 24 Next day, towards night, we laid up under a little willow-toe head out in the middle, where there was a village on each side of the river, and the duke and the king began to lay out a plan for working them towns. Jim, he spoke to the duke, and said he hoped it wouldn't take but a few hours, because it got mighty heavy and tiresome to him when he had to lay all day in the wigwam tied with a rope. You see, when we left him all alone, we had to tie him, because if anybody happened on to him all by himself and not tied, it wouldn't look much like he was a runaway nigger, you know. So the duke said it was kind of hard to have to lay roped all day, and he'd cipher out some way to get round it. He was uncommon bright, the duke was, and he soon struck it. He dressed Jim up in a King Lear's outfit. It was a long, curtain-calico gown, and a white horse-hair wig and whiskers. And then he took his theatre-paint and painted Jim's face and hands and ears and neck all over a dead, dull, solid blue, like a man that's been drowned nine days. Blamed if he weren't the horriblest-looking outrage I ever see. Then the duke took and wrote out a sign on a shingle, so, Sick Arab, but harmless, when not out of his head. And he nailed that shingle to a lath, and stood the lath up four or five foot in front of the wigwam. Jim was satisfied. He said it was a sight better than lying tied a couple of years every day, and trembling all over every time there was a sound. The duke told him to make himself free and easy, and if anybody ever come meddling around he must hop out of the wigwam and carry on a little, and fetch a howl or two like a wild beast, and he reckoned they would light out and leave him alone. Which was sound enough judgment. But you take the average man, and he wouldn't wait for him to howl. Why? If the duke didn't only look like he was dead, he looked considerable more than that. These Rapscallians wanted to try the none such again, because there was so much money in it, but they judged it wouldn't be safe, because maybe the news might have worked along down by this time. They couldn't hit no project that suited exactly. So at last the duke said he reckoned he'd lay off and work his brains an hour or two, and see if he couldn't put up something on the Arkansas village. When the king he loud he would drop over to the village without any plan, but just trust in Providence to lead him the profitable way, meaning the devil, I reckon. We had all bought store clothes where we stopped last, and now the king put his none, and he told me to put mine on. I'd done it, of course. The king's duds was all black, and he did look real swell and starchy. I never know how clothes could change a body before. Why? Before, he looked like the ornery as old rip that ever was, but now, when he'd take off his new white beaver and make a bow and do a smile, he looked that grand and good and pious that you'd say he had walked right out of the ark, and maybe was old Leviticus himself. Jim cleaned up the canoe, and I got my paddle ready. There was a big steamboat laying at the shore away up under the point about three miles above the town, been there a couple hours, taking on freight, says the king. Seems how I'm dressed. I reckon maybe I'd better arrive down from St. Louis, or Cincinnati, or some other big place. Go for the steamboat, Huckleberry. We'll come down to the village on her. I didn't have to be ordered twice to go and take a steamboat ride. I fetched the shore a half a mile above the village, and then went scooting along the bluff bank in the easy water. Very soon we come to a nice innocent-looking young country jake setting on a log, swabbing the sweat off of his face, for it was powerful warm weather, and he had a couple of big carpet bags by him. Runner knows in shore, says the king. I done it. Were you bound for a young man? For the steamboat? Going to Orleans. Get aboard, says the king. Hold on a minute. My servant will help you with them bags. Jump out and help the gentleman, Adolphus. Meaning me, I see. I done so, and then we all three started on again. The young chap was mighty thankful, said it was tough work toting his baggage such weather. He asked the king where he was going, and the king told him he'd come down the river and landed at the other village this morning, and now he was going up a few mile to see an old friend on a farm up there. The young fellow says, When I first see you, I says to myself, Yes, Mr. Wilkes, sure, and he come mighty near getting here in time. But then I says again, No, I reckon it ain't him or else he wouldn't be paddling up the river. You ain't him, are you? No, my name's Blodgett. Alexander Blodgett. Reverend Alexander Blodgett, I suppose I must say, as I'm one of the Lord's poor servants. But still I'm just as able to be sorry for Mr. Wilkes for not arriving in time all the same. If he's missed anything by it, which I hope he hasn't. Well, he don't miss any property by it, because he'll get that all, right? But he's missing his poor brother Peter Dye, which he made in mind—nobody can tell us to that—but his brother would have given anything in this world to see him before he died, never talked about nothing else all these three weeks, hadn't seen him since they were boys together, and hadn't ever seen his brother William at all. That's the deep and dumb one. William ain't more than thirty or thirty-five. Peter and George were the only ones that come out here. George was the married brother. Him and his wife both died last year. Harvey and William's the only ones that's left now, and as I was saying, they haven't got here in time. Did anybody send him word? Oh yes, a month or two ago, when Peter was first took, because Peter said then that he sort of felt like he weren't going to get well this time. You see, he was pretty old, and George's girls was too young to be much company for him, except Mary Jane, the red-headed one, and so he was kinder lonesome after George and his wife died, and didn't seem to care much to live. He most desperately wanted to see Harvey and William too for that matter, because he was one of them kind that can't bear to make a will. He left a letter behind for Harvey and said he'd told in it where his money was hid, and how he wanted the rest of the property divided up so George's girls would be all right, for George didn't leave nothing, and that letter was all they could get him to put a pen to. Why do you reckon Harvey don't come? Where does he live? Oh, he lives in England, Sheffield, preaches there, hasn't ever been in this country, he hasn't had any too much time, and besides, he mightn't have got the letter at all, you know. Too bad. Too bad he couldn't have lived to see his brother's poor soul. You're going to Orleans, you say. Yes, but that ain't only a part of it. I'm going on a ship next Wednesday for Rio de Janeiro, where my uncle lives. It's a pretty long journey, but it'll be lovely. Wished I was going. Is Mary Jane the oldest? How old is the others? Mary Jane is nineteen, Susan's fifteen, and Joanne is about fourteen. That's the one that gives herself to good works, and has a hairlip. Poor things. To be left alone in the cold world, so. Well, they could be worse off. Old Peter had friends, and they ain't going to let them come to no harm. There's Hobson, the Baptist preacher, and Deacon Lott-Hovey, and Ben Rucker, and Abner Shackleford, and Levi Bell, the employer, and Dr. Robinson and their wives, and the widow Bartley, and—well, there's a lot of them. But these are the ones that Peter was thickest with, and used to write about sometimes, when he wrote home. So Harvey'll know where to look for friends when he gets here. Well, the old man went on asking questions till he just fairly emptied that young fellow, blamed if he didn't inquire about everybody and everything in that blessed town, and all about the Wilkes's, and about Peter's business, which was a tanner, and about George's, which was a carpenter, and about Harvey's, which was a dissentering minister, and so on, and so on. And then he says, What did you want to walk all the way up to the steamboat for? Because she's a big Orleans boat, and I was afraid she mightn't stop there. When they're deep they won't stop for a hail. A Cincinnati boat will, but this is a St. Louis one. Is Peter Wilkes well off? Oh, yes, pretty well off. He had houses and land, and it's reckoned he left three or four thousand in cash, hit up in summers. When did you say he died? I didn't say, but it was last night. Funeral tomorrow likely? Yes, about the middle of the day. Well, it's all terrible sad, but we've all got to go, one time or another. So what we want to do is to be prepared, then we're all right. Yes, sir, it's the best way. Ma used to always say that. When we struck the boat, she was about done loading, and pretty soon she got off. The king never said nothing about going aboard, so I lost my ride after all. When the boat was gone, the king made me paddle up another mile to a lonesome place, and then he got ashore and says, Now, hustle back right off and fetch the duke up here, and the new carpet-bags, and if he's gone over to the other side, go over there and get him, and tell him to get himself up regardless. Shove along now. I see what he was up to, but I never said nothing, of course. When I got back with the duke, we hid the canoe, and then they sat down on a log, and the king told him everything, just like the young fellow had said it, every last word of it. And all the time he was doing it, he tried to talk like an Englishman, and he'd done it pretty well, too, for a slouch. I can't imitate him, and so I ain't going to try to, but he really done it pretty good. And then he says, How are you on the deep and dumb bilge water? The duke said, Leave him alone for that. Said he had played a deep and dumb person on the histronic boards, so then they waited for a steamboat. About the middle of the afternoon a couple of little boats come along, but they didn't come from high enough up the river. But at last there was a big one, and they hailed her. She sent out her yaw, and we went aboard, and she was from Cincinnati. And when they found we only wanted to go four or five miles, they was booming mad, and gave us a cussing, and said they wouldn't land us. But the king was calm. He says, If gentlemen can afford to pay a dollar a mile apiece to be took on and put off in a yaw, a steamboat can afford to carry them, can't it? So they softened down, and said it was all right, and when we got to the village they yawled us ashore. About two dozen men flocked down when they see the yawle coming, and when the king says, Can any of you gentlemen tell me where Mr. Peter Wilkes lives? They give a glance at one another, and nodded their heads as much to say, What I tell you? And one of them says, Kind of soft and gentle. I'm sorry, sir, but the best we can do is to tell you where he did live, yesterday evening. One as winking the ornery old critter went all to smash and fell up against the man, and put his chin on his shoulder, and cried down his back, and says, Alas, Alas, our poor brother, gone, and we never got to see him, oh, it's too, too hard! Then he turns round, blubbering, and makes a lot of idiotic signs to the duke on his hands, and blamed if he didn't drop a carpet-bag and bust out a crying, if they weren't the beatin'est lot them two frauds that I ever struck. Well, the men gathered round and sympathized with them, and said all sorts of kind things to them, and carried their carpet-bags up the hill for them, and let them lean on them and cry, and told the king all about his brother's last moments, and the king he told it all over again on his hands to the duke, and both of them took on about that dead tanner like they'd lost the twelve disciples. Well, if ever I struck anything like it, I'm a nigger. It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race. CHAPTER XXV IS IT THEM? SINGING THE DOCSOLIGER. AWFUL SQUARE FUNERAL ORGIES. A BAD INVESTMENT. The news was all over town in two minutes, and you could see the people tearing down on the run from every which way, some of them putting on their coats as they come. Pretty soon we was in the middle of a crowd, and the noise of the tramping was like a soldier's march. The windows and door yards was full, and every minute somebody would say over a fence, IS IT THEM? And somebody trotting along with a gang would answer back and say, You bet it is! When we got to the house the street in front of it was packed, and the three girls was standing in the door. Mary Jane was red-headed, but that don't make no difference. She was most awful beautiful, and her face and her eyes was all lit up like glory. She was so glad her uncles was come. The king he spread his arms, and Mary Jane she jumped for them, and the hair-lip jumped for the duke, and there they had it. Everybody most, least ways women, cried for joy to see them meet again at last and have such good times. Then the king he hunched the duke private, I see him do it, and then he looked round and see the coffin over in the corner on two chairs. So then him and the duke, with a hand across each other's shoulder, and tether hand to their eyes, walked slow and solemn over there, everybody dropping back to give them room, and all the talk and noise stopping, and people saying, shh, and all the men taking their hats off and drooping their heads, so you could have heard a pinfall. And when they got there they bent over and looked in the coffin and took one side, and then they bust out a crying so you could have heard them to Orleans most. And then they put their arms round each other's necks, and hung their chins over each other's shoulders, and then for three minutes, or maybe four, I never see two men leak the way they done. And, mind you, everybody was doing the same. And the place was that damp, I had never seen anything like it. Then one of them got on one side of the coffin, and tether on tether side, and they kneeled down and rested their foreheads on the coffin, and led on to pray all to themselves. Well, when it come to that it worked the crowd like you never see anything like it, and everybody broke down and went sobbing right out loud. The poor girls, too, and every woman nearly went up to the girls without saying a word and kissed them solemn on the forehead, and then put their hand on their head and looked up toward the sky, with the tears running down, and then busted out and went off sobbing and swabbing and give the next woman a show. I never see anything so disgusting. Well, by and by the king he gets up and comes forward a little, and works himself up and slobbers out of speech, all full of tears and flap-doodle about its being a sore trial for him and his poor brother to lose the diseased, and to miss seeing diseased alive after the long journey of four thousand miles. But it's a trial that sweetened and sanctifies to us by this dear sympathy and these holy tears, and so he thanks them out of his heart and out of his brother's heart, because out of their mouths they can't, words being too weak and cold, and all that kind of rot and slush, till it was just sickening. And then he blubbers out of pious goody-goody, amen, and turns himself loose, and goes to crying fit to burst. And the minute the words were out of his mouth somebody over in the crowd struck up the docksoliger, and everybody joined in with all their might, and it just warmed you up and made you feel as good as church-letting out. Music is a good thing, and after all that soul-butter and hogwash I never see it freshen up things so, and sound so honest and bully. Then the king begins to work his jog in, and says how him and his nieces would be glad if a few of the main principal friends of the family would take supper here with them this evening, and help set up with the ashes of the diseased, and says if his poor brother laying yonder could speak he knows who he would name, for they was names that was very dear to him and mentioned often in his letters, and so he will name the same to it as follows, these Reverend Mr. Hobson, and Deacon Lot-Hovey, and Mr. Ben Rucker, and Abner Shackleford, and Levi Bell, and Dr. Robinson and their wives, and the widow Bartley. Reverend Hobson and Dr. Robinson was down to the end of the town a hunting together, that is, I mean the doctor was shipping a sick man to their world, and the preacher was piting him right. The lawyer Bell was away up to Louisville on business, but the rest was on hand, and so they all come and shook hands with the king and thanked him and talked to him, and then they shook hands with the Duke, and didn't say nothing, but just kept to smiling and bobbing their heads like a parcel of sap heads whilst he made all sorts of signs with his hands, and said go, go, go, go, go, all the time like a baby that can't talk. So the king he blattered along and managed to inquire about pretty much everybody and dog in town by his name, and mentioned all sorts of little things that happened one time or another in the town, or to George's family or to Peter, and he always led on that Peter wrote him the things, but that was a lie. He got every blessed one of them out of that young flathead that we canoed up to the steamboat. Then Mary Jane she fetched the letter her father left behind, and the king he read it out loud and cried over it. He'd give the dwelling house and three thousand dollars gold to the girls, and he'd give the tanyard, which was doing a good business, along with some other houses and land, worth about seven thousand, and three thousand dollars in gold to Harvey and William, and told where the six thousand cash was hid down cellar. So these two frauds said they'd go and fetch it up and have everything square and above board, and told me to come with a candle. We shut the cellar door behind us, and when they found the bag they spilt it out on the floor, and it was a lovely sight all of them yaller-boys. By the way the king's eyes did shine. He slaps the duke on the shoulder and says, Oh, this ain't bully nor nothing. Oh, no, I reckon not. Why, bilgey, it beats the nuns such, don't it? The duke allowed it did. They pawed the yaller-boys and sifted them through their fingers and let them jingle down on the floor, and the king says, It ain't no use talking. Being brothers to a rich dead man, and representatives of fur and heirs that's got left, is the line for you and me, bilge. This share comes of trust and to providence. It's the best way in the long run. I've tried them all, and there ain't no better way. Most everybody would have been satisfied with the pile and took it on trust, but no, they must count it. So they count it, and it comes out four hundred and fifteen dollars short, says the king. Darn him! I wonder what he'd done with that four hundred and fifteen dollars. They worried over that a while, and ransacked all around for it. Then the duke says, Well, he was a pretty sick man, and likely he made a mistake. I reckon that's the way of it. The best way is to let it go, and keep still about it. We can spare it. Oh, shucks! Yes, we can spare it. I don't care nothing about that. It's the count I'm thinking about. We want to be awful square and open and aboveboard here, you know. We want to lug this hair of money upstairs and count it before everybody. Then there ain't nothing suspicious. But when the dead man says there's six thousand dollars, you know, we don't want to—hold on, says the duke. Let's make up the deficit. And he began to haul out yaller boys out of his pocket. That's the most amazing good idea, duke. You have got a rattling clever head on you, says the king. Blessed if the old nun such ain't a happiness out again! And he began to haul out yaller jackets and stack them up. It most busted them, but they made up the six thousand clean and clear. Say, says the duke, I got another idea. Let's go upstairs and count this money, and then take and give it to the girls. Good land, duke, let me hug you. It's the most dazzling idea ever, man struck. You have certainly got the most astonishing head I ever see. Oh, this is the boss-dodge. There ain't no mistake about it. Let him fetch along their suspicions now if they want to. This'll lay him out. When we got upstairs everybody gathered round the table and the king he counted it and stacked it up three hundred dollars in a pile, twenty elegant little piles. Everybody looked hungry at it and licked their chops. Then they raked it into the bag again, and I see the king begin to swell himself up for another speech. He says, Friends all, my poor brother, that lays yonder, has done generous by them that's left behind in the veil of SARS. He has done generous by these year poor little lambs that he loved and sheltered, and that's left fatherless and motherless. Yes, and we that knowed him knows that he would have done more generous by them if he hadn't been a fear to wound in his dear William and me. Now, wouldn't he? There ain't no question about it in my mind. Well, what kind of brothers would it be that stand in his way at such a time? And what kind of uncles would it be that rob, yes, rob such poor sweet lambs as these that he loved so at such a time? If I know William and I think I do, he—well, I'll just ask him. He turns around and begins to make a lot of signs to the duke with his hands, and the duke he looks at him stupid and leather-headed awhile. Then all of a sudden he seems to catch his meaning, and jumps for the king, googooing with all his might for joy, and hugs him about fifteen times before he lets up. Then the king says, I knowed it, I reckon that'll convince anybody the way he feels about it. Here, Mary Jane, Susan, Jonah, take the money, take it all, it's the gift of him that lays yonder cold but joyful. Mary Jane, she went for him. Susan and the hair-lip went for the duke, and then such another hugging and kissing I never see yet. And everybody crowded up with the tears in their eyes, and most shook the hands off them frauds, saying all the time, you dear good souls, how lovely, how could you—well, then pretty soon all hands got to talking about the diseased again, and how good he was, and what a loss he was, and all that. And before long a big iron-jawed man worked himself in there from outside and stood a listening and looking, and not saying anything, and nobody saying anything to him either, because the king was talking and they was all busy listening. The king was saying, in the middle of something he'd started in on, they being particular friends of the diseased, that's why they're invited here this evening. But tomorrow we want all to come everybody, for he respected everybody, he liked everybody, and so it's fitting that his funeral orgies should be public. So he went to moon and on and on, liking to hear himself talk, and every little while he fetched in his funeral orgies again, till the duke. He couldn't stand it no more. So he writes on a little scrap of paper, obsequies, you old fool, and folds it up, and goes to goo-gooing, and reaching it over people's heads to him. The king, he reads it, and puts it in his pocket, and says, Poor William, afflicted as he is, his heart's all is right. Asks me to invite everybody to come to the funeral, wants me to make them all welcome. But he neither worried, it was just what I was at. Then he weaves along again, perfectly calm, and goes to dropping in his funeral orgies again every now and then, just like he'd done before. And when he'd done it the third time, he says, I say orgies, not because it's the common term, because it ain't. Obsequies being the common term, but because orgies is the right term. Obsequies ain't used in England no more now, it's gone out. We say orgies now in England. Orgies is better, because it means the thing you're after more exact. It's a word that's made up out in a Greek orgo, outside, open, abroad, and the Hebrew jeezum, to plant, cover up, hence inter. So, you see, funeral orgies is an opener, public funeral. He was the worst I ever struck. Well, the iron-jawed man he laughed right in his face, everybody was shocked, everybody says, Why, doctor! An Abner Shackleford says, Why, Robinson, ain't you heard the news? This is Harvey Wilkes. The king he smiled eager and shoved out his flapper and says, Is it my poor brother's dear good friend and physician? I keep your hands off of me, says the doctor. You talk like an Englishman, don't you? It's the worst imitation I ever heard. You, Peter Wilkes' brother, you're a fraud, that's what you are. Well, how they all took on. They crowded around the doctor and tried to quiet him down, and tried to explain to him and tell him how Harvey'd showed in forty ways that he was Harvey, and knowed everybody by name, and the names of the very dogs, and begged and begged him not to hurt Harvey's feelings and the poor girl's feelings and all that. But it warn't no use. He stormed right along and said any man that pretended to be an Englishman, and couldn't imitate the linga no better than what he did, was a fraud and a liar. The poor girls was hanging to the king and crying, and all of a sudden the doctor ups and turns on them. He says, I was your father's friend and I'm your friend, and I warn you as a friend and an honest one that wants to protect you and keep you out of harm and trouble to turn your backs on that scoundrel and have nothing to do with him. The ignorant tramp with his idiotic Greek and Hebrew as he calls it, he is the thinnest kind of an imposter, has come here with a lot of empty names and facts which he picked up somewheres, and you take them for proofs, and are helped to fool yourselves by these foolish friends here who ought to know better. Mary Jane Wilkes, you know me for your friend, and for your unselfish friend too. Now listen to me. Turn this pitiful rascal out, I beg you to do it, will you? Mary Jane straightened herself up, and my but she was handsome, and she says, Here is my answer. She hove up the bag of money and put it in the king's hands and says, Take this, six thousand dollars, and invest it for me and my sisters any way you want to, and don't give us no receipt for it. Then she put her arm around the king on one side, and Susan and the hair-lipped on the same on the other. Everybody clapped their hands and stomped on the floor like a perfect storm, whilst the king held up his head and smiled proud. The doctor says, All right, I wash my hands of the matter, but I warn you all that a time's a coming when you're going to feel sick whenever you think of this day, and away he went. All right, doctor, says the king, kind of mocking him. We'll try and get him to send for you, which made them all laugh, and they said it was a prime good hit. CHAPTER XXVI A pious king. The king's clergy. She asked his pardon. Hiding in the room, Huck takes the money. Well, when they was all gone, the king, he asks Mary Jane how they was all for spare rooms, and she said she had one spare room, which would do for Uncle William, and she'd give her own room to Uncle Harvey, which was a little bigger, and she would turn into the room with her sisters and sleep on a cot, and up Garrett was a little cubby with a pallet in it. The king said the cubby would do for his valley, meaning me. So Mary Jane took us up and she showed them their rooms, which was plain but nice. She said she'd have her frocks and a lot of other traps took out of her room if they was in Uncle Harvey's way, but he said they weren't. The frocks was hung along the wall, and before them was a curtain made out of calico that hung down to the floor. There was an old hair-trunk in one corner and a guitar-box in another, and all sorts of little knickknacks and gym-cracks round, like girls risking up a room with. The king said it was all the more homely and more pleasanter for these fixings, and so don't disturb them. The duke's room was pretty small, but plenty good enough, and so was my cubby. That night they had a big supper, and all of them men and women was there, and I stood behind the king and the duke's chairs and waited on them, and the niggers waited on the rest. Mary Jane, she sat at the head of the table with Susan alongside of her, and said how bad the biscuits was, and how mean the preserves was, and how ornery and tough the fried chicken was, and all that kind of rot, the way women always do for to force out compliments, and the people all knowed everything was tip-top and said so. Said, how do you get biscuits to brown so nice, and where, for land's sake, did you get these maize and pickles, and all that kind of humbug talky-talk, just the way people always does at their supper, you know. When it was all done, me and the hairlip had supper in the kitchen, off of the leavens, whilst the others was helping the niggers clean up the things. The hairlip, she got to pumpin' me about England, and blessed if I didn't think the ice was getting mighty thin sometimes, she says, Did you ever see the king? Who, a William Fourth? Well, I bet I have. He goes to our church. I knowed he was dead years ago, but I never let on. So when I says he goes to our church, she says, What, regular? Yes, regular. His pews right over opposite Arne, on the other side of the pulpit. I thought he lived in London. Well, he does. Where would he live? But I thought you lived in Sheffield. I see I was up a stump. I had to let on to get choked with a chicken bone, so as to get time to think how to get down again. Then I says, I mean he goes to our church regular when he's in Sheffield. That's only in the summer time, when he comes there to take the sea baths. Why, how you talk? Sheffield ain't on the sea. Well, who said it was? Why, you did. I didn't nother. You did. I didn't. You did. I never said nothing of the kind. Well, what did you say then? Said he come to take the sea baths. That's what I said. Well, then, how's he going to take the sea baths if it ain't on the sea? Look here, I says. Did you ever see any Congress water? Yes. Well, do you have to go to Congress to get it? Why, no. Well, neither does William Forth have to go to the sea to get sea baths. How does he get it, then? Gets it the way people down here gets Congress water in barrels. There in the palace at Sheffield they've got furnaces, and he wants his water hot. They can't buy that amount of water way off there at the sea. They haven't got no conveniences for it. Oh, I see now. You might have said that in the first place and saved time. When she said that, I see I was out of the woods again, and so I was comfortable and glad. Next, she says, do you go to church, too? Yes, regular. Where do you sit? Why, in our pew. Whose pew? Why, turn, your Uncle Harvey's. Hison, what does he want with a pew? Wants it to set in. What did you reckon he wanted with it? Why, I thought he'd be in the pulpit. Rot him, I forgot he was a preacher. I see I was up a stump again, so I played another chicken bone and got another think. Then I says, blame it. Do you suppose there ain't but one preacher to a church? Why, what do they want with more? What? To preach before a king? I never did see such a girl as you. They don't have no less than seventeen. Seventeen? My land! Why, I wouldn't set out such a string as that, not if I never got to glory. It must take them a week. Sharks, they don't all of them preach the same day, only one of them. Well, then, what does the rest of them do? Oh, nothing much. All around, past the plate, and one thing or another, but mainly they don't do nothing. Well, then, what are they for? Why, they're for style. Don't you know nothing? Well, I don't want to know no such foolishness as that. How is servants treated in England? Do they treat them better than we treat our niggers? No. A servant ain't nobody there. They treat them worse than dogs. Don't they give them holidays the way we do? Christmas and New Year's week and 4th of July? Oh, just listen. Body could tell you ain't ever been to England by that. Why, Harold, why, Joanna, they never see a holiday from years end to years end. Never go to the circus, nor a theatre, nor nigger shows, nor know-wares. Nor church, nor church. But you always went to church? Well, I was gone up again. I forgot I was the old man's servant. But next minute I whirled in on a kind of an explanation how a valley was different from a common servant, and had to go to church whether he wanted to or not, and set with the family on account of its being the law. But I didn't do it pretty good, and when I got home I see she weren't satisfied. She says, Honest engine, now ain't you been telling me a lot of lies? Honest engine, says I. None of it at all? None of it at all, not a lie in it, says I. Lay your hand on this book and say it. I see it weren't nothing but a dictionary, so I laid my hand on it and said it. So then she looked a little better satisfied and says, Well, then, I'll believe some of it, but I hope to gracious if I'll believe the rest. What is it you won't believe, Joe? says Mary Jane, stepping in with Susan behind her. It ain't right, nor kind for you to talk so to him, and him a stranger and so far from his people. How would you like to be treated so? That's always your way, maim, always sailing in to help somebody before they're hurt. I ain't done nothing to him. He's told some stretchers, I reckon, and I said I wouldn't swallow it all. And that's every bit and grain I did say. I reckon he can stand a little thing like that, can't he? I don't care whether it was a little or whether it was big. He's here in our house and a stranger, and it wasn't good of you to say it. If you was in his place, it would make you feel ashamed. And so you ought to say a thing to another person that will make them feel ashamed. Why, maim, he said I don't make no difference what he said. That ain't the thing. The thing is for you to treat him kind, and not be saying things to make him remember he ain't in his own country and amongst his own folks. I says to myself, this is a girl that I am letting that old reptile rob her of her money. Then Susan she wants him, and if you'll believe me, she did give Harelip hark from the tomb. Says I to myself, and this is another one that I am letting him rob her of her money. Then Mary Jane, she took another inning, and went in sweet and lovely again, which was her way, and when she got done there weren't hardly anything left of poor Harelip, so she hollered, all right, then, says the other girls, you just ask his pardon. She done it, too. She done it beautiful. She done it so beautiful it was good to hear. And I wished I could tell her a thousand lies so she could do it again. I says to myself, this is another one that I am letting him rob her of her money. And when she got through they all just laid their selves out to make me feel at home and know I was amongst friends. I felt so ornery and low down and mean that I says to myself, my mind's made up, I'll hive that money for them or bust. So then I lit out, for bed, I said, meaning some time or another. When I got by myself I went to think and the thing over, I says to myself, shall I go to that doctor private and blow on these frauds? No, that won't do. He might tell who told him. Then the king and the duke would make it warm for me. Shall I go private and tell Mary Jane? No, I danced to it. Her face would give them a hint, sure. They've got the money and they'd slide right out and get away with it. If she was to fetch in help, I'd get mixed up in the business before it was done with, I judged. No, there ain't no good way but one. I got to steal that money somehow. When I got to steal it some way they won't suspicion that I'd done it. They've got a good thing here and they ain't a going to leave till they've played this family and this town for all their worth. So I'll find a chance time enough. I'll steal it and hide it and buy and buy when I'm away down the river. I'll write a letter and tell Mary Jane where it's hid. But I'd better hive it tonight if I can, because the doctor maybe hasn't let up as much as he lets on he has. He might scare them out of here yet. So, thinks I, I'll go and search them rooms. Upstairs the hall was dark, but I found the Duke's room and started to paw around it with my hands. But I recollected it wouldn't be much like the king to let anybody else take care of that money but his own self. So then I went to his room and begun to paw around there. But I see I couldn't do nothing without a candle, and it doesn't like one, of course. So I judged I'd go to do the other thing, lay for them and eavesdrop. About that time I hears their footsteps coming. I was going to skip under the bed. I reached for it, but it wasn't where I thought it would be. But I touched the curtain that hid Mary Jane's frocks. So I jumped in behind that and snuggled in amongst the gowns and stood there perfectly still. They come in and shut the door, and the first thing the Duke done was to get down and look under the bed. Then I was glad I hadn't found the bed when I wanted it. And yet, you know, it's kind of natural to hide under the bed when you're up to anything private. They sets down then and the king says, Well, what is it? And cut it middling short because it's better for us to be down there a whooping up the morning than up here giving them a chance to talk us over. Well, this is it, Cabot. It ain't easy. It ain't comfortable. That doctor lays on my mind. I wanted to know your plans. I've got a notion, and I think it's a sound one. What is it, Duke? That we better glide out of this before three in the morning and clip it down the river with what we've got. Especially seeing we got it so easy. Given back to us, flung at our heads, as you may say, when, of course, we allowed to have to steal it back. I'm for knocking off and lighting out. That made me feel pretty bad. About an hour or two ago it would have been a little different, but now it made me feel bad and disappointed. The king rips out and says, What? And not sell out the rest of the property? March off like a parcel of fools and leave eight or nine thousand dollars worth of property laying round just suffering to be scooped in? And all good saleable stuff, too! The Duke, he crumbled, said the bag of gold was enough. He didn't want to go no deeper. Didn't want to rob a lot of orphans of everything they had. Why, how you talk, says the king. We shan't rob them of nothing at all but just this money. The people that buys the property as the sufferers, because as soon as it's found out that we didn't own it, which won't be long after we've slid, the sale won't be valid, and it'll all go back to the estate. These year orphans will get their house back again, and that's enough for them, their young and spry and caneasier and livin'. They ain't a goin' to suffer. Why, just think, there's thousands and thousands that ain't nice so well off. Bless you, they ain't got nothin' to complain of. Well, the king, he talked him blind, so last he'd given, and said all right, but said he believed it was blame foolishness to stay and that doctor hangin' over them. But the king says, Cush the doctor! What do we care for him? Ain't we got all the fools in town on our side? Ain't that a big enough majority in any town? So they got ready to go downstairs again. Duke says, I don't think we put that money in a good place. That cheered me up. I'd begin to think I weren't going to give a hint of no kind to help me. The king says, why? Because Mary Jane will be in mourning from this out, and first you know, the nigger that does up the rooms will get an order to box these duds up and put them away, and you reckon a nigger can run across money and not borrow some of it? Your heads level again, Duke, says the king, and he comes a fumbling under the curtain two or three foot from where I was. I stuck tight to the wall and kept mighty still, though quivery, and I wondered what them fellows would say to me if they catched me, and I tried to think what I'd better do if they did catch me. But the king, he got the bag before I could think more than about half a thought, and he never suspicioned I was around. They took and shoved the bag through a rip in the straw tick that was under the feather bed, and crammed it in a foot or two amongst the straw, and said it was all right now, because a nigger only makes up the feather bed and don't turn over the straw tick only about twice a year, and so it weren't in no danger of getting stole now. But I knowed better. I had it out of there before they was half way downstairs. I groped along up to my cubby and hid it there till I could get a chance to do better. I judged I better hide it outside of the house somewheres, because if they missed it they would give the house a good ransacking. I know that very well. Then I turned in with my clothes all on, but I couldn't have gone to sleep if I had wanted to. I was in such a sweat to get through with the business. By and by I heard the king and the duke come up, so I rolled off my pallet and laid with my chin at the top of my ladder, and waited to see if anything was going to happen. But nothing did. So I held on till all the late sengans had quit, and the early ones hadn't done yet. And then I slipped down the ladder. CHAPTER XXVII I crept to their doors and listened. They were snoring. So I tipped toad along and got downstairs all right. There weren't a sound anywheres. I peeped through a crack or the dining-room door and see the men that was watching the corpse all sound asleep on their chairs. The door was open into the parlor where the corpse was laying, and there was a candle in both rooms. I passed along and the parlor door was open, but I see there weren't nobody in there but the remainders of Peter. So I shoved on by, but the front door was locked, and the key wasn't there. Just then I heard somebody coming down the stairs, back behind me. I run in the parlor and took a swift look around, and the only place I see to hide the bag was in the coffin. The lid was shoved along about a foot, showing the dead man's face down in there, with a wet cloth over it and his shroud on. I tucked the money bag in under the lid, just down beyond where his hands was crossed, which made me creep. They was so cold. Then I run back across the room and in behind the door. The person coming was Mary Jane. She went to the coffin very soft and kneeled down and looked in. Then she put up her handkerchief and I see she began to cry, though I couldn't hear her, and her back was to me. I slid out, and as I passed the dining-room I thought I'd make sure them watchers hadn't seen me, so I looked through the crack, and everything was all right. They hadn't stirred. I slipped up to bed, feeling rather blue, on accounts of the thing playing out that way after I had took so much trouble and run so much rust about it. It says I, if it could stay where it is, all right, because when we get down the river a hundred mile or two I could write back to Mary Jane, and she could dig him up again and get it. But that ain't the thing that's going to happen. The thing that's going to happen is the money'll be found when they come to screw on the lid. Then the king'll get it again, and it'll be a long day before he gives anybody another chance to smooch it from him. Of course, I wanted to slide down and get it out of there, but I doesn't try it. Every minute it was getting earlier now, and pretty soon some of them watchers would begin to stir, and I might get catched, catched with six thousand dollars in my hands that nobody hadn't hired me to take care of. I don't wish to be mixed up in no such business as that, I says to myself. When I got downstairs in the morning the parlor was shut up, and the watchers was gone. There weren't nobody around but the family and the widow Bartley and our tribe. I watched their faces to see if anything had been happening, but I couldn't tell. Towards the middle of the day the undertaker come with his man, and they set the coffin in the middle of the room on a couple of chairs, and then set all our chairs and rows and borrowed more from the neighbors till the hall and the parlor and the dining-room was full. I see the coffin lid was the way it was before, but I doesn't go to look in under it with folks around. Then the people began to flock in, and the beats, and the girls took seats in the front row at the head of the coffin, and for half an hour the people filed around slow and single at rank, and looked down at the dead man's face a minute, and some dropped in a tear, and was all very still and solemn, only the girls and the beats holding handkerchiefs to their eyes and keeping their heads bent and sobbing a little. There weren't no other sound but the scraping of the feet on the floor and the blowing noses, because people always blows them more funeral than they do at other places at church. When the place was packed full, the undertaker he slid around in his black gloves with his softy soothering ways, putting on the last touches and getting people and things all ship-shape and comfortable and making no more sound than a cat. He never spoke. He moved people around and squeezed in late ones. He opened up passageways and done it with nods and signs with his hands. Then he took his place over against the wall. He was the softest, glidingest, stealthiest man I ever see, and there weren't no more smile to him than there is to a ham. They had borrowed a melodium, a sick one, and when everything was ready a young woman sat down and worked it, and it was pretty squeaky and colicky, and everybody joined in and sung, and Peter was the only one that had a good thing, according to my notion. Then the Reverend Hobbeson opened up slow and solemn and begun to talk, and straight off the most outrageous row busted out in the cellar a body ever heard. It was only one dog, but he made a most powerful racket, and he kept it up right along. The parson he had to stand there over the coffin and wait, couldn't hear himself think. It was right down awkward and nobody didn't seem to know what to do. But pretty soon they see that long-legged undertaker make a sign to the preacher as much as to say, Don't you worry, just depend on me. Then he stooped down and begun to glide along the wall, just his shoulders showing over the people's heads. So he glided along, and the powwow and racket getting more and more outrageous all the time, and at last, when he'd gone round two sides of the room, he disappears down cellar. Then in about two seconds we heard a whack in the dog he finished up with a most amazing howl or two, and everything was dead still, and the parson begun his solemn talk where he left off. In a minute or two here comes this undertaker's back and shoulders gliding along the wall again, and so he glided and glided around three sides of the room, and then rose up and shaded his mouth with his hands and stretched his neck out towards the preacher over the people's heads and says, in a kind of a coarse whisper, He had a rat! Then he drooped down and glided along the wall again to his place. You could see it was a great satisfaction to the people, because naturally they wanted to know. A little thing like that don't cost nothing, and it's just the little things that makes a man to be looked up to and liked. There weren't no more popular men in town than what that undertaker was. Well, the funeral sermon was very good, but pison long and tiresome, and then the king he shoved in and got off some of his usual rubbage, and at last the job was through, and the undertaker began to sneak up on the coffin with his screwdriver. I was in a sweat then and watched him pretty keen, but he never meddled at all, just slid the lid long as soft as mush and screwed it down tight and fast. So there I was. I didn't know whether the money was in there or not. So says I suppose somebody has hogged that bag on the sly. Now how do I know whether to write to Mary Jane or not? Suppose she dug him up and didn't find nothing. What would she think of me? Blame it, I says, I might get hunted up and jailed. I'd better lay low and keep dark and not write at all. The thing's awful mixed now. Trying to better it, I have worsened it a hundred times, and I wish to goodness I'd just let it alone dead fetch the whole business. They buried him, and we come back home. And I went to watching faces again, and I couldn't help it, and I couldn't rest easy. But nothing come of it. The faces didn't tell me nothing. The king he visited round in the evening, and sweetened everybody up, and made himself ever so friendly. And he give out the idea that his congregation over in England would be in a sweat about him, so he must hurry and settle up the estate right away and leave for home. He was very sorry he was so pushed, and so was everybody. They wished he could stay longer, but they said they could see it couldn't be done. And he said, of course, him and William would take the girls home with them, and that pleased everybody too, because then the girls would be well fixed and amongst their own relations. And it pleased the girls too, tickled them so they clean forgot they ever had a trouble in the world, and told him to sell out as quick as he wanted to they would be ready. Them poor things was that glad and happy it made my heart ache to see them getting fooled and lied to so. But I didn't see no safe way for me to chip in and change the general tune. Well, blamed if the king didn't build the house and the niggers and all the property for auction straight off, sailed two days after the funeral. But anybody could buy private beforehand if they wanted to. So the next day after the funeral, along about noontime, the girls' joy got the first jolt. Couple of nigger traders come along, and the king sold them the niggers reasonable. For three-day draps, as they called it, and away they went, the two sons up the river to Memphis, and their mother down the river to Orleans. I thought them poor girls and them niggers would break their hearts for grief. They cried around each other and took on so it most made me down sick to see it. The girls said they hadn't ever dreamed of seeing the family separated or sold away from the town. I can't ever get it out of my memory. The sight of them poor, miserable girls and niggers hanging around each other's necks and crying. And I reckon I couldn't have stood it at all, but would have had to bust out and tell on our gang if I hadn't knowed the sale, warn't no account, and the niggers would be back home in a week or two. The thing made a big stir in the town, too, and a good many come out, flat-footed, and said it was scandalous to separate the mother and the children that way. It injured the fraud some, but the old fool he bulled right along, spite of all the duke could say or do, and I tell you the duke was powerful uneasy. Next day was auction day. About broad day in the morning the king and the duke come up in the garret and woke me up, and I see by their look that there was trouble. The king says, Was you in my room night before last? Know your majesty, which was the way I always called him when nobody but our gang weren't around. Was you in there yesterday or last night? Know your majesty. Honor bright now, no lies. Honor bright, your majesty, I'm telling you the truth. I ain't been in nearer your room since Miss Mary Jane took you and the duke showed it to you. The duke says, Have you seen anybody else go in there? Know your grace, not as I remember, I believe. Stop and think. I studied a while and see my chance, and I says, Well, I see the niggers go in there several times. Both of them gave a little jump, and looked like they hadn't ever expected it, and then like they had, and the duke says, What? All of them? No, least wise, not all at once. That is, I don't think I ever see them all come out at once, but just one time. Hello, when was that? Well, it was the day we had the funeral in the morning. It weren't early, because I overslept. I was just starting down the ladder, and I see them. Well, go on, go on. What did they do? How'd they act? They didn't do nothing. They didn't act any way much. As far as I could see, they tiptoed away. So I seen easy enough that they shoved in there to do up your majesty's room or something, supposing you was up, and found you weren't up, and so they was hoping to slide out of the way of trouble without waking you up, if they hadn't already waked you up. Great guns, this is a go! says the king, and both of them looked pretty sick and tolerable silly. They stood there, thinking and scratching their heads a minute, and the duke he bust into a kind of a little raspy chuckle, and says, It does beat all how neat the niggers played their hand. They let on to be sorry they was going out of this region, and I believe they was sorry, and so did you, and so did everybody. Don't ever tell me any more that a nigger ain't got any histrionic talent. Why, the way they played that thing it would fool anybody. In my opinion there's a fortune in him. If I had capital in a theatre, I wouldn't want a better layout than that, and here we've gone and sold him for a song. Yes, and ain't privileged to sing the song yet. Say, where is that song, that draft? In the bank, for to be collected. Where would it be? Well, it's all right then, thank goodness, says I, kind of timid like. Is something gone wrong? A king whirls on me and rips out, None of your business! You keep your head shut, and mind your own affairs, if you got any. Long as you're in this town, don't you forget that, you hear? And he says to the duke, We got to just swallow it, and say nothing. Mum's the word for us. As they was starting down the ladder, the duke he chuckles again, and says, Quick sales and small profits! It's good business! Yes! The king snarls around on him, and says, I was trying to do for the best in selling him out so quick. If the profits has turned out to be none, lackin' considerable and none to carry, is it my fault, and any more than it's your one? Well, they'd be in this house yet, and we wouldn't, if I could have got my advice listened to. The king sassed back as much as was safe for him, and then swapped round the lid into me again. He gave me down the banks for not coming and telling him I see the niggers come out of his room acting that way, said any fool would have known something was up, and then waltzed in and cussed himself a while, and said it all come of him not laying late and taking his natural rest that morning, and he'd be blamed if he'd ever do it again. So they went off ajawn, and I felt dreadful glad I'd worked it all off on to the niggers, and yet hadn't done the niggers no harm by it. XXVIII. The trip to England. The brute, Mary Jane decides to leave. Huck parting with Mary Jane. Mumps the opposite line. By and by it was getting up time, so I come down the ladder and started for downstairs. But as I come to the girl's room the door was open and I see Mary Jane setting by her old hair-trunk, which was open and she'd been packing things in it, getting ready to go to England. But she had stopped now with a folded gown in her lap, and had her face in her hands crying. I felt awful bad to see it. Of course anybody would. I went in there and says, Miss Mary Jane, you can't ever bear to see people in trouble, and I can't, most always. Tell me about it. So she done it. And it was the niggers I just expected it. She said the beautiful trip to England was most about spoiled for her. She didn't know how she was ever going to be happy there, knowing the mother and the children weren't ever going to see each other no more, and then busted out bitterer than ever and flung up her hands and says, Oh, dear, dear, to think they ain't ever going to see each other any more. But they will, and inside of two weeks, and I know it, says I. Laws, it was out before I could think. And before I could budge, she throws her arms around my neck and told me to say it again, say it again, say it again. I see I had spoke too sudden and said too much and was in a close place. I asked her to let me think a minute. And she sat there, very impatient and excited and handsome, but looking kind of happy and eased up, like a person that's had a tooth pulled out. So I went to studying it out. I says to myself I reckon a body that ups and tells the truth when he is in a tight place is taking considerable many risks, though I ain't had no experience, and can't say for certain. But it looks so to me, anyway. And yet here's a case where I'm blessed if it don't look to me like the truth is better and actually safer than a lie. I must lay it by in my mind and think it over some time or other. It's so kind of strange and unregular. I never see nothing like it. Well, I says to myself at last, I'm going to chance it. I'll up and tell the truth this time, though it does seem most like setting down on a keg of powder and touching it off just to see where you'll go to. Then I says, Miss Mary Jane, is there any place out of town in little ways where you could go and stay three or four days? Yes, Mr. Lothrop's, why? Never mind why yet. If I'll tell you how I know the niggers will see each other again inside of two weeks here in this house and prove how I know it, will you go to Mr. Lothrop's and stay four days? Four days, she says. I'll stay a year. All right, I says, I don't want nothing more out of you than just your word. I'd rather have it than another man's kiss the Bible. She smiled and reddened up very sweet, and I says, if you don't mind it, I'll shut the door and bolt it. Then I come back and sit down again and says, don't you holler, just sit still and take it like a man. I got to tell you the truth, and you want to brace up, Miss Mary, because it's a bad kind and going to be hard to take. But there ain't no help for it. These uncles of urine ain't no uncles at all. There are a couple of frauds, regular deadbeats. There. Now we're over the worst of it. You can stand the rest, middling easy. It jolted her up like everything, of course. But I was over the shoal water now, so I went right along, her eyes ablazing higher and higher all the time, and told her every blame thing, from where we first struck that young fool going up to the steamboat, clear through to where she flung herself onto the king's breast at the front door, and he kissed her sixteen or seventeen times, and then up she jumps, with her face afire like sunset, and says, Thou brute! Come, don't waste a minute, not a second, we'll have them tarred and feathered and flung in the river. Says I, certainly. But do you mean before you go to Mr. Lothrop's, or— Oh! she says. What am I thinking about? she says, and set right down again. Don't mind what I said. Please don't. You won't now, will you? laying her silky hand on mine, in that kind of a way that I said I would die first. I never thought I was so stirred up, she says. Now go on, and I won't do so any more. You tell me what to do, and whatever you say, I'll do it. Well, I says, it's a rough gang, them two frauds, and I'm fixed so I've got to travel with them a while longer, whether I want to or not. I'd rather not tell you why. And if you was to blow on them, this town would get me out of their claws, and I'd be all right. But there'd be another person that you don't know about who'd be in big trouble. Well, we've got to save him, ain't we? Of course. Well, then we won't blow on them. Saying them words put a good idea in my head. I see how maybe I could get me and Jim rid of the frauds, get them jailed here, and then leave. But I didn't want to run the raft and the daytime without anybody aboard to answer questions but me. So I didn't want the plan to begin working till pretty late to-night. I says, Miss Mary Jane, I'll tell you what we'll do. And you won't have to stay at Mr. Lothrop so long another. How far is it? A little short of four miles, right out in the country, back here. Well, that'll answer. Now you go along out there and lay low till nine or half past to-night, and then get them to fetch you home again. Tell them you thought of something. If you get here before eleven, put a candle in this window, and if I don't turn up, wait till eleven. And then, if I don't turn up, it means I'm gone, and out of the way, and safe. Then you come out and spread the news round, and get these beats jailed. Good, she says, I'll do it. And if it just happens so that I don't get away, but get-took up along with them, you must up and say I told you the whole thing beforehand, and you must stand by me all you can. Stand by you, indeed I will. They shan't touch a hair of your head, she says, and I see her nostril spread and her eyes snap when she said it too. If I get away, I shan't be here, I says, to prove these Rapscallions ain't your uncles, and I couldn't do it if I was here. I could swear they was beats and bummers, that's all, though that's worth something. Well, there's others can do that better than what I can, and they're people that ain't going to be doubted as quick as I'd be. I'll tell you how to find them. Give me a pencil and a piece of paper. There. Royal, none such, Bricksville. Put it away and don't lose it. When the court wants to find out something about these two, let them send up to Bricksville and say they've got the men that played the Royal, none such, and ask for some witnesses. Why, you'll have that entire town down here before you can hardly wink, Miss Mary, and they'll come a-biling, too. I judged we had got everything fixed about right now, so I says, just let the auction go right along, and don't worry. Nobody don't have to pay for the things they buy till the whole day after the auction on counts of the short notice, and they ain't going out of this till they get that money. And the way we fixed it, the sale ain't going to count, and they ain't going to get no money. It's just like the way it was with the niggers. It weren't no sale, and the niggers will be back before long. Why, they can't collect the money for the niggers yet. They're in the worst kind of affix, Miss Mary. Well, she says, I'll run down to breakfast now, and then I'll start straight for Mr. Lothrop's. Deed, that ain't the ticket, Miss Mary Jane, I says, by no manner means. Go before breakfast. Why, what did you reckon I wanted you to go at all for, Miss Mary? Well, I never thought, and come to think, I don't know, what was it? Why, it's because you ain't one of these leather-faced people. I don't want no better book than what your face is. A body can set down and read it off like coarse print. Do you reckon you can go and face your uncles when they come to kiss you good morning, and never there, there don't? Yes, I'll go before breakfast, I'll be glad to, and leave my sisters with them? Yes, never mind about them. They've got to stand at, yet a while. They might suspicion something if all of you was to go. I don't want you to see them, nor your sisters, nor nobody in this town. If a neighbor was to ask, how is your uncles this morning, your face would tell something. No, you go right along, Miss Mary Jane, and I'll fix it with all of them. I'll tell Miss Susan to give your love to your uncles, and say you've went away for a few hours to get a little rest and change, or to see a friend, and you'll be back to-night or early in the morning. Gone to see a friend is all right, but I won't have my love given to them. Well, then it shan't be. It was well enough to tell her so, no harm in it. It was only a little thing to do and no trouble, and it's the little things that smooth people's roads the most down here below. It would make Mary Jane comfortable, and it wouldn't cost nothing. Then I says, there's one more thing, that bag of money. Well, they've got that, and it makes me feel pretty silly to think how they got it. No, you're out there. They ain't got it. Why? Who's got it? I wish I knowed, but I don't. I had it because I stole it from them, and I stole it to give to you, and I know where I hid it, but I'm afraid it ain't there no more. I'm awful sorry, Miss Mary Jane. I'm just as sorry as I can be, but I'd done the best I could. I did, honest. I come nigh at getting caught, and I had to shove it into the first place I come to and run, and it weren't a good place. Oh, stop blaming yourself. It's too bad to do it, and I won't allow it. You couldn't help it. It wasn't your fault. Where did you hide it? I didn't want to set her to thinking about her troubles again, and I couldn't seem to get my mouth to tell her what would make her see that corpse laying in the coffin with that bag of money on his stomach. So for a minute I didn't say nothing. Then I says, I'd rather not tell you where I put it, Miss Mary Jane, if you don't mind letting me off, but I'll write it out for you on a piece of paper, and you can read it along the road to Mr. Lothrop's if you want to. Do you reckon that'll do? Oh, yes. So I wrote, I put it in the coffin. It was in there when you was crying there away in the night. I was behind the door, and I was mighty sorry for you, Miss Mary Jane. It made my eyes water a little to remember her crying there all by herself in the night, and then devils laying there right under her own roof, shaming her and robbing her, and when I folded it up and give it to her, I see the water come into her eyes too, and she shook me by the hand hard, and says, Good-bye! I'm going to do everything just as you've told me, and if I don't ever see you again, I shan't ever forget you, and I'll think of you a many and a many a time, and I'll pray for you too, and she was gone. Pray for me. I reckoned if she knowed me she'd take a job that was more nearer her size, but I bet she'd done it just the same. She was just that kind. She had the grit to pray for Judas if she took the notion. There weren't no back down to her, I judge. You may say what you want to, but in my opinion she had more sand in her than any girl I ever see. In my opinion she was just full of sand. It sounds like flattery, but it ain't no flattery, and when it comes to beauty and goodness too, she lays over them all. I ain't ever seen her since that time I see her go out of that door. No, I ain't ever seen her since, but I reckon I've thought of her a many and a many a million times, and of her saying she would pray for me, and if ever I'd have thought it would do any good for me to pray for her, blamed if I wouldn't have done it or bust. Well, Mary Jane, she lit out the back way, I reckon, because nobody see her go. When I struck Susan and the hair-lip, I says, What's the name of them people over on to the side of the river that you all goes to see sometimes? They says, There's several, but it's the proctors mainly. That's the name, I says. I most forgot it. Well, Miss Mary Jane, she told me to tell you she's gone over there in a dreadful hurry, one of them sick. Which one? I don't know, at least ways I kind of forget, but I think it's a—sinks alive, I hope it ain't Hannah. I'm sorry to say it, I says, but Hannah's the very one. My goodness, and she's so well only last week! Is she took bad? It ain't no name for it. They set up with her all night, Miss Mary Jane said, and they don't think she'll last many hours. Only think of that now. What's the matter with her? I couldn't think of anything reasonable right off that way, so I says, Mumps! Mumps, your granny, they don't set up with people that's got the mumps. They don't, don't they? You better bet they do with these mumps. These mumps is different. It's a new kind, Miss Mary Jane said. How's it a new kind? Because it's mixed up with other things. What other things? Well, measles, and hooping cough, and irisoplasts, and consumption, and yallerjanders, and brain fever, and I don't know what all. My land, and they call it the mumps? That's what Miss Mary Jane said. Well, what in the nation do they call it the mumps for? Why, because it is the mumps. That's what it starts with. Well, there ain't no sense in it. A body might stump his toe, and take pison, and fall down the well, and break his neck, and bust his brains out, and somebody come along and ask what killed him, and some numbskull up, and says, Why, he stumped his toe. Would there be any sense in that? No. And then there ain't no sense in this, neither. Is it catching? Is it catching? Why, how you talk? Is a harrow catching in the dark? If you don't hitch on to one tooth you're bound to on another, ain't you? And you can't get away with that tooth without fetching the whole harrow along, can you? Well, these kind of mumps is a kind of a harrow, as you may say, and it ain't no slouch of a harrow another you come to get it hitched on good. Well, it's awful, I think, says the hairlip. I'll go to Uncle Harvey, and—oh, yes, I says, I would. Of course, I would. I wouldn't lose no time. Well, why wouldn't you? Just look at it a minute, and maybe you can see. Ain't your uncle's a blage to get along home to England as fast as they can? And do you reckon they'd be mean enough to go off and leave you to go all that journey by yourselves? You know they'll wait for you, so far so good. Your Uncle Harvey's a preacher, ain't he? Very well, then. Is a preacher going to deceive a steamboat clerk? Is he going to deceive a ship clerk, so as to get them to let Miss Mary Jane go aboard? Now, you know he ain't. What will he do, then? Why, he'll say, it's a great pity, but my church matters has got to get along the best way they can, for my niece has been exposed to the dreadful pleuribusuna mumps. And so it's my bounden duty to set down here, and wait the three months it takes to show on her if she's got it. But never mind if you think it's best to tell your Uncle Harvey. Chocks, and stay fooling around here when we could all be having good times in England whilst we was waiting to find out whether Mary Jane's got it or not? Why, you talk like amuggans. Well, anyway, maybe you'd better tell some of the neighbors. Listen at that now. You do beat all for natural stupidness. Can't you see that they'd go and tell? There ain't no way, but just did not tell anybody at all. Well, maybe you're right. Yes, I judge you are great. But I reckon we ought to tell Uncle Harvey she's gone out a while anyway, so it won't be uneasy about her. Yes. Miss Mary Jane, she wanted you to do that. She says, tell them to give Uncle Harvey and William my love and a kiss, and say I've run over the river to see Mr... Mr... What is the name of that rich family your Uncle Peter used to think so much of? I mean, the one that, why, you must mean the Apthorps, ain't it? Of course, bother them kind of names. Body can't ever seem to remember them half the time somehow. Yes, she said, say she has run over for to ask the Apthorps to be sure and come to the auction and buy this house, because she allowed her Uncle Peter would rather they had it than anybody else, and she's going to stick to them till they say they'll come. And then, if she ain't too tired, she's coming home. And if she is, she'll be home in the morning anyway. She said, don't say nothing about the Procters, but only about the Apthorps, which will be perfectly true, because she is going there to speak about their buying the house. I know it, because she told me so herself. All right! they said, and cleared out to lay for their uncles, and give them the love and the kisses, and tell them the message. Everything was all right now. The girls wouldn't say nothing because they wanted to go to England, and the King and the Duke would rather Mary Jane was off working for the auction than around in reach of Dr. Robinson. I felt very good. I judged I had done it pretty neat. I reckoned Tom Sawyer couldn't have done it no neater himself. Of course he would have throwed more style into it, but I can't do that very handy, not being brung up to it. Well, they held the auction in the public square along toward the end of the afternoon, and it strung along, and strung along, and the old man he was on hand, and looking his level pisonist up there alongside of the auctioneer, and chipping in a little scripture now and then, or a little goody-goody saying of some kind, and the Duke he was around goo-gooing for sympathy all he knowed how, and just spreading himself generally. But by and by the thing dragged through, and everything was sold, everything but a little old trifling lot in the graveyard. So they had got to work that off. I never see such a giraffe as the King was for wanting to swallow everything. Well, whilst they was at it, a steamboat landed, and in about two minutes up comes a crowd of whooping and yelling and laughing and carrying on and singing out, Here's your opposition line, Here's your two sets of heirs to old Peter Wilkes, and you pays your money, and you takes your choice. CHAPTER XXIX They was fetching a very nice-looking old gentleman along, and a nice-looking younger one, with his right arm in a sling. And my soul's how the people yelled and laughed and kept it up. But I didn't see no joke about it, and I judged it would strain the Duke and the King some to see any. I reckoned they'd turn pale. But no, nary a pale did they turn. The Duke he never let on, he suspicioned what was up, but just went a-goo-gooing around happy and satisfied, like a jug that's googling out buttermilk. And as for the King, he just gazed and gazed down soreful on them newcomers like it give him the stomachache in his very heart to think there could be such frauds and rascals in the world. Oh, he done it admirable! Lots of the principal people gathered round the King, to let him see they was on his side. That old gentleman that had just come looked all puzzled to death. Pretty soon he begun to speak, and I see straight off he pronounced like an Englishman. Not the King's way, though the King's was pretty good for an imitation. I can't give the old gents words, nor I can't imitate him, but he turned round to the crowd and says, about like this, This is a surprise to me, which I wasn't looking for, and I'll acknowledge Candid and Frank, I ain't very well fixed to meet it and answer it, for my brother and me has had misfortunes. He's broke his arm, and our baggage got put off at a town above here last night in the night by a mistake. I am Peter Wilk's brother Harvey, and this is his brother William, which can't hear nor speak, and can't even make signs to amount to much. Now he's only got one hand to work them with. We are who we say we are, and in a day or two, when I get the baggage I can prove it. But up till then I won't say nothing more, but go to the hotel and wait. So him and the new dummy started off, and the King he laughs, and blithers out, broke his arm. Very likely, ain't it? And very convenient, too, for a fraud that's got to make signs, and ain't learnt how, lost their baggage. That's mighty good, and mighty ingenious under the circumstances. So he laughed again, and so did everybody else, except three or four, or maybe half a dozen. One of these was that doctor. Another one was a sharp-looking gentleman with a carpet bag of the old-fashioned kind made out of carpet stuff that had just come off of the steamboat and was talking to him in a low voice and glancing towards the King now and then and nodding their heads. It was Levi Bell, the lawyer that was gone up to Louisville, and another one was a big rough husky that come along and listened to all the old gentlemen said and was listening to the King now, and when the King got done, this husky up and says, Say, lookie here, if you are Harvey Wilkes, when'd you come to this town? The day before the funeral, friend, says the King. But what time or day? In the evening, about an hour or two before sundown. How'd you come? Come down on the Susan Bell from Cincinnati. Well, then, how'd you come to be up at the pint in the morning in a canoe? I weren't up at the pint in the morning. It's a lie! Selratham jumped for him and begged him not to talk that way to an old man and a preacher. Preacher be hanged! He's a fraud and a liar! He was up at the pint that morning. I live up there, don't I? Well, I was up there, and he was up there. I've seen him there. He'd come in a canoe, along with Tim Collins and a boy. The doctor he up and says, Would you know the boy again if you was to see him, Heinz? I reckon I would, but I don't know why yonder he is now. I know him perfectly easy. It was me he pointed at. The doctor says, Neighbours, I don't know whether the new couple is frauds or not, but if these two ain't frauds, I am an idiot, that's all. I think it's our duty to see that they don't get away from here till we've looked into this thing. Come along, Heinz. Come along the rest of you. We'll take these fellows to the tavern and affront them with the other couple, and I reckon we'll find out something before we get through. It was nuts for the crowd, though maybe not for the king's friends, so we all started. It was about sundown. The doctor he led me along by the hand and was plenty kind enough, but he never let go my hand. We all got in a big room in the hotel and lit up some candles and fetched in the new couple. First the doctor says, I don't wish to be too hard on these two men, but I think they're frauds, and they may have complices that we don't know nothing about. If they have, won't the complices get away with that bag of gold Peter Wilkes left? It ain't unlikely. If these men ain't frauds, they won't object to sending for that money and letting us keep it till they prove they're all right. Ain't that so? Everybody agreed to that. So I judged they had our gang in a pretty tight place right at the out-start, but the king he only looked sorrowful and says, Gentlemen, I wish the money was there, for I ain't got no disposition to throw anything in the way of a fair, open, out-and-out investigation of this miserable business, but alas the money ain't there. You can send and see, if you want to. Where is it then? Well, when my niece give it to me to keep for her, I took it and hid it inside of the straw-tick of my bed, not wishing to bank it for the few days we'd be here, and considering the bed a safe place, we not being used to niggers, and supposing them honest, like servants in England, the niggers stole it the very next morning after I had went downstairs, and when I sold them I hadn't missed the money yet, so they got clean away with it. My servant here can tell you about it, gentlemen. The doctor and several said, Shucks, and I see nobody didn't altogether believe him. One man asked me if I see the niggers steal it. I said, No, but I see them sneaking out of the room and hustling away, and I never thought nothing only I reckoned they was afraid they'd waked up my master and was trying to get away before he made trouble with them. That was all they asked me. Then the doctor whirls on me and says, Are you English too? I says yes, and him and some others laughed, and said, Stuff! Well, then they sailed in on the general investigation, and there we had it, up and down, hour in, hour out, and nobody never said a word about supper, nor even seemed to think about it, and so they kept it up, and kept it up, and it was the worst mixed-up thing you ever see. They made the king tell his yarn, and they made the old gentleman tell hisn, and anybody but a lot of prejudice chuckle-heads would have seen that the old gentleman is spinning truth, and other one lies, and by and by they had me up to tell what I knowed. The king he give me a left-handed look out of the corner of his eye, and so I knowed enough to talk on the right side. I began to tell about Sheffield, and how we lived there, and all about the English Wilks's, and so on, and I didn't get pretty furred till the doctor began to laugh, and leave I bell the lawyer says, Sit down, my boy, I wouldn't strain myself if I was you. I reckon you ain't used to lying. It don't seem to come handy. What you want is practice. You do it pretty awkward." I didn't care nothing for the compliment, but I was glad to be let off, anyway. The doctor he started to say something, and turns, and says, If you'd been in town at first, leave I bell. The king broke in, and reached out his hand, and says, Why, is this my poor dead brother's old friend that he's wrote so often about? The lawyer and him shook hands, and the lawyer smiled and looked pleased, and they talked right along a while, and then got to one side and talked low, and at last the lawyer speaks up and says, That'll fix it. I'll take the order and send it, along with your brothers, and then they'll know it's all right. So they got some paper and pen, and the king he sat down and twisted his head to one side, and jawed his tongue, and scrawled off something, and then they give the pen to the duke, and then for the first time the duke looked sick. But he took the pen and wrote. So then the lawyer turns to the new old gentleman, and says, You and your brother, please write a line or two, and sign your names. The old gentleman wrote, but nobody could read it. The lawyer looked powerful astonished, and says, Well, it beats me, and snaked a lot of old letters out of his pocket, and examined them, and then examined the old man's writing, and then them again, and then says, These old letters is from Harvey Wilkes, and here's these two handwritings, and anybody can see they didn't write them. The king and the duke looked sold and foolish, I tell you, to see how the lawyer had took them in. And here's this old gentleman's handwriting, and anybody can tell, easy enough, he didn't write them. Fact is, the scratches he makes ain't properly writing at all. Now here's some letters from new old gentleman says, If you please, let me explain. Nobody can read my hand, but my brother there, so he copies for me. It's his hand you've got there, not mine. Well, says the lawyer, This is a state of things. I've got some of William's letters too. So if you'll get him to write a line or so, we can come— He can't write with his left hand, says the old gentleman. If he could use his right hand, you would see that he wrote his own letters and mine too. Look at both, please, there by the same hand. The lawyer done it, and says, I believe it's so, and if it ain't so, there's a heap stronger resemblance than I'd noticed before, anyway. Well, well, well, I thought we was right on track of a solution. But it's gone to grass, partly. But anyway, one thing is proved, these two ain't either of them Wilks's, and he wagged his head toward the king and the duke. Well, what do you think? That mule-headed old fool wouldn't give in then. Indeed, he wouldn't. Said it weren't no fair test. Said his brother William was the cussetist joker in the world, and hadn't tried to write. He, see, William, was going to play one of his jokes the minute he put the pen to paper. And so he warmed up and went warbling and warbling right along till he was actually beginning to believe what he was saying himself. But pretty soon the new gentleman broke in and says, I've thought of something. Is there anybody here that helped to lay out my—helped to lay out the late Peter Wilks for burying? Yes, says somebody. Me and Abturner done it. We're both here. Then the old man turns toward the king and says, Perhaps this gentleman can tell me what was tattooed on his breast! Blamed if the king didn't have to brace up mighty quick, or he'd a-squished down like a bluff bank that the river has cut under, it took him so sudden. And, mind you, it was a thing that was calculated to make most anybody squished to get fetched such a solid one as that without any notice, because how was he going to know what was tattooed on the man? He whitened a little, he couldn't help it, and it was mighty still in there, and everybody bending a little forwards and gazing at him, says I to myself, Now he'll throw up the sponge. There ain't no more use. Well, did he? A potty can't hardly believe it, but he didn't. I reckon he thought he'd keep the thing up till he tired them people out so they'd thin out, and him and the duke could break loose and get away. Anyway, he sat there and pretty soon he began to smile and says, It's a very tough question, ain't it? Yes, sir, I can tell you what's tattooed on his breast. It's just a small, thin, blue arrow. That's what it is, and if you don't look close, you can't see it. Now what do you say, hey? Well, I never see anything like that old blister for clean, out and out-cheek. The new old gentleman turns brisk towards Ab Turner in his pardon, his eyes light up like he judged he'd got the king this time, and says, There, you've heard what he said. Was there any such mark on Peter Wilk's breast? Both of them spoke up and says, We didn't see no such mark. Good, said the old gentleman. Now what you did see on his breast was a small, dim P, and a B, which is an initial he dropped when he was young, and a W, with dashes between them, so P dash dash B dash dash W, and he marked them that way on a piece of paper. Come, ain't that what you saw? Both of them spoke up again and says, No, we didn't. We never seen any marks at all. Well, everybody was in a state of mind now, and they sings out, The whole ballon of them's frauds, Let's duck them, let's drown them, let's ride them on a rail, and everybody was whooping at once, and there was a rattling pow-wow, but the lawyer he jumps on the table and yells, and says, Gentlemen, gentlemen, hear me, just a word, just a single word, if you please. There's one way yet. Let's go and dig up the corpse and look. That took them. Hurray! they all shouted, and was starting right off, but the lawyer and the doctor sang out, Hold on! Hold on! Caller all these four men and the boy, and fetch them along, too. We'll do it, they all shouted, and if we don't find them marks we'll lynch the whole gang. I was scared now, I tell you, but there weren't no getting away, you know. They gripped us all and marched us right along straight for the graveyard, which was a mile-and-a-half down the river, and the whole town at our heels, for we made noise enough, and it was only nine in the evening. As we went by our house, I wished I hadn't sent Mary Jane out of town, because now, if I could tip her of the wink, she'd light out and save me and blow on our deadbeats. Well, we swarmed along down the river-road, just carrying on like wildcats, and to make it more scary the sky was darking up, and the lightning beginning to wink and flitter, and the winds to shiver amongst the leaves. This was the most awful trouble and most dangerous some I ever was in, and I was kind of stunned. Everything was going so different from what I had allowed for, instead of being fixed so I could take my own time if I wanted to, and see all the fun, and have Mary Jane at my back to save me, and set me free when the close fit come. Here was nothing in the world, twist me, and sudden death, but just them tattoo marks. If they didn't find them, I couldn't bear to think about it, and yet, somehow, I couldn't think about nothing else. It got darker and darker, and it was a beautiful time to give the crowd the slip, but that big husky had me by the wrist, hines, and a body might as well try to give Goliar the slip. He dragged me right along, and he was so excited, and I had to run to keep up. When they got there, they swarmed into the graveyard and washed over it like an overflow, and when they got to the grave they found they had about a hundred times as many shovels as they wanted, but nobody hadn't thought to fetch a lantern. But they sailed into digging anyway by the flicker of the lightning, and sent a man to the nearest house a half a mile off to borrow one. So they dug and dug like everything, and it got awful dark, and the rain started, and the wind swished and swushed along, and the lightning come brisker and brisker, and the thunder boomed. But then people never took no notice of it. They was so full of this business, and one minute you could see everything and every face in that big crowd, and the shovelfuls of dirt sailing up out of the grave, and the next second the dark wiped it all out, and you couldn't see nothing at all. At last they got out the coffin and begun to unscrew the lid, and then such another crowding and shouldering and shoving as there was to scrounge in and get a sight you never see. And in the dark that way it was awful. Hines he hurt my wrist dreadful pulling and tugging so, and I reckon he cleaned for God I was in the world. He was so excited and panting. All of a sudden the lightning let go a perfect sluice of white glare, and somebody sings out, By the living Jingo here's the bag of gold on his breast! Hines let out a whoop like everybody else and dropped my wrist and give a big surge to bust his way in and get a look. And the way I lit out and shined for the road in the dark there ain't nobody can tell. I had the road all to myself and I fairly flew, least wise I had it all to myself except the solid dark, and the now and then glares, and the buzzing of the rain, and the thrashing of the wind, and the splitting of the thunder, and sure as you are born I did clip it along. When I struck the town I see there weren't nobody out in the storm, so I never hunted for no backstreets, but humped it straight through the main one. And when I began to get towards our house I aimed my eye and set it. No light there, the house all dark, which made me feel sorry and disappointed. I didn't know why. But at last, just as I was sailing by, flash comes the light in Mary Jane's window, and my heart swelled up sudden like to bust. In the same second the house and all was behind me in the dark, and wasn't ever going to be before me no more in this world. She was the best girl I ever see, and had the most sand. The minute I was far enough above the town to see I could make the tow-head I began to look sharp for a boat to borrow, and the first time the lightning showed me one that wasn't chained I snatched it and shoved. It was a canoe, and weren't fastened with nothing but a rope. The tow-head was a rattling big distance off, away out there in the middle of the river, but I didn't lose no time, and when I struck the raft at last I was so fagged I would have just laid down to blow and gasp if I could afforded it. But I didn't. As I sprung aboard I sang out, Out with you, Jim! And set her loose! Before he beat a goodness we were shut of them! Jim lit out, and was a-coming for me with both arms spread, he was so full of joy. But when I glimpsed him in the lightning my heart shot up in my mouth, and I went overboard backwards. For I forgot he was old King Lear, and a drowned A-rab all in one, and he most scared the livers and lights out of me. But Jim fished me out, and was going to hug me and bless me and so on. He was so glad I was back, and we was shut of the King and the Duke. But I says, Not now! Have it for breakfast! Have it for breakfast! Cut loose, and let her slide! So in two seconds away we went, a sliding down the river, and it did seem so good to be free again, and all by ourselves on the big river, and nobody to bother us. I had to skip around a bit, and jump up and crack my heels a few times. I couldn't help it. But about the third crack I noticed a sound that I knowed mighty well, and held my breath, and listened, and waited. And sure enough, when the next flash busted out over the water, here they come, and just allaying to their oars and making their skiff hum, it was the King and the Duke. So I wilted right down on to the planks then, and give up, and it was all I could do to keep from crying. End of Chapter 29 This is Chapter 30 of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Chapter 30. The King went for him. A royal row. Powerful mellow. When they got aboard, the King went for me, and shook me by the collar, and says, Trying to give us the slip, was ye, you pup? Tired of our company, hey? I says, No, Your Majesty, we weren't—please don't, Your Majesty. Quick then, and tell us what was your idea, or I'll shake the insides out of you. Honest, I'll tell you everything just as it happened, Your Majesty. The man that had a hold of me was very good to me, and kept saying he had a boy about as big as me that died last year, and he was sorry to see a boy in such a dangerous fix. And when they was all took by surprise by finding the gold, and made a rush for the coffin, he lets go of me and whispers, Heal it now, or hang ye, sure! And I let out. It didn't seem no good for me to stay. I couldn't do nothing, and I didn't want to be hung if I could get away. So I never stopped running till I found the canoe. And when I got here I told Jim to hurry, or they'd catch me and hang me yet, and said I was afeard you and the Duke wasn't alive now, and I was awful sorry, and so was Jim, and was awful glad when we see you coming. You may ask Jim if I didn't." Jim said it was so. And the King told him to shut up, and said, Oh yes, it's mighty likely, and shook me up again, and said he reckoned he'd drowned me. But the Duke says, Like oh, the boy, you old idiot! Would you done any different? Did you inquire round for him when you got loose? I don't remember it. So the King let go of me, and began to cuss that town and everybody in it. But the Duke says, You better a blame sight give yourself a good cussing, for you're the one that's entitled to it most. You ain't done a thing from the start that had any sense in it, except coming up so cool and cheeky with that imaginary blue arrow mark. That was bright. It was right down bully, and it was a thing that saved us, for if it hadn't been for that, they'd have jailed us till them Englishmen's baggage come, and then the penitentiary you bet. But that trick took them to the graveyard, and the gold done us a still bigger kindness, for if the excited fools hadn't let go all hults, and made that rush to get a look, we'd slept in our crevats tonight. Crevats warned to wear, too, longer than we'd need them. They was still a minute thinking, then the King says, kind of absent-minded, like, and we reckon the niggers stole it. That made me squirm. Yes, said the Duke, kinder slow and deliberate and sarcastic. We did. After about half a minute the King draws out. Least ways I did. The Duke says the same way. On the contrary, I did. The King kind of ruffled up, and says, Look here, Bilgewater. What are you referring to? The Duke says, Pretty Brisk, when it comes to that, maybe you'll let me ask, what was you referring to? Shuck, says the King, very sarcastic, but I don't know. Maybe you was asleep and didn't know what you was about. The Duke bristles up now, and says, Oh, let up on this cussid nonsense, do you take me for a blame fool? Don't you reckon I know who hid that money in that coffin? Yes, sir, I know you do know, because you done it yourself. It's a lie! And the Duke went for him. The King sings out, Take your hands off, and lick on my throat! I'd take it all back. The Duke says, Well, you just own up first, that you did hide that money there, and tended to give me the slip one of these days, and come back and dig it up, and have it all yourself. Wait just a minute, Duke. Answer me this one question, honest and fair. If you didn't put the money there, say it, and I'll believe you, and take back everything I said. You old scoundrel, I didn't, and you know I didn't! There now! Well, and I believe you. But answer me only just this one more. Now, don't get mad. Didn't you have it in your mind to hook the money and hide it? The Duke never said nothing for a little bit, and he says, Well, I don't care if I did. I didn't do it anyway. But you not only had it in mind to do it, but you'd done it! I wished I'd never die if I'd done it, Duke, and that's honest. I won't say I weren't going to do it, because I was, but you, I mean, somebody, got in ahead of me. It's a lie! You'd done it! And you got to say you'd done it, or— The King began to gurgle, and then he gasped out, Enough! I own up! I was very glad to hear him say that. It made me feel much more easier than what I was feeling before. So the Duke took his hands off and says, If you ever deny it again, I'll drown you. It's well for you to sit there and blubber like a baby. It's fitting for you, after the way you've acted. I never see such an old ostrich for wanting to gobble everything, and I had trusting you all the time, like you was my own father. You ought to be ashamed of yourself to stand by and hear it saddled on to a lot of poor niggers, and you never say a word for him. It makes me feel ridiculous to think I was soft enough to believe that rubbish, because, you, I can see now why you were so anxious to make up the deficit. You wanted to get what money I'd got out of the nunsuch and one thing or another and scoop it all. The King says, timid and still snuffling, Why, Duke, it was you that said make up the deficit. It weren't me. Dry up! I don't want to hear no more out of you, says the Duke. And now you see what you got by it. Days got all their own money back and all are'n, but a shekel or two besides. Go long to bed, and don't you deficit me no more deficits, long as you live. So the King sneaked into the wigwam, and took to his bottle for comfort, and before long the Duke tackled his bottle, and so in about a half an hour they was as thick as thieves again, and the tighter they got the lovinger they got, and went off a snorting in each other's arms. They both got powerful mellow, but I noticed the King didn't get mellow enough to forget to remember to not deny about hiding the money back again. That made me feel easy and satisfied. Of course, when they got to snorting we had a long gavel, and I told Jim everything.