 In the morning we went up to the village and bought a wire rat-trap and fetched it down, and unstopped the best rat-hole, and in about an hour we had fifteen of the bulliest kinds of ones, and then we took it and put it in a safe place under Aunt Sally's bed. But while we was gone for spiders, little Thomas Franklin Benjamin Jefferson Alexander Phelps found it there, and opened the door of it to see if the rats would come out, and they did. In Aunt Sally she come in, and when we got back she was astounding on top of the bed raising cane, and the rats was doing what they could to keep off the dull times for her. We took and dusted us both with the hickory, and we was as much as two hours catching another fifteen or sixteen, and they weren't the likeliest neither, because the first hole was the pick of the flock, and never see a likelier lot of rats than what that first hole was. We got a splendid stock of sorted spiders, and bugs, and frogs, and caterpillars, and one thing or another, and we liked to got a hornet's nest, but we didn't. The family was at home. We didn't give it right up, but stayed with them as long as we could, because we allowed we'd tire them out, or they'd got to tire us out, and they'd done it. Then we got alley-compane, and rubbed on the places, and was pretty near all right again, but couldn't set down convenient. And so we went for the snakes, and grabbed a couple of dozen garters and house snakes, and put them in a bag, and put it in our room, and by that time it was supper time, and a rattling good honest day's work. And hungry? Oh, no, I reckon not. And there weren't a blessed snake up there when we went back. We didn't half-tie the sack, and they worked out somehow and left. But it didn't matter much, because they were still on the premises somewheres. So we judged we could get some of them again. No, there weren't no real scarcity of snakes about the house for a considerable spell. You'd see them dripping from the rafters in places every now and then, and they had generally landed in your plate, or down the back of your neck, and most of the time where you didn't want them. Well they was handsome and striped, and there weren't no harm in a million of them. But that never made no difference to Aunt Sally. She despised snakes. Be the breed what they might, and she couldn't stand them no way you could fix it. And every time one of them flopped down on her it didn't make no difference what she was doing, she would just lay that work down and light out, and I never see such a woman. You could hear her whoop to Jericho. You couldn't get her to take a hold of one of them with the tongs. And if she turned over and found one in bed she would scramble out and lift a howl that she would think the house was a fire. She disturbed the old man so that he said he could most wish there hadn't ever been no snakes created. Why, after every last snake had been gone clear out of the house for as much as a week Aunt Sally weren't over it yet. She weren't nearer over it. When she was sitting thinking about something you could touch her on the back of her neck with a feather and she would jump right out of her stockings. It was very curious. But Tom said all women was just so. He said they was made that way for some reason or other. We got a licking every time one of our snakes come in her way, and she allowed these lickings weren't nothing to what she would do if we ever loaded up the place again with them. I didn't mind the lickings because they didn't mount to nothing. But I minded the trouble we had to lay in another lot. But we got them laid in, and all the other things. And you never see a cabin as blithesome as Jim's was when they'd all swarm out for music and go for him. Jim didn't like the spiders, and the spiders didn't like Jim. And so they'd lay for him and make it mighty warm for him. And he said that between the rats and the snakes and the grindstone there weren't no room in bed for him scarcely, and when there was a body couldn't sleep. It was so lively, and it was always lively, he said, because they never all slept at one time, but took turn about. So when the snakes was asleep the rats was on deck, and when the rats turned in the snakes come on watch. So he always had one gang under him in his way, and another gang having a circus over him. And if he got up to hunt a new place the spiders would take a chance at him as he crossed over. He said if he ever got out this time he wouldn't ever be a prisoner again, not for a salary. Well, by the end of three weeks everything was in pretty good shape. The shirt was sent in early, in a pie, and every time a rat bit Jim he would get up and write a little in his journal whilst the ink was fresh. The pens was made, the inscriptions and so on was all carved on the grindstone. The bed leg was sawed in two, and we had ed up the sawdust and it give us a most amazing stomach ache. We reckoned we was all going to die but didn't. It was the most undigestible sawdust I ever see. And Tom said the same. But, as I was saying, we'd got all the work done now at last. And we was all pretty much fagged out too, but mainly Jim. The old man had wrote a couple of times to the plantation below Orleans to come and get their runaway nigger, but hadn't got no answer because there weren't no such plantation. So he allowed he would advertise Jim in the St. Louis and New Orleans papers, and when he mentioned the St. Louis ones it gave me the cold shivers, and I see we hadn't no time to lose. So Tom said, now for the anonymous letters. What's them, I says? Warnings to the people that something is up. Sometimes it's done one way, sometimes another, but there's always somebody spying around that gives notice to the Governor of the Castle. When Louis XVI was going to light out of the Tullarys, a servant girl done it. It's a very good way, and so is the anonymous letters. We'll use them both, and it's usual for the prisoner's mother to change clothes with him, and she stays in and he slides out in her clothes. We'll do that too. But looky here, Tom, what do we want to warn anybody for that something's up? Let them find it out for themselves. It's there, look out. Yes, I know, but you can't depend on them. It's the way they've acted from the very start, left us to do everything. They're so confiding and moat-headed they don't take notice of nothing at all, so if we don't give them notice there won't be nobody nor nothing to interfere with us, and so after all our hard work and trouble this escape will go off perfectly flat, won't amount to nothing, won't be nothing to it. Well, as for me, Tom, that's the way I'd like it. Shucks, he says, and looks disgusted, so I says, but I ain't going to make no complaint. Any way that suits you suits me. What are you going to do about the servant-girl? You'll be her. You slide in in the middle of the night, and hook that yaller girl's frock. Why, Tom, that'll make trouble next morning, because, of course, she probably ain't got any but that one. I know, but you don't want it but fifteen minutes to carry the anonymous letter and shove it under the front door. All right, then I'll do it, but I could carry it just as handy in my own togs. You wouldn't look like a servant-girl then, would you? No. But there won't be nobody to see what I look like anyway. That ain't got nothing to do with it. The thing for us to do is just to do our duty, and not worry about whether anybody sees us do it or not. Ain't you got no principle at all? All right, I ain't saying nothing. I am the servant-girl. Who's Jim's mother? I'm his mother. I'll hook a gown from Aunt Sally. Well, then, you'll have to stay in the cabin when me and Jim leaves. Not much. I'll stuff Jim's clothes full of straw and lay it on his bed to represent his mother in disguise, and Jim'll take the nigger-woman's gown off of me and wear it, and we'll all evade together. When a prisoner of style escapes it's called an evasion. It's always called so when a king escapes, for instance, and the same with a king's son. It don't make no difference whether he's a natural one or an unnatural one. So Tom he wrote the anonymous letter and I smooched the yaller wenches frock that night and put it on and shoved it under the front door the way Tom told me to. It said, Beware, trouble is brewing. Keep a sharp lookout, unknown friend. Next night we stuck a picture which Tom draw'd in blood of a scullin' cross-bones on the front door, and next night another one of a coffin on the back door. I never see a family in such a sweat. They couldn't have been worse scared if the place had been full of ghosts laying for them behind everything and under the beds and shivering through the air. If a door bang'd, Aunt Sally she jumped and said ouch, if anything fell. She jumped and said ouch, if you happen to touch her, when she weren't noticing, she'd done the same. She couldn't face no way and be satisfied, because she allowed there was something behind her every time, so she was always a whirling around sudden and saying ouch. And before she'd got two-thirds round she'd whirl back again and say it again, and she was afraid to go to bed. She doesn't set up. So the thing was working very well, Tom said. He said he never see a thing work more satisfactory. He said it showed it was done right. So he said, now for the grand bulge. So the very next morning at the streak of dawn we got another letter ready and was wondering what we better do with it, because we heard them say at supper they was going to have a nigger on watch at both doors all night. Tom he went down the lightning rod to spy round and the nigger at the back door was asleep, and he stuck it in the back of his neck and come back. This letter said, Don't betray me, I wish to be your friend. There is a desperate gang of cutthroats from over in the Indian territory going to steal your runaway nigger tonight, and they have been trying to scare you so as you will stay in the house and not bother them. I am one of the gang, but have got religion, and wish to quit it, and lead an honest life again, and will betray the hellish design. They will sneak down from Northards along the fence at midnight exact, with a false key, and go in the nigger's cabin to get him. I am to be off a piece and blow a tin horn if I see any danger, but instead of that I will bow like a sheep soon as they get in and not blow at all. Then once they are getting his chains loose you slip there and lock them in, and can kill them at your leisure. Don't do anything but just the way I am telling you. If you do, they will suspicion something and raise whoop-jam-ber-ee-hoo. I do not wish any reward, but to know I have done the right thing. ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FIN CHAPTER 40 FISHING The Vigilance Committee A Lively Run Jim Advises a Doctor We was feeling pretty good after breakfast, and took my canoe, and went over the river of fishing, with a lunch, and had a good time, and took a look at the raft, and found her all right, and got home late to supper, and found them in such a sweat and worry they didn't know which end was standing on, and made us go right off to bed the minute we was done supper, and wouldn't tell us what the trouble was, and never let on a word about the new letter, but didn't need to, because we knowed as much about it as anybody did, and as soon as we was half upstairs, and her back was turned, we slid for the cellar cupboard, and loaded up a good lunch, and took it up to our room, and went to bed, and got up about half past eleven, and Tom put on Aunt Sally's dress, that he stole, and was going to start with a lunch, but says, Where's the butter? I laid out a hunk of it, I says, on a piece of corn-pone. Well, you left it laid out, then, it ain't here. We can get along without it, I says. We can get along with it, too, he says. Just you slide down cellar and fetch it, and then Mosey write down the lightning rod, and come along. I'll go and stuff the straw into Jim's clothes to represent his mother in disguise, and be ready to bow like a sheep and shove soon as you get there. So out he went, and down cellar went I. The hunk of butter, big as a person's fist, was where I had left it, so I took up the slab of corn-pone with it on, and blowed out my light, and started upstairs very stealthy, and got up to the main floor all right. But here comes Aunt Sally with a candle, and I clapped the truck in my hat, and clapped my hat on my head, and the next second she see me, and she says, You been down cellar? Yeson, what you been doin' down there? Nothin'? Nothin'? Nome? Well, then, what possessed you to go down there this time of night? I don't know him. You don't know? Don't answer me that way. Tom, I want to know what you would been doin' down there. I hain't been doin' a single thing Aunt Sally, I hope to gracious if I have. I reckon she'd let me go now, and as a general thing she would. But I suppose there was so many strange things going on, she was just in a sweat about every little thing that weren't yard stick straight. So she says, very decided, You just march into that setting-room and stay there till I come. You've been up to something you know business to, and I lay I'll find out what it is before I'm done with you. So she went away as I opened the door and walked into the setting-room. My, but there was a crowd there. Fifteen farmers, and every one of them had a gun. I was most powerful sick, and slunk to a chair, and set down. They was settin' round, some of them talkin' a little, in a low voice, and all of them fidgety and uneasy, and tryin' to look like they weren't. But I know they was, because they was always takin' off their hats and puttin' them on, and scratchin' their heads, and changin' their seats, and fumbling with their buttons. I weren't easy myself, but I didn't take my hat off all the same. I did wish Aunt Sally would come and get done with me, and lick me if she wanted to, and let me get away and tell Tom how we'd overdone this thing, and what a thundering hornet's nest we'd got ourselves into, so we could stop fooling around straight off, and clear out with Jim before these rips got out of patience and come for us. At last she come, and begun to ask me questions, but I couldn't answer them straight. I didn't know which end of me was up, because these men was in such a fidget now that some was wanting to start right now, and lay for them desperados, and sang it warn't but a few minutes to midnight, and others was tryin' to get them to hold on and wait for the sheep signal. And here was Auntie pegging away at the questions, and me shakin' all over and ready to sink down in my tracks, I was that scared, and the place getting hotter and hotter, and the butter beginning to melt and run down my neck and behind my ears, and pretty soon when one of them says, I'm a foregoing and getting in the cabin first and right now, and catching them when they come, a most dropped, and a streak of butter come trickling down my forehead, and Aunt Sally, she see it, and turns white as a sheet and says, for the land's sake, what is the matter with the child, he's got the brain fever as sure as you're born, and they're oozing out, and everybody runs to see, and she snatches off my hat, and out comes the bread, and what was left of the butter, and she grabbed me, and hugged me, and says, oh, what a turn you did give me, and how glad and grateful I am, it ain't no worse, for lux against us, and it never rains but it pours, and when I see that truck I thought we'd lost you, for I knowed by the color and all it was just like your brains would be if, dear, dear, why'd you tell me that was what you'd been down there for, I wouldn't have cared? Now clear out to bed, and don't let me see no more of you till morning. I was upstairs in a second, and down the lightning rod in another one, and shinning through the dark for the lean to. I couldn't hardly get my words out, I was so anxious, but I told Tom as quick as I could we must jump for it now, and not a minute to lose, the house was full of men yonder with guns, his eyes just blazed, and he says, no, is that so? Ain't it bully? Why, huck, if it was to do over again I bet I could fetch two hundred, if we could put it off till, hurry, hurry, I says, where's Jim? Right at your elbow, if you reach out your arm you can touch him, he's dressed and everything's ready, now we'll slide out and give the sheep signal, but then we heard the tramp of men coming to the door, and heard them begin to fumble with a padlock, and heard a man say, I told you we'd be too soon, they haven't come, the door is locked. Here, I'll lock some of you into the cabin, and you lay for them in the dark, and kill them when they come, and the rest scatter round a piece, and listen if you can hear them coming. So in they come, but couldn't see us in the dark, and most trod on us whilst we was hustling to get under the bed, but we got under all right, and out through the hole swift but soft, Jim first, me next, and Tom last, which was according to Tom's orders. Now we was in the lean to, and heard trampings close by outside, so we crept to the door, and Tom stopped us there, and put his eye to the crack, but couldn't make out nothing, it was so dark, and whispered and said he would listen for the steps to get further, and when he nudged us, Jim must glide out first, and him last, so he said his ear to the crack, and listened, and listened, and listened, and the steps a scrape and round out there all the time, and at last he nudged us, and we slid out, and stooped down, not breathing, and not making the least noise, and slipped stealthy towards the fence in Indian file, and got to it all right, and me and Jim over it, but Tom's britches catched fast on a splinter on the top rail, and then he hear the steps coming, so he had to pull loose, which snapped the splinter and made a noise, and as he dropped in our tracks and started, somebody sings out, "'Oh, is that? Answer or I'll shoot!' But we didn't answer, we just unfurled our heels and shoved. Then there was a rush in a bang, bang, bang, and the bullets fairly whizzed round us, we heard them sing out, "'Here they are! They've broke for the river! Kill them boys, and turn loose the dogs!' So here they come, full tilt. We could hear them because they wore boots and yelled, but we didn't wear no boots and didn't yell. We was in the past of the mill, and when they got pretty close on to us, we dodged into the bush and let them go by, and then dropped in behind them. They'd had all the dogs shut up, so they wouldn't scare off the robbers, but by this time somebody had let them loose, and here they come, making pow-wow enough for a million. But they was our dogs, so we stopped in our tracks till they catched up, and when they see it weren't nobody but us, and no excitement to offer them, they only just said howdy and tore right ahead towards the shouting and clattering, and then we upstream again, and whizzed along after them till we was nearly to the mill, and then struck up through the bush to where my canoe was tied, and hopped in and pulled for dear life towards the middle of the river, but didn't make no more noise than we was obliged to. Then we struck out easy and comfortable for the island where my raft was, and we could hear them yelling and barking at each other all up and down the bank till we was so far away the sounds got dim and died out, and when we stepped on to the raft I says, Now, old Jim, you're a free man again, and I bet you won't ever be a slave no more. And a mighty good job it was, too, Huck. It is planned beautiful, and it is done beautiful, and ain't nobody can get up a plan that's more mixed up and splendid than what that one was. We was all glad as we could be, but Tom was the gladdest of all, because he had a bullet in the calf of his leg. When me and Jim heard that we didn't feel so brash as what we did before. It was hurting him considerable and bleeding, so we laid him in the wigwam and tore up one of Duke's shirts for the bandage him. But he says, Give me the rags. I can do it myself. Don't stop now. Don't fool around here, and the evasion booming along so handsome. Man the sweeps and set her loose! Boys, we'd done it elegant! Indeed we did! I wished we'd a hand the handling of Louis XVI. There wouldn't have been no son of St. Louis ascended to heaven. Wrote down in his biography, No, sir, we'd a whooped him over the border. That's what we'd a done with him, and done it just as slick as nothing at all, too. Man the sweeps! Man the sweeps! But me and Jim was consulting and thinking, and after we'd thought a minute I says, Say it, Jim. So he says, Well then, this is the way it looked to me, Huck. If it was him that is being sought free, and one or two boys was to get shot, would he say, Go on and save me! Never mind about a doctor for to save this one! Is that like Mars-Tom Sawyer? Would he say that? You bet he wouldn't. Well then, is Jim going to say it? No, sir. I don't n' barge a step out of this place, doubt a doctor. Not if it's forty ye. I knowed he was white inside, and I reckoned he'd say what he did say, so it was all right now, and I told Tom I was a going for a doctor. He raised considerable row about it, but me and Jim stuck to it, and wouldn't budge. So he was for crawling out and setting the raft loose himself, but we wouldn't let him. Then he'd give us a piece of his mind, but it didn't do no good. So when he sees me getting the canoe ready, he says, Well then, if ye were bound to go, I'll tell ye the way to do when ye get to the village. Shut the door and blindfold a doctor tight and fast, and make him swear to be silent as the grave, and put a purse full of gold in his hand, and then take and lead him all around the back alleys and everywhere is in the dark, and then fetch him here in the canoe, in a roundabout way amongst the islands, and search him and take his chalk away from him, and don't give it back to him till ye get him back to the village, or else he will chalk this raft so he can find it again. It's the way they all do. So I said I would and left, and Jim was to hide in the woods when he see the doctor coming till he was gone again. CHAPTER XXI The Doctor, Uncle Silas, Sister Hodgkis, Aunt Sally in Trouble The Doctor was an old man, a very nice, kind-looking old man when I got him up. I told him me and my brother was over on Spanish Island hunting yesterday afternoon, and camped on a piece of a raft we found, and about midnight he must have kicked his gun in his dreams, for it went off and shot him in the leg, and we wanted him to go over there and fix it and not say nothing about it, nor let anybody know, because we wanted to come home this evening and surprise the folks. CHAPTER XXII Who is your folks? he says. CHAPTER XXII The Phelps is down yonder. CHAPTER XXII Oh, he says, and after a minute he says. CHAPTER XXII How'd you say he got shot? CHAPTER XXII He had a dream, I says, and it shot him. CHAPTER XXII Singular dream, he says, so he lit up his lantern and got his saddle-bags, and we started. But when he seized the canoe he didn't like the look of her. Said she was big enough for one, but didn't look pretty safe for two. I says, oh, you needn't be afeard, sir. She carried the three of us easy enough. What three? Why, me and Sid and—and—and the guns. That's what I mean. Oh, he says. But he put his foot on the gunnel and rocked her and shook his head, and said he reckoned he'd look round for a bigger one. But they was all locked and chained, so he took my canoe and said for me to wait till he come back, or I could hunt around further, or maybe I better go down home and get them ready for the surprise if I wanted to. But I said I didn't, so I told him just how to find the raft, and then he started. I struck an idea pretty soon. I says to myself, supposing he can't fix that leg just in three shakes of a sheep's tail, as the saying is, supposing it takes him three or four days. What are we going to do? Lay around there till he lets the cat out of the bag? No, sir. I know what I'll do. I'll wait. And when he comes back, if he says he's got to go any more, I'll get down there, too, if I swim, and we'll take and tie him, and keep him, and shove out down the river. And when Tom's done with him, we'll give him what it's worth, or all we got, and then let him get ashore. So then I crept into a lumber pile to get some sleep, and next time I waked up the sun was away up over my head. I shot out and went for the doctor's house, but they told me he'd gone away in the night some time or other and weren't back yet. Well, thinks I, that looks powerful bad for Tom, and I'll dig out for the island right off. So away I shoved, and turned the corner, and nearly ran my head into Uncle Salus' stomach. He says, Why, Tom, where have you been all this time, you rascal? I ain't been nowhere, as I says, only just hunting for the runaway nigger, me and Sid. Why, wherever did you go, he says, your aunt's been mighty uneasy. She needn't, I says, because we was all right. We followed the men and the dogs, but they outrun us, and we lost them. But we thought we heard them on the water, so we got a canoe and took out after them and crossed over, but couldn't find nothing of them. So we cruised along up shore till we got kind of tired and beat out, and tied up the canoe and went to sleep, and never waked up till about an hour ago. Then we paddled over here to hear the news, and Sid's at the post office to see what he can hear, and I'm a branching out to get something to eat for us, and then we're going home. So then we went to the post office to get Sid, but just as I suspicion he weren't there. So the old man he got a letter out of the office, and we waited a while longer, but Sid didn't come. So the old man said, Come along, let Sid foot it home, or canoe it, when he got done fooling round, but we would ride. I couldn't get him to let me stay and wait for Sid, and he said there weren't no use in it, and I must come along, and let Aunt Sally see we was all right. When we got home Aunt Sally was that glad to see me, she laughed and cried both, and hugged me, and give me one of them lickings of her that don't mount and shucks, and said she'd serve Sid the same when he come. And the place was plumb full of farmers and farmers' wives to dinner, and such another clock a body never heard. Old Mrs. Hodgkis was the worst. Her tongue was a-going all the time. She says, Well, sisters Phelps, I've ransacked that air-cabin over, and I believe the nigger was crazy. I says to Sister Damrell, didn't I, Sister Damrell? Says I, He's crazy, says I. Them's the very words I said. Y'all heard me. He's crazy, says I. Everything shows it, says I. Look at that air grindstone, says I. Wanna tell me to any creature that is in his right mind that's gonna scrabble all them crazy things onto grindstone, says I. Here such and such a person's busted his heart. And here so and so pegged along for thirty-seven year, and all that. Natural son of Louis, somebody in such everlasting rubbage. He is plumb crazy, says I. It's what I says in the first place. It's what I says in the middle. It's what I says last and all the time. The nigger's crazy. Crazy as never could knees her, says I. And look at that air ladder made out of rag, Sister Hodgeskis, says old Mrs. Damrell. What in the name of goodness could ever want of the very words I was a-saying no longer ago than this minute, to Sister Utterback, and she'll tell you so herself, says she. Look at that air rag ladder, says she. Says I, Yes, look at it, says I. What could he have wanted of it, says I. She, Sister Hodgeskis, she. But how in the nation they ever get that grindstone in there anyway, and who dug that air hole, and who, my very words, Brear Penrod, I was a-saying past that air sassar, molasses, won't you? I was a-saying to Sister Dunlop. Just this minute, how did they get that grindstone in there, says I? Without help, mind you, without help. That's where it is. Don't tell me, says I. There was help, says I. There was a plenty of help, too, says I. There's been a dozen that help in that nigger, and I lay-eyed skin every last nigger on this place, but I'd find out who done it, says I. Moreover, says I. A dozen, says you. Forty couldn't have done everything that's been done. Look at them caseknife saws and things. How tedious they've been made. Look at that bed-leg sawed off with them. A week's work for six men. Look at that nigger made out of the straw on the bed. And look at— You may well say it, Brear Hightower. It's just as I was a-saying to Brear Phelps, his own self, says he. What do you think of it, Sister Hodgekiss? See, think of what, Brear Phelps, as I? Think of that bed-leg sawed off that away, says he. Think of it, says I. I lay it, never sawed itself off, says I. Somebody sawed it off, says I. That's my opinion. Take it or leave it. It may't be no count, says I. But, such as tis, it's my opinion, says I. If anybody can start a better one, says I, then let him do it, says I. That's all. I says to Sister Dunlop, says I. Why, dog-mock-catch, they must have been a hushful of niggers in there every night for four weeks to have done all that work, Sister Phelps. Look at that shirt. Every last inch of it civered over with secret African writing down with blood. Must have been a raft of them at it right along all the time, almost. Why, I'd give two dollars to have it read to me, and as for the niggers that wrote it, I allow I'd take it and lash them until— People to help him, Brother Marples. Well, I reckon you'd think so if you'd have been in this house for a while back. Why, they've stole everything they could lay their hands on. And we are watching all the time, mind you. They stole that shirt right off the line, and as for that sheet they made the rag ladder out of. There ain't no telling how many times they didn't steal that, and flour and candles and candlesticks and spoons and the old warming pan, and most a thousand things that I disremember now, and my new calico dress, and me and Silas and my Sid and Tom on the constant watch-day and night, as I was telling you, and not a one of us could catch hide nor hear nor sight nor sound of them. And here, at the last minute, lo and behold you, they slides right in under our noses and fools us, and not only fools us, but the Injun Territory robbers too, and actually gets away with that nigger safe and sound, and that with sixteen men and twenty-two dogs right on their very heels at that very time. I tell you, it just bangs anything I ever heard of. Why, spirits couldn't have done better and been no smarter, and I reckon they must have been spirits because you know our dogs, and there ain't no better—well, them dogs never even got on the track of them once. You explain that to me if you can, any of you. Well, it does be laws of life, I never—so help me, I wouldn't be House Thieves, as well as goodness gracious sakes, I'd been feared to live in such a—fraid to live? Why, I was that scared I dusted hard to go to bed, or get up, or lay down, or set down, Sister Ridgeway. Why, they'd steal the very—why, goodness sakes, you can guess what kind of a fluster I was in by the time midnight come last night. I hoped to gracious if I weren't afraid they'd steal some of the family. I was just to that pass I didn't have no reasoning faculties no more. It looks foolish enough now, in the daytime, but I says to myself, there's my two poor boys asleep way upstairs in that lonesome room, and I declare to goodness I was that uneasy till I crept up there and locked them in, I did, and anybody would, because, you know, when you get scared that way, and it keeps running on, and getting worse and worse all the time, and your wits gets to addling, and you get to doing all sorts of wild things, and by and by you think to yourself, suppose I was a boy, and was a way up there, and the door ain't locked, and you—she stopped—looked kind of wondering, and then she turned her head round slow, and when her eye lit on me, I got up and took a walk. As I to myself, I can explain better how we come to not be in that room this morning if I go out to one side and study over it a little. So I done it, but I doesn't go far, or she dissent for me, and when it was late in the day the people all went, and then I come in and told her the noise, and shooting waked up me and Sid, and the door was locked, and we wanted to see the fun, so we went down the lightning rod, and both of us got hurt a little, and we didn't never want to try that no more, and then I went on and told her all what I told Uncle Silas before, and then she said she'd forgive us, and maybe it was all right enough anyway, and about what a body might expect of boys, for all boys was a pretty harem-scarrem lot as fur as she could see, and so as long as no harm hadn't come of it she judged she better put in her time being grateful we was alive and well, and she had us still, instead of fretting over what was past and done. So then she kissed me, and patted me on the head, and dropped into a kind of a brown study, and pretty soon jumped up and says, Why, laws and mercy it's most night, and Sid not come yet, what has become of that boy? I see my chance, so I skipped up and says, I'll run and ride up to town and get him, I says. No you won't, she says, you'll stay right where you are, one's enough to be lost at a time, if he ain't here to supper your uncle'll go. Well, he weren't there to supper, so right after supper Uncle went. He come back about ten a little bit uneasy, hadn't run across Tom's track. Aunt Sally was a good deal uneasy, but Uncle Silas he said there weren't no occasion to be, boys will be boys, he said, and you'll see this one turn up in the morning all sound and right. So she had to be satisfied. But she said she'd set up for him a while anyway, and keep a light burning so he could see it. And then when I went up to bed she come up with me and fetched her candle and tucked me in, and mothered me so good I felt mean and like I couldn't look her in the face, and she sat down in the bed and talked with me a long time, and said what a splendid boy Sid was, and didn't seem to want to ever stop talking about him, and kept asking me every now and then if I reckoned he could have got lost, or hurt, or maybe drowned, and might be laying at this minute somewhere suffering or dead, and she not by him to help him, and so that tears would drip down silent, and I would tell her that Sid was all right, and would be home in the morning, sure, and she would squeeze my hand, or maybe kiss me, and tell me to say it again, and keep on saying it, because it done her good, and she was in so much trouble, and when she was going away she looked down in my eyes so steady and gentle, and says, The door ain't going to be locked, Tom, and there's the window and the rod, but you'll be good, won't you? And you won't go, for my sake. Laws knows I wanted to go bad enough to see about Tom, and was all intending to go, but after that I wouldn't have went not for kingdoms. But she was on my mind, and Tom was on my mind, so I slept very restless, and twice I went down the rod away in the night, and slipped around front, and see her setting there by her candle in the window, with her eyes towards the road, and the tears in them, and I wished I could do something for her, but I couldn't, only to swear that I wouldn't never do nothing to grieve her any more, and the third time I waked up at dawn, and slid down, and she was there yet, and her candle was most out, and her old gray head was resting on her hand, and she was asleep. CHAPTER 42 The old man was uptown again, before breakfast, but couldn't get no track of Tom, and both of them sat at the table thinking, and not saying nothing, and looking mournful, and their coffee getting cold, and not eating anything, and by and by the old man says, Did I give you the letter? What letter? The one I got yesterday out of the post office. No. You didn't give me no letter? Well, I must have forgot it. So he rummaged his pockets, and then went off somewheres where he had laid it down, and fetched it, and give it to her. She says, Why, it's from St. Petersburg, it's from Sis. I allowed another walk would do me good, but I couldn't stir her. But before she could break it open she dropped it and run, for she sees something. And so did I. It was Tom Sawyer on a mattress, and that old doctor, and Jim, in her calico dress, with his hands tied behind him, and a lot of people. I hid the letter behind the first thing that come handy, and rushed. She flung herself at Tom crying, and says, Oh! he's dead! he's dead! I know he's dead! And Tom he turned his head a little, and muttered something or other, which showed he weren't in his right mind. Then she flung up her hands, and says, He's alive! Thank God! And that's enough! And she snatched a kiss of him, and flew for the house to get the bed ready, and scattering orders right and left at the niggers and everybody else, as fast as her tongue could go, every jump of the way. I followed the men to see what they was going to do with Jim, and the old doctor and Uncle Silas followed after Tom into the house. The men was very huffy, and some of them wanted to hang Jim, for an example, to all the other niggers around there, so they wouldn't be trying to run away like Jim done, and making such a raft of trouble, and keeping a whole family scared most to death for days and nights. But the others said, Don't do it! It wouldn't answer at all. He ain't our nigger, and his owner would turn up and make us pay for him, sure! So that cooled him down a little, because the people that's always the most anxious for to hang a nigger that ain't done just right, is always the very ones that ain't the most anxious to pay for him when they've got their satisfaction out of him. They cussed Jim considerable, though, and give him a cuff or two side of the head once in a while. But Jim never said nothing, and he never let on to know me. And they took him to the same cabin, and put his own clothes on him, and chained him again, and not to know bed-leg this time, but to a big staple-drove into the bottom log, and chained his hands too, and both legs, and said he weren't to have nothing but bread and water to eat after this till his owner come, or he was sold at auction because he didn't come in a certain length of time, and filled up our hole, and said a couple of farmers with guns must stand watch around about the cabin every night, and a bulldog tied to the door in the daytime, and about this time they was through with the job, and was tapering off with a kind of general good-bye cussing, and then the old doctor comes and takes a look, and says, Don't be no rougher on him than you're obliged to, because he ain't a bad nigger. When I got to where I found the boy, I see I couldn't cut the bullet out without some help, and he weren't in no condition for me to leave to go and get help, and he got a little worse and a little worse, and after a long time he went out of his head, and wouldn't let me come an eye with him any more, and said if I chocked his raft he'd kill me, and no end of wild foolishness like that, and I see I couldn't do anything at all with him. So I says, I got to have help somehow, and the minute I says it outcrawls this nigger from somewheres, and says he'll help, and he'd done it too, and done it very well. Of course, I judged he must be a runaway nigger, and there I was, and there I had to stick right straight along all the rest of the day and all night. It was a fix, I tell you. I had a couple of patience with the chills, and of course I'd have liked to run up to town and see them, but I doesn't, because the nigger might get away and then I'd be to blame, and yet never a skiff come close enough for me to hail. So there I had to stick plum until daylight this morning, and I never see a nigger that was a better nurse or faithfuler, and yet he was risking his freedom to do it, and was all tired out, too, and I see plain enough he'd been worked main hard lately. I like the nigger for that. I tell you, gentlemen, a nigger like that is worth a thousand dollars and kind treatment, too. I had everything I needed, and the boy was doing as well there as he would have done at home, better maybe, because it was so quiet. But there I was, with both of them on my hands, and there I had to stick till about dawn this morning. Then some men and a skiff come by, and as good luck would have it, the nigger was setting by the pallet with his head propped on his knees sound asleep, so I motioned them in quiet, and they slipped up on him and grabbed him and tied him before he knowed what he was about, and we never had no trouble. And the boy, being in a kind of a flighty sleep, too, we muffled the oars and hitched the raft on, and towed her over very nice and quiet, and the nigger never made the least round nor said a word from the start. He ain't no bad nigger, gentlemen, and that's what I think about him. Somebody says, Well, it sounds very good, doctor, I'm a bleached to say! And the others softened up a little, too, and I was mighty thankful to that old doctor for doing Jim that good turn, and I was glad it was according to my judgment of him, too, because I thought he had a good heart in him, and was a good man the first time I see him. Then they all agreed that Jim had acted very well, and was deserving to have some notice took of it and reward. So every one of them promised, right out and hearty, that they wouldn't cuss in no more. Then they came out and locked him up. I hoped they was going to say he could have one or two of the chains took off, because they was rotten heavy, or could have meat and greens with his bread and water, but they didn't think of it, and I reckoned it weren't best for me to mix in, but I judged I'd get the doctor's yarn to Aunt Sally somehow or other as soon as I'd got through the breakers that was laying just ahead of me, explanations, I mean, of how I forgot to mention about Sid being shot when I was telling how him and me put in that dratted night paddling around hunting the runaway nigger. But I had plenty of time. Aunt Sally, she stuck to the sick room all day and all night, and every time I see Uncle Silas mooning around I dodged him. Next morning I heard Tom was a good deal better, and he said Aunt Sally was gone to get a nap. So I slipped to the sick room, and if I found him awake I reckoned we could put up a yarn for the family that would wash. But he was sleeping, and sleeping very peaceful too, and pale, not fire-faced the way he was when he come. So I sat down and laid for him to wake. In about half an hour Aunt Sally comes gliding in, and there I was, up a stump again. She motioned me to be still, and sat down by me, and begun to whisper, and said we could all be joyful now, because all the symptoms was first rate, and he'd been sleeping like that for ever so long, and looking better and peacefuler all the time, and ten to one he'd wake up in his right mind. So we sat there watching, and by and by he stirs a bit, and opened his eyes very natural, and takes a look, and says, Hello? Why? I'm at home. How's that? Where's the raft? It's all right, I says. And, Jim? The same, I says, but couldn't say it pretty brash. But he never noticed, but says, Good! Splendid! Now we're all right and safe. Did you tell Auntie? I was going to say yes, but she chipped in, and says, About what, Sid? Why, about the way the whole thing was done. What whole thing? Why, THE whole thing? There ain't but one, how he set the runaway nigger free, me and Tom. Good land! Set the run— What is the child talking about? Dear, dear, out of his head again! No, I ain't out of my head. I know all what I'm talking about. We did set him free, me and Tom. We laid out to do it, and we'd done it, and we'd done it elegant, too. He'd got a start, and she never checked him up, just sat and stared and stared, and let him clip along, and I see it warn't no use for me to put in. Why, Auntie, it cost us a power of work, weeks of it, hours and hours every night whilst you was all asleep, and we had to steal candles and the sheet and the shirt and your dress and spoons and tin plates and case knives and the warming pan and the grindstone and flour and just no end of things. And you can't think what work it was to make the saws and pens and inscriptions and one thing or another, and you can't think half the fun it was, and we had to make up the pictures of coffins and things, anonymous letters from the robbers and get up and down the lightning rod and dig the hole into the cabin and made the rope ladder and send it in cooked up in the pie and send in spoons and things to work with in your apron pocket, mercy sakes, and load up the cabin with rats and snakes and so on for company for Jim. And then you kept Tom here so long with a butter in his hat that you come near spiling the whole business because the men come before we was out of the cabin and we had to rush and they heard us and let drive at us. And I got my share and we dodged out of the path and let them go by, and when the dogs come they weren't interested in us but went for the most noise and we got our canoe and made for the raft and was all safe and Jim was a free man and we done it all by ourselves and wasn't it bully-anty? Well, I never heard the likes of it in all my born days, so it was you, you little rapscallions that's been making all this trouble and turned everybody's wits clean inside out and scared us all most to death. I have as good a notion as ever I had in my life to take it out of you this very minute, to think here I've been night after night, you just get well once you young scamp and I lay all tan the old Harry out of both of you. But Tom, he was so proud and joyful, he just couldn't hold in and his tongue just went it, sheat chipping in and spitting fire all along and both of them going it at once like a cat convention and she says, well, you get all the enjoyment you can out of it now, for mind I tell you if I catch you meddling with him again, meddling with who, Tom says, dropping his smile and looking surprised. With who? Why, the runaway nigger, of course, who would you reckon? Tom looks at me very grave and says, Tom, didn't you just tell me he was all life? Hasn't he got away? Him, says Aunt Sally, the runaway nigger, deed he hasn't, they've got him back safe and sound and he's in that cabin again on bread and water and loaded down with chains till he's claimed or sold. Tom rose square up in bed with his eye hot and his nostrils opening and shutting like gills and sings out to me, they ain't no right to shut him up, shove, and don't you lose a minute, turn him loose, he ain't no slave, he's as free as any critter that walks this earth. What does the child mean? I mean every word I say, Aunt Sally, and if somebody don't go, I'll go, I've known him all his life and so has Tom there. Old Miss Watson died two months ago and she was ashamed she ever was going to sell him down the river and said so, and she set him free in her will. Then what on earth did you want to set him free for, seeing he was already free? Well, that is a question, I must say, and just like women. Why, I wanted the adventure of it, and I'd a weighted neck deep in blood to—goodness, live, Aunt Polly! Here she wasn't standing right there, just inside the door looking as sweet and contented as an angel half full of pie, I wish I may never. Aunt Sally jumped for her and most hugged the head off of her and cried over her and I found a good enough place for me under the bed, for it was getting pretty sultry for us, seemed to me. And I peeped out, and in a little while Tom's Aunt Polly shook herself loose and stood there looking across at Tom over her spectacles, kind of grinding him into the earth, you know, and then she says, Yes, you better turn your head away, I would if I was you, Tom. Oh, dearie me, says Aunt Sally, is he changed so? Why, that ain't Tom, it's Sid. Tom's—Tom's—what? Where is Tom? He was here a minute ago. You mean, where's Huck Finn? That's what you mean. I reckon I ain't raised such a scamp as my Tom all these years not to know him when I see him. That would be a pretty howdy-do. Come out from under that bed, Huck Finn. So I done it. But not feeling brash. And Sally, she was one of the mixed upest looking persons I ever see. Except one, and that was Uncle Silas when he come in, and they told it all to him. It kind of made him drunk, as you may say, and he didn't know nothing at all the rest of the day, and preached a prayer meeting sermon that night that gave him a rattling reputation, because the oldest man in the world couldn't have understood it. So Tom's Aunt Polly, she told all about who I was and what. And I had to up and tell how I was in such a tight place that when Mrs. Phelps took me for Tom Sawyer, she chipped in and says, Oh, go on and call me Aunt Sally. I'm used to it now, and ain't no need to change. That when Aunt Sally took me for Tom Sawyer, I had to stand it. There weren't no other way. And I knowed he wouldn't mind, because it would be nuts for him being a mystery, and he'd make an adventure out of it, and be perfectly satisfied. And so it turned out, and he let on to be Sid, and made things as soft as he could for me. And his Aunt Polly, she said Tom was right about old Miss Watson setting Jim free in her will. And so, sure enough, Tom Sawyer had gone and took all that trouble and bother to set a free nigger free. And I couldn't ever understand before, until that minute and that talk, how he could help a body set a nigger free with his bringing up. Well, Aunt Polly she said that when Aunt Sally wrote to her that Tom and Sid had come all right and safe, she says to herself, Look at that now. I might have expected it, letting him go off that way without anybody to watch him. And so now I've got to go and traipse all the way down the river eleven hundred mile, and find out what that creature is up to this time, as long as I couldn't seem to get any answer out of you about it. Why, I never heard nothing from you, says Aunt Sally. Well, I wonder, why, I wrote you twice to ask you what you could mean by Sid being here. Well, I never got him, sis. Aunt Polly she turns round slow and severe and says, You, Tom. Well, what, he says, kind of pettish. Don't you want me, you impudent thing? Hand out them letters. What letters? Them letters. I'd be bound if I have to take a hold of you while they're in the trunk. There now. And they're just the same as they was when I got them out of the office. I ain't looked into them, I ain't touched them. But I know they'd make trouble. And I thought if you weren't in no hurry I'd—well, you do need skinning. There ain't no mistake about it. And I wrote another one to tell you I was coming. And I suppose he—no, it come yesterday. I ain't read it yet. But it's all right. I've got that one. I wanted to offer to bet two dollars she hadn't. But I reckoned maybe it was just a safe to, not to. So I never said nothing. The first time I caught Tom private I asked him what was his idea, time of the evasion. What it was he'd planned to do if the evasion worked all right and he managed to set a nigger free that was already free before. And he said, what he planned in his head from the start, if we got Jim out all safe, was for us to run him down the river on the raft and have adventures plumb to the mouth of the river, and then tell him about his being free, and take him back up home on a steamboat in style and pay him for his lost time, and write word ahead and get out all the niggers around and have them waltz him into town with a torchlight procession and a brass band, and then he would be a hero, and so would we. But I reckoned it was about as well the way it was. We had Jim out of the chains in no time, and when Aunt Polly and Uncle Silas and Aunt Sally found out how good he helped the doctor nurse Tom, they made a heap of fuss over him and fixed him up prime, and give him all he wanted to eat and a good time and nothing to do. And we had him up to the sick room and had a high talk, and Tom give Jim forty dollars for being prisoner for us so patient and doing it up so good, and Jim was pleased most to death and busted out, and says, Da now, Huck, what I tell you? What I tell you up there on Jackson Island? I told you I got a hairy breast, and what's the sign on it? And I told you I've been rich once, and going to be rich again, and it's come true, and here she is. Da now, don't talk to me, signs is signs, mine I tell you, and I know just as well that I was going to be rich again, his eyes are standing here this minute. Then Tom, he talked along, and talked along, and says, let's all three slide out of here one of these nights and get an outfit, and go for howling adventures amongst the engines over in the territory, for a couple of weeks or two. And I says, all right, that suits me, but I ain't got no money for to buy the outfit, and I reckon I couldn't get none from home, because it's likely Papp's been back before now and got it all away from Judge Thatcher and drunk it up. No, he hate, Tom says, it's all there yet, six thousand dollars and more, and your Papp ain't ever been back since. Haven't, when I come away anyhow, Jim says, kind of solemn, he ain't coming back no more, Huck. I says, why, Jim? Ain't mind why, Huck, but he ain't coming back no more. But I kept at him, at last, he says, don't you remember the house that was floating down the river, and there was a man in there, and I went in and uncovered him, and didn't let you come in? Well, then you can get your money when you want it, because that was him. Tom's most well now, and got his bullet round his neck on a watch-guard for a watch, and is always seeing what time it is, and so there ain't nothing more to write about, and I am rotten glad of it, because if I'd a-node what a trouble it was to make a book, I wouldn't have tackled it, and ain't it going to no more. But I reckon I got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally, she's going to adopt me and civilize me, and I can't stand it. I've been there before. CHAPTER XIV CHAPTER THE LAST AND END OF ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBURY FIN by Mark Twain Red by John Greenman