two, wrote on it with a pencil. I ransacked it, but I couldn't find anything else. I couldn't make anything out of that, so I put the paper in the book again, and when I got home and upstairs there was Miss Sophia in her door waitin' for me. She pulled me in and shut the door. Then she looked in the testament till she found the paper, and as soon as she read it she looked glad, and before her body could think she grabbed me and gave me a squeeze, and said I was the best boy in the world and not to tell anybody. She was mighty red in the face for a minute, and her eyes lighted up, and it made her powerful pretty. I was a good deal astonished, but when I got my breath I asked her what the paper was about. And she asked me if I'd read it. I said no. And she asked me if I could read writing, and I told her no, only coarse-hand. And then she said the paper warn't anything but a bookmark to keep her place, and I might go and play now. I went off down the river, studying over this thing. Pretty soon I noticed that my nigger was following along behind. When we was out of sight of the house he looked back in around a second, and then comes running and says, Ma's George, if you come down into the swamp I'll show you a whole stack of water-markersons. Thanks I, that's mighty curious. He said that yesterday. He ought to know a body don't love water-markersons enough to go round hunting for them. What is he up to, anyway? So I says, all right, try it ahead. I followed a half a mile. Then he struck out over the swamp, and waited ankle-deep as much as another half-mile. We come to a little flat piece of land which was dry and very thick with trees and bushes and vines, and he says, You shove right in there just a few steps, Ma's George. That's where they is. I'd seen them before. I don't care to see them no more. Then he slopped right along and went away, and pretty soon the trees hit him. I poked into the place away and come to a little open patch as big as a bedroom, all hung around with vines, and found a man laying there asleep, and by jings it was my old gym. I waked him up, and I reckoned it was going to be a grand surprise to him to see me again. But it weren't. He nearly cried he was so glad, but he warn't surprised. Said he swum along behind me that night and heard me yell every time, but dashing answer, because he didn't want nobody to pick him up and take him into slavery again. Says he, I got hurt a little and couldn't swim fast, so I was a considerable ways behind you towards the last. When you landed I reckoned I could catch up with you on the land. Doubt having to shout at you, but when I see that house I begin to go slow. I was off too far to hear what they say to you. I was afraid of the dogs. But when it was all quiet again, I knowed you was in the house, so I struck out full the woods to wait for a day. Early in the morning some of the niggas come along, go on to the fields, and they took me and showed me this place, where the dogs can't track me on accounts of the water, and they brings me truck to eat every night, and tells me how you's are getting along. Why didn't you tell my Jack to fetch me here sooner, Jim? Well, twart no use to disturb you, Huck, till we could do something. But we's all right now. I've been a-buying pots and pans and vitals, as I got a chance, and a-patching up to raff knights went, What raff, Jim? Our old raff. You mean to say our old raff warn't smashed all the flinders? No, she warn't. She was tore up a good deal. One end of her was, but there warn't no great arm done. Only our traps was most all off. If we hadn't dived so deep and swum so far under water, and the night hadn't been so dark, and we weren't so scared, and been such punkin' heads as to say it is, we'd have seen the raff. But it's just as well we didn't, because now she's all fixed up again most as good as new. And we's got a new lot of stuff into place of others' loss. Why, how did you get hold of the raft again, Jim? Did you catch her? How I guana catch her, and I out in the woods. No, some of the niggers found her catched on a snag along here in Deben, and they hid her in a creek amongst the willows, and there was so much jawn about which of them she belonged to the most that I come to hear about it pretty soon, and I ups and settles to trouble by tellin' them she don't belong to none of them, but to you and me, and I asked them if they guana grab a young white gentleman's property, and get a hidein' for it. Then I giddens ten cents apiece, and they is mighty well satisfied, and wish some old rafts had come along and make them rich again. They is mighty good to me, these niggers is, and whatever I want them to do for me I don't have to ask them twice, honey. That jack's a good nigger, and put it smart. Yes, he is. He ain't ever told me you was here, told me to come, and he'd show me a lot of water moccasins. If anything happens he ain't mixed up in it. He can say he'd never seen us together, and it'll be the truth. I don't want to talk much about the next day. I reckon I'll cut it pretty short. I waked up about dawn, and was it goin' to turn over and go to sleep again when I noticed how still it was. Didn't seem to be anybody stirrin'. That warn't usual. Next I noticed the buck was up and gone. Well, I gets up a-wandering, and goes down stairs. Nobody round. Everything is still as a mouse, just the same outside. Thinks I, what does it mean? Down by the wood-pile I cross my jack and says, What's it all about? Says he. Don't you know Mars George? No, says I. I don't. Well, there, Miss Sophia's run-off. Deed she has. She run-off in the night some time. Nobody don't know just when. Run-off to get married to that young harness Shepardson, you know. Least wise, so they speck. The family found it out about half an hour ago. Maybe a little more. And I tell you, they want no time's loss. Such another hurrying up guns and horses you never see. The women folks has gone for to stir up their relations. And old Mars Saul and the boys tucked the guns and rode up the river-road for to try and catch that young man and kill him, for he can get across the river with Miss Sophia. I reckon there's going to be mighty rough times. Buck went off without waking me up. Well, I reckon he did. There weren't going to mix you up in it. Mars Buck, he loaded up his gun and loud he's going to fetch home our Shepardson or bust. Well, there'll be plenty of them there, I reckon. And you bet you he'll fetch one if he gets a chance. I took up the river-road as hard as I could get. By and by I began to hear guns a good ways off. When I come inside of the log-store in the wood-pile where the steam-boats lands, I worked along under the trees and brushed till I got to a good place. And then I clump up into the forks of a cotton-wood that was out of reach and watched. There was a wood-rank four-foot high little ways in front of the tree, and first I was going to hide behind that. But maybe it was luckier. I didn't. There was four or five men cavorting around on their horses in the open place before the log-store, cussing and yelling, and trying to get at a couple of young chaps that was behind the wood-rank alongside of the steam-boat landing. But they couldn't come it. Every time one of them showed himself on the river-side of the wood-pile he got shot at. The two boys were squatting back to back behind the pile so they could watch both ways. By and by the men stopped cavorting around and yelling, they started riding towards the store, then up gets one of the boys, draws a steady bead over the wood-rank, and drops one of them out of his saddle. All the men jumped off their horses and grabbed the hurt one, and started to carry him to the store. And that minute the two boys started on the run. They got halfway to the tree I was in before the men noticed. Then the men see them, and jumped on their horses and took out after them. They gained on the boys, but it didn't do no good. The boys had too good a start. They got to the wood-pile that was in front of my tree and slipped in behind it, and so they had the bulge on the men again. One of the boys was Buck, and the other was a slim young chap about nineteen years old. Men ripped around awhile and then rode away. As soon as they was out of sight, I sung out to Buck and told him. He didn't know what to make of my voice coming out of the tree at first. He was awful surprised. He told me to watch out sharp and let him know when the men come inside again. Said they was up to some devil-men or other. Couldn't be gone long. I wished I was out of that tree, but I didn't come down. Buck began to cry and rip and loud that him and his cousin Joe, that was the other young chap, would make up for this day yet. He said his father and his two brothers was killed, and two or three of the enemy. Said the Shepardsons laid for them in ambush. Buck said his father and brothers ought to have waited for their relations. The Shepardsons was too strong for them. I asked him what was become of young Harney and Miss Sophia. He said they got across the river and were safe. I was glad of that. But the way Buck did take on, because he didn't manage to kill Harney that day, he shouted him, I ain't ever heard anything like it. All of a sudden, bang, bang, bang goes three or four guns. The men had slipped around through the woods and come in from behind without their horses. The boys jumped for the river, both of them hurt. And as they swum down the current, the men run along the bank, shooting at them and singing out, Kill them, kill them! Made me so sick I most fell out of the tree. I ain't gonna tell all that happened. It would make me sick again if I was to do that. I wished I hadn't ever come ashore that night to see such things. I ain't ever gonna get shot of them. Lots of times I dream about them. I stayed in the tree till it begun to get dark, afraid to come down. Sometimes I heard guns away off into woods, and twice I seen little gangs of men gallop past the log-store with guns, so I reckon the trouble was still a-going on. I was mighty downhearted, so I made up my mind I wouldn't ever go near that house again, because I reckon I was to blame somehow. I judged that that piece of paper meant that Miss Sophia was to meet harness somewheres at half-past two and run off. And I judged I ought to told her father about that paper and the curious way she acted, and then maybe he would have locked her up, and this awful mess wouldn't ever happened. When I got down out of the tree I crept long down the riverbank of peace and found the two bodies laying in the edge of the water, and tugged at them till I got them ashore. Then I covered up their faces and got away as quick as I could. I cried a little when I was covering up Buck's face, for he was mighty good to me. It was just dark now. I never went near the house, but struck through the woods made for the swamp. Jim ward on his allen, so I tramped off in a hurry for the creek, and crowded through the villas, red-hot to jump aboard and get out of that awful country. The raft was gone. My souls but I was scared. I couldn't get my breath for most a minute. Then I raised a yell. A voice not twenty-five foot from me says, Good land at you, honey. Don't make no noise. It was Jim's voice. Nothing ever sounded so good before. I run along the bank of peace and got aboard, and Jim he grabbed me and hugged me. He was so glad to see me. He says, Law's bless you, child. I was right down show you's dead again. Jack's been here. He say he reckon you's been shot, because you didn't come home no more. And I was just this minute of starting to raft down towards the mouth of the creek. So let's be all ready for the shove out and leave as soon as Jack comes again and tells me for a certain you is dead. I was mighty glad to get you back again, honey. I says, All right, that's mighty good. They won't find me and they'll think I've been killed and floated down the river. There's something up there that'll help them think so. So don't you lose no time, Jim, but just shove off for the big water as fast as ever you can. I never felt easy till the raft was two miles below there and out in the middle of the Mississippi. Then we hung up our signal lantern and judged that we was free and safe once more. I hadn't had a bite to eat since yesterday, so Jim he got out some corn dodgers and buttermilk and pork and cabbage and greens. There ain't nothing in the world so good when it's cooked right. And whilst I eat my supper we talked and had a good time. I was powerful glad to get away from the feuds, and so was Jim to get away from the swamp. We said there weren't no home like a raft after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don't. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft. CHAPTER XIX two or three days and nights went by. I reckon I might say they swum by. They slid along so quiet and smooth and lovely. Here's the way we put in the time. It was a monstrous big river down there, sometimes a mile and a half wide. We run nights and laid up and hid day times. Soon as night was most gone we stopped navigating and tied up, nearly always in the dead water under a toe-head, and cut young cotton-woods and willows and hid the raft with them. Then we set out the lines. Next we slid into the river and had a swim so as to freshen up and cool off. Then we sat down on the sandy bottom where the water was about knee-deep and watched the daylight come. Not a sound anywheres. Perfectly still. Just like the whole world was asleep. Only sometimes the bullfrog a clutter it may be. The first thing to see, looking away over the water, was a kind of dull line. That was the woods on the other side. You couldn't make nothing else out. Then a pale place in the sky, then more paleness spreading around. Then the river softened up way off and weren't black any more but gray. You could see little dark spots drifting long ever so far away, trading scows and such things. And long black streaks, raps. Sometimes you could hear a sweep squeaking. Or jumbled up voices it was so still. And sounds come so far. And by and by you could see a streak on the water which you know by the look of the streak that there's a snag there in the swift current which breaks on it and makes that streak look that way. And you see the mist curl up off of the water, and the east reddens up, and the river, and you make out a log cabin in the edge of the woods, way on the bank on the other side of the river, being a woodyard likely, and piled by them cheats so you can throw a dog through it anywheres. Then the nice breeze springs up and comes fanning you from over there, so cool and fresh and sweet to smell on account of the woods and the flowers. But sometimes not that way because they've left dead fish laying around, gars and such, and they do get pretty rank. And next you got the full day, and everything smiling in the sun, and the songbirds just going it. A little smoke couldn't be noticed now, so we would take some fish off of the lines and cook up a hot breakfast. And afterwards we would watch the lonesomeness of the river, and kind of lazy along, and by and by lazy off to sleep. Wake up by and by, and look to see what done it, and maybe see a steamboat coughing along upstream, so far off towards the other side you couldn't tell nothing about her, only whether she was a stern wheel or a side wheel. Then for about an hour there wouldn't be nothing to hear nor nothing to see, just solid lonesomeness. Next you see a raft sliding by, away off yonder, and maybe a galoot on it chopping, because they're most always doing it on a raft. You'd see the ax flash and come down, you don't hear nothing. You see that ax go up again, and by the time it's above the man's head, then you hear that gajunk. It took all that time to come over the water. So we would put in the day, lazy and around, listening to the stillness. Once there was a thick fog, and the rafts and things that went by was beaten ten pans so the steamboats wouldn't run over them. A scour or a raft went by so close we could hear them talking and cussing and laughing. Heard them plain. But we couldn't see no sign of them. It made you feel crawly. It was like spirits carrying on that way in the air. Jim said he believed it was spirits. But I says, no, spirits wouldn't say Dern the Dern fog. Soon as it was night out we shoved. When we got her out to about the middle we'd let her alone and let her float wherever the current wanted her to. Then we let the pipes and dangle our legs in the water and talked about all kinds of things. We was always naked day and night whenever the mosquitoes would let us. The new clothes Bucks folks made for me was too good to be comfortable, and besides I didn't go much on clothes, no-how. Sometimes we'd have that whole river all to ourselves for the longest time. Yonder was the banks and the islands, across the water, and maybe a spark, which was a candle in a cabin window. And sometimes on the water you could see a spark or two, on a raft or a scow, you know, and maybe you could hear a fiddle or a song coming over from one of them crafts. It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them and discuss about whether they were made or only just happened. Jim he allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened. I judged it would have took too long to make so many. Jim said the moon could have laid them. Well, that looked kind of reasonable, so I didn't say nothing against it. Because I've seen a frog lay most as many. So, of course, it could be done. We used to watch the stars that fell, too, and see them streak down. Jim allowed they got spoiled and was hoeved out of the nest. Once or twice of a night we would see a steamboat slipping along in the dark, and now and then she would belt a whole world of sparks up out of her chimblies, and they would rain down in the river and look awful pretty. Then she would turn a corner and her lights would wink out, and her pow-wow shut off and leave the river still again. And by and by her ways would get to us a long time after she was gone and juggle the raft a bit. And after that you wouldn't hear nothing for you couldn't tell how long, except maybe frogs or something. After midnight the people on shore went to bed, and then for two or three hours the shores was black, no more sparks in the cabin windows. These sparks was our clock. The first one that showed again meant morning was coming, so we hunted a place to hide and tie up right away. One morning about daybreak I found a canoe and crossed over a shoot to the main shore. It was only two hundred yards, and paddled about a mile up a creek amongst the cypress woods to see if I couldn't get some berries. Just as I was passing a place where a kind of a cow-path crossed the creek, here comes a couple of men tearing up the path as tight as they could foot it. I thought I was a goner, for whenever anybody was after anybody I judged it was me, or maybe Jim. I was about to dig out from there in a hurry, but there was pretty close to me then, and sung out and begged me to save their lives. Said they hadn't been doing nothing and was being chased for it. Said there was men and dogs that coming. They wanted to jump right in, but I says, Don't you do it! I don't hear the dogs and horses yet. You've got time to crowd through the brush and get up the creek a little ways. Then you take to the water and wade down to me and get in. That'll throw the dogs off the scent. They done it, and soon as they was aboard I lit out for our toehead. In about five or ten minutes we heard the dogs and the men way off shouting. We heard them come along towards the creek, but couldn't see them. They seemed to stop and fool around a while. Then, as we got further and further away all the time, we couldn't hardly hear them at all. By the time we had left a mile of woods behind us and struck the river, everything was quiet. We paddled over to the toehead and hid in the cotton woods and was safe. One of these fellows was about seventy or upwards, and had a bald head and very gray whiskers. He had an old battered-up slouch hat on, and a greasy blue woolen shirt and ragged old blue-jean birches stuffed into his boot-tops, and home-knit gallouses. No, he only had one. He had an old long-tailed blue-jean's coat with slick brass buttons flung over his arm, and both of them had big, fat, ratty-looking carpet-bags. The other fellow was about thirty and dressed about his ornery. After breakfast we all laid off and talked, and the first thing to come out was that these chaps didn't know one another. What got you into trouble? says the bald head to the other chap. Well, I'd been selling an article to take the tartar off the teeth, and it does take it off too, and generally the enamel along with it, but I stayed about one night longer than I ought to and was just in the act of sliding out when I ran across you on the trail, this side of town, and you told me they were coming and begged me to help you get off, so I told you I was expecting trouble myself, and would scatter out with you. That's the whole yarn. What's yarn? Well, I'd been running a little temperate survival there about a week, and was the pet of the women, folks, big and little, for I was making it mighty warm for the rummies, I tell you, and taking as much as five or six dollars a night, ten cents ahead, children and niggers free, and business are growing all the time, when somehow or another little report got around last night that I had a way of putting in my time with a private jug on the sly. A nigger roused at me out this morning, and told me the people was gathering on the quiet with their dogs and horses, and they'd be along pretty soon and give me about half an hour's start and then run me down if they could, and if they got me they'd tar and feather me and ride me on a rail, sure. I didn't wait for no breakfast, I warn't hungry. Old man, said the young one, I reckon we might double-team it together. What do you think? I ain't undisposed. What's your line, mainly? Chur-printer, by trade. Do a little in patent medicines. Theater-actor, tragedy, you know. Take a turn to mesmerism and phrenology when there's chance. Teach singing geography school for a change. Sling a lecture sometimes. Oh, I do lots of things. Most anything that comes handy so it ain't work. What's your lay? I've done considerable in the doctrine way in my time. Laying on a hands is my best hold, for cancer and paralysis and such things, and I can tell a fortune pretty good when I've got somebody along to find out the facts for me. Preaches my line, too, and work in camp-meetings and missionarying around. Nobody never said anything for a while. Then the young man hovers sigh and says, Alas! What are you alasin' about? says the bald-head. To think I should have lived to be leading such a life and be degraded down into such company. Had he begun to wipe the corner of his eye with a rag. Durn your skin ain't the company good enough for you? says the bald-head. Pretty pert and upish. Yes, it is good enough for me. It's as good as I deserve. For who fetched me so low when I was so high? I did myself. I don't blame you, gentlemen. Far from it. I don't blame anybody. I deserve it all. Let the cold world do its worst. One thing I know. There's a grave somewhere for me. The world may go on just as it's always done, and take everything from me. Loved one's property, everything. But it can't take that. Someday I'll lie down in it and forget it all, and my poor broken heart will be at rest. He went on a-wipe it. Draught your poor broken heart, says the bald-head. What do you even your poor broken heart at us for? We ain't done nothing. No, I know you haven't. I ain't blaming you, gentlemen. I brought myself down. Yes, I did it myself. It's right I should suffer. Perfectly right. I don't make any moan. Brought you down from where? Where wish you'd brought down from? Ah, you would not believe me. The world never believes. Let it pass. Tis no matter. The secret of my birth, the secret of your birth, do you mean to say? Gentlemen, says the young man, very solemn. I will reveal it to you, for I feel I may have confidence in you. By rights, I am a duke. Jim's eyes bugged out when he heard that, and I reccomended, too. Then the bald-head says, No, you can't mean it. Yes, my great-grandfather, eldest son of the Duke of Bridgewater, fled to this country about the end of the last century, to breathe the pure air of freedom. Married here, and died, leaving a son, his own father dying about the same time. The second son of the late Duke sees the titles and estates. The infant real Duke was ignored. I, and the lineal descendant of that infant, I am the rightful Duke of Bridgewater, and here I am, forlorn, torn from my highest state, hunted of men, despised by the cold world, ragged, worn, heartbroken, and degraded to the companionship of felons on a raft. Jim pitied him ever so much, and so did I. We tried to comfort him, but he said it warn't much use. He couldn't be much comforted, said if we was a mind to acknowledge him, that would do him more good than most anything else. So he said we would, if he would tell us how. He said we ought to bow when we spoke to him and say, your grace, or my lord, or your lordship, and he wouldn't mind it if we called him plain Bridgewater, which he said was a title anyway and not a name, and one of us ought to wait on him at dinner and do any little thing for him he wanted done. Well, that was all easy, so we'd done it. All through dinner Jim stood around and waited on him and says, we, your grace, have some of this or some of that. And so on, and a body could see it was mighty pleasing to him. But the old man got pretty silent by and by, didn't have much to say, and didn't look pretty comfortable over all that padding that was going on around that duke. He seemed to have something on his mind. So along in the afternoon he says, looky here, Bridgewater. He says, I'm nation sorry for you, but you ain't the only person that's had troubles like that. No? No, you ain't. You ain't the only person that's been snaked down wrongfully out of a high place. Alas! No, you ain't the only person that's had a secret of his birth. And by a jing's he begins to cry. Hold, what do you mean? Bilgewater, can I trust you? says the old man, still sort of sobbing. To the bitter death he took the old man by the hand and squeezed it and says, that secret of your being, speak. Bilgewater, I am the late Dolphin. You bet you, Jim and me, stared this time. Then the duke says, you are what? Yes, my friend, it is too true. Your eyes is looking at this very moment at the poor, disappeared Dolphin. Louis the 17, son of Louis the 16 and Mary Antoinette. You, at your age? No. You mean you're the late Charlemagne. You must be six or seven hundred years old at the very least. Trouble has done it, Bilgewater. Trouble has done it. Trouble has brung these gray hairs and this premature balditude. Yes, gentlemen, you see before you, in blue jeans and misery, the wanderin' exiled, trampled on and suffered rightful king of France. Well, he cried and took on so that me and Jim did know hardly what to do. We was so sorry and so glad and proud we got him with us, too. So he sat in, like we'd done before with the duke, and tried to comfort him. But he said it warn't no use. Nothing but to be dead and done with it all could do him any good. Though he said it often made him feel easier and better for a while if people treated him according to his rites, and got down on one knee to speak to him, and always called him Your Majesty, and waited on him first at meals, and didn't set down in his presence till he asked them. So Jim and me set to majestying him, and doing this and that and the other for him, and standing up till he told us we might set down. This done him heaps of good, and so he got cheerful and comfortable. But the duke kinda soured on him, and didn't look a bit satisfied with the way things was going. Still the king acted real friendly towards him, and said the duke's great grandfather and all the other dukes of Bilgewater was a good deal thought of by his father, and was allowed to come to the palace considerable. But the duke stayed huffier good while, till by and by the king says, Like as not we got to be together a blame long time on this here raft, Bilgewater. And so what's the use of your being sour? He'll only make things uncomfortable. It ain't my fault I weren't born a duke. It ain't your fault you weren't born a king. So what's the use to worry? Make the best of things the way you find him, says I. That's my motto. This ain't no bad thing we struck here. Plenty grub and an easy life. Come, give us your hand duke, and let's all be friends. The duke done it, and Jim and me was pretty glad to see it. It took away all the uncomfortableness, and we felt mighty good over it, because it would have been a miserable business to have any unfriendliness on the raft. For what you want above all things on a raft is for everybody to be satisfied, and feel right and kind towards the others. It didn't take me long to make up my mind that these liars weren't no kings nor dukes at all, but just low down humbugs and frauds. But I never said nothing, never let on, kept it to myself. It's the best way, and you don't have no quarrels, and don't get into no trouble. If they wanted us to call them kings and dukes, I had no objections, long as it would keep peace in the family, and it warn't no use to tell Jim so I didn't tell him. If I never learned anything else out of Pat, I learnt that the best way to get along with his kind of people is to let them have their own way. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain Chapter 20 They asked us considerable many questions, wanted to know what we covered up the raft that way for, and laid by in the daytime instead of running. Was Jim a runaway nigger? Says I. Goodness sakes, would a runaway nigger run south? No, they allowed he wouldn't. I had to account for things some way, so I says. My folks was living in Pike County in Missouri, where I was born, and they all died off but me and Pa and my brother Ike. Pa he loud he'd break up and go down and live with Uncle Ben, who's got a little one-horse place on the river, forty-four miles below Orleans. Pa was pretty poor, and had some debts, so when he'd squared up there warn't nothing left but sixteen dollars and a nigger, Jim. That warn't enough to take us fourteen hundred miles, deck passage, nor no other way. Well, when the river rose, Pa had a streak of luck one day. He'd catch this piece of a raft, so we reckoned we'd go down to Orleans on it. Pa's luck didn't hold out. A steamboat run over the forward quarter of the raft one night, and we all went overboard and dove under the wheel. Jim and me come up all right, but Pa was drunk, and Ike was only four years old, so they never come up no more. Well, for the next day or two we had considerable trouble, because people was always coming out in skiffs and trying to take Jim away from me, saying they believed he was a runaway nigger. We don't run daytimes no more now. Nights they don't bother us. The Duke says, Leave me alone to cipher out a way so we can run in the daytime if we want to. I'll think the thing over. I'll invent a plan that'll fix it. We'll let it alone for today, because of course we don't want to go by that town yonder in daylight. It mightn't be healthy. Towards night it begun to darken up and look like rain. The heat lightning was squirting around low down in the sky, and the leaves was beginning to shiver. It was going to be pretty ugly. It was easy to see that. So the Duke and the King went to overhauling our wigwam to see what the beds was like. My bed was a straw tick better than Jim's, which was a corn-shuck tick, and there always cobs around about it a shuck tick, and they poke into you and hurt, and when you roll over the dry shuck sound like you was rolling over in a pile of dead leaves. It makes such a rustling that you wake up. Well, the Duke allowed he would take my bed, but the King allowed he wouldn't. He says, I should have reckoned the difference in rank would have suggested to you that a corn-shuck bed won't just fit in for me to sleep on. Your grace'll take the shuck bed yourself. Jim and me was in a sweat again for a minute, being afraid there was going to be some more trouble amongst them, so he was pretty glad when the Duke says, Tis my fate to be always grounded to the mire under the iron heel of oppression. Misfortune has broken my once-hotty spirit. I yield, I submit. Tis my fate. I am alone in the world. Let me suffer. Combear it. We got away as soon as it was good and dark. The King told us to stand well out towards the middle of the river, and not show a light till we got a long ways below the town. We come inside of the little bunch of lights by and by. That was the town, you know, and slid by about a half a mile out all right. When we was three-quarters of a mile below, we hoisted up our signal lantern, and about ten o'clock it came on to rain and blow and thunder and lightning like everything. So the King told us to both stay on watch till the weather got better, then him and the Duke crawled into the wigwam and turned in for the night. It was my watch below till twelve, but I wouldn't have turned in anyway if I'd had a bed, because a body don't see such a storm as that every day in the week, not by a long sight. My souls, how the wind didn't scream along! Every second or two, there come a glare that lit up the whitecaps for a half a mile around, and you'd see the islands looking dusty through the rain, and the trees thrashing around in the wind. Then comes a whack! And the thunder would go rumbling and grumbling away and quit, and then rip comes another flash on another sock of the lodger. The waves most washed me off the raft sometimes, but I hadn't any clothes on and didn't mind. We didn't have no trouble about snags. The lightning was glaring and flittering around so constant that we could see them plenty soon enough to throw her head this way or that and miss them. I had the middle watch, you know, but I was pretty sleepy by that time, so Jim he said he could stand the first half of it for me. He was always mighty good that way, Jim was. I crawled into the wigwam, but the king and the duke had their legs sprawled around so there weren't no show for me, so I laid outside. I didn't mind the rain because it was warm, and the waves weren't running so high now. About two they come up again, though, and Jim was going to call me, but he changed his mind because he reckoned they weren't high enough yet to do any harm. But he was mistaken about that, for pretty soon all of a sudden along comes a regular ripper and wash me overboard. It most killed Jim a laughing. He was the easiest nigger to laugh that ever was, anyway. I took the watch, and Jim he laid down and snored away, and by and by the storm led up for good and all, and the first cabin light that showed I roused in him out, and we slid the raft into hide-and-quarters for the day. The king got out an old ratty deck of cards after breakfast, and him and the duke played seven up a while, five cents a game. Then they got tired of it and allowed they would lay out a campaign, as they called it. The duke went down into his carpet-bag and fetched up a lot of little printed bills and read them aloud. One bill said, The celebrated Dr. Armand de Montemont of Paris would lecture on the science of phrenology, at such and such a place, on the blank day of blank, at ten cents admission, and furnished charts of character at twenty-five cents apiece. The duke said that was him. In another bill he was the world-renowned Shakespearean tragedian, Garrick the Younger of Drury Lane, London. In other bills he had a lot of other names and done other wonderful things, like finding water and gold with a divining rod, dissipating witch-spells, and so on. By and by, he says. But the histrionic muse is the darlin'. Have you ever trod the board's royalty? No, says the king. You shall then, before your three days older, fall in grandeur, says the duke. The first good-town we come to will hire a hall and do the sword-fight in Richard III, and the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet. How does that strike you? I'm in, up to the hub, for anything that will pay Bilgewater, but you see, I don't know nothing about play-acting, and ain't ever seen much of it. I was too small when Papp used to have him at the palace. Do you reckon you can learn me? Easy. All right, I'm just a-freezing for something fresh, anyway. Let us commence right away. So the duke he told him all about who Romeo was and who Juliet was, and said he was used to being Romeo, so the king could be Juliet. But if Juliet's such a young gal, Duke, my peeled head in my white whiskers is going to look uncommon odd on her, maybe. No, don't you worry. These country jakes won't ever think of that. Besides, you know you'll be in costume, and that makes all the difference in the world. Juliet's in a balcony, enjoying the moonlight before she goes to bed, and she's got on her nightgown in a ruffled nightcap. Here are the costumes for the parts. He got out two or three curtain calico suits, which he said was medieval armor for Richard III and the other chap, and a long white cotton night shirt and a ruffled nightcap to match. The king was satisfied, so the duke got out his book and read the parts over in the most splendid spreading away, prancing around and acting at the same time to show how it had got to be done. Then he gave the book to the king and told him to get his part by heart. There was a little one-horse town about three miles down the bend, and after dinner the duke said he had siphoned out his idea about how to run in daylight without it being dangerousome for Jim, so he allowed he would go down to the town and fix that thing. The king allowed he would go too and see if he couldn't strike something. We was out of coffee, so Jim said I'd better go along with them in the canoe and get some. When we got there, there was nobody stirring, streets empty, and perfectly dead and still, like Sunday. We found a sick nigger, sunning himself in a backyard, and he said everybody that want too young or too sick or too old was gone to camp meeting about two miles back in the woods. The king got the directions and allowed he go and work that camp meeting for all it was worth, and I might go too. The duke said that what he was after was a printing office. We found it, a little bit of a concern. Up over a carpenter's shop, copeters and printers all gone to the meeting, and no doors locked. It was a dirty, littered up place and had ink marks and handbills with pictures of horses and runaway niggers on them all over the walls. The duke shed his coat and said he was all right now. So me and the king lit out for the camp meeting. We got there in about a half an hour fairly dripping for it was a most awful hot day. There was as much as a thousand people there from twenty miles around. The woods was full of teams and wagons hitched everywhere, feeding out of the wagon troughs and stompin' to keep off the flies. There were sheds made out of poles and roofed over with branches where they had lemonade and gingerbread to sell and piles of watermelons and green corn and such like truck. The preacher was going on under the same kind of sheds. Only they was bigger and held crowds of people. The benches was made out of outside slabs of logs with holes bored in the round side to drive sticks in too for legs. They didn't have no backs. The preachers had high platforms to stand on at one end of the sheds. The women had on sun-bonnets, and some had Lindsay Woolsey frocks, some gingham ones, and a few of the young ones had on calico. Some of the young men were barefooted, and some of the children didn't have any clothes on but just a tow linen shirt. Some of the old women was knitting, and some of the young folks was cordon on the sly. The first shed we come to the preacher was lining out of him. He lined out two lines. Everybody sung it, and it was kind of grand to hear it. There was so many of them, and they'd done it in such a rousing way. Then he lined out two more for them to sing, and so on. The people woke up more and more and sung louder and louder, and towards the end some begun to groan, and some begun to shout. Then the preacher begun to preach, and begun in earnest too, and went weaving first to one side of the platform, and then the other, and then leaning down over the front of it, with his arms and his body going all the time, and shouting his words out with all his mind. And every now and then he would hold up his Bible and spread it open, and kind of pass it around this way and that, shouting, it's the brazen serpent in the wilderness, look upon it and live, and people would shout out, Glory, amen! And so he went on, and the people groaning and crying and saying amen. Oh, come to the mourner's bench, come black with sin, amen! Come sick and soar, amen! Come lame and halt and blind, amen! Come poor and needy, sunken shame, amen! Come all that's worn and soiled in suffering, come with a broken spirit, come with a contrite heart, come on your rags and sin and dirt. The waters that cleanses free, the door of heaven stands open. Oh, enter in and be at rest, amen! Glory, glory, hallelujah! And so on. You couldn't make out what the preacher said anymore, on account of the shouting and the crying. Folks got up everywhere as in the crowd and worked their way just by main strength to the mourner's bench, where the tears running down their faces, and when all the mourners had got up there to the front benches in a crowd, they sung and shouted and flung themselves down on the straw just crazy and wild. Well, the first I knowed the king got a-going, and you could hear him over everybody, and next he went a-charging up on to the platform, and the preacher he begged him to speak to the people, and he'd done it. He told them he was a pirate. Been a pirate for thirty years out in the Indian Ocean, and his crew was thinned out considerable last spring in a fight, and he was home now to take out some fresh men. And thanks to goodness he'd been robbed last night and put ashore off of a steamboat without a scent, and he was glad of it. It was the blessedest thing that ever happened to him, because he was a changed man now, and happy for the first time in his life, and poor as he was, he was going to start right off and work his way back to the Indian Ocean, and put in the rest of his life trying to turn the pirates into the true path, for he could do it better than anybody else, being acquainted with all pirate crews in that ocean, and though it would take him a long time to get there without money, he would get there anyway, and every time he convinced a pirate he would say to him, Don't you thank me, don't you give me no credit? It all belongs to them dear people in Pokeville Camp Meeting, natural brothers and benefactors of the race, and that dear preacher there, the truest friend-up pirate ever had. Then he bursted into tears, and so did everybody. Then somebody sings out, Take up a collection for him, take up a collection! Well, a half a dozen made a jump to do it, but somebody sings out, Let him pass the hat around! Then everybody said it, the preacher too. So the king went all through the crowd with his hat, swabbing his eyes, and blessing the people and praising them, and thanking them for being so good to the poor pirates away off there. And every little while the prettiest kind of girls were the tears running down their cheeks, would up and ask him would he let them kiss him for to remember him by, and he always done it, and some of them he hugged and kissed as many as five or six times. And he was invited to stay a week, and everybody wanted him to live in their houses, and said they think it was an honor. But he said, as this was the last day of the camp meeting he couldn't do no good, and besides he was in a sweat to get to the Indian Ocean right off and go to work on the pirates. When we got back to the raft and he come to count up, he found he had collected eighty-seven dollars and seventy-five cents, and then he had fetched away a three-gallon jug of whiskey, too, that he found under a wagon when he was starting home through the woods. The king said, take it all around, it laid over any day he'd ever put in in the missionarying line. He said it warn't no use talking. He then stoned him out to shucks alongside of pirates to work at camp meeting with. The duke was thinking he'd been doing pretty well till the king come to show up. But after that he didn't think so, so much. He had set up and printed off two little jobs for farmers in that printing office, horse-spills, and took the money, four dollars. And he had got in ten dollars worth of advertisements for the paper, which he said he would put in for four dollars if they would pay in advance. So they done it. The price of the paper was two dollars a year, but he took in three subscriptions for half a dollar apiece on condition of them paying him in advance. They was going to pay in cordwood and onions as usual, but he said he had just bought the concern and knocked down the price as low as he could afford it, and was going to run it for cash. He set up a little piece of poetry which he made himself out of his own head, three verses, kind of sweet and saddish. The name of it was Yes, Crush, Cold World, Disbreaking Heart. And he left that all set up and ready to print in the paper and didn't charge nothing for it. Well, he took in nine dollars and a half and said he'd done a pretty square day's work for it. Then he showed us another little job he printed and hadn't charged for, because it was for us. It had a picture of a runaway nigger with a bundle on a stick over his shoulder and two hundred dollar reward under it. The reading was all about Jim and just described him to a dot. It said he run away from St. Jack's Plantation, forty miles below New Orleans, last winter, and likely went north, and whoever would catch him and send him back he could have the reward and expenses. Now, says the Duke, after tonight we can run in the daytime if we want to. Whenever we see anybody coming we can tie Jim hand and foot with a rope and lay him in the wigwam and show this hand-bell and say we captured him up the river and were too poor to travel on a steamboat, so we got this little raft on credit from our friends and are going down to get the reward. Hankuffs and chains would look still better on Jim, but it wouldn't go well with the story of us being so poor. Too much like jewelry. Ropes are the correct thing. We must preserve the unities, as we say on the boards. We all said the Duke was pretty smart, and there couldn't be no trouble about running daytimes. We judged we could make miles enough the night to get out of the reach of the powwow we reckoned the Duke's work in the printing office was going to make in that little town. Then we could boom right along if we wanted to. We laid low and kept still, and never shoved out till nearly ten o'clock. Then we slid by, pretty wide away from the town, and didn't hoist our lantern till we was clear out of sight of it. When Jim called me to take the watch at four in the morning, he says, Huck, does you reckon we're going to run across any more kings on this trip? No, I says. I reckon not. Well, says he. That's all right, then. I don't mind one or two kings, but that's enough. This one's powerful, drunk, and the Duke ain't much better. I found Jim had been trying to get him to talk French, so he could hear what it was like, but he said he had been in this country so long and had so much trouble he'd forgot it. CHAPTER XXI. It was after sun up now, but we went right on and didn't tie up. The king and the Duke turned out by and by, looking pretty rusty. But after they jumped overboard and took a swim, it chippered them up a good deal. After breakfast, the king he took a seat on the corner of the raft, and pulled off his boots and rolled up his bridges, and let his legs dangle in the water, so as to be comfortable, and lit his pipe and went to getting his Romeo and Juliet by heart. When he had got it pretty good, him and the Duke began to practice it together. The Duke had to learn him over and over again how to say every speech, and he made him sigh, and put his hand on his heart, and after a while he said he'd done it pretty well. Only, he says, you mustn't bellow out Romeo that way, like a bull. You must say it soft and sweet and languishy. So Romeo! That is the idea. For Juliet said dear sweet mere child of a girl, you know, and she doesn't bray like a jackass. Well, next they got out a couple of long sorts that the Duke made out of oak-laths, and begun to practice the sword-fight. The Duke called himself Richard III, and the way they laid on and pranced around the raft was grand to sea. But by and by the King tripped and fell overboard, and after that they took a rest, and had a talk about all kinds of adventures they'd had in other times along the river. After dinner the Duke says, Well, Capit, we'll want to make this a first-class show, you know, so I guess we'll add a little more to it. We want a little something to answer Encore's with, anyway. What's Encore's, Bilgewater? The Duke told him, and then says, I'll answer by doing the Highland Fling, or the Sailor's Hornpipe, and you, well, let me see. Oh, I've got it. You could do Hamlet's soliloquy. Hamlet's witch? Hamlet's soliloquy, you know. The most celebrated thing in Shakespeare. Ah, it's sublime, sublime! Always fetches the house. I haven't got it in the book. I've only got one volume. But I reckon I can piece it out from memory. I'll just walk up and down a minute and see if I can call it back from recollection's vaults. So he went to marchin' up and down, thinkin', and frownin' horrible every now and then. Then he would hoist up his eyebrows. Next he would squeeze his hand on his forehead and stagger back and kind of moan. Next he would sigh. And next he'd let on to drop a tear. It was beautiful to see him. By and by he got it. He told us to give attention. Then he strikes a most noble attitude, with one leg shoved forwards and his arms stretched away up, and his head tilted back, looking up at the sky. And then he begins to rip and rave and grit his teeth. And after that, all through his speech he howled and spread around and swelled up his chest, and just knocked the spots out of any acting ever I see before. This is the speech. I learned it easy enough while he was learning it to the king. To be or not to be. That is the bear bodkin. That makes calamity of so long life. For who would fartles bear, till Burnham Wood do come to Dunsenane, but that the fear of something after death murders the innocent sleep? Great nature's second course, and makes us rather sling the arrows of outrageous fortune, than fly to others that we know not of. There's the respect must give us pause. Wake, Duncan, with thy knocking. I would, thou couldst. For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, the oppressors wrong, and proud man's contumely, the law's delay, and the quietest switches pangs might take, in the dead waste and middle of the night, when churchyards yawn. In customary suits of solemn black, but that the undiscovered country from whose borne no traveller returns, breathes forth contagion on the world, and thus the native hue of resolution, like the poor cat in the adage, is sick-lead over with care, and all the clouds that lowered over our housetops, with this regard their currents turn awry, and lose the name of action. It is a consummation devoutly to be wished, but soft you, the fair Ophelia. Hope not they ponderous and marble jaws, but get thee to a nunnery. Go! Well, the old man he liked that speech, and he might as soon got it so he could do it first rate. It seemed like he was just born for it, and when he had his hand in and was excited, it was perfectly lovely the way he would rip and tear and rare up behind when he was getting it off. The first chance we got, the Duke he had some showbills printed, and after that, for two or three days as we floated along, the raft was a most uncommon lively place, for there warn't nothing but sword fighting and rehearsing, as the Duke called it, going on all the time. One morning, when we were pretty well down the state of Arkansas, we came inside of a little one-horse town in a big bend, so we tied up about three quarters of a mile above it, in the mouth of a creek which was shut in like a tunnel by the cypress trees, and all of us but Jim took the canoe and went down there to see if there was any chance in that place for our show. We struck it mighty lucky, there was going to be a circus there that afternoon, and the country people was already beginning to come in, in all kinds of old shackley wagons and on horses. The circus would leave before night, so our show would have a pretty good chance. The Duke he hired the courthouse, and we went around and stuck up our bills, they read like this. Shakespearean revival, wonderful attraction, for one night only. The world-renowned tragedians David Garrick the Younger of Jury Lane Theatre, London, and Edmund Cain the Elder of the Royal Haymarket Theatre, Whitechapel, Pudding Lane, Piccadilly, London, and the Royal Continental Theatres in their sublime Shakespearean spectacle entitled The Balcony Scene in Romeo and Juliet. Romeo, played by Mr. Garrick. Juliet, played by Mr. Cain. Assisted by the whole strength of the company, new costumes, new scenes, new appointments, also the thrilling masterly and blood-curdling broadsword conflict in Richard III. Richard III played by Mr. Garrick. Richmond played by Mr. Cain. Also by special request, Hamlet's immortal soliloquy by the illustrious Cain, done by him three hundred consecutive nights in Paris, for one night only on account of imperative European engagements, admission twenty-five cents, children and servants ten cents. Then we went loafing around town. The stores and houses was most all old, shackly, dried up frame concerns that hadn't ever been painted. They was set up three or four feet above ground on stilts, so as to be out of reach of the water when the river was overflowed. The houses had little gardens around them, but they didn't seem to raise hardly anything in them, but gyms and weeds, and sunflowers and ash piles, and old curled-up boots and shoes, and pieces of bottles and rags, and played-out tinware. The fences was made of different kinds of boards, nailed on at different times, and they leaned every which way, and had gates that didn't generally have but one hinge, a leather one. Some of the fences had been whitewashed some time or another, but the duke said it was in Columbus's time, like enough. There was generally hogs in the garden and people driving them out. All the stores was along one street. They had white, domestic awnings in front, and the country people hitched their horses to the awning posts. There was empty dry goods boxes under the awnings, and loafers roosting on them all day long, whittling them with their barlow knives, and chowing tobacco, and gaping, and yawning, and stretching. I might honour a lot. They generally had on yellow straw hats, most as wide as an umbrella, but didn't wear no coats nor waistcoats. They called one another Bill, and Buck, and Hank, and Joe, and Andy, and talked lazy and drolly, and used considerable many cuss words. There was as many as one loafer leaning up against every awning post, and he most always had his hands in his britches' pockets, except when he fetched them out to lend a char of tobacco or scratch. What a body was here and amongst them all the time was. Give me a char of tobacco, Hank. I can't. I ain't got but one char left. Ask Bill. Maybe Bill, he gives him a char. Maybe he lies and says he ain't got none. Some of them kinds of loafers never has a scent in the world, nor a char of tobacco of their own. They get all their char'n by borrowing. They say to a fella, I wish you'd lend me a char, Jack. I'd just this minute give Ben Thompson the last char I had. Which is a lie pretty much every time. He don't fool nobody but a stranger, but Jack ain't no stranger, so he says, You give him a char, did you? So did your sister's cat's grandmother. You pay me back to chars you already borrowed off of me, Leif Buckner. Then I'll loan you one or two ton of it, and won't charge you no back interest another. Well, I did pay back some of it once. Yes, you did. About six chars. You'd borrow a store tobacco and pay back niggerhead. Store tobacco is flat black plug, but these fellas mostly chars the natural Leif twisted. When they borrow a char they don't gently cut it off with a knife but set the plug in between their teeth and gnaw with their teeth and tug at the plug with their hands till they get it in two. Then sometimes the one that owns the tobacco looks mournful at it when it's handed back and says sarcastic. Here, give me the char. You take the plug. All the streets and lanes was just mud. They want nothing else but mud. Mud is black as tar and nigh about a foot deep in some places, and two or three inches deep in all the places. The hogs loafed and grunted round everywheres. You'd see a muddy sow and a litter of pigs come lazing along the street and wallop herself right down in the way where folks had to walk around her. And she'd stretch out and shut her eyes and wave her ears whilst the pigs was milking her and look as happy as if she was on salary. And pretty soon you'd hear a loafers sing out, Ha! So, boy, sick'em, tyke! And away the sow would go squealing most horrible with the dog or two swinging to each ear, and three or four dozen more coming. And then you'd see all the loafers get up and watch the thing out of sight and laugh at the fun and look grateful for the noise. Then they'd settle back again until there was a dogfight. They couldn't anything wake them up all over and make them happy all over like a dog fight, unless it might be putting turpentine on a stray dog and setting fire to him or tying a tin pan to his tail and see him run himself to death. On the riverfront some of the houses was sticking out over the bank and they was bowed and bent and about ready to tumble in. The people had moved out of them. The bank was caved away under one corner of some others and that corner was hanging over. People lived in them yet, but it was dangerous some because sometimes a strip of land as wide as a house caves in at a time. Sometimes a belt of land a quarter of a mile deep will start in and cave along and cave along till it all caves into the river in one summer. Such a town as that has to be always moving back and back and back because the river's always gnawing at it. The nearer it got to noon that day the thicker and thicker was the wagons and horses in the streets and more coming all the time. Families fetched their dinners with them from the country and eat them in the wagons. There was considerable whisker drinking going on and I seen three fights. By and by somebody sings out, Here comes old Boggs in from the country for his little old monthly drunk. Here he comes, boys. All the loafers looked glad. I reckon they was used to having fun out of Boggs. One of them says, Wonder who's a going to chaw up this time? If he'd chawed up all the men he's been a going to chaw up in the last twenty years he'd had a considerable reputation now. Another one says, I wish the old Boggs had threatened me because then I'd know I warn't Gwanda die for a thousand years. Boggs comes a-terring along on his horse whooping and yelling like an engine and singing out, clear the track there. I'm on the wall-path and the path of coffins is a Gwanda raise. He was drunk and weaving about in his saddle. He was over fifty years old and had a very red face. Everybody yelled at him and laughed at him and sassed him and he sassed back and said he'd attend to them and lay them out in their regular turns. But he couldn't wait now because he'd come to town to kill old Colonel Sherburn and his motto was, Meet first and spoon vitals to top off on. He seen me and wrote up and says, Where'd you come from, boy? You prepare to die? Then he wrote on. I was scared. But a man says, He don't mean nothing. He's always a-carrying on like that when he's drunk. He's the best-naturedness old fool in Arkansas. Never hurt nobody, drunk nor sober. Boggs wrote up before the biggest store in town and bent his head down so he could see under the curtain of the awning and yells, Come out here, Sherburn. Come out and meet the man you swindled. You're the hound I'm after and I'm going to have you, too. So he went on, calling Sherburn everything he could lay his tongue to and whole street packed with people listening and laughing and going on. By and by a proud-looking man about fifty-five and he was a heap the best-dressed man in that town, too. Steps out of the store and the crowd drops back on each side to let him come. He says to Boggs, Might it calm and slow? He says, I'm tired of this, but I'll endure it till one o'clock. Till one o'clock, mind, no longer. If you open your mouth against me only once after that time, you can't travel so far, but I will find you. Then he turns and goes in. The crowd looked mighty sober, nobody stirred and there weren't no more laughing. Boggs rode up Black Garden Sherburn as loud as he could yell, all down the street. Pretty soon back he comes and stops before the store, still keeping it up. Some man crowded around him and tried to get him to shut up, but he wouldn't. They told him it would be one o'clock in about fifteen minutes and so he must go home, he must go right away. But it didn't do no good. He cussed away with all his might and throwed his hat down in the mud and rode over it, and pretty soon away he went a-raging down the street again with his gray hair a-flying. Everybody that could get a chance at him tried their best to coax him off of his horse so they could lock him up and get him sober. But it warn't no use. Up the street he would tear again and give Sherburn another cussing. Buy and buy, somebody says. Go for his daughter. Quick, go for his daughter. Sometimes it'll listen to her. If anybody can persuade him, she can. So somebody started on a run. I walked down the street a-ways and stopped. In about five or ten minutes here comes Boggs again but not on his horse. He was a-reeling across the street towards me, bare-headed, with a friend on both sides of him, a hold of his arms and hurrying him along. He was quiet and looked uneasy, and he warn't hangin' back any but was doin' some of the hurrying themself. Somebody sings out—Boggs. I looked over there to see who said it, and it was that Colonel Sherburn. He was standin' perfectly still in the street, and had a pistol raised in his right hand—not aimin' it, but holdin' it out with the barrel tilted up towards the sky. The same second I see a young girl comin' on the run and two men with her. Boggs and the men turned round to see who called him, and when they see the pistol, the men jumped to one side, and the pistol barrel come down slow and steady to a level. Both barrels cocked. Boggs throws up both of his hands and says, Oh Lord, don't shoot! Bang! goes the first shot, and he staggers back, clawin' at the air. Bang! goes the second one, and he tumbles backwards on to the ground, heavy and solid, with his arms spread out. That young girl screamed out and comes rushin', and down she throws herself on her father, cryin' and sayin' Oh, he's killed him! He's killed him! The crowd closed up around them, and shouldered and jammed one another, where the neck stretched, tryin' to see, and people on the inside tryin' to shove them back and shouting, Back! Back! Give him air! Give him air! Colonel Sherburn, he tossed his pistol on to the ground, and turned around on his heels, and walked off. They took Boggs to a little drugstore. The crowd pressin' round just the same, and the whole town followin', and I rushed and got a good place at the window, where I was close to him and could see in. They laid him on the floor, and put one large Bible under his head, and opened another one, and spread it on his breast, but they tore open his shirt first, and I seen where one of the bullets went in. He made about a dozen long gasps, his breast liftin' the Bible up when he drawed in his breath, and lettin' it down again when he breathed it out, and after that he laid still. He was dead. Then they pulled his daughter away from him, screamin' and cryin', and took her off. She was about sixteen, very sweet and gentle-lookin', but awful pale and scared. Well, pretty soon the whole town was there, squirmin' and scrugin' and pushin' and shovin' to get out the window and have a look, but people that had the places wouldn't give them up, and folks behind them was sayin' all the time, Say now, you've looked enough, you fellas, taint right and taint fair for you to stay there all the time, never give nobody a chance, other folks has their rights as well as you. There was considerable jaw and back, so I slid out, thinkin' maybe there was going to be trouble. The streets was full, and everybody was excited. Everybody that seen the shooting was tellin' how it happened, and there was a big crowd packed around each one of these fellas, stretchin' their necks and listenin'. One long lanky man with long hair and a big white furred stove-pipe hat on the back of his head, and a crooked-handled cane marked out the places on the ground where Boggs stood and where Sherburne stood, and the people followin' him round from one place to the other, and watchin' everything he'd done, and bobbin' their heads to show they understood, and stoopin' a little and restin' their hands on their thighs to watch him mark the places on the ground with his cane. And then he stood up straight and stiff, where Sherburne had stood, frownin' and havin' his hat brimmed down over his eyes, and sung out, Boggs, and then fetched his cane down, slowed to a level, and says, BANG, staggered backwards, says BANG, again, and fell down flat on his back. The people that had seen the thing said he'd done it perfect, said it was just exactly the way it all happened. Then as much as a dozen people got out their bottles and treated him. Well, by and by somebody said Sherburne ought to be lynched. In about a minute everybody was sayin' it, so away they went, mad and yelling, and snatching down every clothesline they come to, to do the hangin' with. End of the chapter.