CHAPTER I

“TOM!”

No answer.

“TOM!”

No answer.

“What's gone with that boy,  I wonder? You TOM!”

No answer.

The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them about the
room; then she put them up and looked out under them. She seldom or
never looked _through_ them for so small a thing as a boy; they were
her state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for “style,” not
service--she could have seen through a pair of stove-lids just as well.
She looked perplexed for a moment, and then said, not fiercely, but
still loud enough for the furniture to hear:

“Well, I lay if I get hold of you I'll--”

She did not finish, for by this time she was bending down and punching
under the bed with the broom, and so she needed breath to punctuate the
punches with. She resurrected nothing but the cat.

“I never did see the beat of that boy!”

She went to the open door and stood in it and looked out among the
tomato vines and “jimpson” weeds that constituted the garden. No Tom. So
she lifted up her voice at an angle calculated for distance and shouted:

“Y-o-u-u TOM!”

There was a slight noise behind her and she turned just in time to seize
a small boy by the slack of his roundabout and arrest his flight.

“There! I might 'a' thought of that closet. What you been doing in
there?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing! Look at your hands. And look at your mouth. What _is_ that
truck?”

“I don't know, aunt.”

“Well, I know. It's jam--that's what it is. Forty times I've said if you
didn't let that jam alone I'd skin you. Hand me that switch.”

The switch hovered in the air--the peril was desperate--

“My! Look behind you, aunt!”

The old lady whirled round, and snatched her skirts out of danger.
The lad fled on the instant, scrambled up the high board-fence, and
disappeared over it.

His aunt Polly stood surprised a moment, and then broke into a gentle
laugh.

“Hang the boy, can't I never learn anything? Ain't he played me tricks
enough like that for me to be looking out for him by this time? But old
fools is the biggest fools there is. Can't learn an old dog new tricks,
as the saying is. But my goodness, he never plays them alike, two days,
and how is a body to know what's coming? He 'pears to know just how long
he can torment me before I get my dander up, and he knows if he can make
out to put me off for a minute or make me laugh, it's all down again and
I can't hit him a lick. I ain't doing my duty by that boy, and that's
the Lord's truth, goodness knows. Spare the rod and spile the child,
as the Good Book says. I'm a laying up sin and suffering for us both,
I know. He's full of the Old Scratch, but laws-a-me! he's my own
dead sister's boy, poor thing, and I ain't got the heart to lash him,
somehow. Every time I let him off, my conscience does hurt me so, and
every time I hit him my old heart most breaks. Well-a-well, man that is
born of woman is of few days and full of trouble, as the Scripture
says, and I reckon it's so. He'll play hookey this evening, * and [*
Southwestern for “afternoon”] I'll just be obleeged to make him work,
tomorrow, to punish him. It's mighty hard to make him work Saturdays,
when all the boys is having holiday, but he hates work more than he
hates anything else, and I've _got_ to do some of my duty by him, or
I'll be the ruination of the child.”

Tom did play hookey, and he had a very good time. He got back home
barely in season to help Jim, the small colored boy, saw next-day's wood
and split the kindlings before supper--at least he was there in time
to tell his adventures to Jim while Jim did three-fourths of the work.
Tom's younger brother (or rather half-brother) Sid was already through
with his part of the work (picking up chips), for he was a quiet boy,
and had no adventurous, trouble-some ways.

While Tom was eating his supper, and stealing sugar as opportunity
offered, Aunt Polly asked him questions that were full of guile, and
very deep--for she wanted to trap him into damaging revealments. Like
many other simple-hearted souls, it was her pet vanity to believe she
was endowed with a talent for dark and mysterious diplomacy, and she
loved to contemplate her most transparent devices as marvels of low
cunning. Said she:

“Tom, it was middling warm in school, warn't it?”

“Yes'm.”

“Powerful warm, warn't it?”

“Yes'm.”

“Didn't you want to go in a-swimming, Tom?”

A bit of a scare shot through Tom--a touch of uncomfortable suspicion. He
searched Aunt Polly's face, but it told him nothing. So he said:

“No'm--well, not very much.”

The old lady reached out her hand and felt Tom's shirt, and said:

“But you ain't too warm now, though.” And it flattered her to reflect
that she had discovered that the shirt was dry without anybody knowing
that that was what she had in her mind. But in spite of her, Tom knew
where the wind lay, now. So he forestalled what might be the next move:

“Some of us pumped on our heads--mine's damp yet. See?”

Aunt Polly was vexed to think she had overlooked that bit of
circumstantial evidence, and missed a trick. Then she had a new
inspiration:

“Tom, you didn't have to undo your shirt collar where I sewed it, to
pump on your head, did you? Unbutton your jacket!”

The trouble vanished out of Tom's face. He opened his jacket. His shirt
collar was securely sewed.

“Bother! Well, go 'long with you. I'd made sure you'd played hookey
and been a-swimming. But I forgive ye, Tom. I reckon you're a kind of a
singed cat, as the saying is--better'n you look. _This_ time.”

She was half sorry her sagacity had miscarried, and half glad that Tom
had stumbled into obedient conduct for once.

But Sidney said:

“Well, now, if I didn't think you sewed his collar with white thread,
but it's black.”

“Why, I did sew it with white! Tom!”

But Tom did not wait for the rest. As he went out at the door he said:

“Siddy, I'll lick you for that.”

In a safe place Tom examined two large needles which were thrust into
the lapels of his jacket, and had thread bound about them--one needle
carried white thread and the other black. He said:

“She'd never noticed if it hadn't been for Sid. Confound it! sometimes
she sews it with white, and sometimes she sews it with black. I wish to
gee-miny she'd stick to one or t'other--I can't keep the run of 'em. But
I bet you I'll lam Sid for that. I'll learn him!”

He was not the Model Boy of the village. He knew the model boy very well
though--and loathed him.

Within two minutes, or even less, he had forgotten all his troubles. Not
because his troubles were one whit less heavy and bitter to him than a
man's are to a man, but because a new and powerful interest bore
them down and drove them out of his mind for the time--just as men's
misfortunes are forgotten in the excitement of new enterprises. This new
interest was a valued novelty in whistling, which he had just acquired
from a negro, and he was suffering to practise it un-disturbed. It
consisted in a peculiar bird-like turn, a sort of liquid warble,
produced by touching the tongue to the roof of the mouth at short
intervals in the midst of the music--the reader probably remembers how to
do it, if he has ever been a boy. Diligence and attention soon gave him
the knack of it, and he strode down the street with his mouth full of
harmony and his soul full of gratitude. He felt much as an astronomer
feels who has discovered a new planet--no doubt, as far as strong, deep,
unalloyed pleasure is concerned, the advantage was with the boy, not the
astronomer.

The summer evenings were long. It was not dark, yet. Presently Tom
checked his whistle. A stranger was before him--a boy a shade larger
than himself. A new-comer of any age or either sex was an im-pressive
curiosity in the poor little shabby village of St. Petersburg. This boy
was well dressed, too--well dressed on a week-day. This was simply as
astounding. His cap was a dainty thing, his close-buttoned blue cloth
roundabout was new and natty, and so were his pantaloons. He had shoes
on--and it was only Friday. He even wore a necktie, a bright bit of
ribbon. He had a citified air about him that ate into Tom's vitals. The
more Tom stared at the splendid marvel, the higher he turned up his nose
at his finery and the shabbier and shabbier his own outfit seemed to
him to grow. Neither boy spoke. If one moved, the other moved--but only
sidewise, in a circle; they kept face to face and eye to eye all the
time. Finally Tom said:

“I can lick you!”

“I'd like to see you try it.”

“Well, I can do it.”

“No you can't, either.”

“Yes I can.”

“No you can't.”

“I can.”

“You can't.”

“Can!”

“Can't!”

An uncomfortable pause. Then Tom said:

“What's your name?”

“'Tisn't any of your business, maybe.”

“Well I 'low I'll _make_ it my business.”

“Well why don't you?”

“If you say much, I will.”

“Much--much--_much_. There now.”

“Oh, you think you're mighty smart, _don't_ you? I could lick you with
one hand tied behind me, if I wanted to.”

“Well why don't you _do_ it? You _say_ you can do it.”

“Well I _will_, if you fool with me.”

“Oh yes--I've seen whole families in the same fix.”

“Smarty! You think you're _some_, now, _don't_ you? Oh, what a hat!”

“You can lump that hat if you don't like it. I dare you to knock it
off--and anybody that'll take a dare will suck eggs.”

“You're a liar!”

“You're another.”

“You're a fighting liar and dasn't take it up.”

“Aw--take a walk!”

“Say--if you give me much more of your sass I'll take and bounce a rock
off'n your head.”

“Oh, of _course_ you will.”

“Well I _will_.”

“Well why don't you _do_ it then? What do you keep _saying_ you will
for? Why don't you _do_ it? It's because you're afraid.”

“I _ain't_ afraid.”

“You are.”

“I ain't.”

“You are.”

Another pause, and more eying and sidling around each other. Presently
they were shoulder to shoulder. Tom said:

“Get away from here!”

“Go away yourself!”

“I won't.”

“I won't either.”

So they stood, each with a foot placed at an angle as a brace, and both
shoving with might and main, and glowering at each other with hate. But
neither could get an advantage. After struggling till both were hot and
flushed, each relaxed his strain with watchful caution, and Tom said:

“You're a coward and a pup. I'll tell my big brother on you, and he can
thrash you with his little finger, and I'll make him do it, too.”

“What do I care for your big brother? I've got a brother that's bigger
than he is--and what's more, he can throw him over that fence, too.”
 [Both brothers were imaginary.]

“That's a lie.”

“_Your_ saying so don't make it so.”

Tom drew a line in the dust with his big toe, and said:

“I dare you to step over that, and I'll lick you till you can't stand
up. Anybody that'll take a dare will steal sheep.”

The new boy stepped over promptly, and said:

“Now you said you'd do it, now let's see you do it.”

“Don't you crowd me now; you better look out.”

“Well, you _said_ you'd do it--why don't you do it?”

“By jingo! for two cents I _will_ do it.”

The new boy took two broad coppers out of his pocket and held them out
with derision. Tom struck them to the ground. In an instant both boys
were rolling and tumbling in the dirt, gripped together like cats; and
for the space of a minute they tugged and tore at each other's hair and
clothes, punched and scratched each other's nose, and covered themselves
with dust and glory. Presently the confusion took form, and through the
fog of battle Tom appeared, seated astride the new boy, and pounding him
with his fists. “Holler 'nuff!” said he.

The boy only struggled to free himself. He was crying--mainly from rage.

“Holler 'nuff!”--and the pounding went on.

At last the stranger got out a smothered “'Nuff!” and Tom let him up and
said:

“Now that'll learn you. Better look out who you're fooling with next
time.”

The new boy went off brushing the dust from his clothes, sobbing,
snuffling, and occasionally looking back and shaking his head and
threatening what he would do to Tom the “next time he caught him out.”
 To which Tom responded with jeers, and started off in high feather, and
as soon as his back was turned the new boy snatched up a stone, threw it
and hit him between the shoulders and then turned tail and ran like
an antelope. Tom chased the traitor home, and thus found out where he
lived. He then held a position at the gate for some time, daring the
enemy to come outside, but the enemy only made faces at him through the
window and declined. At last the enemy's mother appeared, and called Tom
a bad, vicious, vulgar child, and ordered him away. So he went away; but
he said he “'lowed” to “lay” for that boy.

He got home pretty late that night, and when he climbed cautiously in
at the window, he uncovered an ambuscade, in the person of his aunt; and
when she saw the state his clothes were in her resolution to turn his
Saturday holiday into captivity at hard labor became adamantine in its
firmness.




CHAPTER II

SATURDAY morning was come, and all the summer world was bright and
fresh, and brimming with life. There was a song in every heart; and if
the heart was young the music issued at the lips. There was cheer in
every face and a spring in every step. The locust-trees were in bloom
and the fragrance of the blossoms filled the air. Cardiff Hill, beyond
the village and above it, was green with vegetation and it lay just far
enough away to seem a Delectable Land, dreamy, reposeful, and inviting.

Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a
long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and
a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board
fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a
burden. Sighing, he dipped his brush and passed it along the topmost
plank; repeated the operation; did it again; compared the insignificant
whitewashed streak with the far-reaching continent of unwhitewashed
fence, and sat down on a tree-box discouraged. Jim came skipping out at
the gate with a tin pail, and singing Buffalo Gals. Bringing water from
the town pump had always been hateful work in Tom's eyes, before, but
now it did not strike him so. He remembered that there was company at
the pump. White, mulatto, and negro boys and girls were always there
waiting their turns, resting, trading playthings, quarrelling, fighting,
skylarking. And he remembered that although the pump was only a hundred
and fifty yards off, Jim never got back with a bucket of water under an
hour--and even then somebody generally had to go after him. Tom said:

“Say, Jim, I'll fetch the water if you'll whitewash some.”

Jim shook his head and said:

“Can't, Mars Tom. Ole missis, she tole me I got to go an' git dis water
an' not stop foolin' roun' wid anybody. She say she spec' Mars Tom gwine
to ax me to whitewash, an' so she tole me go 'long an' 'tend to my own
business--she 'lowed _she'd_ 'tend to de whitewashin'.”

“Oh, never you mind what she said, Jim. That's the way she always talks.
Gimme the bucket--I won't be gone only a a minute. _She_ won't ever
know.”

“Oh, I dasn't, Mars Tom. Ole missis she'd take an' tar de head off'n me.
'Deed she would.”

“_She_! She never licks anybody--whacks 'em over the head with her
thimble--and who cares for that, I'd like to know. She talks awful, but
talk don't hurt--anyways it don't if she don't cry. Jim, I'll give you a
marvel. I'll give you a white alley!”

Jim began to waver.

“White alley, Jim! And it's a bully taw.”

“My! Dat's a mighty gay marvel, I tell you! But Mars Tom I's powerful
'fraid ole missis--”

“And besides, if you will I'll show you my sore toe.”

Jim was only human--this attraction was too much for him. He put down
his pail, took the white alley, and bent over the toe with absorbing
interest while the bandage was being unwound. In another moment he
was flying down the street with his pail and a tingling rear, Tom was
whitewashing with vigor, and Aunt Polly was retiring from the field with
a slipper in her hand and triumph in her eye.

But Tom's energy did not last. He began to think of the fun he had
planned for this day, and his sorrows multiplied. Soon the free boys
would come tripping along on all sorts of delicious expeditions, and
they would make a world of fun of him for having to work--the very
thought of it burnt him like fire. He got out his worldly wealth and
examined it--bits of toys, marbles, and trash; enough to buy an exchange
of _work_, maybe, but not half enough to buy so much as half an hour
of pure freedom. So he returned his straitened means to his pocket, and
gave up the idea of trying to buy the boys. At this dark and hopeless
moment an inspiration burst upon him! Nothing less than a great,
magnificent inspiration.

He took up his brush and went tranquilly to work. Ben Rogers hove in
sight presently--the very boy, of all boys, whose ridicule he had been
dreading. Ben's gait was the hop-skip-and-jump--proof enough that his
heart was light and his anticipations high. He was eating an apple, and
giving a long, melodious whoop, at intervals, followed by a deep-toned
ding-dong-dong, ding-dong-dong, for he was personating a steamboat. As
he drew near, he slackened speed, took the middle of the street, leaned
far over to starboard and rounded to ponderously and with laborious pomp
and circumstance--for he was personating the Big Missouri, and considered
himself to be drawing nine feet of water. He was boat and captain and
engine-bells combined, so he had to imagine himself standing on his own
hurricane-deck giving the orders and executing them:

“Stop her, sir! Ting-a-ling-ling!” The headway ran almost out, and he
drew up slowly toward the sidewalk.

“Ship up to back! Ting-a-ling-ling!” His arms straightened and stiffened
down his sides.

“Set her back on the stabboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow! ch-chow-wow!
Chow!” His right hand, mean-time, describing stately circles--for it was
representing a forty-foot wheel.

“Let her go back on the labboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow-ch-chow-chow!”
 The left hand began to describe circles.

“Stop the stabboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Stop the labboard! Come ahead on
the stabboard! Stop her! Let your outside turn over slow! Ting-a-ling-ling!
Chow-ow-ow! Get out that head-line! _lively_ now! Come--out with
your spring-line--what're you about there! Take a turn round that stump
with the bight of it! Stand by that stage, now--let her go! Done with
the engines, sir! Ting-a-ling-ling! SH'T! S'H'T! SH'T!” (trying the
gauge-cocks).

Tom went on whitewashing--paid no attention to the steamboat. Ben stared
a moment and then said: “_Hi-Yi! You're_ up a stump, ain't you!”

No answer. Tom surveyed his last touch with the eye of an artist, then
he gave his brush another gentle sweep and surveyed the result, as
before. Ben ranged up alongside of him. Tom's mouth watered for the
apple, but he stuck to his work. Ben said:

“Hello, old chap, you got to work, hey?”

Tom wheeled suddenly and said:

“Why, it's you, Ben! I warn't noticing.”

“Say--I'm going in a-swimming, I am. Don't you wish you could? But of
course you'd druther _work_--wouldn't you? Course you would!”

Tom contemplated the boy a bit, and said:

“What do you call work?”

“Why, ain't _that_ work?”

Tom resumed his whitewashing, and answered carelessly:

“Well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain't. All I know, is, it suits Tom
Sawyer.”

“Oh come, now, you don't mean to let on that you _like_ it?”

The brush continued to move.

“Like it? Well, I don't see why I oughtn't to like it. Does a boy get a
chance to whitewash a fence every day?”

That put the thing in a new light. Ben stopped nibbling his apple.
Tom swept his brush daintily back and forth--stepped back to note the
effect--added a touch here and there--criticised the effect again--Ben
watching every move and getting more and more interested, more and more
absorbed. Presently he said:

“Say, Tom, let _me_ whitewash a little.”

Tom considered, was about to consent; but he altered his mind:

“No--no--I reckon it wouldn't hardly do, Ben. You see, Aunt Polly's awful
particular about this fence--right here on the street, you know--but if it
was the back fence I wouldn't mind and _she_ wouldn't. Yes, she's awful
particular about this fence; it's got to be done very careful; I reckon
there ain't one boy in a thousand, maybe two thousand, that can do it
the way it's got to be done.”

“No--is that so? Oh come, now--lemme just try. Only just a little--I'd let
_you_, if you was me, Tom.”

“Ben, I'd like to, honest injun; but Aunt Polly--well, Jim wanted to do
it, but she wouldn't let him; Sid wanted to do it, and she wouldn't let
Sid. Now don't you see how I'm fixed? If you was to tackle this fence
and anything was to happen to it--”

“Oh, shucks, I'll be just as careful. Now lemme try. Say--I'll give you
the core of my apple.”

“Well, here--No, Ben, now don't. I'm afeard--”

“I'll give you _all_ of it!”

Tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his
heart. And while the late steamer Big Missouri worked and sweated in the
sun, the retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by,
dangled his legs, munched his apple, and planned the slaughter of more
innocents. There was no lack of material; boys happened along every
little while; they came to jeer, but remained to whitewash. By the time
Ben was fagged out, Tom had traded the next chance to Billy Fisher for
a kite, in good repair; and when he played out, Johnny Miller bought in
for a dead rat and a string to swing it with--and so on, and so on, hour
after hour. And when the middle of the afternoon came, from being a
poor poverty-stricken boy in the morning, Tom was literally rolling in
wealth. He had besides the things before mentioned, twelve marbles, part
of a jews-harp, a piece of blue bottle-glass to look through, a spool
cannon, a key that wouldn't unlock anything, a fragment of chalk, a
glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles,
six fire-crackers, a kitten with only one eye, a brass door-knob, a
dog-collar--but no dog--the handle of a knife, four pieces of orange-peel,
and a dilapidated old window sash.

He had had a nice, good, idle time all the while--plenty of company--and
the fence had three coats of whitewash on it! If he hadn't run out of
whitewash he would have bankrupted every boy in the village.

Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He
had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it--namely,
that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary
to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and
wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have
comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is _obliged_ to do,
and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And
this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or
performing on a tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing
Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in England
who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a
daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable
money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn
it into work and then they would resign.

The boy mused awhile over the substantial change which had taken place
in his worldly circumstances, and then wended toward headquarters to
report.




CHAPTER III

TOM presented himself before Aunt Polly, who was sitting by an
open window in a pleasant rearward apartment, which was bedroom,
breakfast-room, dining-room, and library, combined. The balmy summer
air, the restful quiet, the odor of the flowers, and the drowsing
murmur of the bees had had their effect, and she was nodding over her
knitting--for she had no company but the cat, and it was asleep in her
lap. Her spectacles were propped up on her gray head for safety. She had
thought that of course Tom had deserted long ago, and she wondered at
seeing him place himself in her power again in this intrepid way. He
said: “Mayn't I go and play now, aunt?”

“What, a'ready? How much have you done?”

“It's all done, aunt.”

“Tom, don't lie to me--I can't bear it.”

“I ain't, aunt; it _is_ all done.”

Aunt Polly placed small trust in such evidence. She went out to see for
herself; and she would have been content to find twenty per cent. of
Tom's statement true. When she found the entire fence white-washed, and
not only whitewashed but elaborately coated and recoated, and even a
streak added to the ground, her astonishment was almost unspeakable. She
said:

“Well, I never! There's no getting round it, you can work when you're a
mind to, Tom.” And then she diluted the compliment by adding, “But it's
powerful seldom you're a mind to, I'm bound to say. Well, go 'long and
play; but mind you get back some time in a week, or I'll tan you.”

She was so overcome by the splendor of his achievement that she took
him into the closet and selected a choice apple and delivered it to him,
along with an improving lecture upon the added value and flavor a treat
took to itself when it came without sin through virtuous effort.
And while she closed with a happy Scriptural flourish, he “hooked” a
doughnut.

Then he skipped out, and saw Sid just starting up the outside stairway
that led to the back rooms on the second floor. Clods were handy and
the air was full of them in a twinkling. They raged around Sid like a
hail-storm; and before Aunt Polly could collect her surprised faculties
and sally to the rescue, six or seven clods had taken personal effect,
and Tom was over the fence and gone. There was a gate, but as a general
thing he was too crowded for time to make use of it. His soul was at
peace, now that he had settled with Sid for calling attention to his
black thread and getting him into trouble.

Tom skirted the block, and came round into a muddy alley that led by the
back of his aunt's cow-stable. He presently got safely beyond the reach
of capture and punishment, and hastened toward the public square of the
village, where two “military” companies of boys had met for conflict,
according to previous appointment. Tom was General of one of these
armies, Joe Harper (a bosom friend) General of the other. These two
great commanders did not condescend to fight in person--that being better
suited to the still smaller fry--but sat together on an eminence
and conducted the field operations by orders delivered through
aides-de-camp. Tom's army won a great victory, after a long and
hard-fought battle. Then the dead were counted, prisoners exchanged,
the terms of the next disagreement agreed upon, and the day for the
necessary battle appointed; after which the armies fell into line and
marched away, and Tom turned homeward alone.

As he was passing by the house where Jeff Thatcher lived, he saw a new
girl in the garden--a lovely little blue-eyed creature with yellow
hair plaited into two long-tails, white summer frock and embroidered
pan-talettes. The fresh-crowned hero fell without firing a shot. A
certain Amy Lawrence vanished out of his heart and left not even a
memory of herself behind. He had thought he loved her to distraction;
he had regarded his passion as adoration; and behold it was only a poor
little evanescent partiality. He had been months winning her; she had
confessed hardly a week ago; he had been the happiest and the proudest
boy in the world only seven short days, and here in one instant of time
she had gone out of his heart like a casual stranger whose visit is
done.

He worshipped this new angel with furtive eye, till he saw that she had
discovered him; then he pretended he did not know she was present, and
began to “show off” in all sorts of absurd boyish ways, in order to win
her admiration. He kept up this grotesque foolishness for some time;
but by-and-by, while he was in the midst of some dangerous gymnastic
performances, he glanced aside and saw that the little girl was wending
her way toward the house. Tom came up to the fence and leaned on it,
grieving, and hoping she would tarry yet awhile longer. She halted a
moment on the steps and then moved toward the door. Tom heaved a great
sigh as she put her foot on the threshold. But his face lit up,
right away, for she tossed a pansy over the fence a moment before she
disappeared.

The boy ran around and stopped within a foot or two of the flower, and
then shaded his eyes with his hand and began to look down street as
if he had discovered something of interest going on in that direction.
Presently he picked up a straw and began trying to balance it on his
nose, with his head tilted far back; and as he moved from side to side,
in his efforts, he edged nearer and nearer toward the pansy; finally his
bare foot rested upon it, his pliant toes closed upon it, and he hopped
away with the treasure and disappeared round the corner. But only for a
minute--only while he could button the flower inside his jacket, next
his heart--or next his stomach, possibly, for he was not much posted in
anatomy, and not hypercritical, anyway.

He returned, now, and hung about the fence till nightfall, “showing
off,” as before; but the girl never exhibited herself again, though Tom
comforted himself a little with the hope that she had been near some
window, meantime, and been aware of his attentions. Finally he strode
home reluctantly, with his poor head full of visions.

All through supper his spirits were so high that his aunt wondered “what
had got into the child.” He took a good scolding about clodding Sid, and
did not seem to mind it in the least. He tried to steal sugar under his
aunt's very nose, and got his knuckles rapped for it. He said:

“Aunt, you don't whack Sid when he takes it.”

“Well, Sid don't torment a body the way you do. You'd be always into
that sugar if I warn't watching you.”

Presently she stepped into the kitchen, and Sid, happy in his immunity,
reached for the sugar-bowl--a sort of glorying over Tom which was
wellnigh unbearable. But Sid's fingers slipped and the bowl dropped and
broke. Tom was in ecstasies. In such ecstasies that he even controlled
his tongue and was silent. He said to himself that he would not speak a
word, even when his aunt came in, but would sit perfectly still till she
asked who did the mischief; and then he would tell, and there would be
nothing so good in the world as to see that pet model “catch it.” He was
so brimful of exultation that he could hardly hold himself when the old
lady came back and stood above the wreck discharging lightnings of wrath
from over her spectacles. He said to himself, “Now it's coming!” And the
next instant he was sprawling on the floor! The potent palm was uplifted
to strike again when Tom cried out:

“Hold on, now, what 'er you belting _me_ for?--Sid broke it!”

Aunt Polly paused, perplexed, and Tom looked for healing pity. But when
she got her tongue again, she only said:

“Umf! Well, you didn't get a lick amiss, I reckon. You been into some
other audacious mischief when I wasn't around, like enough.”

Then her conscience reproached her, and she yearned to say something
kind and loving; but she judged that this would be construed into a
confession that she had been in the wrong, and discipline forbade that.
So she kept silence, and went about her affairs with a troubled heart.
Tom sulked in a corner and exalted his woes. He knew that in her heart
his aunt was on her knees to him, and he was morosely gratified by the
consciousness of it. He would hang out no signals, he would take notice
of none. He knew that a yearning glance fell upon him, now and then,
through a film of tears, but he refused recognition of it. He pictured
himself lying sick unto death and his aunt bending over him beseeching
one little forgiving word, but he would turn his face to the wall, and
die with that word unsaid. Ah, how would she feel then? And he pictured
himself brought home from the river, dead, with his curls all wet, and
his sore heart at rest. How she would throw herself upon him, and how
her tears would fall like rain, and her lips pray God to give her back
her boy and she would never, never abuse him any more! But he would
lie there cold and white and make no sign--a poor little sufferer, whose
griefs were at an end. He so worked upon his feelings with the pathos of
these dreams, that he had to keep swallowing, he was so like to choke;
and his eyes swam in a blur of water, which overflowed when he winked,
and ran down and trickled from the end of his nose. And such a luxury to
him was this petting of his sorrows, that he could not bear to have any
worldly cheeriness or any grating delight intrude upon it; it was too
sacred for such contact; and so, presently, when his cousin Mary danced
in, all alive with the joy of seeing home again after an age-long visit
of one week to the country, he got up and moved in clouds and darkness
out at one door as she brought song and sunshine in at the other.

He wandered far from the accustomed haunts of boys, and sought desolate
places that were in harmony with his spirit. A log raft in the river
invited him, and he seated himself on its outer edge and contemplated
the dreary vastness of the stream, wishing, the while, that he could
only be drowned, all at once and unconsciously, without undergoing the
uncomfortable routine devised by nature. Then he thought of his flower.
He got it out, rumpled and wilted, and it mightily increased his dismal
felicity. He wondered if she would pity him if she knew? Would she
cry, and wish that she had a right to put her arms around his neck and
comfort him? Or would she turn coldly away like all the hollow world?
This picture brought such an agony of pleasurable suffering that he
worked it over and over again in his mind and set it up in new and
varied lights, till he wore it threadbare. At last he rose up sighing
and departed in the darkness.

About half-past nine or ten o'clock he came along the deserted street to
where the Adored Unknown lived; he paused a moment; no sound fell upon
his listening ear; a candle was casting a dull glow upon the curtain
of a second-story window. Was the sacred presence there? He climbed the
fence, threaded his stealthy way through the plants, till he stood under
that window; he looked up at it long, and with emotion; then he laid him
down on the ground under it, disposing himself upon his back, with his
hands clasped upon his breast and holding his poor wilted flower.
And thus he would die--out in the cold world, with no shelter over his
homeless head, no friendly hand to wipe the death-damps from his brow,
no loving face to bend pityingly over him when the great agony came. And
thus _she_ would see him when she looked out upon the glad morning, and
oh! would she drop one little tear upon his poor, lifeless form, would
she heave one little sigh to see a bright young life so rudely blighted,
so untimely cut down?

The window went up, a maid-servant's discordant voice profaned the holy
calm, and a deluge of water drenched the prone martyr's remains!

The strangling hero sprang up with a relieving snort. There was a whiz
as of a missile in the air, mingled with the murmur of a curse, a sound
as of shivering glass followed, and a small, vague form went over the
fence and shot away in the gloom.

Not long after, as Tom, all undressed for bed, was surveying his
drenched garments by the light of a tallow dip, Sid woke up; but if he
had any dim idea of making any “references to allusions,” he thought
better of it and held his peace, for there was danger in Tom's eye.

Tom turned in without the added vexation of prayers, and Sid made mental
note of the omission.




CHAPTER IV

THE sun rose upon a tranquil world, and beamed down upon the peaceful
village like a benediction. Breakfast over, Aunt Polly had family
worship: it began with a prayer built from the ground up of solid
courses of Scriptural quotations, welded together with a thin mortar of
originality; and from the summit of this she delivered a grim chapter of
the Mosaic Law, as from Sinai.

Then Tom girded up his loins, so to speak, and went to work to “get
his verses.” Sid had learned his lesson days before. Tom bent all his
energies to the memorizing of five verses, and he chose part of the
Sermon on the Mount, because he could find no verses that were shorter.
At the end of half an hour Tom had a vague general idea of his lesson,
but no more, for his mind was traversing the whole field of human
thought, and his hands were busy with distracting recreations. Mary took
his book to hear him recite, and he tried to find his way through the
fog:

“Blessed are the--a--a--”

“Poor”--

“Yes--poor; blessed are the poor--a--a--”

“In spirit--”

“In spirit; blessed are the poor in spirit, for they--they--”

“_Theirs_--”

“For _theirs_. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom
of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn, for they--they--”

“Sh--”

“For they--a--”

“S, H, A--”

“For they S, H--Oh, I don't know what it is!”

“_Shall_!”

“Oh, _shall_! for they shall--for they shall--a--a--shall mourn--a--a--blessed
are they that shall--they that--a--they that shall mourn, for they
shall--a--shall _what_? Why don't you tell me, Mary?--what do you want to
be so mean for?”

“Oh, Tom, you poor thick-headed thing, I'm not teasing you. I wouldn't
do that. You must go and learn it again. Don't you be discouraged, Tom,
you'll manage it--and if you do, I'll give you something ever so nice.
There, now, that's a good boy.”

“All right! What is it, Mary, tell me what it is.”

“Never you mind, Tom. You know if I say it's nice, it is nice.”

“You bet you that's so, Mary. All right, I'll tackle it again.”

And he did “tackle it again”--and under the double pressure of curiosity
and prospective gain he did it with such spirit that he accomplished a
shining success. Mary gave him a brand-new “Barlow” knife worth twelve
and a half cents; and the convulsion of delight that swept his system
shook him to his foundations. True, the knife would not cut anything,
but it was a “sure-enough” Barlow, and there was inconceivable grandeur
in that--though where the Western boys ever got the idea that such a
weapon could possibly be counterfeited to its injury is an imposing
mystery and will always remain so, perhaps. Tom contrived to scarify the
cupboard with it, and was arranging to begin on the bureau, when he was
called off to dress for Sunday-school.

Mary gave him a tin basin of water and a piece of soap, and he went
outside the door and set the basin on a little bench there; then he
dipped the soap in the water and laid it down; turned up his sleeves;
poured out the water on the ground, gently, and then entered the kitchen
and began to wipe his face diligently on the towel behind the door. But
Mary removed the towel and said:

“Now ain't you ashamed, Tom. You mustn't be so bad. Water won't hurt
you.”

Tom was a trifle disconcerted. The basin was refilled, and this time he
stood over it a little while, gathering resolution; took in a big breath
and began. When he entered the kitchen presently, with both eyes shut
and groping for the towel with his hands, an honorable testimony of
suds and water was dripping from his face. But when he emerged from
the towel, he was not yet satisfactory, for the clean territory stopped
short at his chin and his jaws, like a mask; below and beyond this line
there was a dark expanse of unirrigated soil that spread downward in
front and backward around his neck. Mary took him in hand, and when she
was done with him he was a man and a brother, without distinction of
color, and his saturated hair was neatly brushed, and its short curls
wrought into a dainty and symmetrical general effect. [He privately
smoothed out the curls, with labor and difficulty, and plastered his
hair close down to his head; for he held curls to be effeminate, and his
own filled his life with bitterness.] Then Mary got out a suit of his
clothing that had been used only on Sundays during two years--they were
simply called his “other clothes”--and so by that we know the size of his
wardrobe. The girl “put him to rights” after he had dressed himself;
she buttoned his neat roundabout up to his chin, turned his vast shirt
collar down over his shoulders, brushed him off and crowned him with
his speckled straw hat. He now looked exceedingly improved and
uncomfortable. He was fully as uncomfortable as he looked; for there
was a restraint about whole clothes and cleanliness that galled him. He
hoped that Mary would forget his shoes, but the hope was blighted; she
coated them thoroughly with tallow, as was the custom, and brought
them out. He lost his temper and said he was always being made to do
everything he didn't want to do. But Mary said, persuasively:

“Please, Tom--that's a good boy.”

So he got into the shoes snarling. Mary was soon ready, and the three
children set out for Sunday-school--a place that Tom hated with his whole
heart; but Sid and Mary were fond of it.

Sabbath-school hours were from nine to half-past ten; and then church
service. Two of the children always remained for the sermon voluntarily,
and the other always remained too--for stronger reasons. The church's
high-backed, uncushioned pews would seat about three hundred persons;
the edifice was but a small, plain affair, with a sort of pine board
tree-box on top of it for a steeple. At the door Tom dropped back a step
and accosted a Sunday-dressed comrade:

“Say, Billy, got a yaller ticket?”

“Yes.”

“What'll you take for her?”

“What'll you give?”

“Piece of lickrish and a fish-hook.”

“Less see 'em.”

Tom exhibited. They were satisfactory, and the property changed hands.
Then Tom traded a couple of white alleys for three red tickets, and some
small trifle or other for a couple of blue ones. He waylaid other
boys as they came, and went on buying tickets of various colors ten
or fifteen minutes longer. He entered the church, now, with a swarm
of clean and noisy boys and girls, proceeded to his seat and started
a quarrel with the first boy that came handy. The teacher, a grave,
elderly man, interfered; then turned his back a moment and Tom pulled a
boy's hair in the next bench, and was absorbed in his book when the boy
turned around; stuck a pin in another boy, presently, in order to hear
him say “Ouch!” and got a new reprimand from his teacher. Tom's whole
class were of a pattern--restless, noisy, and troublesome. When they came
to recite their lessons, not one of them knew his verses perfectly, but
had to be prompted all along. However, they worried through, and each
got his reward--in small blue tickets, each with a passage of Scripture
on it; each blue ticket was pay for two verses of the recitation. Ten
blue tickets equalled a red one, and could be exchanged for it; ten red
tickets equalled a yellow one; for ten yellow tickets the superintendent
gave a very plainly bound Bible (worth forty cents in those easy
times) to the pupil. How many of my readers would have the industry and
application to memorize two thousand verses, even for a Dore Bible? And
yet Mary had acquired two Bibles in this way--it was the patient work of
two years--and a boy of German parentage had won four or five. He once
recited three thousand verses without stopping; but the strain upon his
mental faculties was too great, and he was little better than an idiot
from that day forth--a grievous misfortune for the school, for on great
occasions, before company, the superintendent (as Tom expressed it)
had always made this boy come out and “spread himself.” Only the older
pupils managed to keep their tickets and stick to their tedious work
long enough to get a Bible, and so the delivery of one of these prizes
was a rare and noteworthy circumstance; the successful pupil was so
great and conspicuous for that day that on the spot every scholar's
heart was fired with a fresh ambition that often lasted a couple
of weeks. It is possible that Tom's mental stomach had never really
hungered for one of those prizes, but unquestionably his entire being
had for many a day longed for the glory and the eclat that came with it.

In due course the superintendent stood up in front of the pulpit, with
a closed hymn-book in his hand and his forefinger inserted between its
leaves, and commanded attention. When a Sunday-school superintendent
makes his customary little speech, a hymn-book in the hand is as
necessary as is the inevitable sheet of music in the hand of a singer
who stands forward on the platform and sings a solo at a concert--though
why, is a mystery: for neither the hymn-book nor the sheet of music
is ever referred to by the sufferer. This superintendent was a slim
creature of thirty-five, with a sandy goatee and short sandy hair; he
wore a stiff standing-collar whose upper edge almost reached his ears
and whose sharp points curved forward abreast the corners of his mouth--a
fence that compelled a straight lookout ahead, and a turning of the
whole body when a side view was required; his chin was propped on a
spreading cravat which was as broad and as long as a bank-note, and had
fringed ends; his boot toes were turned sharply up, in the fashion
of the day, like sleigh-runners--an effect patiently and laboriously
produced by the young men by sitting with their toes pressed against a
wall for hours together. Mr. Walters was very earnest of mien, and very
sincere and honest at heart; and he held sacred things and places
in such reverence, and so separated them from worldly matters, that
unconsciously to himself his Sunday-school voice had acquired a peculiar
intonation which was wholly absent on week-days. He began after this
fashion:

“Now, children, I want you all to sit up just as straight and pretty as
you can and give me all your attention for a minute or two. There--that
is it. That is the way good little boys and girls should do. I see one
little girl who is looking out of the window--I am afraid she thinks I
am out there somewhere--perhaps up in one of the trees making a speech
to the little birds. [Applausive titter.] I want to tell you how good it
makes me feel to see so many bright, clean little faces assembled in a
place like this, learning to do right and be good.” And so forth and so
on. It is not necessary to set down the rest of the oration. It was of a
pattern which does not vary, and so it is familiar to us all.

The latter third of the speech was marred by the resumption of fights
and other recreations among certain of the bad boys, and by fidgetings
and whisperings that extended far and wide, washing even to the bases of
isolated and incorruptible rocks like Sid and Mary. But now every sound
ceased suddenly, with the subsidence of Mr. Walters' voice, and the
conclusion of the speech was received with a burst of silent gratitude.

A good part of the whispering had been occasioned by an event which was
more or less rare--the entrance of visitors: lawyer Thatcher, accompanied
by a very feeble and aged man; a fine, portly, middle-aged gentleman
with iron-gray hair; and a dignified lady who was doubtless the latter's
wife. The lady was leading a child. Tom had been restless and full of
chafings and repinings; conscience-smitten, too--he could not meet Amy
Lawrence's eye, he could not brook her loving gaze. But when he saw this
small newcomer his soul was all ablaze with bliss in a moment. The next
moment he was “showing off” with all his might--cuffing boys, pulling
hair, making faces--in a word, using every art that seemed likely to
fascinate a girl and win her applause. His exaltation had but one
alloy--the memory of his humiliation in this angel's garden--and that
record in sand was fast washing out, under the waves of happiness that
were sweeping over it now.

The visitors were given the highest seat of honor, and as soon as Mr.
Walters' speech was finished, he introduced them to the school. The
middle-aged man turned out to be a prodigious personage--no less a one
than the county judge--altogether the most august creation these children
had ever looked upon--and they wondered what kind of material he was made
of--and they half wanted to hear him roar, and were half afraid he might,
too. He was from Constantinople, twelve miles away--so he had travelled,
and seen the world--these very eyes had looked upon the county
court-house--which was said to have a tin roof. The awe which these
reflections inspired was attested by the impressive silence and the
ranks of staring eyes. This was the great Judge Thatcher, brother of
their own lawyer. Jeff Thatcher immediately went forward, to be familiar
with the great man and be envied by the school. It would have been music
to his soul to hear the whisperings:

“Look at him, Jim! He's a going up there. Say--look! he's a going to
shake hands with him--he _is_ shaking hands with him! By jings, don't you
wish you was Jeff?”

Mr. Walters fell to “showing off,” with all sorts of official bustlings
and activities, giving orders, delivering judgments, discharging
directions here, there, everywhere that he could find a target. The
librarian “showed off”--running hither and thither with his arms full of
books and making a deal of the splutter and fuss that insect authority
delights in. The young lady teachers “showed off”--bending sweetly over
pupils that were lately being boxed, lifting pretty warning fingers
at bad little boys and patting good ones lovingly. The young gentlemen
teachers “showed off” with small scoldings and other little displays of
authority and fine attention to discipline--and most of the teachers, of
both sexes, found business up at the library, by the pulpit; and it was
business that frequently had to be done over again two or three times
(with much seeming vexation). The little girls “showed off” in various
ways, and the little boys “showed off” with such diligence that the air
was thick with paper wads and the murmur of scufflings. And above it
all the great man sat and beamed a majestic judicial smile upon all
the house, and warmed himself in the sun of his own grandeur--for he was
“showing off,” too.

There was only one thing wanting to make Mr. Walters' ecstasy complete,
and that was a chance to deliver a Bible-prize and exhibit a prodigy.
Several pupils had a few yellow tickets, but none had enough--he had been
around among the star pupils inquiring. He would have given worlds, now,
to have that German lad back again with a sound mind.

And now at this moment, when hope was dead, Tom Sawyer came forward with
nine yellow tickets, nine red tickets, and ten blue ones, and demanded
a Bible. This was a thunderbolt out of a clear sky. Walters was not
expecting an application from this source for the next ten years. But
there was no getting around it--here were the certified checks, and they
were good for their face. Tom was therefore elevated to a place with
the Judge and the other elect, and the great news was announced from
headquarters. It was the most stunning surprise of the decade, and
so profound was the sensation that it lifted the new hero up to the
judicial one's altitude, and the school had two marvels to gaze upon
in place of one. The boys were all eaten up with envy--but those that
suffered the bitterest pangs were those who perceived too late that they
themselves had contributed to this hated splendor by trading tickets to
Tom for the wealth he had amassed in selling whitewashing privileges.
These despised themselves, as being the dupes of a wily fraud, a
guileful snake in the grass.

The prize was delivered to Tom with as much effusion as the
superintendent could pump up under the circumstances; but it lacked
somewhat of the true gush, for the poor fellow's instinct taught him
that there was a mystery here that could not well bear the light,
perhaps; it was simply preposterous that this boy had warehoused two
thousand sheaves of Scriptural wisdom on his premises--a dozen would
strain his capacity, without a doubt.

Amy Lawrence was proud and glad, and she tried to make Tom see it in
her face--but he wouldn't look. She wondered; then she was just a grain
troubled; next a dim suspicion came and went--came again; she watched;
a furtive glance told her worlds--and then her heart broke, and she was
jealous, and angry, and the tears came and she hated everybody. Tom most
of all (she thought).

Tom was introduced to the Judge; but his tongue was tied, his breath
would hardly come, his heart quaked--partly because of the awful
greatness of the man, but mainly because he was her parent. He would
have liked to fall down and worship him, if it were in the dark. The
Judge put his hand on Tom's head and called him a fine little man, and
asked him what his name was. The boy stammered, gasped, and got it out:

“Tom.”

“Oh, no, not Tom--it is--”

“Thomas.”

“Ah, that's it. I thought there was more to it, maybe. That's very well.
But you've another one I daresay, and you'll tell it to me, won't you?”

“Tell the gentleman your other name, Thomas,” said Walters, “and say
sir. You mustn't forget your manners.”

“Thomas Sawyer--sir.”

“That's it! That's a good boy. Fine boy. Fine, manly little fellow. Two
thousand verses is a great many--very, very great many. And you never can
be sorry for the trouble you took to learn them; for knowledge is worth
more than anything there is in the world; it's what makes great men
and good men; you'll be a great man and a good man yourself, some
day, Thomas, and then you'll look back and say, It's all owing to the
precious Sunday-school privileges of my boyhood--it's all owing to
my dear teachers that taught me to learn--it's all owing to the good
superintendent, who encouraged me, and watched over me, and gave me a
beautiful Bible--a splendid elegant Bible--to keep and have it all for my
own, always--it's all owing to right bringing up! That is what you will
say, Thomas--and you wouldn't take any money for those two thousand
verses--no indeed you wouldn't. And now you wouldn't mind telling me and
this lady some of the things you've learned--no, I know you wouldn't--for
we are proud of little boys that learn. Now, no doubt you know the names
of all the twelve disciples. Won't you tell us the names of the first
two that were appointed?”

Tom was tugging at a button-hole and looking sheepish. He blushed,
now, and his eyes fell. Mr. Walters' heart sank within him. He said
to himself, it is not possible that the boy can answer the simplest
question--why _did_ the Judge ask him? Yet he felt obliged to speak up
and say:

“Answer the gentleman, Thomas--don't be afraid.”

Tom still hung fire.

“Now I know you'll tell me,” said the lady. “The names of the first two
disciples were--”

“_David And Goliah!_”

Let us draw the curtain of charity over the rest of the scene.




CHAPTER V

ABOUT half-past ten the cracked bell of the small church began to ring,
and presently the people began to gather for the morning sermon. The
Sunday-school children distributed themselves about the house and
occupied pews with their parents, so as to be under supervision. Aunt
Polly came, and Tom and Sid and Mary sat with her--Tom being placed next
the aisle, in order that he might be as far away from the open window
and the seductive outside summer scenes as possible. The crowd filed up
the aisles: the aged and needy postmaster, who had seen better days;
the mayor and his wife--for they had a mayor there, among other
unnecessaries; the justice of the peace; the widow Douglass, fair,
smart, and forty, a generous, good-hearted soul and well-to-do, her hill
mansion the only palace in the town, and the most hospitable and much
the most lavish in the matter of festivities that St. Petersburg could
boast; the bent and venerable Major and Mrs. Ward; lawyer Riverson, the
new notable from a distance; next the belle of the village, followed by
a troop of lawn-clad and ribbon-decked young heart-breakers; then all
the young clerks in town in a body--for they had stood in the vestibule
sucking their cane-heads, a circling wall of oiled and simpering
admirers, till the last girl had run their gantlet; and last of all came
the Model Boy, Willie Mufferson, taking as heedful care of his mother as
if she were cut glass. He always brought his mother to church, and was
the pride of all the matrons. The boys all hated him, he was so
good. And besides, he had been “thrown up to them” so much. His
white handkerchief was hanging out of his pocket behind, as usual on
Sundays--accidentally. Tom had no handkerchief, and he looked upon boys
who had as snobs.

The congregation being fully assembled, now, the bell rang once more,
to warn laggards and stragglers, and then a solemn hush fell upon the
church which was only broken by the tittering and whispering of the
choir in the gallery. The choir always tittered and whispered all
through service. There was once a church choir that was not ill-bred,
but I have forgotten where it was, now. It was a great many years ago,
and I can scarcely remember anything about it, but I think it was in
some foreign country.

The minister gave out the hymn, and read it through with a relish, in a
peculiar style which was much admired in that part of the country. His
voice began on a medium key and climbed steadily up till it reached a
certain point, where it bore with strong emphasis upon the topmost word
and then plunged down as if from a spring-board:

Shall I be car-ri-ed toe the skies, on flow'ry _beds_ of ease,

Whilst others fight to win the prize, and sail thro' _blood_-y seas?

He was regarded as a wonderful reader. At church “sociables” he was
always called upon to read poetry; and when he was through, the ladies
would lift up their hands and let them fall helplessly in their laps,
and “wall” their eyes, and shake their heads, as much as to say, “Words
cannot express it; it is too beautiful, TOO beautiful for this mortal
earth.”

After the hymn had been sung, the Rev. Mr. Sprague turned himself into
a bulletin-board, and read off “notices” of meetings and societies and
things till it seemed that the list would stretch out to the crack of
doom--a queer custom which is still kept up in America, even in cities,
away here in this age of abundant newspapers. Often, the less there is
to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.

And now the minister prayed. A good, generous prayer it was, and went
into details: it pleaded for the church, and the little children of the
church; for the other churches of the village; for the village itself;
for the county; for the State; for the State officers; for the United
States; for the churches of the United States; for Congress; for the
President; for the officers of the Government; for poor sailors, tossed
by stormy seas; for the oppressed millions groaning under the heel of
European monarchies and Oriental despotisms; for such as have the light
and the good tidings, and yet have not eyes to see nor ears to hear
withal; for the heathen in the far islands of the sea; and closed with
a supplication that the words he was about to speak might find grace
and favor, and be as seed sown in fertile ground, yielding in time a
grateful harvest of good. Amen.

There was a rustling of dresses, and the standing congregation sat down.
The boy whose history this book relates did not enjoy the prayer, he
only endured it--if he even did that much. He was restive all through it;
he kept tally of the details of the prayer, unconsciously--for he was not
listening, but he knew the ground of old, and the clergyman's regular
route over it--and when a little trifle of new matter was interlarded,
his ear detected it and his whole nature resented it; he considered
additions unfair, and scoundrelly. In the midst of the prayer a fly had
lit on the back of the pew in front of him and tortured his spirit by
calmly rubbing its hands together, embracing its head with its arms, and
polishing it so vigorously that it seemed to almost part company with
the body, and the slender thread of a neck was exposed to view; scraping
its wings with its hind legs and smoothing them to its body as if they
had been coat-tails; going through its whole toilet as tranquilly as if
it knew it was perfectly safe. As indeed it was; for as sorely as Tom's
hands itched to grab for it they did not dare--he believed his soul would
be instantly destroyed if he did such a thing while the prayer was going
on. But with the closing sentence his hand began to curve and steal
forward; and the instant the “Amen” was out the fly was a prisoner of
war. His aunt detected the act and made him let it go.

The minister gave out his text and droned along monotonously through an
argument that was so prosy that many a head by and by began to nod--and
yet it was an argument that dealt in limitless fire and brimstone and
thinned the predestined elect down to a company so small as to be hardly
worth the saving. Tom counted the pages of the sermon; after church he
always knew how many pages there had been, but he seldom knew anything
else about the discourse. However, this time he was really interested
for a little while. The minister made a grand and moving picture of the
assembling together of the world's hosts at the millennium when the lion
and the lamb should lie down together and a little child should lead
them. But the pathos, the lesson, the moral of the great spectacle
were lost upon the boy; he only thought of the conspicuousness of the
principal character before the on-looking nations; his face lit with the
thought, and he said to himself that he wished he could be that child,
if it was a tame lion.

Now he lapsed into suffering again, as the dry argument was resumed.
Presently he bethought him of a treasure he had and got it out. It was
a large black beetle with formidable jaws--a “pinchbug,” he called it. It
was in a percussion-cap box. The first thing the beetle did was to
take him by the finger. A natural fillip followed, the beetle went
floundering into the aisle and lit on its back, and the hurt finger went
into the boy's mouth. The beetle lay there working its helpless legs,
unable to turn over. Tom eyed it, and longed for it; but it was safe out
of his reach. Other people uninterested in the sermon found relief in
the beetle, and they eyed it too. Presently a vagrant poodle dog came
idling along, sad at heart, lazy with the summer softness and the
quiet, weary of captivity, sighing for change. He spied the beetle; the
drooping tail lifted and wagged. He surveyed the prize; walked around
it; smelt at it from a safe distance; walked around it again; grew
bolder, and took a closer smell; then lifted his lip and made a gingerly
snatch at it, just missing it; made another, and another; began to enjoy
the diversion; subsided to his stomach with the beetle between his paws,
and continued his experiments; grew weary at last, and then indifferent
and absent-minded. His head nodded, and little by little his chin
descended and touched the enemy, who seized it. There was a sharp yelp,
a flirt of the poodle's head, and the beetle fell a couple of yards
away, and lit on its back once more. The neighboring spectators
shook with a gentle inward joy, several faces went behind fans and
hand-kerchiefs, and Tom was entirely happy. The dog looked foolish,
and probably felt so; but there was resentment in his heart, too, and a
craving for revenge. So he went to the beetle and began a wary attack on
it again; jumping at it from every point of a circle, lighting with his
fore-paws within an inch of the creature, making even closer snatches at
it with his teeth, and jerking his head till his ears flapped again. But
he grew tired once more, after a while; tried to amuse himself with a
fly but found no relief; followed an ant around, with his nose close
to the floor, and quickly wearied of that; yawned, sighed, forgot the
beetle entirely, and sat down on it. Then there was a wild yelp of agony
and the poodle went sailing up the aisle; the yelps continued, and so
did the dog; he crossed the house in front of the altar; he flew
down the other aisle; he crossed before the doors; he clamored up the
home-stretch; his anguish grew with his progress, till presently he was
but a woolly comet moving in its orbit with the gleam and the speed of
light. At last the frantic sufferer sheered from its course, and sprang
into its master's lap; he flung it out of the window, and the voice of
distress quickly thinned away and died in the distance.

By this time the whole church was red-faced and suffocating with
suppressed laughter, and the sermon had come to a dead standstill.
The discourse was resumed presently, but it went lame and halting, all
possibility of impressiveness being at an end; for even the gravest
sentiments were constantly being received with a smothered burst of
unholy mirth, under cover of some remote pew-back, as if the poor parson
had said a rarely facetious thing. It was a genuine relief to the whole
congregation when the ordeal was over and the benediction pronounced.

Tom Sawyer went home quite cheerful, thinking to himself that there was
some satisfaction about divine service when there was a bit of variety
in it. He had but one marring thought; he was willing that the dog
should play with his pinchbug, but he did not think it was upright in
him to carry it off.




CHAPTER VI

MONDAY morning found Tom Sawyer miserable. Monday morning always found
him so--because it began another week's slow suffering in school. He
generally began that day with wishing he had had no intervening holiday,
it made the going into captivity and fetters again so much more odious.

Tom lay thinking. Presently it occurred to him that he wished he was
sick; then he could stay home from school. Here was a vague possibility.
He canvassed his system. No ailment was found, and he investigated
again. This time he thought he could detect colicky symptoms, and he
began to encourage them with considerable hope. But they soon grew
feeble, and presently died wholly away. He reflected further. Suddenly
he discovered something. One of his upper front teeth was loose. This
was lucky; he was about to begin to groan, as a “starter,” as he
called it, when it occurred to him that if he came into court with that
argument, his aunt would pull it out, and that would hurt. So he thought
he would hold the tooth in reserve for the present, and seek further.
Nothing offered for some little time, and then he remembered hearing
the doctor tell about a certain thing that laid up a patient for two or
three weeks and threatened to make him lose a finger. So the boy eagerly
drew his sore toe from under the sheet and held it up for inspection.
But now he did not know the necessary symptoms. However, it seemed
well worth while to chance it, so he fell to groaning with considerable
spirit.

But Sid slept on unconscious.

Tom groaned louder, and fancied that he began to feel pain in the toe.

No result from Sid.

Tom was panting with his exertions by this time. He took a rest and then
swelled himself up and fetched a succession of admirable groans.

Sid snored on.

Tom was aggravated. He said, “Sid, Sid!” and shook him. This course
worked well, and Tom began to groan again. Sid yawned, stretched, then
brought himself up on his elbow with a snort, and began to stare at Tom.
Tom went on groaning. Sid said:

“Tom! Say, Tom!” [No response.] “Here, Tom! TOM! What is the matter,
Tom?” And he shook him and looked in his face anxiously.

Tom moaned out:

“Oh, don't, Sid. Don't joggle me.”

“Why, what's the matter, Tom? I must call auntie.”

“No--never mind. It'll be over by and by, maybe. Don't call anybody.”

“But I must! _Don't_ groan so, Tom, it's awful. How long you been this
way?”

“Hours. Ouch! Oh, don't stir so, Sid, you'll kill me.”

“Tom, why didn't you wake me sooner? Oh, Tom, _don't!_ It makes my flesh
crawl to hear you. Tom, what is the matter?”

“I forgive you everything, Sid. [Groan.] Everything you've ever done to
me. When I'm gone--”

“Oh, Tom, you ain't dying, are you? Don't, Tom--oh, don't. Maybe--”

“I forgive everybody, Sid. [Groan.] Tell 'em so, Sid. And Sid, you give
my window-sash and my cat with one eye to that new girl that's come to
town, and tell her--”

But Sid had snatched his clothes and gone. Tom was suffering in reality,
now, so handsomely was his imagination working, and so his groans had
gathered quite a genuine tone.

Sid flew downstairs and said:

“Oh, Aunt Polly, come! Tom's dying!”

“Dying!”

“Yes'm. Don't wait--come quick!”

“Rubbage! I don't believe it!”

But she fled upstairs, nevertheless, with Sid and Mary at her heels.
And her face grew white, too, and her lip trembled. When she reached the
bedside she gasped out:

“You, Tom! Tom, what's the matter with you?”

“Oh, auntie, I'm--”

“What's the matter with you--what is the matter with you, child?”

“Oh, auntie, my sore toe's mortified!”

The old lady sank down into a chair and laughed a little, then cried a
little, then did both together. This restored her and she said:

“Tom, what a turn you did give me. Now you shut up that nonsense and
climb out of this.”

The groans ceased and the pain vanished from the toe. The boy felt a
little foolish, and he said:

“Aunt Polly, it _seemed_ mortified, and it hurt so I never minded my
tooth at all.”

“Your tooth, indeed! What's the matter with your tooth?”

“One of them's loose, and it aches perfectly awful.”

“There, there, now, don't begin that groaning again. Open your mouth.
Well--your tooth _is_ loose, but you're not going to die about that.
Mary, get me a silk thread, and a chunk of fire out of the kitchen.”

Tom said:

“Oh, please, auntie, don't pull it out. It don't hurt any more. I wish
I may never stir if it does. Please don't, auntie. I don't want to stay
home from school.”

“Oh, you don't, don't you? So all this row was because you thought you'd
get to stay home from school and go a-fishing? Tom, Tom, I love you so,
and you seem to try every way you can to break my old heart with your
outrageousness.” By this time the dental instruments were ready. The old
lady made one end of the silk thread fast to Tom's tooth with a loop
and tied the other to the bedpost. Then she seized the chunk of fire and
suddenly thrust it almost into the boy's face. The tooth hung dangling
by the bedpost, now.

But all trials bring their compensations. As Tom wended to school after
breakfast, he was the envy of every boy he met because the gap in his
upper row of teeth enabled him to expectorate in a new and admirable
way. He gathered quite a following of lads interested in the exhibition;
and one that had cut his finger and had been a centre of fascination and
homage up to this time, now found himself suddenly without an adherent,
and shorn of his glory. His heart was heavy, and he said with a disdain
which he did not feel that it wasn't anything to spit like Tom Sawyer;
but another boy said, “Sour grapes!” and he wandered away a dismantled
hero.

Shortly Tom came upon the juvenile pariah of the village, Huckleberry
Finn, son of the town drunkard. Huckleberry was cordially hated and
dreaded by all the mothers of the town, because he was idle and lawless
and vulgar and bad--and because all their children admired him so, and
delighted in his forbidden society, and wished they dared to be like
him. Tom was like the rest of the respectable boys, in that he envied
Huckleberry his gaudy outcast condition, and was under strict orders
not to play with him. So he played with him every time he got a chance.
Huckleberry was always dressed in the cast-off clothes of full-grown
men, and they were in perennial bloom and fluttering with rags. His hat
was a vast ruin with a wide crescent lopped out of its brim; his coat,
when he wore one, hung nearly to his heels and had the rearward buttons
far down the back; but one suspender supported his trousers; the seat of
the trousers bagged low and contained nothing, the fringed legs dragged
in the dirt when not rolled up.

Huckleberry came and went, at his own free will. He slept on doorsteps
in fine weather and in empty hogsheads in wet; he did not have to go to
school or to church, or call any being master or obey anybody; he could
go fishing or swimming when and where he chose, and stay as long as it
suited him; nobody forbade him to fight; he could sit up as late as he
pleased; he was always the first boy that went barefoot in the spring
and the last to resume leather in the fall; he never had to wash, nor
put on clean clothes; he could swear wonderfully. In a word, everything
that goes to make life precious that boy had. So thought every harassed,
hampered, respectable boy in St. Petersburg.

Tom hailed the romantic outcast:

“Hello, Huckleberry!”

“Hello yourself, and see how you like it.”

“What's that you got?”

“Dead cat.”

“Lemme see him, Huck. My, he's pretty stiff. Where'd you get him?”

“Bought him off'n a boy.”

“What did you give?”

“I give a blue ticket and a bladder that I got at the slaughter-house.”

“Where'd you get the blue ticket?”

“Bought it off'n Ben Rogers two weeks ago for a hoop-stick.”

“Say--what is dead cats good for, Huck?”

“Good for? Cure warts with.”

“No! Is that so? I know something that's better.”

“I bet you don't. What is it?”

“Why, spunk-water.”

“Spunk-water! I wouldn't give a dern for spunk-water.”

“You wouldn't, wouldn't you? D'you ever try it?”

“No, I hain't. But Bob Tanner did.”

“Who told you so!”

“Why, he told Jeff Thatcher, and Jeff told Johnny Baker, and Johnny
told Jim Hollis, and Jim told Ben Rogers, and Ben told a nigger, and the
nigger told me. There now!”

“Well, what of it? They'll all lie. Leastways all but the nigger. I
don't know _him_. But I never see a nigger that _wouldn't_ lie. Shucks!
Now you tell me how Bob Tanner done it, Huck.”

“Why, he took and dipped his hand in a rotten stump where the rain-water
was.”

“In the daytime?”

“Certainly.”

“With his face to the stump?”

“Yes. Least I reckon so.”

“Did he say anything?”

“I don't reckon he did. I don't know.”

“Aha! Talk about trying to cure warts with spunk-water such a blame fool
way as that! Why, that ain't a-going to do any good. You got to go all
by yourself, to the middle of the woods, where you know there's a
spunk-water stump, and just as it's midnight you back up against the stump
and jam your hand in and say:

'Barley-corn, barley-corn, injun-meal shorts, Spunk-water, spunk-water,
swaller these warts,'

and then walk away quick, eleven steps, with your eyes shut, and then
turn around three times and walk home without speaking to anybody.
Because if you speak the charm's busted.”

“Well, that sounds like a good way; but that ain't the way Bob Tanner
done.”

“No, sir, you can bet he didn't, becuz he's the wartiest boy in this
town; and he wouldn't have a wart on him if he'd knowed how to work
spunk-water. I've took off thousands of warts off of my hands that way,
Huck. I play with frogs so much that I've always got considerable many
warts. Sometimes I take 'em off with a bean.”

“Yes, bean's good. I've done that.”

“Have you? What's your way?”

“You take and split the bean, and cut the wart so as to get some blood,
and then you put the blood on one piece of the bean and take and dig
a hole and bury it 'bout midnight at the crossroads in the dark of the
moon, and then you burn up the rest of the bean. You see that piece
that's got the blood on it will keep drawing and drawing, trying to
fetch the other piece to it, and so that helps the blood to draw the
wart, and pretty soon off she comes.”

“Yes, that's it, Huck--that's it; though when you're burying it if you
say 'Down bean; off wart; come no more to bother me!' it's better.
That's the way Joe Harper does, and he's been nearly to Coonville and
most everywheres. But say--how do you cure 'em with dead cats?”

“Why, you take your cat and go and get in the grave-yard 'long about
midnight when somebody that was wicked has been buried; and when it's
midnight a devil will come, or maybe two or three, but you can't see
'em, you can only hear something like the wind, or maybe hear 'em talk;
and when they're taking that feller away, you heave your cat after 'em
and say, 'Devil follow corpse, cat follow devil, warts follow cat, I'm
done with ye!' That'll fetch _any_ wart.”

“Sounds right. D'you ever try it, Huck?”

“No, but old Mother Hopkins told me.”

“Well, I reckon it's so, then. Becuz they say she's a witch.”

“Say! Why, Tom, I _know_ she is. She witched pap. Pap says so his own
self. He come along one day, and he see she was a-witching him, so he
took up a rock, and if she hadn't dodged, he'd a got her. Well, that
very night he rolled off'n a shed wher' he was a layin drunk, and broke
his arm.”

“Why, that's awful. How did he know she was a-witching him?”

“Lord, pap can tell, easy. Pap says when they keep looking at you right
stiddy, they're a-witching you. Specially if they mumble. Becuz when
they mumble they're saying the Lord's Prayer backards.”

“Say, Hucky, when you going to try the cat?”

“To-night. I reckon they'll come after old Hoss Williams to-night.”

“But they buried him Saturday. Didn't they get him Saturday night?”

“Why, how you talk! How could their charms work till midnight?--and
_then_ it's Sunday. Devils don't slosh around much of a Sunday, I don't
reckon.”

“I never thought of that. That's so. Lemme go with you?”

“Of course--if you ain't afeard.”

“Afeard! 'Tain't likely. Will you meow?”

“Yes--and you meow back, if you get a chance. Last time, you kep' me
a-meowing around till old Hays went to throwing rocks at me and says
'Dern that cat!' and so I hove a brick through his window--but don't you
tell.”

“I won't. I couldn't meow that night, becuz auntie was watching me, but
I'll meow this time. Say--what's that?”

“Nothing but a tick.”

“Where'd you get him?”

“Out in the woods.”

“What'll you take for him?”

“I don't know. I don't want to sell him.”

“All right. It's a mighty small tick, anyway.”

“Oh, anybody can run a tick down that don't belong to them. I'm
satisfied with it. It's a good enough tick for me.”

“Sho, there's ticks a plenty. I could have a thousand of 'em if I wanted
to.”

“Well, why don't you? Becuz you know mighty well you can't. This is a
pretty early tick, I reckon. It's the first one I've seen this year.”

“Say, Huck--I'll give you my tooth for him.”

“Less see it.”

Tom got out a bit of paper and carefully unrolled it. Huckleberry viewed
it wistfully. The temptation was very strong. At last he said:

“Is it genuwyne?”

Tom lifted his lip and showed the vacancy.

“Well, all right,” said Huckleberry, “it's a trade.”

Tom enclosed the tick in the percussion-cap box that had lately been the
pinchbug's prison, and the boys separated, each feeling wealthier than
before.

When Tom reached the little isolated frame school-house, he strode in
briskly, with the manner of one who had come with all honest speed. He
hung his hat on a peg and flung himself into his seat with business-like
alacrity. The master, throned on high in his great splint-bottom
arm-chair, was dozing, lulled by the drowsy hum of study. The
interruption roused him.

“Thomas Sawyer!”

Tom knew that when his name was pronounced in full, it meant trouble.

“Sir!”

“Come up here. Now, sir, why are you late again, as usual?”

Tom was about to take refuge in a lie, when he saw two long tails of
yellow hair hanging down a back that he recognized by the electric
sympathy of love; and by that form was _the only vacant place_ on the
girls' side of the school-house. He instantly said:

“_I stopped to talk with Huckleberry Finn!_”

The master's pulse stood still, and he stared helplessly. The buzz of
study ceased. The pupils wondered if this foolhardy boy had lost his
mind. The master said:

“You--you did what?”

“Stopped to talk with Huckleberry Finn.”

There was no mistaking the words.

“Thomas Sawyer, this is the most astounding confession I have ever
listened to. No mere ferule will answer for this offence. Take off your
jacket.”

The master's arm performed until it was tired and the stock of switches
notably diminished. Then the order followed:

“Now, sir, go and sit with the girls! And let this be a warning to you.”

The titter that rippled around the room appeared to abash the boy, but
in reality that result was caused rather more by his worshipful awe
of his unknown idol and the dread pleasure that lay in his high good
fortune. He sat down upon the end of the pine bench and the girl hitched
herself away from him with a toss of her head. Nudges and winks and
whispers traversed the room, but Tom sat still, with his arms upon the
long, low desk before him, and seemed to study his book.

By and by attention ceased from him, and the accustomed school murmur
rose upon the dull air once more. Presently the boy began to steal
furtive glances at the girl. She observed it, “made a mouth” at him
and gave him the back of her head for the space of a minute. When she
cautiously faced around again, a peach lay before her. She thrust it
away. Tom gently put it back. She thrust it away again, but with less
animosity. Tom patiently returned it to its place. Then she let it
remain. Tom scrawled on his slate, “Please take it--I got more.” The
girl glanced at the words, but made no sign. Now the boy began to draw
something on the slate, hiding his work with his left hand. For a time
the girl refused to notice; but her human curiosity presently began
to manifest itself by hardly perceptible signs. The boy worked on,
apparently unconscious. The girl made a sort of non-committal attempt
to see, but the boy did not betray that he was aware of it. At last she
gave in and hesitatingly whispered:

“Let me see it.”

Tom partly uncovered a dismal caricature of a house with two gable ends
to it and a corkscrew of smoke issuing from the chimney. Then the girl's
interest began to fasten itself upon the work and she forgot everything
else. When it was finished, she gazed a moment, then whispered:

“It's nice--make a man.”

The artist erected a man in the front yard, that resembled a derrick. He
could have stepped over the house; but the girl was not hypercritical;
she was satisfied with the monster, and whispered:

“It's a beautiful man--now make me coming along.”

Tom drew an hour-glass with a full moon and straw limbs to it and armed
the spreading fingers with a portentous fan. The girl said:

“It's ever so nice--I wish I could draw.”

“It's easy,” whispered Tom, “I'll learn you.”

“Oh, will you? When?”

“At noon. Do you go home to dinner?”

“I'll stay if you will.”

“Good--that's a whack. What's your name?”

“Becky Thatcher. What's yours? Oh, I know. It's Thomas Sawyer.”

“That's the name they lick me by. I'm Tom when I'm good. You call me
Tom, will you?”

“Yes.”

Now Tom began to scrawl something on the slate, hiding the words from
the girl. But she was not backward this time. She begged to see. Tom
said:

“Oh, it ain't anything.”

“Yes it is.”

“No it ain't. You don't want to see.”

“Yes I do, indeed I do. Please let me.”

“You'll tell.”

“No I won't--deed and deed and double deed won't.”

“You won't tell anybody at all? Ever, as long as you live?”

“No, I won't ever tell _any_body. Now let me.”

“Oh, _you_ don't want to see!”

“Now that you treat me so, I _will_ see.” And she put her small hand
upon his and a little scuffle ensued, Tom pretending to resist in
earnest but letting his hand slip by degrees till these words were
revealed: “_I love you_.”

“Oh, you bad thing!” And she hit his hand a smart rap, but reddened and
looked pleased, nevertheless.

Just at this juncture the boy felt a slow, fateful grip closing on his
ear, and a steady lifting impulse. In that wise he was borne across the
house and deposited in his own seat, under a peppering fire of giggles
from the whole school. Then the master stood over him during a few awful
moments, and finally moved away to his throne without saying a word. But
although Tom's ear tingled, his heart was jubilant.

As the school quieted down Tom made an honest effort to study, but
the turmoil within him was too great. In turn he took his place in the
reading class and made a botch of it; then in the geography class and
turned lakes into mountains, mountains into rivers, and rivers into
continents, till chaos was come again; then in the spelling class, and
got “turned down,” by a succession of mere baby words, till he brought
up at the foot and yielded up the pewter medal which he had worn with
ostentation for months.




CHAPTER VII

THE harder Tom tried to fasten his mind on his book, the more his ideas
wandered. So at last, with a sigh and a yawn, he gave it up. It seemed
to him that the noon recess would never come. The air was utterly dead.
There was not a breath stirring. It was the sleepiest of sleepy days.
The drowsing murmur of the five and twenty studying scholars soothed
the soul like the spell that is in the murmur of bees. Away off in the
flaming sunshine, Cardiff Hill lifted its soft green sides through a
shimmering veil of heat, tinted with the purple of distance; a few birds
floated on lazy wing high in the air; no other living thing was visible
but some cows, and they were asleep. Tom's heart ached to be free, or
else to have something of interest to do to pass the dreary time.
His hand wandered into his pocket and his face lit up with a glow of
gratitude that was prayer, though he did not know it. Then furtively
the percussion-cap box came out. He released the tick and put him on
the long flat desk. The creature probably glowed with a gratitude that
amounted to prayer, too, at this moment, but it was premature: for when
he started thankfully to travel off, Tom turned him aside with a pin and
made him take a new direction.

Tom's bosom friend sat next him, suffering just as Tom had been, and
now he was deeply and gratefully interested in this entertainment in
an instant. This bosom friend was Joe Harper. The two boys were sworn
friends all the week, and embattled enemies on Saturdays. Joe took a
pin out of his lapel and began to assist in exercising the prisoner.
The sport grew in interest momently. Soon Tom said that they were
interfering with each other, and neither getting the fullest benefit
of the tick. So he put Joe's slate on the desk and drew a line down the
middle of it from top to bottom.

“Now,” said he, “as long as he is on your side you can stir him up and
I'll let him alone; but if you let him get away and get on my side,
you're to leave him alone as long as I can keep him from crossing over.”

“All right, go ahead; start him up.”

The tick escaped from Tom, presently, and crossed the equator. Joe
harassed him awhile, and then he got away and crossed back again. This
change of base occurred often. While one boy was worrying the tick with
absorbing interest, the other would look on with interest as strong, the
two heads bowed together over the slate, and the two souls dead to all
things else. At last luck seemed to settle and abide with Joe. The
tick tried this, that, and the other course, and got as excited and as
anxious as the boys themselves, but time and again just as he would
have victory in his very grasp, so to speak, and Tom's fingers would
be twitching to begin, Joe's pin would deftly head him off, and keep
possession. At last Tom could stand it no longer. The temptation was too
strong. So he reached out and lent a hand with his pin. Joe was angry in
a moment. Said he:

“Tom, you let him alone.”

“I only just want to stir him up a little, Joe.”

“No, sir, it ain't fair; you just let him alone.”

“Blame it, I ain't going to stir him much.”

“Let him alone, I tell you.”

“I won't!”

“You shall--he's on my side of the line.”

“Look here, Joe Harper, whose is that tick?”

“I don't care whose tick he is--he's on my side of the line, and you
sha'n't touch him.”

“Well, I'll just bet I will, though. He's my tick and I'll do what I
blame please with him, or die!”

A tremendous whack came down on Tom's shoulders, and its duplicate on
Joe's; and for the space of two minutes the dust continued to fly from
the two jackets and the whole school to enjoy it. The boys had been
too absorbed to notice the hush that had stolen upon the school awhile
before when the master came tiptoeing down the room and stood over them.
He had contemplated a good part of the performance before he contributed
his bit of variety to it.

When school broke up at noon, Tom flew to Becky Thatcher, and whispered
in her ear:

“Put on your bonnet and let on you're going home; and when you get to
the corner, give the rest of 'em the slip, and turn down through the
lane and come back. I'll go the other way and come it over 'em the same
way.”

So the one went off with one group of scholars, and the other with
another. In a little while the two met at the bottom of the lane, and
when they reached the school they had it all to themselves. Then they
sat together, with a slate before them, and Tom gave Becky the pencil
and held her hand in his, guiding it, and so created another surprising
house. When the interest in art began to wane, the two fell to talking.
Tom was swimming in bliss. He said:

“Do you love rats?”

“No! I hate them!”

“Well, I do, too--_live_ ones. But I mean dead ones, to swing round your
head with a string.”

“No, I don't care for rats much, anyway. What I like is chewing-gum.”

“Oh, I should say so! I wish I had some now.”

“Do you? I've got some. I'll let you chew it awhile, but you must give
it back to me.”

That was agreeable, so they chewed it turn about, and dangled their legs
against the bench in excess of contentment.

“Was you ever at a circus?” said Tom.

“Yes, and my pa's going to take me again some time, if I'm good.”

“I been to the circus three or four times--lots of times. Church ain't
shucks to a circus. There's things going on at a circus all the time.
I'm going to be a clown in a circus when I grow up.”

“Oh, are you! That will be nice. They're so lovely, all spotted up.”

“Yes, that's so. And they get slathers of money--most a dollar a day, Ben
Rogers says. Say, Becky, was you ever engaged?”

“What's that?”

“Why, engaged to be married.”

“No.”

“Would you like to?”

“I reckon so. I don't know. What is it like?”

“Like? Why it ain't like anything. You only just tell a boy you won't
ever have anybody but him, ever ever ever, and then you kiss and that's
all. Anybody can do it.”

“Kiss? What do you kiss for?”

“Why, that, you know, is to--well, they always do that.”

“Everybody?”

“Why, yes, everybody that's in love with each other. Do you remember
what I wrote on the slate?”

“Ye--yes.”

“What was it?”

“I sha'n't tell you.”

“Shall I tell _you_?”

“Ye--yes--but some other time.”

“No, now.”

“No, not now--to-morrow.”

“Oh, no, _now_. Please, Becky--I'll whisper it, I'll whisper it ever so
easy.”

Becky hesitating, Tom took silence for consent, and passed his arm about
her waist and whispered the tale ever so softly, with his mouth close to
her ear. And then he added:

“Now you whisper it to me--just the same.”

She resisted, for a while, and then said:

“You turn your face away so you can't see, and then I will. But you
mustn't ever tell anybody--_will_ you, Tom? Now you won't, _will_ you?”

“No, indeed, indeed I won't. Now, Becky.”

He turned his face away. She bent timidly around till her breath stirred
his curls and whispered, “I--love--you!”

Then she sprang away and ran around and around the desks and benches,
with Tom after her, and took refuge in a corner at last, with her little
white apron to her face. Tom clasped her about her neck and pleaded:

“Now, Becky, it's all done--all over but the kiss. Don't you be afraid
of that--it ain't anything at all. Please, Becky.” And he tugged at her
apron and the hands.

By and by she gave up, and let her hands drop; her face, all glowing
with the struggle, came up and submitted. Tom kissed the red lips and
said:

“Now it's all done, Becky. And always after this, you know, you ain't
ever to love anybody but me, and you ain't ever to marry anybody but me,
ever never and forever. Will you?”

“No, I'll never love anybody but you, Tom, and I'll never marry anybody
but you--and you ain't to ever marry anybody but me, either.”

“Certainly. Of course. That's _part_ of it. And always coming to school
or when we're going home, you're to walk with me, when there ain't
anybody looking--and you choose me and I choose you at parties, because
that's the way you do when you're engaged.”

“It's so nice. I never heard of it before.”

“Oh, it's ever so gay! Why, me and Amy Lawrence--”

The big eyes told Tom his blunder and he stopped, confused.

“Oh, Tom! Then I ain't the first you've ever been engaged to!”

The child began to cry. Tom said:

“Oh, don't cry, Becky, I don't care for her any more.”

“Yes, you do, Tom--you know you do.”

Tom tried to put his arm about her neck, but she pushed him away and
turned her face to the wall, and went on crying. Tom tried again, with
soothing words in his mouth, and was repulsed again. Then his pride was
up, and he strode away and went outside. He stood about, restless and
uneasy, for a while, glancing at the door, every now and then, hoping
she would repent and come to find him. But she did not. Then he began
to feel badly and fear that he was in the wrong. It was a hard struggle
with him to make new advances, now, but he nerved himself to it and
entered. She was still standing back there in the corner, sobbing, with
her face to the wall. Tom's heart smote him. He went to her and stood a
moment, not knowing exactly how to proceed. Then he said hesitatingly:

“Becky, I--I don't care for anybody but you.”

No reply--but sobs.

“Becky”--pleadingly. “Becky, won't you say something?”

More sobs.

Tom got out his chiefest jewel, a brass knob from the top of an andiron,
and passed it around her so that she could see it, and said:

“Please, Becky, won't you take it?”

She struck it to the floor. Then Tom marched out of the house and over
the hills and far away, to return to school no more that day. Presently
Becky began to suspect. She ran to the door; he was not in sight; she
flew around to the play-yard; he was not there. Then she called:

“Tom! Come back, Tom!”

She listened intently, but there was no answer. She had no companions
but silence and loneliness. So she sat down to cry again and upbraid
herself; and by this time the scholars began to gather again, and she
had to hide her griefs and still her broken heart and take up the cross
of a long, dreary, aching afternoon, with none among the strangers about
her to exchange sorrows with.




CHAPTER VIII

TOM dodged hither and thither through lanes until he was well out of the
track of returning scholars, and then fell into a moody jog. He crossed
a small “branch” two or three times, because of a prevailing juvenile
superstition that to cross water baffled pursuit. Half an hour later
he was disappearing behind the Douglas mansion on the summit of Cardiff
Hill, and the school-house was hardly distinguishable away off in the
valley behind him. He entered a dense wood, picked his pathless way to
the centre of it, and sat down on a mossy spot under a spreading oak.
There was not even a zephyr stirring; the dead noonday heat had even
stilled the songs of the birds; nature lay in a trance that was broken
by no sound but the occasional far-off hammering of a wood-pecker, and
this seemed to render the pervading silence and sense of loneliness the
more profound. The boy's soul was steeped in melancholy; his feelings
were in happy accord with his surroundings. He sat long with his elbows
on his knees and his chin in his hands, meditating. It seemed to him
that life was but a trouble, at best, and he more than half envied Jimmy
Hodges, so lately released; it must be very peaceful, he thought, to lie
and slumber and dream forever and ever, with the wind whispering through
the trees and caressing the grass and the flowers over the grave, and
nothing to bother and grieve about, ever any more. If he only had a
clean Sunday-school record he could be willing to go, and be done with
it all. Now as to this girl. What had he done? Nothing. He had meant
the best in the world, and been treated like a dog--like a very dog. She
would be sorry some day--maybe when it was too late. Ah, if he could only
die _temporarily_!

But the elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrained
shape long at a time. Tom presently began to drift insensibly back into
the concerns of this life again. What if he turned his back, now, and
disappeared mysteriously? What if he went away--ever so far away, into
unknown countries beyond the seas--and never came back any more! How
would she feel then! The idea of being a clown recurred to him now, only
to fill him with disgust. For frivolity and jokes and spotted tights
were an offense, when they intruded themselves upon a spirit that was
exalted into the vague august realm of the romantic. No, he would be
a soldier, and return after long years, all war-worn and illustrious.
No--better still, he would join the Indians, and hunt buffaloes and go on
the warpath in the mountain ranges and the trackless great plains of the
Far West, and away in the future come back a great chief, bristling with
feathers, hideous with paint, and prance into Sunday-school, some drowsy
summer morning, with a blood-curdling war-whoop, and sear the eyeballs
of all his companions with unappeasable envy. But no, there was
something gaudier even than this. He would be a pirate! That was it!
_now_ his future lay plain before him, and glowing with unimaginable
splendor. How his name would fill the world, and make people shudder!
How gloriously he would go plowing the dancing seas, in his long, low,
black-hulled racer, the Spirit of the Storm, with his grisly flag flying
at the fore! And at the zenith of his fame, how he would suddenly appear
at the old village and stalk into church, brown and weather-beaten, in
his black velvet doublet and trunks, his great jack-boots, his crimson
sash, his belt bristling with horse-pistols, his crime-rusted cutlass
at his side, his slouch hat with waving plumes, his black flag unfurled,
with the skull and crossbones on it, and hear with swelling ecstasy
the whisperings, “It's Tom Sawyer the Pirate!--the Black Avenger of the
Spanish Main!”

Yes, it was settled; his career was determined. He would run away from
home and enter upon it. He would start the very next morning. Therefore
he must now begin to get ready. He would collect his resources together.
He went to a rotten log near at hand and began to dig under one end of
it with his Barlow knife. He soon struck wood that sounded hollow. He
put his hand there and uttered this incantation impressively:

“What hasn't come here, come! What's here, stay here!”

Then he scraped away the dirt, and exposed a pine shingle. He took it
up and disclosed a shapely little treasure-house whose bottom and sides
were of shingles. In it lay a marble. Tom's astonishment was bound-less!
He scratched his head with a perplexed air, and said:

“Well, that beats anything!”

Then he tossed the marble away pettishly, and stood cogitating. The
truth was, that a superstition of his had failed, here, which he and
all his comrades had always looked upon as infallible. If you buried
a marble with certain necessary incantations, and left it alone a
fortnight, and then opened the place with the incantation he had just
used, you would find that all the marbles you had ever lost had gathered
themselves together there, meantime, no matter how widely they had been
separated. But now, this thing had actually and unquestionably failed.
Tom's whole structure of faith was shaken to its foundations. He had
many a time heard of this thing succeeding but never of its failing
before. It did not occur to him that he had tried it several times
before, himself, but could never find the hiding-places afterward. He
puzzled over the matter some time, and finally decided that some witch
had interfered and broken the charm. He thought he would satisfy himself
on that point; so he searched around till he found a small sandy spot
with a little funnel-shaped depression in it. He laid himself down and
put his mouth close to this depression and called--

“Doodle-bug, doodle-bug, tell me what I want to know! Doodle-bug,
doodle-bug, tell me what I want to know!”

The sand began to work, and presently a small black bug appeared for a
second and then darted under again in a fright.

“He dasn't tell! So it _was_ a witch that done it. I just knowed it.”

He well knew the futility of trying to contend against witches, so he
gave up discouraged. But it occurred to him that he might as well have
the marble he had just thrown away, and therefore he went and made a
patient search for it. But he could not find it. Now he went back to his
treasure-house and carefully placed himself just as he had been standing
when he tossed the marble away; then he took another marble from his
pocket and tossed it in the same way, saying:

“Brother, go find your brother!”

He watched where it stopped, and went there and looked. But it must
have fallen short or gone too far; so he tried twice more. The last
repetition was successful. The two marbles lay within a foot of each
other.

Just here the blast of a toy tin trumpet came faintly down the green
aisles of the forest. Tom flung off his jacket and trousers, turned
a suspender into a belt, raked away some brush behind the rotten log,
disclosing a rude bow and arrow, a lath sword and a tin trumpet, and
in a moment had seized these things and bounded away, barelegged,
with fluttering shirt. He presently halted under a great elm, blew an
answering blast, and then began to tiptoe and look warily out, this way
and that. He said cautiously--to an imaginary company:

“Hold, my merry men! Keep hid till I blow.”

Now appeared Joe Harper, as airily clad and elaborately armed as Tom.
Tom called:

“Hold! Who comes here into Sherwood Forest without my pass?”

“Guy of Guisborne wants no man's pass. Who art thou that--that--”

“Dares to hold such language,” said Tom, prompting--for they talked “by
the book,” from memory.

“Who art thou that dares to hold such language?”

“I, indeed! I am Robin Hood, as thy caitiff carcase soon shall know.”

“Then art thou indeed that famous outlaw? Right gladly will I dispute
with thee the passes of the merry wood. Have at thee!”

They took their lath swords, dumped their other traps on the ground,
struck a fencing attitude, foot to foot, and began a grave, careful
combat, “two up and two down.” Presently Tom said:

“Now, if you've got the hang, go it lively!”

So they “went it lively,” panting and perspiring with the work. By and
by Tom shouted:

“Fall! fall! Why don't you fall?”

“I sha'n't! Why don't you fall yourself? You're getting the worst of
it.”

“Why, that ain't anything. I can't fall; that ain't the way it is in the
book. The book says, 'Then with one back-handed stroke he slew poor Guy
of Guisborne.' You're to turn around and let me hit you in the back.”

There was no getting around the authorities, so Joe turned, received the
whack and fell.

“Now,” said Joe, getting up, “you got to let me kill _you_. That's
fair.”

“Why, I can't do that, it ain't in the book.”

“Well, it's blamed mean--that's all.”

“Well, say, Joe, you can be Friar Tuck or Much the miller's son, and lam
me with a quarter-staff; or I'll be the Sheriff of Nottingham and you be
Robin Hood a little while and kill me.”

This was satisfactory, and so these adventures were carried out. Then
Tom became Robin Hood again, and was allowed by the treacherous nun to
bleed his strength away through his neglected wound. And at last Joe,
representing a whole tribe of weeping outlaws, dragged him sadly forth,
gave his bow into his feeble hands, and Tom said, “Where this arrow
falls, there bury poor Robin Hood under the greenwood tree.” Then he
shot the arrow and fell back and would have died, but he lit on a nettle
and sprang up too gaily for a corpse.

The boys dressed themselves, hid their accoutrements, and went off
grieving that there were no outlaws any more, and wondering what modern
civilization could claim to have done to compensate for their loss.
They said they would rather be outlaws a year in Sherwood Forest than
President of the United States forever.




CHAPTER IX

AT half-past nine, that night, Tom and Sid were sent to bed, as usual.
They said their prayers, and Sid was soon asleep. Tom lay awake and
waited, in restless impatience. When it seemed to him that it must be
nearly daylight, he heard the clock strike ten! This was despair. He
would have tossed and fidgeted, as his nerves demanded, but he was
afraid he might wake Sid. So he lay still, and stared up into the dark.
Everything was dismally still. By and by, out of the stillness, little,
scarcely perceptible noises began to emphasize themselves. The ticking
of the clock began to bring itself into notice. Old beams began to crack
mysteriously. The stairs creaked faintly. Evidently spirits were abroad.
A measured, muffled snore issued from Aunt Polly's chamber. And now the
tiresome chirping of a cricket that no human ingenuity could locate,
began. Next the ghastly ticking of a death-watch in the wall at the
bed's head made Tom shudder--it meant that somebody's days were numbered.
Then the howl of a far-off dog rose on the night air, and was answered
by a fainter howl from a remoter distance. Tom was in an agony. At last
he was satisfied that time had ceased and eternity begun; he began to
doze, in spite of himself; the clock chimed eleven, but he did not hear
it. And then there came, mingling with his half-formed dreams, a most
melancholy caterwauling. The raising of a neighboring window disturbed
him. A cry of “Scat! you devil!” and the crash of an empty bottle
against the back of his aunt's woodshed brought him wide awake, and a
single minute later he was dressed and out of the window and creeping
along the roof of the “ell” on all fours. He “meow'd” with caution once
or twice, as he went; then jumped to the roof of the woodshed and thence
to the ground. Huckleberry Finn was there, with his dead cat. The boys
moved off and disappeared in the gloom. At the end of half an hour they
were wading through the tall grass of the graveyard.

It was a graveyard of the old-fashioned Western kind. It was on a hill,
about a mile and a half from the village. It had a crazy board fence
around it, which leaned inward in places, and outward the rest of the
time, but stood upright nowhere. Grass and weeds grew rank over the
whole cemetery. All the old graves were sunken in, there was not a
tombstone on the place; round-topped, worm-eaten boards staggered over
the graves, leaning for support and finding none. “Sacred to the memory
of” So-and-So had been painted on them once, but it could no longer have
been read, on the most of them, now, even if there had been light.

A faint wind moaned through the trees, and Tom feared it might be the
spirits of the dead, complaining at being disturbed. The boys talked
little, and only under their breath, for the time and the place and the
pervading solemnity and silence oppressed their spirits. They found the
sharp new heap they were seeking, and ensconced themselves within the
protection of three great elms that grew in a bunch within a few feet of
the grave.

Then they waited in silence for what seemed a long time. The hooting of
a distant owl was all the sound that troubled the dead stillness. Tom's
reflections grew oppressive. He must force some talk. So he said in a
whisper:

“Hucky, do you believe the dead people like it for us to be here?”

Huckleberry whispered:

“I wisht I knowed. It's awful solemn like, _ain't_ it?”

“I bet it is.”

There was a considerable pause, while the boys canvassed this matter
inwardly. Then Tom whispered:

“Say, Hucky--do you reckon Hoss Williams hears us talking?”

“O' course he does. Least his sperrit does.”

Tom, after a pause:

“I wish I'd said Mister Williams. But I never meant any harm. Everybody
calls him Hoss.”

“A body can't be too partic'lar how they talk 'bout these-yer dead
people, Tom.”

This was a damper, and conversation died again.

Presently Tom seized his comrade's arm and said:

“Sh!”

“What is it, Tom?” And the two clung together with beating hearts.

“Sh! There 'tis again! Didn't you hear it?”

“I--”

“There! Now you hear it.”

“Lord, Tom, they're coming! They're coming, sure. What'll we do?”

“I dono. Think they'll see us?”

“Oh, Tom, they can see in the dark, same as cats. I wisht I hadn't
come.”

“Oh, don't be afeard. I don't believe they'll bother us. We ain't doing
any harm. If we keep perfectly still, maybe they won't notice us at
all.”

“I'll try to, Tom, but, Lord, I'm all of a shiver.”

“Listen!”

The boys bent their heads together and scarcely breathed. A muffled
sound of voices floated up from the far end of the graveyard.

“Look! See there!” whispered Tom. “What is it?”

“It's devil-fire. Oh, Tom, this is awful.”

Some vague figures approached through the gloom, swinging an
old-fashioned tin lantern that freckled the ground with innumerable
little spangles of light. Presently Huckleberry whispered with a
shudder:

“It's the devils sure enough. Three of 'em! Lordy, Tom, we're goners!
Can you pray?”

“I'll try, but don't you be afeard. They ain't going to hurt us. 'Now I
lay me down to sleep, I--'”

“Sh!”

“What is it, Huck?”

“They're _humans_! One of 'em is, anyway. One of 'em's old Muff Potter's
voice.”

“No--'tain't so, is it?”

“I bet I know it. Don't you stir nor budge. He ain't sharp enough to
notice us. Drunk, the same as usual, likely--blamed old rip!”

“All right, I'll keep still. Now they're stuck. Can't find it. Here they
come again. Now they're hot. Cold again. Hot again. Red hot! They're
p'inted right, this time. Say, Huck, I know another o' them voices; it's
Injun Joe.”

“That's so--that murderin' half-breed! I'd druther they was devils a dern
sight. What kin they be up to?”

The whisper died wholly out, now, for the three men had reached the
grave and stood within a few feet of the boys' hiding-place.

“Here it is,” said the third voice; and the owner of it held the lantern
up and revealed the face of young Doctor Robinson.

Potter and Injun Joe were carrying a handbarrow with a rope and a couple
of shovels on it. They cast down their load and began to open the grave.
The doctor put the lantern at the head of the grave and came and sat
down with his back against one of the elm trees. He was so close the
boys could have touched him.

“Hurry, men!” he said, in a low voice; “the moon might come out at any
moment.”

They growled a response and went on digging. For some time there was no
noise but the grating sound of the spades discharging their freight of
mould and gravel. It was very monotonous. Finally a spade struck upon
the coffin with a dull woody accent, and within another minute or two
the men had hoisted it out on the ground. They pried off the lid with
their shovels, got out the body and dumped it rudely on the ground. The
moon drifted from behind the clouds and exposed the pallid face.
The barrow was got ready and the corpse placed on it, covered with a
blanket, and bound to its place with the rope. Potter took out a large
spring-knife and cut off the dangling end of the rope and then said:

“Now the cussed thing's ready, Sawbones, and you'll just out with
another five, or here she stays.”

“That's the talk!” said Injun Joe.

“Look here, what does this mean?” said the doctor. “You required your
pay in advance, and I've paid you.”

“Yes, and you done more than that,” said Injun Joe, approaching the
doctor, who was now standing. “Five years ago you drove me away from
your father's kitchen one night, when I come to ask for something to
eat, and you said I warn't there for any good; and when I swore I'd get
even with you if it took a hundred years, your father had me jailed for
a vagrant. Did you think I'd forget? The Injun blood ain't in me for
nothing. And now I've _got_ you, and you got to _settle_, you know!”

He was threatening the doctor, with his fist in his face, by this time.
The doctor struck out suddenly and stretched the ruffian on the ground.
Potter dropped his knife, and exclaimed:

“Here, now, don't you hit my pard!” and the next moment he had grappled
with the doctor and the two were struggling with might and main,
trampling the grass and tearing the ground with their heels. Injun Joe
sprang to his feet, his eyes flaming with passion, snatched up Potter's
knife, and went creeping, catlike and stooping, round and round about
the combatants, seeking an opportunity. All at once the doctor flung
himself free, seized the heavy headboard of Williams' grave and felled
Potter to the earth with it--and in the same instant the half-breed saw
his chance and drove the knife to the hilt in the young man's breast. He
reeled and fell partly upon Potter, flooding him with his blood, and in
the same moment the clouds blotted out the dreadful spectacle and the
two frightened boys went speeding away in the dark.

Presently, when the moon emerged again, Injun Joe was standing over the
two forms, contemplating them. The doctor murmured inarticulately, gave
a long gasp or two and was still. The half-breed muttered:

“_That_ score is settled--damn you.”

Then he robbed the body. After which he put the fatal knife in Potter's
open right hand, and sat down on the dismantled coffin. Three--four--five
minutes passed, and then Potter began to stir and moan. His hand closed
upon the knife; he raised it, glanced at it, and let it fall, with a
shudder. Then he sat up, pushing the body from him, and gazed at it, and
then around him, confusedly. His eyes met Joe's.

“Lord, how is this, Joe?” he said.

“It's a dirty business,” said Joe, without moving.

“What did you do it for?”

“I! I never done it!”

“Look here! That kind of talk won't wash.”

Potter trembled and grew white.

“I thought I'd got sober. I'd no business to drink to-night. But it's
in my head yet--worse'n when we started here. I'm all in a muddle;
can't recollect anything of it, hardly. Tell me, Joe--_honest_, now,
old feller--did I do it? Joe, I never meant to--'pon my soul and honor, I
never meant to, Joe. Tell me how it was, Joe. Oh, it's awful--and him so
young and promising.”

“Why, you two was scuffling, and he fetched you one with the headboard
and you fell flat; and then up you come, all reeling and staggering
like, and snatched the knife and jammed it into him, just as he fetched
you another awful clip--and here you've laid, as dead as a wedge til
now.”

“Oh, I didn't know what I was a-doing. I wish I may die this minute if I
did. It was all on account of the whiskey and the excitement, I reckon.
I never used a weepon in my life before, Joe. I've fought, but never
with weepons. They'll all say that. Joe, don't tell! Say you won't tell,
Joe--that's a good feller. I always liked you, Joe, and stood up for you,
too. Don't you remember? You _won't_ tell, _will_ you, Joe?” And the
poor creature dropped on his knees before the stolid murderer, and
clasped his appealing hands.

“No, you've always been fair and square with me, Muff Potter, and I
won't go back on you. There, now, that's as fair as a man can say.”

“Oh, Joe, you're an angel. I'll bless you for this the longest day I
live.” And Potter began to cry.

“Come, now, that's enough of that. This ain't any time for blubbering.
You be off yonder way and I'll go this. Move, now, and don't leave any
tracks behind you.”

Potter started on a trot that quickly increased to a run. The half-breed
stood looking after him. He muttered:

“If he's as much stunned with the lick and fuddled with the rum as he
had the look of being, he won't think of the knife till he's gone so
far he'll be afraid to come back after it to such a place by
himself--chicken-heart!”

Two or three minutes later the murdered man, the blanketed corpse, the
lidless coffin, and the open grave were under no inspection but the
moon's. The stillness was complete again, too.




CHAPTER X

THE two boys flew on and on, toward the village, speechless with
horror. They glanced backward over their shoulders from time to time,
apprehensively, as if they feared they might be followed. Every stump
that started up in their path seemed a man and an enemy, and made them
catch their breath; and as they sped by some outlying cottages that lay
near the village, the barking of the aroused watch-dogs seemed to give
wings to their feet.

“If we can only get to the old tannery before we break down!” whispered
Tom, in short catches between breaths. “I can't stand it much longer.”

Huckleberry's hard pantings were his only reply, and the boys fixed
their eyes on the goal of their hopes and bent to their work to win it.
They gained steadily on it, and at last, breast to breast, they burst
through the open door and fell grateful and exhausted in the sheltering
shadows beyond. By and by their pulses slowed down, and Tom whispered:

“Huckleberry, what do you reckon'll come of this?”

“If Doctor Robinson dies, I reckon hanging'll come of it.”

“Do you though?”

“Why, I _know_ it, Tom.”

Tom thought a while, then he said:

“Who'll tell? We?”

“What are you talking about? S'pose something happened and Injun Joe
_didn't_ hang? Why, he'd kill us some time or other, just as dead sure
as we're a laying here.”

“That's just what I was thinking to myself, Huck.”

“If anybody tells, let Muff Potter do it, if he's fool enough. He's
generally drunk enough.”

Tom said nothing--went on thinking. Presently he whispered:

“Huck, Muff Potter don't know it. How can he tell?”

“What's the reason he don't know it?”

“Because he'd just got that whack when Injun Joe done it. D'you reckon
he could see anything? D'you reckon he knowed anything?”

“By hokey, that's so, Tom!”

“And besides, look-a-here--maybe that whack done for _him_!”

“No, 'taint likely, Tom. He had liquor in him; I could see that; and
besides, he always has. Well, when pap's full, you might take and belt
him over the head with a church and you couldn't phase him. He says so,
his own self. So it's the same with Muff Potter, of course. But if a man
was dead sober, I reckon maybe that whack might fetch him; I dono.”

After another reflective silence, Tom said:

“Hucky, you sure you can keep mum?”

“Tom, we _got_ to keep mum. You know that. That Injun devil wouldn't
make any more of drownding us than a couple of cats, if we was to squeak
'bout this and they didn't hang him. Now, look-a-here, Tom, less take
and swear to one another--that's what we got to do--swear to keep mum.”

“I'm agreed. It's the best thing. Would you just hold hands and swear
that we--”

“Oh no, that wouldn't do for this. That's good enough for little
rubbishy common things--specially with gals, cuz _they_ go back on you
anyway, and blab if they get in a huff--but there orter be writing 'bout
a big thing like this. And blood.”

Tom's whole being applauded this idea. It was deep, and dark, and awful;
the hour, the circumstances, the surroundings, were in keeping with it.
He picked up a clean pine shingle that lay in the moon-light, took a
little fragment of “red keel” out of his pocket, got the moon on
his work, and painfully scrawled these lines, emphasizing each slow
down-stroke by clamping his tongue between his teeth, and letting up the
pressure on the up-strokes. [See next page.]

“Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer swears they will keep mum about This and They
wish They may Drop down dead in Their Tracks if They ever Tell and Rot.”

Huckleberry was filled with admiration of Tom's facility in writing, and
the sublimity of his language. He at once took a pin from his lapel and
was going to prick his flesh, but Tom said:

“Hold on! Don't do that. A pin's brass. It might have verdigrease on
it.”

“What's verdigrease?”

“It's p'ison. That's what it is. You just swaller some of it once--you'll
see.”

So Tom unwound the thread from one of his needles, and each boy pricked
the ball of his thumb and squeezed out a drop of blood. In time, after
many squeezes, Tom managed to sign his initials, using the ball of his
little finger for a pen. Then he showed Huckleberry how to make an H and
an F, and the oath was complete. They buried the shingle close to the
wall, with some dismal ceremonies and incantations, and the fetters
that bound their tongues were considered to be locked and the key thrown
away.

A figure crept stealthily through a break in the other end of the ruined
building, now, but they did not notice it.

“Tom,” whispered Huckleberry, “does this keep us from _ever_
telling--_always_?”

“Of course it does. It don't make any difference _what_ happens, we got
to keep mum. We'd drop down dead--don't _you_ know that?”

“Yes, I reckon that's so.”

They continued to whisper for some little time. Presently a dog set up
a long, lugubrious howl just outside--within ten feet of them. The boys
clasped each other suddenly, in an agony of fright.

“Which of us does he mean?” gasped Huckleberry.

“I dono--peep through the crack. Quick!”

“No, _you_, Tom!”

“I can't--I can't _do_ it, Huck!”

“Please, Tom. There 'tis again!”

“Oh, lordy, I'm thankful!” whispered Tom. “I know his voice. It's Bull
Harbison.” *

[* If Mr. Harbison owned a slave named Bull, Tom would have spoken of
him as “Harbison's Bull,” but a son or a dog of that name was “Bull
Harbison.”]

“Oh, that's good--I tell you, Tom, I was most scared to death; I'd a bet
anything it was a _stray_ dog.”

The dog howled again. The boys' hearts sank once more.

“Oh, my! that ain't no Bull Harbison!” whispered Huckleberry. “_Do_,
Tom!”

Tom, quaking with fear, yielded, and put his eye to the crack. His
whisper was hardly audible when he said:

“Oh, Huck, _its a stray dog_!”

“Quick, Tom, quick! Who does he mean?”

“Huck, he must mean us both--we're right together.”

“Oh, Tom, I reckon we're goners. I reckon there ain't no mistake 'bout
where _I'll_ go to. I been so wicked.”

“Dad fetch it! This comes of playing hookey and doing everything a
feller's told _not_ to do. I might a been good, like Sid, if I'd a
tried--but no, I wouldn't, of course. But if ever I get off this time,
I lay I'll just _waller_ in Sunday-schools!” And Tom began to snuffle a
little.

“_You_ bad!” and Huckleberry began to snuffle too. “Consound it, Tom
Sawyer, you're just old pie, 'long-side o' what I am. Oh, _lordy_,
lordy, lordy, I wisht I only had half your chance.”

Tom choked off and whispered:

“Look, Hucky, look! He's got his _back_ to us!”

Hucky looked, with joy in his heart.

“Well, he has, by jingoes! Did he before?”

“Yes, he did. But I, like a fool, never thought. Oh, this is bully, you
know. _Now_ who can he mean?”

The howling stopped. Tom pricked up his ears.

“Sh! What's that?” he whispered.

“Sounds like--like hogs grunting. No--it's somebody snoring, Tom.”

“That _is_ it! Where 'bouts is it, Huck?”

“I bleeve it's down at 'tother end. Sounds so, anyway. Pap used to sleep
there, sometimes, 'long with the hogs, but laws bless you, he just lifts
things when _he_ snores. Besides, I reckon he ain't ever coming back to
this town any more.”

The spirit of adventure rose in the boys' souls once more.

“Hucky, do you das't to go if I lead?”

“I don't like to, much. Tom, s'pose it's Injun Joe!”

Tom quailed. But presently the temptation rose up strong again and the
boys agreed to try, with the understanding that they would take to their
heels if the snoring stopped. So they went tiptoeing stealthily down,
the one behind the other. When they had got to within five steps of the
snorer, Tom stepped on a stick, and it broke with a sharp snap. The man
moaned, writhed a little, and his face came into the moonlight. It was
Muff Potter. The boys' hearts had stood still, and their hopes too,
when the man moved, but their fears passed away now. They tip-toed out,
through the broken weather-boarding, and stopped at a little distance
to exchange a parting word. That long, lugubrious howl rose on the night
air again! They turned and saw the strange dog standing within a few
feet of where Potter was lying, and _facing_ Potter, with his nose
pointing heavenward.

“Oh, geeminy, it's _him_!” exclaimed both boys, in a breath.

“Say, Tom--they say a stray dog come howling around Johnny Miller's
house, 'bout midnight, as much as two weeks ago; and a whippoorwill come
in and lit on the banisters and sung, the very same evening; and there
ain't anybody dead there yet.”

“Well, I know that. And suppose there ain't. Didn't Gracie Miller fall
in the kitchen fire and burn herself terrible the very next Saturday?”

“Yes, but she ain't _dead_. And what's more, she's getting better, too.”

“All right, you wait and see. She's a goner, just as dead sure as Muff
Potter's a goner. That's what the niggers say, and they know all about
these kind of things, Huck.”

Then they separated, cogitating. When Tom crept in at his bedroom window
the night was almost spent. He undressed with excessive caution, and
fell asleep congratulating himself that nobody knew of his escapade. He
was not aware that the gently-snoring Sid was awake, and had been so for
an hour.

When Tom awoke, Sid was dressed and gone. There was a late look in the
light, a late sense in the atmosphere. He was startled. Why had he not
been called--persecuted till he was up, as usual? The thought filled
him with bodings. Within five minutes he was dressed and down-stairs,
feeling sore and drowsy. The family were still at table, but they had
finished breakfast. There was no voice of rebuke; but there were averted
eyes; there was a silence and an air of solemnity that struck a chill
to the culprit's heart. He sat down and tried to seem gay, but it
was up-hill work; it roused no smile, no response, and he lapsed into
silence and let his heart sink down to the depths.

After breakfast his aunt took him aside, and Tom almost brightened in
the hope that he was going to be flogged; but it was not so. His aunt
wept over him and asked him how he could go and break her old heart so;
and finally told him to go on, and ruin himself and bring her gray hairs
with sorrow to the grave, for it was no use for her to try any more.
This was worse than a thousand whippings, and Tom's heart was sorer now
than his body. He cried, he pleaded for forgiveness, promised to reform
over and over again, and then received his dismissal, feeling that
he had won but an imperfect forgiveness and established but a feeble
confidence.

He left the presence too miserable to even feel revengeful toward
Sid; and so the latter's prompt retreat through the back gate was
unnecessary. He moped to school gloomy and sad, and took his flogging,
along with Joe Harper, for playing hookey the day before, with the
air of one whose heart was busy with heavier woes and wholly dead to
trifles. Then he betook himself to his seat, rested his elbows on his
desk and his jaws in his hands, and stared at the wall with the stony
stare of suffering that has reached the limit and can no further go.
His elbow was pressing against some hard substance. After a long time
he slowly and sadly changed his position, and took up this object with
a sigh. It was in a paper. He unrolled it. A long, lingering, colossal
sigh followed, and his heart broke. It was his brass andiron knob!

This final feather broke the camel's back.




CHAPTER XI

CLOSE upon the hour of noon the whole village was suddenly electrified
with the ghastly news. No need of the as yet un-dreamed-of telegraph;
the tale flew from man to man, from group to group, from house to house,
with little less than telegraphic speed. Of course the schoolmaster gave
holi-day for that afternoon; the town would have thought strangely of
him if he had not.

A gory knife had been found close to the murdered man, and it had been
recognized by somebody as belonging to Muff Potter--so the story ran. And
it was said that a belated citizen had come upon Potter washing himself
in the “branch” about one or two o'clock in the morning, and that Potter
had at once sneaked off--suspicious circumstances, especially the washing
which was not a habit with Potter. It was also said that the town had
been ransacked for this “murderer” (the public are not slow in the
matter of sifting evidence and arriving at a verdict), but that he
could not be found. Horsemen had departed down all the roads in every
direction, and the Sheriff “was confident” that he would be captured
before night.

All the town was drifting toward the graveyard. Tom's heartbreak
vanished and he joined the procession, not because he would not
a thousand times rather go anywhere else, but because an awful,
unaccountable fascination drew him on. Arrived at the dreadful place, he
wormed his small body through the crowd and saw the dismal spectacle.
It seemed to him an age since he was there before. Somebody pinched
his arm. He turned, and his eyes met Huckleberry's. Then both looked
elsewhere at once, and wondered if anybody had noticed anything in their
mutual glance. But everybody was talking, and intent upon the grisly
spectacle before them.

“Poor fellow!” “Poor young fellow!” “This ought to be a lesson to grave
robbers!” “Muff Potter'll hang for this if they catch him!” This was the
drift of remark; and the minister said, “It was a judgment; His hand is
here.”

Now Tom shivered from head to heel; for his eye fell upon the stolid
face of Injun Joe. At this moment the crowd began to sway and struggle,
and voices shouted, “It's him! it's him! he's coming himself!”

“Who? Who?” from twenty voices.

“Muff Potter!”

“Hallo, he's stopped!--Look out, he's turning! Don't let him get away!”

People in the branches of the trees over Tom's head said he wasn't
trying to get away--he only looked doubtful and perplexed.

“Infernal impudence!” said a bystander; “wanted to come and take a quiet
look at his work, I reckon--didn't expect any company.”

The crowd fell apart, now, and the Sheriff came through, ostentatiously
leading Potter by the arm. The poor fellow's face was haggard, and
his eyes showed the fear that was upon him. When he stood before the
murdered man, he shook as with a palsy, and he put his face in his hands
and burst into tears.

“I didn't do it, friends,” he sobbed; “'pon my word and honor I never
done it.”

“Who's accused you?” shouted a voice.

This shot seemed to carry home. Potter lifted his face and looked around
him with a pathetic hopelessness in his eyes. He saw Injun Joe, and
exclaimed:

“Oh, Injun Joe, you promised me you'd never--”

“Is that your knife?” and it was thrust before him by the Sheriff.

Potter would have fallen if they had not caught him and eased him to the
ground. Then he said:

“Something told me 't if I didn't come back and get--” He shuddered; then
waved his nerveless hand with a vanquished gesture and said, “Tell 'em,
Joe, tell 'em--it ain't any use any more.”

Then Huckleberry and Tom stood dumb and staring, and heard the
stony-hearted liar reel off his serene statement, they expecting every
moment that the clear sky would deliver God's lightnings upon his head,
and wondering to see how long the stroke was delayed. And when he had
finished and still stood alive and whole, their wavering impulse to
break their oath and save the poor betrayed prisoner's life faded and
vanished away, for plainly this miscreant had sold himself to Satan and
it would be fatal to meddle with the property of such a power as that.

“Why didn't you leave? What did you want to come here for?” somebody
said.

“I couldn't help it--I couldn't help it,” Potter moaned. “I wanted to
run away, but I couldn't seem to come anywhere but here.” And he fell to
sobbing again.

Injun Joe repeated his statement, just as calmly, a few minutes
afterward on the inquest, under oath; and the boys, seeing that the
lightnings were still withheld, were confirmed in their belief that
Joe had sold himself to the devil. He was now become, to them, the most
balefully interesting object they had ever looked upon, and they could
not take their fascinated eyes from his face.

They inwardly resolved to watch him nights, when opportunity should
offer, in the hope of getting a glimpse of his dread master.

Injun Joe helped to raise the body of the murdered man and put it in
a wagon for removal; and it was whispered through the shuddering
crowd that the wound bled a little! The boys thought that this happy
circumstance would turn suspicion in the right direction; but they were
disappointed, for more than one villager remarked:

“It was within three feet of Muff Potter when it done it.”

Tom's fearful secret and gnawing conscience disturbed his sleep for as
much as a week after this; and at breakfast one morning Sid said:

“Tom, you pitch around and talk in your sleep so much that you keep me
awake half the time.”

Tom blanched and dropped his eyes.

“It's a bad sign,” said Aunt Polly, gravely. “What you got on your mind,
Tom?”

“Nothing. Nothing 't I know of.” But the boy's hand shook so that he
spilled his coffee.

“And you do talk such stuff,” Sid said. “Last night you said, 'It's
blood, it's blood, that's what it is!' You said that over and over.
And you said, 'Don't torment me so--I'll tell!' Tell _what_? What is it
you'll tell?”

Everything was swimming before Tom. There is no telling what might have
happened, now, but luckily the concern passed out of Aunt Polly's face
and she came to Tom's relief without knowing it. She said:

“Sho! It's that dreadful murder. I dream about it most every night
myself. Sometimes I dream it's me that done it.”

Mary said she had been affected much the same way. Sid seemed satisfied.
Tom got out of the presence as quick as he plausibly could, and after
that he complained of toothache for a week, and tied up his jaws every
night. He never knew that Sid lay nightly watching, and frequently
slipped the bandage free and then leaned on his elbow listening a good
while at a time, and afterward slipped the bandage back to its place
again. Tom's distress of mind wore off gradually and the toothache grew
irksome and was discarded. If Sid really managed to make anything out of
Tom's disjointed mutterings, he kept it to himself.

It seemed to Tom that his schoolmates never would get done holding
inquests on dead cats, and thus keeping his trouble present to his mind.
Sid noticed that Tom never was coroner at one of these inquiries,
though it had been his habit to take the lead in all new enterprises;
he noticed, too, that Tom never acted as a witness--and that was strange;
and Sid did not overlook the fact that Tom even showed a marked aversion
to these inquests, and always avoided them when he could. Sid marvelled,
but said nothing. However, even inquests went out of vogue at last, and
ceased to torture Tom's conscience.

Every day or two, during this time of sorrow, Tom watched his
opportunity and went to the little grated jail-window and smuggled such
small comforts through to the “murderer” as he could get hold of. The
jail was a trifling little brick den that stood in a marsh at the edge
of the village, and no guards were afforded for it; indeed, it
was seldom occupied. These offerings greatly helped to ease Tom's
conscience.

The villagers had a strong desire to tar-and-feather Injun Joe and ride
him on a rail, for body-snatching, but so formidable was his character
that nobody could be found who was willing to take the lead in the
matter, so it was dropped. He had been careful to begin both of his
inquest-statements with the fight, without confessing the grave-robbery
that preceded it; therefore it was deemed wisest not to try the case in
the courts at present.




CHAPTER XII

ONE of the reasons why Tom's mind had drifted away from its secret
troubles was, that it had found a new and weighty matter to interest
itself about. Becky Thatcher had stopped coming to school. Tom had
struggled with his pride a few days, and tried to “whistle her down the
wind,” but failed. He began to find himself hanging around her father's
house, nights, and feeling very miserable. She was ill. What if she
should die! There was distraction in the thought. He no longer took an
interest in war, nor even in piracy. The charm of life was gone; there
was nothing but dreariness left. He put his hoop away, and his bat;
there was no joy in them any more. His aunt was concerned. She began to
try all manner of remedies on him. She was one of those people who
are infatuated with patent medicines and all new-fangled methods of
producing health or mending it. She was an inveterate experimenter in
these things. When something fresh in this line came out she was in a
fever, right away, to try it; not on herself, for she was never ailing,
but on anybody else that came handy. She was a subscriber for all the
“Health” periodicals and phrenological frauds; and the solemn ignorance
they were inflated with was breath to her nostrils. All the “rot” they
contained about ventilation, and how to go to bed, and how to get up,
and what to eat, and what to drink, and how much exercise to take, and
what frame of mind to keep one's self in, and what sort of clothing
to wear, was all gospel to her, and she never observed that her
health-journals of the current month customarily upset everything they
had recommended the month before. She was as simple-hearted and honest
as the day was long, and so she was an easy victim. She gathered
together her quack periodicals and her quack medicines, and thus armed
with death, went about on her pale horse, metaphorically speaking, with
“hell following after.” But she never suspected that she was not an
angel of healing and the balm of Gilead in disguise, to the suffering
neighbors.

The water treatment was new, now, and Tom's low condition was a windfall
to her. She had him out at daylight every morning, stood him up in the
wood-shed and drowned him with a deluge of cold water; then she scrubbed
him down with a towel like a file, and so brought him to; then she
rolled him up in a wet sheet and put him away under blankets till she
sweated his soul clean and “the yellow stains of it came through his
pores”--as Tom said.

Yet notwithstanding all this, the boy grew more and more melancholy and
pale and dejected. She added hot baths, sitz baths, shower baths, and
plunges. The boy remained as dismal as a hearse. She began to assist the
water with a slim oatmeal diet and blister-plasters. She calculated his
capacity as she would a jug's, and filled him up every day with quack
cure-alls.

Tom had become indifferent to persecution by this time. This phase
filled the old lady's heart with consternation. This indifference must
be broken up at any cost. Now she heard of Pain-killer for the first
time. She ordered a lot at once. She tasted it and was filled with
gratitude. It was simply fire in a liquid form. She dropped the water
treatment and everything else, and pinned her faith to Pain-killer.
She gave Tom a teaspoonful and watched with the deepest anxiety for the
result. Her troubles were instantly at rest, her soul at peace again;
for the “indifference” was broken up. The boy could not have shown a
wilder, heartier interest, if she had built a fire under him.

Tom felt that it was time to wake up; this sort of life might be
romantic enough, in his blighted condition, but it was getting to have
too little sentiment and too much distracting variety about it. So he
thought over various plans for relief, and finally hit upon that of
professing to be fond of Pain-killer. He asked for it so often that he
became a nuisance, and his aunt ended by telling him to help himself and
quit bothering her. If it had been Sid, she would have had no misgivings
to alloy her delight; but since it was Tom, she watched the bottle
clandestinely. She found that the medicine did really diminish, but it
did not occur to her that the boy was mending the health of a crack in
the sitting-room floor with it.

One day Tom was in the act of dosing the crack when his aunt's yellow
cat came along, purring, eyeing the teaspoon avariciously, and begging
for a taste. Tom said:

“Don't ask for it unless you want it, Peter.”

But Peter signified that he did want it.

“You better make sure.”

Peter was sure.

“Now you've asked for it, and I'll give it to you, because there ain't
anything mean about me; but if you find you don't like it, you mustn't
blame anybody but your own self.”

Peter was agreeable. So Tom pried his mouth open and poured down
the Pain-killer. Peter sprang a couple of yards in the air, and then
delivered a war-whoop and set off round and round the room, banging
against furniture, upsetting flower-pots, and making general havoc. Next
he rose on his hind feet and pranced around, in a frenzy of enjoyment,
with his head over his shoulder and his voice proclaiming his
unappeasable happiness. Then he went tearing around the house again
spreading chaos and destruction in his path. Aunt Polly entered in time
to see him throw a few double summersets, deliver a final mighty hurrah,
and sail through the open window, carrying the rest of the flower-pots
with him. The old lady stood petrified with astonishment, peering over
her glasses; Tom lay on the floor expiring with laughter.

“Tom, what on earth ails that cat?”

“I don't know, aunt,” gasped the boy.

“Why, I never see anything like it. What did make him act so?”

“Deed I don't know, Aunt Polly; cats always act so when they're having a
good time.”

“They do, do they?” There was something in the tone that made Tom
apprehensive.

“Yes'm. That is, I believe they do.”

“You _do_?”

“Yes'm.”

The old lady was bending down, Tom watching, with interest emphasized
by anxiety. Too late he divined her “drift.” The handle of the telltale
tea-spoon was visible under the bed-valance. Aunt Polly took it, held it
up. Tom winced, and dropped his eyes. Aunt Polly raised him by the usual
handle--his ear--and cracked his head soundly with her thimble.

“Now, sir, what did you want to treat that poor dumb beast so, for?”

“I done it out of pity for him--because he hadn't any aunt.”

“Hadn't any aunt!--you numskull. What has that got to do with it?”

“Heaps. Because if he'd had one she'd a burnt him out herself! She'd a
roasted his bowels out of him 'thout any more feeling than if he was a
human!”

Aunt Polly felt a sudden pang of remorse. This was putting the thing in
a new light; what was cruelty to a cat _might_ be cruelty to a boy, too.
She began to soften; she felt sorry. Her eyes watered a little, and she
put her hand on Tom's head and said gently:

“I was meaning for the best, Tom. And, Tom, it _did_ do you good.”

Tom looked up in her face with just a perceptible twinkle peeping
through his gravity.

“I know you was meaning for the best, aunty, and so was I with Peter. It
done _him_ good, too. I never see him get around so since--”

“Oh, go 'long with you, Tom, before you aggravate me again. And you try
and see if you can't be a good boy, for once, and you needn't take any
more medicine.”

Tom reached school ahead of time. It was noticed that this strange thing
had been occurring every day latterly. And now, as usual of late,
he hung about the gate of the schoolyard instead of playing with his
comrades. He was sick, he said, and he looked it. He tried to seem to
be looking everywhere but whither he really was looking--down the road.
Presently Jeff Thatcher hove in sight, and Tom's face lighted; he gazed
a moment, and then turned sorrowfully away. When Jeff arrived, Tom
accosted him; and “led up” warily to opportunities for remark about
Becky, but the giddy lad never could see the bait. Tom watched and
watched, hoping whenever a frisking frock came in sight, and hating the
owner of it as soon as he saw she was not the right one. At last frocks
ceased to appear, and he dropped hopelessly into the dumps; he entered
the empty schoolhouse and sat down to suffer. Then one more frock passed
in at the gate, and Tom's heart gave a great bound. The next instant he
was out, and “going on” like an Indian; yelling, laughing, chasing boys,
jumping over the fence at risk of life and limb, throwing handsprings,
standing on his head--doing all the heroic things he could conceive of,
and keeping a furtive eye out, all the while, to see if Becky Thatcher
was noticing. But she seemed to be unconscious of it all; she never
looked. Could it be possible that she was not aware that he was there?
He carried his exploits to her immediate vicinity; came war-whooping
around, snatched a boy's cap, hurled it to the roof of the schoolhouse,
broke through a group of boys, tumbling them in every direction, and
fell sprawling, himself, under Becky's nose, almost upsetting her--and
she turned, with her nose in the air, and he heard her say: “Mf! some
people think they're mighty smart--always showing off!”

Tom's cheeks burned. He gathered himself up and sneaked off, crushed and
crestfallen.




CHAPTER XIII

TOM'S mind was made up now. He was gloomy and desperate. He was a
forsaken, friendless boy, he said; nobody loved him; when they found out
what they had driven him to, perhaps they would be sorry; he had tried
to do right and get along, but they would not let him; since nothing
would do them but to be rid of him, let it be so; and let them blame
_him_ for the consequences--why shouldn't they? What right had the
friendless to complain? Yes, they had forced him to it at last: he would
lead a life of crime. There was no choice.

By this time he was far down Meadow Lane, and the bell for school to
“take up” tinkled faintly upon his ear. He sobbed, now, to think he
should never, never hear that old familiar sound any more--it was very
hard, but it was forced on him; since he was driven out into the cold
world, he must submit--but he forgave them. Then the sobs came thick and
fast.

Just at this point he met his soul's sworn comrade, Joe
Harper--hard-eyed, and with evidently a great and dismal purpose in his
heart. Plainly here were “two souls with but a single thought.” Tom,
wiping his eyes with his sleeve, began to blubber out something about
a resolution to escape from hard usage and lack of sympathy at home by
roaming abroad into the great world never to return; and ended by hoping
that Joe would not forget him.

But it transpired that this was a request which Joe had just been going
to make of Tom, and had come to hunt him up for that purpose. His mother
had whipped him for drinking some cream which he had never tasted and
knew nothing about; it was plain that she was tired of him and wished
him to go; if she felt that way, there was nothing for him to do but
succumb; he hoped she would be happy, and never regret having driven her
poor boy out into the unfeeling world to suffer and die.

As the two boys walked sorrowing along, they made a new compact to stand
by each other and be brothers and never separate till death relieved
them of their troubles. Then they began to lay their plans. Joe was for
being a hermit, and living on crusts in a remote cave, and dying,
some time, of cold and want and grief; but after listening to Tom, he
conceded that there were some conspicuous advantages about a life of
crime, and so he consented to be a pirate.

Three miles below St. Petersburg, at a point where the Mississippi River
was a trifle over a mile wide, there was a long, narrow, wooded island,
with a shallow bar at the head of it, and this offered well as a
rendezvous. It was not inhabited; it lay far over toward the further
shore, abreast a dense and almost wholly unpeopled forest. So Jackson's
Island was chosen. Who were to be the subjects of their piracies was a
matter that did not occur to them. Then they hunted up Huckleberry Finn,
and he joined them promptly, for all careers were one to him; he was
indifferent. They presently separated to meet at a lonely spot on the
river-bank two miles above the village at the favorite hour--which was
midnight. There was a small log raft there which they meant to capture.
Each would bring hooks and lines, and such provision as he could steal
in the most dark and mysterious way--as became outlaws. And before the
afternoon was done, they had all managed to enjoy the sweet glory of
spreading the fact that pretty soon the town would “hear something.” All
who got this vague hint were cautioned to “be mum and wait.”

About midnight Tom arrived with a boiled ham and a few trifles,
and stopped in a dense undergrowth on a small bluff overlooking the
meeting-place. It was starlight, and very still. The mighty river lay
like an ocean at rest. Tom listened a moment, but no sound disturbed the
quiet. Then he gave a low, distinct whistle. It was answered from under
the bluff. Tom whistled twice more; these signals were answered in the
same way. Then a guarded voice said:

“Who goes there?”

“Tom Sawyer, the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main. Name your names.”

“Huck Finn the Red-Handed, and Joe Harper the Terror of the Seas.” Tom
had furnished these titles, from his favorite literature.

“'Tis well. Give the countersign.”

Two hoarse whispers delivered the same awful word simultaneously to the
brooding night:

“_Blood_!”

Then Tom tumbled his ham over the bluff and let himself down after it,
tearing both skin and clothes to some extent in the effort. There was
an easy, comfortable path along the shore under the bluff, but it lacked
the advantages of difficulty and danger so valued by a pirate.

The Terror of the Seas had brought a side of bacon, and had about worn
himself out with getting it there. Finn the Red-Handed had stolen a
skillet and a quantity of half-cured leaf tobacco, and had also brought
a few corn-cobs to make pipes with. But none of the pirates smoked or
“chewed” but himself. The Black Avenger of the Spanish Main said it
would never do to start without some fire. That was a wise thought;
matches were hardly known there in that day. They saw a fire smouldering
upon a great raft a hundred yards above, and they went stealthily
thither and helped themselves to a chunk. They made an imposing
adventure of it, saying, “Hist!” every now and then, and suddenly
halting with finger on lip; moving with hands on imaginary dagger-hilts;
and giving orders in dismal whispers that if “the foe” stirred, to “let
him have it to the hilt,” because “dead men tell no tales.” They knew
well enough that the raftsmen were all down at the village laying
in stores or having a spree, but still that was no excuse for their
conducting this thing in an unpiratical way.

They shoved off, presently, Tom in command, Huck at the after oar and
Joe at the forward. Tom stood amidships, gloomy-browed, and with folded
arms, and gave his orders in a low, stern whisper:

“Luff, and bring her to the wind!”

“Aye-aye, sir!”

“Steady, steady-y-y-y!”

“Steady it is, sir!”

“Let her go off a point!”

“Point it is, sir!”

As the boys steadily and monotonously drove the raft toward mid-stream
it was no doubt understood that these orders were given only for
“style,” and were not intended to mean anything in particular.

“What sail's she carrying?”

“Courses, tops'ls, and flying-jib, sir.”

“Send the r'yals up! Lay out aloft, there, half a dozen of
ye--foretopmaststuns'l! Lively, now!”

“Aye-aye, sir!”

“Shake out that maintogalans'l! Sheets and braces! _now_ my hearties!”

“Aye-aye, sir!”

“Hellum-a-lee--hard a port! Stand by to meet her when she comes! Port,
port! _Now_, men! With a will! Stead-y-y-y!”

“Steady it is, sir!”

The raft drew beyond the middle of the river; the boys pointed her head
right, and then lay on their oars. The river was not high, so there was
not more than a two or three mile current. Hardly a word was said during
the next three-quarters of an hour. Now the raft was passing before
the distant town. Two or three glimmering lights showed where it lay,
peacefully sleeping, beyond the vague vast sweep of star-gemmed water,
unconscious of the tremendous event that was happening. The Black
Avenger stood still with folded arms, “looking his last” upon the scene
of his former joys and his later sufferings, and wishing “she” could see
him now, abroad on the wild sea, facing peril and death with dauntless
heart, going to his doom with a grim smile on his lips. It was but
a small strain on his imagination to remove Jackson's Island beyond
eye-shot of the village, and so he “looked his last” with a broken and
satisfied heart. The other pirates were looking their last, too; and
they all looked so long that they came near letting the current drift
them out of the range of the island. But they discovered the danger in
time, and made shift to avert it. About two o'clock in the morning the
raft grounded on the bar two hundred yards above the head of the island,
and they waded back and forth until they had landed their freight. Part
of the little raft's belongings consisted of an old sail, and this they
spread over a nook in the bushes for a tent to shelter their provisions;
but they themselves would sleep in the open air in good weather, as
became outlaws.

They built a fire against the side of a great log twenty or thirty steps
within the sombre depths of the forest, and then cooked some bacon in
the frying-pan for supper, and used up half of the corn “pone” stock
they had brought. It seemed glorious sport to be feasting in that wild,
free way in the virgin forest of an unexplored and uninhabited island,
far from the haunts of men, and they said they never would return to
civilization. The climbing fire lit up their faces and threw its ruddy
glare upon the pillared tree-trunks of their forest temple, and upon the
varnished foliage and festooning vines.

When the last crisp slice of bacon was gone, and the last allowance
of corn pone devoured, the boys stretched themselves out on the grass,
filled with contentment. They could have found a cooler place, but
they would not deny themselves such a romantic feature as the roasting
campfire.

“_Ain't_ it gay?” said Joe.

“It's _nuts_!” said Tom. “What would the boys say if they could see us?”

“Say? Well, they'd just die to be here--hey, Hucky!”

“I reckon so,” said Huckleberry; “anyways, I'm suited. I don't want
nothing better'n this. I don't ever get enough to eat, gen'ally--and here
they can't come and pick at a feller and bullyrag him so.”

“It's just the life for me,” said Tom. “You don't have to get up,
mornings, and you don't have to go to school, and wash, and all that
blame foolishness. You see a pirate don't have to do _anything_, Joe,
when he's ashore, but a hermit _he_ has to be praying considerable, and
then he don't have any fun, anyway, all by himself that way.”

“Oh yes, that's so,” said Joe, “but I hadn't thought much about it, you
know. I'd a good deal rather be a pirate, now that I've tried it.”

“You see,” said Tom, “people don't go much on hermits, nowadays, like
they used to in old times, but a pirate's always respected. And
a hermit's got to sleep on the hardest place he can find, and put
sackcloth and ashes on his head, and stand out in the rain, and--”

“What does he put sackcloth and ashes on his head for?” inquired Huck.

“I dono. But they've _got_ to do it. Hermits always do. You'd have to do
that if you was a hermit.”

“Dern'd if I would,” said Huck.

“Well, what would you do?”

“I dono. But I wouldn't do that.”

“Why, Huck, you'd _have_ to. How'd you get around it?”

“Why, I just wouldn't stand it. I'd run away.”

“Run away! Well, you _would_ be a nice old slouch of a hermit. You'd be
a disgrace.”

The Red-Handed made no response, being better employed. He had finished
gouging out a cob, and now he fitted a weed stem to it, loaded it with
tobacco, and was pressing a coal to the charge and blowing a cloud of
fragrant smoke--he was in the full bloom of luxurious contentment. The
other pirates envied him this majestic vice, and secretly resolved to
acquire it shortly. Presently Huck said:

“What does pirates have to do?”

Tom said:

“Oh, they have just a bully time--take ships and burn them, and get the
money and bury it in awful places in their island where there's ghosts
and things to watch it, and kill everybody in the ships--make 'em walk a
plank.”

“And they carry the women to the island,” said Joe; “they don't kill the
women.”

“No,” assented Tom, “they don't kill the women--they're too noble. And
the women's always beautiful, too.

“And don't they wear the bulliest clothes! Oh no! All gold and silver
and di'monds,” said Joe, with enthusiasm.

“Who?” said Huck.

“Why, the pirates.”

Huck scanned his own clothing forlornly.

“I reckon I ain't dressed fitten for a pirate,” said he, with a
regretful pathos in his voice; “but I ain't got none but these.”

But the other boys told him the fine clothes would come fast enough,
after they should have begun their adventures. They made him understand
that his poor rags would do to begin with, though it was customary for
wealthy pirates to start with a proper wardrobe.

Gradually their talk died out and drowsiness began to steal upon the
eyelids of the little waifs. The pipe dropped from the fingers of the
Red-Handed, and he slept the sleep of the conscience-free and the weary.
The Terror of the Seas and the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main had
more difficulty in getting to sleep. They said their prayers inwardly,
and lying down, since there was nobody there with authority to make them
kneel and recite aloud; in truth, they had a mind not to say them at
all, but they were afraid to proceed to such lengths as that, lest they
might call down a sudden and special thunderbolt from heaven. Then at
once they reached and hovered upon the imminent verge of sleep--but an
intruder came, now, that would not “down.” It was conscience. They began
to feel a vague fear that they had been doing wrong to run away; and
next they thought of the stolen meat, and then the real torture came.
They tried to argue it away by reminding conscience that they had
purloined sweetmeats and apples scores of times; but conscience was not
to be appeased by such thin plausibilities; it seemed to them, in the
end, that there was no getting around the stubborn fact that taking
sweetmeats was only “hooking,” while taking bacon and hams and such
valuables was plain simple stealing--and there was a command against that
in the Bible. So they inwardly resolved that so long as they remained in
the business, their piracies should not again be sullied with the
crime of stealing. Then conscience granted a truce, and these curiously
inconsistent pirates fell peacefully to sleep.




CHAPTER XIV

WHEN Tom awoke in the morning, he wondered where he was. He sat up and
rubbed his eyes and looked around. Then he comprehended. It was the cool
gray dawn, and there was a delicious sense of repose and peace in the
deep pervading calm and silence of the woods. Not a leaf stirred; not
a sound obtruded upon great Nature's meditation. Beaded dewdrops stood
upon the leaves and grasses. A white layer of ashes covered the fire,
and a thin blue breath of smoke rose straight into the air. Joe and Huck
still slept.

Now, far away in the woods a bird called; another answered; presently
the hammering of a woodpecker was heard. Gradually the cool dim gray
of the morning whitened, and as gradually sounds multiplied and life
manifested itself. The marvel of Nature shaking off sleep and going
to work unfolded itself to the musing boy. A little green worm came
crawling over a dewy leaf, lifting two-thirds of his body into the air
from time to time and “sniffing around,” then proceeding again--for he
was measuring, Tom said; and when the worm approached him, of its own
accord, he sat as still as a stone, with his hopes rising and falling,
by turns, as the creature still came toward him or seemed inclined to
go elsewhere; and when at last it considered a painful moment with its
curved body in the air and then came decisively down upon Tom's leg and
began a journey over him, his whole heart was glad--for that meant that
he was going to have a new suit of clothes--without the shadow of a
doubt a gaudy piratical uniform. Now a procession of ants appeared,
from nowhere in particular, and went about their labors; one struggled
manfully by with a dead spider five times as big as itself in its arms,
and lugged it straight up a tree-trunk. A brown spotted lady-bug climbed
the dizzy height of a grass blade, and Tom bent down close to it and
said, “Lady-bug, lady-bug, fly away home, your house is on fire, your
children's alone,” and she took wing and went off to see about it--which
did not surprise the boy, for he knew of old that this insect was
credulous about conflagrations, and he had practised upon its simplicity
more than once. A tumblebug came next, heaving sturdily at its ball, and
Tom touched the creature, to see it shut its legs against its body
and pretend to be dead. The birds were fairly rioting by this time. A
catbird, the Northern mocker, lit in a tree over Tom's head, and trilled
out her imitations of her neighbors in a rapture of enjoyment; then
a shrill jay swept down, a flash of blue flame, and stopped on a twig
almost within the boy's reach, cocked his head to one side and eyed the
strangers with a consuming curiosity; a gray squirrel and a big fellow
of the “fox” kind came skurrying along, sitting up at intervals to
inspect and chatter at the boys, for the wild things had probably never
seen a human being before and scarcely knew whether to be afraid or not.
All Nature was wide awake and stirring, now; long lances of sunlight
pierced down through the dense foliage far and near, and a few
butterflies came fluttering upon the scene.

Tom stirred up the other pirates and they all clattered away with
a shout, and in a minute or two were stripped and chasing after and
tumbling over each other in the shallow limpid water of the white
sandbar. They felt no longing for the little village sleeping in the
distance beyond the majestic waste of water. A vagrant current or a
slight rise in the river had carried off their raft, but this only
gratified them, since its going was something like burning the bridge
between them and civilization.

They came back to camp wonderfully refreshed, glad-hearted, and
ravenous; and they soon had the camp-fire blazing up again. Huck found a
spring of clear cold water close by, and the boys made cups of broad oak
or hickory leaves, and felt that water, sweetened with such a wildwood
charm as that, would be a good enough substitute for coffee. While Joe
was slicing bacon for breakfast, Tom and Huck asked him to hold on a
minute; they stepped to a promising nook in the river-bank and threw in
their lines; almost immediately they had reward. Joe had not had time
to get impatient before they were back again with some handsome bass,
a couple of sun-perch and a small catfish--provisions enough for quite a
family. They fried the fish with the bacon, and were astonished; for
no fish had ever seemed so delicious before. They did not know that the
quicker a fresh-water fish is on the fire after he is caught the better
he is; and they reflected little upon what a sauce open-air sleeping,
open-air exercise, bathing, and a large ingredient of hunger make, too.

They lay around in the shade, after breakfast, while Huck had a smoke,
and then went off through the woods on an exploring expedition. They
tramped gayly along, over decaying logs, through tangled underbrush,
among solemn monarchs of the forest, hung from their crowns to the
ground with a drooping regalia of grape-vines. Now and then they came
upon snug nooks carpeted with grass and jeweled with flowers.

They found plenty of things to be delighted with, but nothing to be
astonished at. They discovered that the island was about three miles
long and a quarter of a mile wide, and that the shore it lay closest to
was only separated from it by a narrow channel hardly two hundred yards
wide. They took a swim about every hour, so it was close upon the middle
of the afternoon when they got back to camp. They were too hungry to
stop to fish, but they fared sumptuously upon cold ham, and then threw
themselves down in the shade to talk. But the talk soon began to drag,
and then died. The stillness, the solemnity that brooded in the woods,
and the sense of loneliness, began to tell upon the spirits of the boys.
They fell to thinking. A sort of undefined longing crept upon them. This
took dim shape, presently--it was budding homesickness. Even Finn the
Red-Handed was dreaming of his doorsteps and empty hogsheads. But they
were all ashamed of their weakness, and none was brave enough to speak
his thought.

For some time, now, the boys had been dully conscious of a peculiar
sound in the distance, just as one sometimes is of the ticking of a
clock which he takes no distinct note of. But now this mysterious sound
became more pronounced, and forced a recognition. The boys started,
glanced at each other, and then each assumed a listening attitude. There
was a long silence, profound and unbroken; then a deep, sullen boom came
floating down out of the distance.

“What is it!” exclaimed Joe, under his breath.

“I wonder,” said Tom in a whisper.

“'Tain't thunder,” said Huckleberry, in an awed tone, “becuz thunder--”

“Hark!” said Tom. “Listen--don't talk.”

They waited a time that seemed an age, and then the same muffled boom
troubled the solemn hush.

“Let's go and see.”

They sprang to their feet and hurried to the shore toward the town. They
parted the bushes on the bank and peered out over the water. The little
steam ferry-boat was about a mile below the village, drifting with the
current. Her broad deck seemed crowded with people. There were a great
many skiffs rowing about or floating with the stream in the neighborhood
of the ferryboat, but the boys could not determine what the men in
them were doing. Presently a great jet of white smoke burst from the
ferryboat's side, and as it expanded and rose in a lazy cloud, that same
dull throb of sound was borne to the listeners again.

“I know now!” exclaimed Tom; “somebody's drownded!”

“That's it!” said Huck; “they done that last summer, when Bill Turner
got drownded; they shoot a cannon over the water, and that makes
him come up to the top. Yes, and they take loaves of bread and put
quicksilver in 'em and set 'em afloat, and wherever there's anybody
that's drownded, they'll float right there and stop.”

“Yes, I've heard about that,” said Joe. “I wonder what makes the bread
do that.”

“Oh, it ain't the bread, so much,” said Tom; “I reckon it's mostly what
they _say_ over it before they start it out.”

“But they don't say anything over it,” said Huck. “I've seen 'em and
they don't.”

“Well, that's funny,” said Tom. “But maybe they say it to themselves. Of
_course_ they do. Anybody might know that.”

The other boys agreed that there was reason in what Tom said, because
an ignorant lump of bread, uninstructed by an incantation, could not
be expected to act very intelligently when set upon an errand of such
gravity.

“By jings, I wish I was over there, now,” said Joe.

“I do too” said Huck “I'd give heaps to know who it is.”

The boys still listened and watched. Presently a revealing thought
flashed through Tom's mind, and he exclaimed:

“Boys, I know who's drownded--it's us!”

They felt like heroes in an instant. Here was a gorgeous triumph; they
were missed; they were mourned; hearts were breaking on their account;
tears were being shed; accusing memories of unkindness to these poor
lost lads were rising up, and unavailing regrets and remorse were being
indulged; and best of all, the departed were the talk of the whole town,
and the envy of all the boys, as far as this dazzling notoriety was
concerned. This was fine. It was worth while to be a pirate, after all.

As twilight drew on, the ferryboat went back to her accustomed business
and the skiffs disappeared. The pirates returned to camp. They were
jubilant with vanity over their new grandeur and the illustrious trouble
they were making. They caught fish, cooked supper and ate it, and then
fell to guessing at what the village was thinking and saying about them;
and the pictures they drew of the public distress on their account were
gratifying to look upon--from their point of view. But when the shadows
of night closed them in, they gradually ceased to talk, and sat gazing
into the fire, with their minds evidently wandering elsewhere. The
excitement was gone, now, and Tom and Joe could not keep back thoughts
of certain persons at home who were not enjoying this fine frolic as
much as they were. Misgivings came; they grew troubled and unhappy; a
sigh or two escaped, unawares. By and by Joe timidly ventured upon a
roundabout “feeler” as to how the others might look upon a return to
civilization--not right now, but--

Tom withered him with derision! Huck, being uncommitted as yet, joined
in with Tom, and the waverer quickly “explained,” and was glad to get
out of the scrape with as little taint of chicken-hearted home-sickness
clinging to his garments as he could. Mutiny was effectually laid to
rest for the moment.

As the night deepened, Huck began to nod, and presently to snore.
Joe followed next. Tom lay upon his elbow motionless, for some time,
watching the two intently. At last he got up cautiously, on his knees,
and went searching among the grass and the flickering reflections flung
by the campfire. He picked up and inspected several large semi-cylinders
of the thin white bark of a sycamore, and finally chose two which seemed
to suit him. Then he knelt by the fire and painfully wrote something
upon each of these with his “red keel”; one he rolled up and put in his
jacket pocket, and the other he put in Joe's hat and removed it to a
little distance from the owner. And he also put into the hat certain
schoolboy treasures of almost inestimable value--among them a lump of
chalk, an India-rubber ball, three fishhooks, and one of that kind
of marbles known as a “sure 'nough crystal.” Then he tiptoed his way
cautiously among the trees till he felt that he was out of hearing, and
straightway broke into a keen run in the direction of the sandbar.




CHAPTER XV

A few minutes later Tom was in the shoal water of the bar, wading toward
the Illinois shore. Before the depth reached his middle he was halfway
over; the current would permit no more wading, now, so he struck out
confidently to swim the remaining hundred yards. He swam quartering
upstream, but still was swept downward rather faster than he had
expected. However, he reached the shore finally, and drifted along till
he found a low place and drew himself out. He put his hand on his jacket
pocket, found his piece of bark safe, and then struck through the woods,
following the shore, with streaming garments. Shortly before ten
o'clock he came out into an open place opposite the village, and saw the
ferryboat lying in the shadow of the trees and the high bank. Everything
was quiet under the blinking stars. He crept down the bank, watching
with all his eyes, slipped into the water, swam three or four strokes
and climbed into the skiff that did “yawl” duty at the boat's stern. He
laid himself down under the thwarts and waited, panting.

Presently the cracked bell tapped and a voice gave the order to “cast
off.” A minute or two later the skiff's head was standing high up,
against the boat's swell, and the voyage was begun. Tom felt happy in
his success, for he knew it was the boat's last trip for the night. At
the end of a long twelve or fifteen minutes the wheels stopped, and
Tom slipped overboard and swam ashore in the dusk, landing fifty yards
downstream, out of danger of possible stragglers.

He flew along unfrequented alleys, and shortly found himself at his
aunt's back fence. He climbed over, approached the “ell,” and looked
in at the sitting-room window, for a light was burning there. There
sat Aunt Polly, Sid, Mary, and Joe Harper's mother, grouped together,
talking. They were by the bed, and the bed was between them and the
door. Tom went to the door and began to softly lift the latch; then
he pressed gently and the door yielded a crack; he continued pushing
cautiously, and quaking every time it creaked, till he judged he might
squeeze through on his knees; so he put his head through and began,
warily.

“What makes the candle blow so?” said Aunt Polly. Tom hurried up. “Why,
that door's open, I believe. Why, of course it is. No end of strange
things now. Go 'long and shut it, Sid.”

Tom disappeared under the bed just in time. He lay and “breathed”
 himself for a time, and then crept to where he could almost touch his
aunt's foot.

“But as I was saying,” said Aunt Polly, “he warn't _bad_, so to say--only
misch_ee_vous. Only just giddy, and harum-scarum, you know. He warn't
any more responsible than a colt. _He_ never meant any harm, and he was
the best-hearted boy that ever was”--and she began to cry.

“It was just so with my Joe--always full of his devilment, and up to
every kind of mischief, but he was just as unselfish and kind as he
could be--and laws bless me, to think I went and whipped him for taking
that cream, never once recollecting that I throwed it out myself because
it was sour, and I never to see him again in this world, never, never,
never, poor abused boy!” And Mrs. Harper sobbed as if her heart would
break.

“I hope Tom's better off where he is,” said Sid, “but if he'd been
better in some ways--”

“_Sid!_” Tom felt the glare of the old lady's eye, though he could not
see it. “Not a word against my Tom, now that he's gone! God'll take care
of _him_--never you trouble _your_self, sir! Oh, Mrs. Harper, I don't
know how to give him up! I don't know how to give him up! He was such a
comfort to me, although he tormented my old heart out of me, 'most.”

“The Lord giveth and the Lord hath taken away--Blessed be the name of
the Lord! But it's so hard--Oh, it's so hard! Only last Saturday my Joe
busted a firecracker right under my nose and I knocked him sprawling.
Little did I know then, how soon--Oh, if it was to do over again I'd hug
him and bless him for it.”

“Yes, yes, yes, I know just how you feel, Mrs. Harper, I know just
exactly how you feel. No longer ago than yesterday noon, my Tom took
and filled the cat full of Pain-killer, and I did think the cretur would
tear the house down. And God forgive me, I cracked Tom's head with my
thimble, poor boy, poor dead boy. But he's out of all his troubles now.
And the last words I ever heard him say was to reproach--”

But this memory was too much for the old lady, and she broke entirely
down. Tom was snuffling, now, himself--and more in pity of himself than
anybody else. He could hear Mary crying, and putting in a kindly word
for him from time to time. He began to have a nobler opinion of himself
than ever before. Still, he was sufficiently touched by his aunt's grief
to long to rush out from under the bed and overwhelm her with joy--and
the theatrical gorgeousness of the thing appealed strongly to his
nature, too, but he resisted and lay still.

He went on listening, and gathered by odds and ends that it was
conjectured at first that the boys had got drowned while taking a swim;
then the small raft had been missed; next, certain boys said the missing
lads had promised that the village should “hear something” soon; the
wise-heads had “put this and that together” and decided that the lads
had gone off on that raft and would turn up at the next town below,
presently; but toward noon the raft had been found, lodged against the
Missouri shore some five or six miles below the village--and then hope
perished; they must be drowned, else hunger would have driven them home
by nightfall if not sooner. It was believed that the search for the
bodies had been a fruitless effort merely because the drowning must
have occurred in mid-channel, since the boys, being good swimmers, would
otherwise have escaped to shore. This was Wednesday night. If the bodies
continued missing until Sunday, all hope would be given over, and the
funerals would be preached on that morning. Tom shuddered.

Mrs. Harper gave a sobbing goodnight and turned to go. Then with a
mutual impulse the two bereaved women flung themselves into each other's
arms and had a good, consoling cry, and then parted. Aunt Polly was
tender far beyond her wont, in her goodnight to Sid and Mary. Sid
snuffled a bit and Mary went off crying with all her heart.

Aunt Polly knelt down and prayed for Tom so touchingly, so appealingly,
and with such measureless love in her words and her old trembling voice,
that he was weltering in tears again, long before she was through.

He had to keep still long after she went to bed, for she kept making
broken-hearted ejaculations from time to time, tossing unrestfully, and
turning over. But at last she was still, only moaning a little in her
sleep. Now the boy stole out, rose gradually by the bedside, shaded the
candle-light with his hand, and stood regarding her. His heart was full
of pity for her. He took out his sycamore scroll and placed it by the
candle. But something occurred to him, and he lingered considering.
His face lighted with a happy solution of his thought; he put the bark
hastily in his pocket. Then he bent over and kissed the faded lips, and
straightway made his stealthy exit, latching the door behind him.

He threaded his way back to the ferry landing, found nobody at large
there, and walked boldly on board the boat, for he knew she was
tenantless except that there was a watchman, who always turned in and
slept like a graven image. He untied the skiff at the stern, slipped
into it, and was soon rowing cautiously upstream. When he had pulled a
mile above the village, he started quartering across and bent himself
stoutly to his work. He hit the landing on the other side neatly, for
this was a familiar bit of work to him. He was moved to capture
the skiff, arguing that it might be considered a ship and therefore
legitimate prey for a pirate, but he knew a thorough search would be
made for it and that might end in revelations. So he stepped ashore and
entered the woods.

He sat down and took a long rest, torturing himself meanwhile to keep
awake, and then started warily down the home-stretch. The night was far
spent. It was broad daylight before he found himself fairly abreast the
island bar. He rested again until the sun was well up and gilding the
great river with its splendor, and then he plunged into the stream. A
little later he paused, dripping, upon the threshold of the camp, and
heard Joe say:

“No, Tom's true-blue, Huck, and he'll come back. He won't desert. He
knows that would be a disgrace to a pirate, and Tom's too proud for that
sort of thing. He's up to something or other. Now I wonder what?”

“Well, the things is ours, anyway, ain't they?”

“Pretty near, but not yet, Huck. The writing says they are if he ain't
back here to breakfast.”

“Which he is!” exclaimed Tom, with fine dramatic effect, stepping
grandly into camp.

A sumptuous breakfast of bacon and fish was shortly provided, and as the
boys set to work upon it, Tom recounted (and adorned) his adventures.
They were a vain and boastful company of heroes when the tale was done.
Then Tom hid himself away in a shady nook to sleep till noon, and the
other pirates got ready to fish and explore.




CHAPTER XVI

AFTER dinner all the gang turned out to hunt for turtle eggs on the bar.
They went about poking sticks into the sand, and when they found a soft
place they went down on their knees and dug with their hands. Sometimes
they would take fifty or sixty eggs out of one hole. They were perfectly
round white things a trifle smaller than an English walnut. They had a
famous fried-egg feast that night, and another on Friday morning.

After breakfast they went whooping and prancing out on the bar, and
chased each other round and round, shedding clothes as they went, until
they were naked, and then continued the frolic far away up the shoal
water of the bar, against the stiff current, which latter tripped their
legs from under them from time to time and greatly increased the fun.
And now and then they stooped in a group and splashed water in each
other's faces with their palms, gradually approaching each other, with
averted faces to avoid the strangling sprays, and finally gripping and
struggling till the best man ducked his neighbor, and then they all
went under in a tangle of white legs and arms and came up blowing,
sputtering, laughing, and gasping for breath at one and the same time.

When they were well exhausted, they would run out and sprawl on the dry,
hot sand, and lie there and cover themselves up with it, and by and by
break for the water again and go through the original performance once
more. Finally it occurred to them that their naked skin represented
flesh-colored “tights” very fairly; so they drew a ring in the sand and
had a circus--with three clowns in it, for none would yield this proudest
post to his neighbor.

Next they got their marbles and played “knucks” and “ringtaw” and
“keeps” till that amusement grew stale. Then Joe and Huck had another
swim, but Tom would not venture, because he found that in kicking off
his trousers he had kicked his string of rattlesnake rattles off his
ankle, and he wondered how he had escaped cramp so long without the
protection of this mysterious charm. He did not venture again until he
had found it, and by that time the other boys were tired and ready to
rest. They gradually wandered apart, dropped into the “dumps,” and
fell to gazing longingly across the wide river to where the village lay
drowsing in the sun. Tom found himself writing “BECKY” in the sand with
his big toe; he scratched it out, and was angry with himself for his
weakness. But he wrote it again, nevertheless; he could not help it. He
erased it once more and then took himself out of temptation by driving
the other boys together and joining them.

But Joe's spirits had gone down almost beyond resurrection. He was so
homesick that he could hardly endure the misery of it. The tears lay
very near the surface. Huck was melancholy, too. Tom was downhearted,
but tried hard not to show it. He had a secret which he was not ready
to tell, yet, but if this mutinous depression was not broken up soon, he
would have to bring it out. He said, with a great show of cheerfulness:

“I bet there's been pirates on this island before, boys. We'll explore
it again. They've hid treasures here somewhere. How'd you feel to light
on a rotten chest full of gold and silver--hey?”

But it roused only faint enthusiasm, which faded out, with no reply.
Tom tried one or two other seductions; but they failed, too. It was
discouraging work. Joe sat poking up the sand with a stick and looking
very gloomy. Finally he said:

“Oh, boys, let's give it up. I want to go home. It's so lonesome.”

“Oh no, Joe, you'll feel better by and by,” said Tom. “Just think of the
fishing that's here.”

“I don't care for fishing. I want to go home.”

“But, Joe, there ain't such another swimming-place anywhere.”

“Swimming's no good. I don't seem to care for it, somehow, when there
ain't anybody to say I sha'n't go in. I mean to go home.”

“Oh, shucks! Baby! You want to see your mother, I reckon.”

“Yes, I _do_ want to see my mother--and you would, too, if you had one. I
ain't any more baby than you are.” And Joe snuffled a little.

“Well, we'll let the crybaby go home to his mother, won't we, Huck? Poor
thing--does it want to see its mother? And so it shall. You like it here,
don't you, Huck? We'll stay, won't we?”

Huck said, “Y-e-s”--without any heart in it.

“I'll never speak to you again as long as I live,” said Joe, rising.
“There now!” And he moved moodily away and began to dress himself.

“Who cares!” said Tom. “Nobody wants you to. Go 'long home and get
laughed at. Oh, you're a nice pirate. Huck and me ain't crybabies. We'll
stay, won't we, Huck? Let him go if he wants to. I reckon we can get
along without him, per'aps.”

But Tom was uneasy, nevertheless, and was alarmed to see Joe go sullenly
on with his dressing. And then it was discomforting to see Huck eying
Joe's preparations so wistfully, and keeping up such an ominous silence.
Presently, without a parting word, Joe began to wade off toward the
Illinois shore. Tom's heart began to sink. He glanced at Huck. Huck
could not bear the look, and dropped his eyes. Then he said:

“I want to go, too, Tom. It was getting so lonesome anyway, and now
it'll be worse. Let's us go, too, Tom.”

“I won't! You can all go, if you want to. I mean to stay.”

“Tom, I better go.”

“Well, go 'long--who's hendering you.”

Huck began to pick up his scattered clothes. He said:

“Tom, I wisht you'd come, too. Now you think it over. We'll wait for you
when we get to shore.”

“Well, you'll wait a blame long time, that's all.”

Huck started sorrowfully away, and Tom stood looking after him, with a
strong desire tugging at his heart to yield his pride and go along
too. He hoped the boys would stop, but they still waded slowly on. It
suddenly dawned on Tom that it was become very lonely and still. He made
one final struggle with his pride, and then darted after his comrades,
yelling:

“Wait! Wait! I want to tell you something!”

They presently stopped and turned around. When he got to where they
were, he began unfolding his secret, and they listened moodily till
at last they saw the “point” he was driving at, and then they set up a
warwhoop of applause and said it was “splendid!” and said if he had
told them at first, they wouldn't have started away. He made a plausible
excuse; but his real reason had been the fear that not even the secret
would keep them with him any very great length of time, and so he had
meant to hold it in reserve as a last seduction.

The lads came gayly back and went at their sports again with a will,
chattering all the time about Tom's stupendous plan and admiring the
genius of it. After a dainty egg and fish dinner, Tom said he wanted to
learn to smoke, now. Joe caught at the idea and said he would like to
try, too. So Huck made pipes and filled them. These novices had never
smoked anything before but cigars made of grapevine, and they “bit” the
tongue, and were not considered manly anyway.

Now they stretched themselves out on their elbows and began to puff,
charily, and with slender confidence. The smoke had an unpleasant taste,
and they gagged a little, but Tom said:

“Why, it's just as easy! If I'd a knowed this was all, I'd a learnt long
ago.”

“So would I,” said Joe. “It's just nothing.”

“Why, many a time I've looked at people smoking, and thought well I wish
I could do that; but I never thought I could,” said Tom.

“That's just the way with me, hain't it, Huck? You've heard me talk just
that way--haven't you, Huck? I'll leave it to Huck if I haven't.”

“Yes--heaps of times,” said Huck.

“Well, I have too,” said Tom; “oh, hundreds of times. Once down by the
slaughter-house. Don't you remember, Huck? Bob Tanner was there, and
Johnny Miller, and Jeff Thatcher, when I said it. Don't you remember,
Huck, 'bout me saying that?”

“Yes, that's so,” said Huck. “That was the day after I lost a white
alley. No, 'twas the day before.”

“There--I told you so,” said Tom. “Huck recollects it.”

“I bleeve I could smoke this pipe all day,” said Joe. “I don't feel
sick.”

“Neither do I,” said Tom. “I could smoke it all day. But I bet you Jeff
Thatcher couldn't.”

“Jeff Thatcher! Why, he'd keel over just with two draws. Just let him
try it once. _He'd_ see!”

“I bet he would. And Johnny Miller--I wish could see Johnny Miller tackle
it once.”

“Oh, don't I!” said Joe. “Why, I bet you Johnny Miller couldn't any more
do this than nothing. Just one little snifter would fetch _him_.”

“'Deed it would, Joe. Say--I wish the boys could see us now.”

“So do I.”

“Say--boys, don't say anything about it, and some time when they're
around, I'll come up to you and say, 'Joe, got a pipe? I want a smoke.'
And you'll say, kind of careless like, as if it warn't anything, you'll
say, 'Yes, I got my _old_ pipe, and another one, but my tobacker ain't
very good.' And I'll say, 'Oh, that's all right, if it's _strong_
enough.' And then you'll out with the pipes, and we'll light up just as
ca'm, and then just see 'em look!”

“By jings, that'll be gay, Tom! I wish it was _now_!”

“So do I! And when we tell 'em we learned when we was off pirating,
won't they wish they'd been along?”

“Oh, I reckon not! I'll just _bet_ they will!”

So the talk ran on. But presently it began to flag a trifle, and
grow disjointed. The silences widened; the expectoration marvellously
increased. Every pore inside the boys' cheeks became a spouting
fountain; they could scarcely bail out the cellars under their tongues
fast enough to prevent an inundation; little overflowings down their
throats occurred in spite of all they could do, and sudden retchings
followed every time. Both boys were looking very pale and miserable,
now. Joe's pipe dropped from his nerveless fingers. Tom's followed. Both
fountains were going furiously and both pumps bailing with might and
main. Joe said feebly:

“I've lost my knife. I reckon I better go and find it.”

Tom said, with quivering lips and halting utterance:

“I'll help you. You go over that way and I'll hunt around by the spring.
No, you needn't come, Huck--we can find it.”

So Huck sat down again, and waited an hour. Then he found it lonesome,
and went to find his comrades. They were wide apart in the woods, both
very pale, both fast asleep. But something informed him that if they had
had any trouble they had got rid of it.

They were not talkative at supper that night. They had a humble look,
and when Huck prepared his pipe after the meal and was going to prepare
theirs, they said no, they were not feeling very well--something they ate
at dinner had disagreed with them.

About midnight Joe awoke, and called the boys. There was a brooding
oppressiveness in the air that seemed to bode something. The boys
huddled themselves together and sought the friendly companionship of
the fire, though the dull dead heat of the breathless atmosphere was
stifling. They sat still, intent and waiting. The solemn hush continued.
Beyond the light of the fire everything was swallowed up in the
blackness of darkness. Presently there came a quivering glow that
vaguely revealed the foliage for a moment and then vanished. By and by
another came, a little stronger. Then another. Then a faint moan came
sighing through the branches of the forest and the boys felt a fleeting
breath upon their cheeks, and shuddered with the fancy that the Spirit
of the Night had gone by. There was a pause. Now a weird flash turned
night into day and showed every little grassblade, separate and
distinct, that grew about their feet. And it showed three white,
startled faces, too. A deep peal of thunder went rolling and tumbling
down the heavens and lost itself in sullen rumblings in the distance. A
sweep of chilly air passed by, rustling all the leaves and snowing the
flaky ashes broadcast about the fire. Another fierce glare lit up the
forest and an instant crash followed that seemed to rend the treetops
right over the boys' heads. They clung together in terror, in the thick
gloom that followed. A few big raindrops fell pattering upon the leaves.

“Quick! boys, go for the tent!” exclaimed Tom.

They sprang away, stumbling over roots and among vines in the dark, no
two plunging in the same direction. A furious blast roared through
the trees, making everything sing as it went. One blinding flash after
another came, and peal on peal of deafening thunder. And now a drenching
rain poured down and the rising hurricane drove it in sheets along the
ground. The boys cried out to each other, but the roaring wind and the
booming thunderblasts drowned their voices utterly. However, one by one
they straggled in at last and took shelter under the tent, cold, scared,
and streaming with water; but to have company in misery seemed something
to be grateful for. They could not talk, the old sail flapped so
furiously, even if the other noises would have allowed them. The tempest
rose higher and higher, and presently the sail tore loose from its
fastenings and went winging away on the blast. The boys seized each
others' hands and fled, with many tumblings and bruises, to the shelter
of a great oak that stood upon the riverbank. Now the battle was at its
highest. Under the ceaseless conflagration of lightning that flamed
in the skies, everything below stood out in cleancut and shadowless
distinctness: the bending trees, the billowy river, white with foam, the
driving spray of spumeflakes, the dim outlines of the high bluffs on
the other side, glimpsed through the drifting cloudrack and the slanting
veil of rain. Every little while some giant tree yielded the fight
and fell crashing through the younger growth; and the unflagging
thunderpeals came now in ear-splitting explosive bursts, keen and sharp,
and unspeakably appalling. The storm culminated in one matchless effort
that seemed likely to tear the island to pieces, burn it up, drown it to
the treetops, blow it away, and deafen every creature in it, all at one
and the same moment. It was a wild night for homeless young heads to be
out in.

But at last the battle was done, and the forces retired with weaker and
weaker threatenings and grumblings, and peace resumed her sway. The
boys went back to camp, a good deal awed; but they found there was still
something to be thankful for, because the great sycamore, the shelter
of their beds, was a ruin, now, blasted by the lightnings, and they were
not under it when the catastrophe happened.

Everything in camp was drenched, the campfire as well; for they were but
heedless lads, like their generation, and had made no provision against
rain. Here was matter for dismay, for they were soaked through and
chilled. They were eloquent in their distress; but they presently
discovered that the fire had eaten so far up under the great log it had
been built against (where it curved upward and separated itself from
the ground), that a handbreadth or so of it had escaped wetting; so they
patiently wrought until, with shreds and bark gathered from the under
sides of sheltered logs, they coaxed the fire to burn again. Then they
piled on great dead boughs till they had a roaring furnace, and were
gladhearted once more. They dried their boiled ham and had a feast,
and after that they sat by the fire and expanded and glorified their
midnight adventure until morning, for there was not a dry spot to sleep
on, anywhere around.

As the sun began to steal in upon the boys, drowsiness came over
them, and they went out on the sandbar and lay down to sleep. They got
scorched out by and by, and drearily set about getting breakfast. After
the meal they felt rusty, and stiff-jointed, and a little homesick once
more. Tom saw the signs, and fell to cheering up the pirates as well as
he could. But they cared nothing for marbles, or circus, or swimming, or
anything. He reminded them of the imposing secret, and raised a ray of
cheer. While it lasted, he got them interested in a new device. This was
to knock off being pirates, for a while, and be Indians for a change.
They were attracted by this idea; so it was not long before they were
stripped, and striped from head to heel with black mud, like so many
zebras--all of them chiefs, of course--and then they went tearing through
the woods to attack an English settlement.

By and by they separated into three hostile tribes, and darted upon each
other from ambush with dreadful warwhoops, and killed and scalped each
other by thousands. It was a gory day. Consequently it was an extremely
satisfactory one.

They assembled in camp toward suppertime, hungry and happy; but now
a difficulty arose--hostile Indians could not break the bread of
hospitality together without first making peace, and this was a simple
impossibility without smoking a pipe of peace. There was no other
process that ever they had heard of. Two of the savages almost wished
they had remained pirates. However, there was no other way; so with such
show of cheerfulness as they could muster they called for the pipe and
took their whiff as it passed, in due form.

And behold, they were glad they had gone into savagery, for they had
gained something; they found that they could now smoke a little without
having to go and hunt for a lost knife; they did not get sick enough to
be seriously uncomfortable. They were not likely to fool away this high
promise for lack of effort. No, they practised cautiously, after supper,
with right fair success, and so they spent a jubilant evening. They were
prouder and happier in their new acquirement than they would have been
in the scalping and skinning of the Six Nations. We will leave them to
smoke and chatter and brag, since we have no further use for them at
present.




CHAPTER XVII

BUT there was no hilarity in the little town that same tranquil Saturday
afternoon. The Harpers, and Aunt Polly's family, were being put into
mourning, with great grief and many tears. An unusual quiet possessed
the village, although it was ordinarily quiet enough, in all conscience.
The villagers conducted their concerns with an absent air, and talked
little; but they sighed often. The Saturday holiday seemed a burden to
the children. They had no heart in their sports, and gradually gave them
up.

In the afternoon Becky Thatcher found herself moping about the deserted
schoolhouse yard, and feeling very melancholy. But she found nothing
there to comfort her. She soliloquized:

“Oh, if I only had a brass andiron-knob again! But I haven't got
anything now to remember him by.” And she choked back a little sob.

Presently she stopped, and said to herself:

“It was right here. Oh, if it was to do over again, I wouldn't say
that--I wouldn't say it for the whole world. But he's gone now; I'll
never, never, never see him any more.”

This thought broke her down, and she wandered away, with tears rolling
down her cheeks. Then quite a group of boys and girls--playmates of Tom's
and Joe's--came by, and stood looking over the paling fence and talking
in reverent tones of how Tom did so-and-so the last time they saw
him, and how Joe said this and that small trifle (pregnant with awful
prophecy, as they could easily see now!)--and each speaker pointed out
the exact spot where the lost lads stood at the time, and then added
something like “and I was a-standing just so--just as I am now, and as if
you was him--I was as close as that--and he smiled, just this way--and then
something seemed to go all over me, like--awful, you know--and I never
thought what it meant, of course, but I can see now!”

Then there was a dispute about who saw the dead boys last in life, and
many claimed that dismal distinction, and offered evidences, more or
less tampered with by the witness; and when it was ultimately decided
who _did_ see the departed last, and exchanged the last words with them,
the lucky parties took upon themselves a sort of sacred importance,
and were gaped at and envied by all the rest. One poor chap, who had
no other grandeur to offer, said with tolerably manifest pride in the
remembrance:

“Well, Tom Sawyer he licked me once.”

But that bid for glory was a failure. Most of the boys could say that,
and so that cheapened the distinction too much. The group loitered away,
still recalling memories of the lost heroes, in awed voices.

When the Sunday-school hour was finished, the next morning, the bell
began to toll, instead of ringing in the usual way. It was a very still
Sabbath, and the mournful sound seemed in keeping with the musing hush
that lay upon nature. The villagers began to gather, loitering a moment
in the vestibule to converse in whispers about the sad event. But there
was no whispering in the house; only the funereal rustling of dresses
as the women gathered to their seats disturbed the silence there. None
could remember when the little church had been so full before. There
was finally a waiting pause, an expectant dumbness, and then Aunt Polly
entered, followed by Sid and Mary, and they by the Harper family, all in
deep black, and the whole congregation, the old minister as well, rose
reverently and stood until the mourners were seated in the front pew.
There was another communing silence, broken at intervals by muffled
sobs, and then the minister spread his hands abroad and prayed. A moving
hymn was sung, and the text followed: “I am the Resurrection and the
Life.”

As the service proceeded, the clergyman drew such pictures of the
graces, the winning ways, and the rare promise of the lost lads that
every soul there, thinking he recognized these pictures, felt a pang
in remembering that he had persistently blinded himself to them always
before, and had as persistently seen only faults and flaws in the poor
boys. The minister related many a touching incident in the lives of the
departed, too, which illustrated their sweet, generous natures, and the
people could easily see, now, how noble and beautiful those episodes
were, and remembered with grief that at the time they occurred they had
seemed rank rascalities, well deserving of the cowhide. The congregation
became more and more moved, as the pathetic tale went on, till at last
the whole company broke down and joined the weeping mourners in a chorus
of anguished sobs, the preacher himself giving way to his feelings, and
crying in the pulpit.

There was a rustle in the gallery, which nobody noticed; a moment later
the church door creaked; the minister raised his streaming eyes above
his handkerchief, and stood transfixed! First one and then another pair
of eyes followed the minister's, and then almost with one impulse the
congregation rose and stared while the three dead boys came marching up
the aisle, Tom in the lead, Joe next, and Huck, a ruin of drooping rags,
sneaking sheepishly in the rear! They had been hid in the unused gallery
listening to their own funeral sermon!

Aunt Polly, Mary, and the Harpers threw themselves upon their restored
ones, smothered them with kisses and poured out thanksgivings, while
poor Huck stood abashed and uncomfortable, not knowing exactly what
to do or where to hide from so many unwelcoming eyes. He wavered, and
started to slink away, but Tom seized him and said:

“Aunt Polly, it ain't fair. Somebody's got to be glad to see Huck.”

“And so they shall. I'm glad to see him, poor motherless thing!” And
the loving attentions Aunt Polly lavished upon him were the one thing
capable of making him more uncomfortable than he was before.

Suddenly the minister shouted at the top of his voice: “Praise God from
whom all blessings flow--_sing_!--and put your hearts in it!”

And they did. Old Hundred swelled up with a triumphant burst, and
while it shook the rafters Tom Sawyer the Pirate looked around upon the
envying juveniles about him and confessed in his heart that this was the
proudest moment of his life.

As the “sold” congregation trooped out they said they would almost be
willing to be made ridiculous again to hear Old Hundred sung like that
once more.

Tom got more cuffs and kisses that day--according to Aunt Polly's varying
moods--than he had earned before in a year; and he hardly knew which
expressed the most gratefulness to God and affection for himself.




CHAPTER XVIII

THAT was Tom's great secret--the scheme to return home with his brother
pirates and attend their own funerals. They had paddled over to the
Missouri shore on a log, at dusk on Saturday, landing five or six miles
below the village; they had slept in the woods at the edge of the town
till nearly daylight, and had then crept through back lanes and alleys
and finished their sleep in the gallery of the church among a chaos of
invalided benches.

At breakfast, Monday morning, Aunt Polly and Mary were very loving to
Tom, and very attentive to his wants. There was an unusual amount of
talk. In the course of it Aunt Polly said:

“Well, I don't say it wasn't a fine joke, Tom, to keep everybody
suffering 'most a week so you boys had a good time, but it is a pity you
could be so hard-hearted as to let me suffer so. If you could come over
on a log to go to your funeral, you could have come over and give me a
hint some way that you warn't dead, but only run off.”

“Yes, you could have done that, Tom,” said Mary; “and I believe you
would if you had thought of it.”

“Would you, Tom?” said Aunt Polly, her face lighting wistfully. “Say,
now, would you, if you'd thought of it?”

“I--well, I don't know. 'Twould 'a' spoiled everything.”

“Tom, I hoped you loved me that much,” said Aunt Polly, with a grieved
tone that discomforted the boy. “It would have been something if you'd
cared enough to _think_ of it, even if you didn't _do_ it.”

“Now, auntie, that ain't any harm,” pleaded Mary; “it's only Tom's giddy
way--he is always in such a rush that he never thinks of anything.”

“More's the pity. Sid would have thought. And Sid would have come and
_done_ it, too. Tom, you'll look back, some day, when it's too late,
and wish you'd cared a little more for me when it would have cost you so
little.”

“Now, auntie, you know I do care for you,” said Tom.

“I'd know it better if you acted more like it.”

“I wish now I'd thought,” said Tom, with a repentant tone; “but I dreamt
about you, anyway. That's something, ain't it?”

“It ain't much--a cat does that much--but it's better than nothing. What
did you dream?”

“Why, Wednesday night I dreamt that you was sitting over there by the
bed, and Sid was sitting by the woodbox, and Mary next to him.”

“Well, so we did. So we always do. I'm glad your dreams could take even
that much trouble about us.”

“And I dreamt that Joe Harper's mother was here.”

“Why, she was here! Did you dream any more?”

“Oh, lots. But it's so dim, now.”

“Well, try to recollect--can't you?”

“Somehow it seems to me that the wind--the wind blowed the--the--”

“Try harder, Tom! The wind did blow something. Come!”

Tom pressed his fingers on his forehead an anxious minute, and then
said:

“I've got it now! I've got it now! It blowed the candle!”

“Mercy on us! Go on, Tom--go on!”

“And it seems to me that you said, 'Why, I believe that that door--'”

“Go _on_, Tom!”

“Just let me study a moment--just a moment. Oh, yes--you said you believed
the door was open.”

“As I'm sitting here, I did! Didn't I, Mary! Go on!”

“And then--and then--well I won't be certain, but it seems like as if you
made Sid go and--and--”

“Well? Well? What did I make him do, Tom? What did I make him do?”

“You made him--you--Oh, you made him shut it.”

“Well, for the land's sake! I never heard the beat of that in all my
days! Don't tell _me_ there ain't anything in dreams, any more. Sereny
Harper shall know of this before I'm an hour older. I'd like to see her
get around _this_ with her rubbage 'bout superstition. Go on, Tom!”

“Oh, it's all getting just as bright as day, now. Next you said I warn't
_bad_, only mischeevous and harum-scarum, and not any more responsible
than--than--I think it was a colt, or something.”

“And so it was! Well, goodness gracious! Go on, Tom!”

“And then you began to cry.”

“So I did. So I did. Not the first time, neither. And then--”

“Then Mrs. Harper she began to cry, and said Joe was just the same, and
she wished she hadn't whipped him for taking cream when she'd throwed it
out her own self--”

“Tom! The sperrit was upon you! You was a prophesying--that's what you
was doing! Land alive, go on, Tom!”

“Then Sid he said--he said--”

“I don't think I said anything,” said Sid.

“Yes you did, Sid,” said Mary.

“Shut your heads and let Tom go on! What did he say, Tom?”

“He said--I _think_ he said he hoped I was better off where I was gone
to, but if I'd been better sometimes--”

“_There_, d'you hear that! It was his very words!”

“And you shut him up sharp.”

“I lay I did! There must 'a' been an angel there. There _was_ an angel
there, somewheres!”

“And Mrs. Harper told about Joe scaring her with a firecracker, and you
told about Peter and the Pain-killer--”

“Just as true as I live!”

“And then there was a whole lot of talk 'bout dragging the river for us,
and 'bout having the funeral Sunday, and then you and old Miss Harper
hugged and cried, and she went.”

“It happened just so! It happened just so, as sure as I'm a-sitting in
these very tracks. Tom, you couldn't told it more like if you'd 'a' seen
it! And then what? Go on, Tom!”

“Then I thought you prayed for me--and I could see you and hear every
word you said. And you went to bed, and I was so sorry that I took and
wrote on a piece of sycamore bark, 'We ain't dead--we are only off being
pirates,' and put it on the table by the candle; and then you looked
so good, laying there asleep, that I thought I went and leaned over and
kissed you on the lips.”

“Did you, Tom, _did_ you! I just forgive you everything for that!” And
she seized the boy in a crushing embrace that made him feel like the
guiltiest of villains.

“It was very kind, even though it was only a--dream,” Sid soliloquized
just audibly.

“Shut up, Sid! A body does just the same in a dream as he'd do if he was
awake. Here's a big Milum apple I've been saving for you, Tom, if you
was ever found again--now go 'long to school. I'm thankful to the good
God and Father of us all I've got you back, that's long-suffering and
merciful to them that believe on Him and keep His word, though goodness
knows I'm unworthy of it, but if only the worthy ones got His blessings
and had His hand to help them over the rough places, there's few enough
would smile here or ever enter into His rest when the long night comes.
Go 'long Sid, Mary, Tom--take yourselves off--you've hendered me long
enough.”

The children left for school, and the old lady to call on Mrs. Harper
and vanquish her realism with Tom's marvellous dream. Sid had better
judgment than to utter the thought that was in his mind as he left the
house. It was this: “Pretty thin--as long a dream as that, without any
mistakes in it!”

What a hero Tom was become, now! He did not go skipping and prancing,
but moved with a dignified swagger as became a pirate who felt that the
public eye was on him. And indeed it was; he tried not to seem to see
the looks or hear the remarks as he passed along, but they were food and
drink to him. Smaller boys than himself flocked at his heels, as proud
to be seen with him, and tolerated by him, as if he had been the drummer
at the head of a procession or the elephant leading a menagerie into
town. Boys of his own size pretended not to know he had been away at
all; but they were consuming with envy, nevertheless. They would have
given anything to have that swarthy sun-tanned skin of his, and his
glittering notoriety; and Tom would not have parted with either for a
circus.

At school the children made so much of him and of Joe, and delivered
such eloquent admiration from their eyes, that the two heroes were
not long in becoming insufferably “stuck-up.” They began to tell their
adventures to hungry listeners--but they only began; it was not a
thing likely to have an end, with imaginations like theirs to furnish
material. And finally, when they got out their pipes and went serenely
puffing around, the very summit of glory was reached.

Tom decided that he could be independent of Becky Thatcher now. Glory
was sufficient. He would live for glory. Now that he was distinguished,
maybe she would be wanting to “make up.” Well, let her--she should see
that he could be as indifferent as some other people. Presently she
arrived. Tom pretended not to see her. He moved away and joined a group
of boys and girls and began to talk. Soon he observed that she was
tripping gayly back and forth with flushed face and dancing eyes,
pretending to be busy chasing schoolmates, and screaming with laughter
when she made a capture; but he noticed that she always made her
captures in his vicinity, and that she seemed to cast a conscious eye
in his direction at such times, too. It gratified all the vicious vanity
that was in him; and so, instead of winning him, it only “set him up”
 the more and made him the more diligent to avoid betraying that he
knew she was about. Presently she gave over skylarking, and moved
irresolutely about, sighing once or twice and glancing furtively and
wistfully toward Tom. Then she observed that now Tom was talking more
particularly to Amy Lawrence than to any one else. She felt a sharp pang
and grew disturbed and uneasy at once. She tried to go away, but her
feet were treacherous, and carried her to the group instead. She said to
a girl almost at Tom's elbow--with sham vivacity:

“Why, Mary Austin! you bad girl, why didn't you come to Sunday-school?”

“I did come--didn't you see me?”

“Why, no! Did you? Where did you sit?”

“I was in Miss Peters' class, where I always go. I saw _you_.”

“Did you? Why, it's funny I didn't see you. I wanted to tell you about
the picnic.”

“Oh, that's jolly. Who's going to give it?”

“My ma's going to let me have one.”

“Oh, goody; I hope she'll let _me_ come.”

“Well, she will. The picnic's for me. She'll let anybody come that I
want, and I want you.”

“That's ever so nice. When is it going to be?”

“By and by. Maybe about vacation.”

“Oh, won't it be fun! You going to have all the girls and boys?”

“Yes, every one that's friends to me--or wants to be”; and she glanced
ever so furtively at Tom, but he talked right along to Amy Lawrence
about the terrible storm on the island, and how the lightning tore the
great sycamore tree “all to flinders” while he was “standing within
three feet of it.”

“Oh, may I come?” said Grace Miller.

“Yes.”

“And me?” said Sally Rogers.

“Yes.”

“And me, too?” said Susy Harper. “And Joe?”

“Yes.”

And so on, with clapping of joyful hands till all the group had begged
for invitations but Tom and Amy. Then Tom turned coolly away, still
talking, and took Amy with him. Becky's lips trembled and the tears
came to her eyes; she hid these signs with a forced gayety and went on
chattering, but the life had gone out of the picnic, now, and out of
everything else; she got away as soon as she could and hid herself and
had what her sex call “a good cry.” Then she sat moody, with wounded
pride, till the bell rang. She roused up, now, with a vindictive cast
in her eye, and gave her plaited tails a shake and said she knew what
_she'd_ do.

At recess Tom continued his flirtation with Amy with jubilant
self-satisfaction. And he kept drifting about to find Becky and lacerate
her with the performance. At last he spied her, but there was a sudden
falling of his mercury. She was sitting cosily on a little bench behind
the schoolhouse looking at a picture-book with Alfred Temple--and so
absorbed were they, and their heads so close together over the book,
that they did not seem to be conscious of anything in the world besides.
Jealousy ran red-hot through Tom's veins. He began to hate himself for
throwing away the chance Becky had offered for a reconciliation. He
called himself a fool, and all the hard names he could think of. He
wanted to cry with vexation. Amy chatted happily along, as they walked,
for her heart was singing, but Tom's tongue had lost its function. He
did not hear what Amy was saying, and whenever she paused expectantly
he could only stammer an awkward assent, which was as often misplaced
as otherwise. He kept drifting to the rear of the schoolhouse, again and
again, to sear his eyeballs with the hateful spectacle there. He could
not help it. And it maddened him to see, as he thought he saw, that
Becky Thatcher never once suspected that he was even in the land of the
living. But she did see, nevertheless; and she knew she was winning her
fight, too, and was glad to see him suffer as she had suffered.

Amy's happy prattle became intolerable. Tom hinted at things he had
to attend to; things that must be done; and time was fleeting. But in
vain--the girl chirped on. Tom thought, “Oh, hang her, ain't I ever going
to get rid of her?” At last he must be attending to those things--and she
said artlessly that she would be “around” when school let out. And he
hastened away, hating her for it.

“Any other boy!” Tom thought, grating his teeth. “Any boy in the whole
town but that Saint Louis smarty that thinks he dresses so fine and is
aristocracy! Oh, all right, I licked you the first day you ever saw this
town, mister, and I'll lick you again! You just wait till I catch you
out! I'll just take and--”

And he went through the motions of thrashing an imaginary boy--pummelling
the air, and kicking and gouging. “Oh, you do, do you? You holler
'nough, do you? Now, then, let that learn you!” And so the imaginary
flogging was finished to his satisfaction.

Tom fled home at noon. His conscience could not endure any more of Amy's
grateful happiness, and his jealousy could bear no more of the other
distress. Becky resumed her picture inspections with Alfred, but as the
minutes dragged along and no Tom came to suffer, her triumph began to
cloud and she lost interest; gravity and absentmindedness followed,
and then melancholy; two or three times she pricked up her ear at
a footstep, but it was a false hope; no Tom came. At last she grew
entirely miserable and wished she hadn't carried it so far. When
poor Alfred, seeing that he was losing her, he did not know how, kept
exclaiming: “Oh, here's a jolly one! look at this!” she lost patience at
last, and said, “Oh, don't bother me! I don't care for them!” and burst
into tears, and got up and walked away.

Alfred dropped alongside and was going to try to comfort her, but she
said:

“Go away and leave me alone, can't you! I hate you!”

So the boy halted, wondering what he could have done--for she had said
she would look at pictures all through the nooning--and she walked on,
crying. Then Alfred went musing into the deserted schoolhouse. He was
humiliated and angry. He easily guessed his way to the truth--the girl
had simply made a convenience of him to vent her spite upon Tom Sawyer.
He was far from hating Tom the less when this thought occurred to him.
He wished there was some way to get that boy into trouble without much
risk to himself. Tom's spelling-book fell under his eye. Here was his
opportunity. He gratefully opened to the lesson for the afternoon and
poured ink upon the page.

Becky, glancing in at a window behind him at the moment, saw the act,
and moved on, without discovering herself. She started homeward, now,
intending to find Tom and tell him; Tom would be thankful and their
troubles would be healed. Before she was half way home, however, she
had changed her mind. The thought of Tom's treatment of her when she was
talking about her picnic came scorching back and filled her with shame.
She resolved to let him get whipped on the damaged spelling-book's
account, and to hate him forever, into the bargain.




CHAPTER XIX

TOM arrived at home in a dreary mood, and the first thing his aunt said
to him showed him that he had brought his sorrows to an unpromising
market:

“Tom, I've a notion to skin you alive!”

“Auntie, what have I done?”

“Well, you've done enough. Here I go over to Sereny Harper, like an old
softy, expecting I'm going to make her believe all that rubbage about
that dream, when lo and behold you she'd found out from Joe that you was
over here and heard all the talk we had that night. Tom, I don't know
what is to become of a boy that will act like that. It makes me feel so
bad to think you could let me go to Sereny Harper and make such a fool
of myself and never say a word.”

This was a new aspect of the thing. His smartness of the morning had
seemed to Tom a good joke before, and very ingenious. It merely looked
mean and shabby now. He hung his head and could not think of anything to
say for a moment. Then he said:

“Auntie, I wish I hadn't done it--but I didn't think.”

“Oh, child, you never think. You never think of anything but your
own selfishness. You could think to come all the way over here from
Jackson's Island in the night to laugh at our troubles, and you could
think to fool me with a lie about a dream; but you couldn't ever think
to pity us and save us from sorrow.”

“Auntie, I know now it was mean, but I didn't mean to be mean. I didn't,
honest. And besides, I didn't come over here to laugh at you that
night.”

“What did you come for, then?”

“It was to tell you not to be uneasy about us, because we hadn't got
drownded.”

“Tom, Tom, I would be the thankfullest soul in this world if I could
believe you ever had as good a thought as that, but you know you never
did--and I know it, Tom.”

“Indeed and 'deed I did, auntie--I wish I may never stir if I didn't.”

“Oh, Tom, don't lie--don't do it. It only makes things a hundred times
worse.”

“It ain't a lie, auntie; it's the truth. I wanted to keep you from
grieving--that was all that made me come.”

“I'd give the whole world to believe that--it would cover up a power
of sins, Tom. I'd 'most be glad you'd run off and acted so bad. But it
ain't reasonable; because, why didn't you tell me, child?”

“Why, you see, when you got to talking about the funeral, I just got all
full of the idea of our coming and hiding in the church, and I couldn't
somehow bear to spoil it. So I just put the bark back in my pocket and
kept mum.”

“What bark?”

“The bark I had wrote on to tell you we'd gone pirating. I wish, now,
you'd waked up when I kissed you--I do, honest.”

The hard lines in his aunt's face relaxed and a sudden tenderness dawned
in her eyes.

“_Did_ you kiss me, Tom?”

“Why, yes, I did.”

“Are you sure you did, Tom?”

“Why, yes, I did, auntie--certain sure.”

“What did you kiss me for, Tom?”

“Because I loved you so, and you laid there moaning and I was so sorry.”

The words sounded like truth. The old lady could not hide a tremor in
her voice when she said:

“Kiss me again, Tom!--and be off with you to school, now, and don't
bother me any more.”

The moment he was gone, she ran to a closet and got out the ruin of a
jacket which Tom had gone pirating in. Then she stopped, with it in her
hand, and said to herself:

“No, I don't dare. Poor boy, I reckon he's lied about it--but it's a
blessed, blessed lie, there's such a comfort come from it. I hope
the Lord--I _know_ the Lord will forgive him, because it was such
good-heartedness in him to tell it. But I don't want to find out it's a
lie. I won't look.”

She put the jacket away, and stood by musing a minute. Twice she put out
her hand to take the garment again, and twice she refrained. Once more
she ventured, and this time she fortified herself with the thought:
“It's a good lie--it's a good lie--I won't let it grieve me.” So she
sought the jacket pocket. A moment later she was reading Tom's piece of
bark through flowing tears and saying: “I could forgive the boy, now, if
he'd committed a million sins!”




CHAPTER XX

THERE was something about Aunt Polly's manner, when she kissed Tom, that
swept away his low spirits and made him lighthearted and happy again. He
started to school and had the luck of coming upon Becky Thatcher at the
head of Meadow Lane. His mood always determined his manner. Without a
moment's hesitation he ran to her and said:

“I acted mighty mean today, Becky, and I'm so sorry. I won't ever, ever
do that way again, as long as ever I live--please make up, won't you?”

The girl stopped and looked him scornfully in the face:

“I'll thank you to keep yourself _to_ yourself, Mr. Thomas Sawyer. I'll
never speak to you again.”

She tossed her head and passed on. Tom was so stunned that he had not
even presence of mind enough to say “Who cares, Miss Smarty?” until the
right time to say it had gone by. So he said nothing. But he was in a
fine rage, nevertheless. He moped into the schoolyard wishing she were
a boy, and imagining how he would trounce her if she were. He presently
encountered her and delivered a stinging remark as he passed. She hurled
one in return, and the angry breach was complete. It seemed to Becky, in
her hot resentment, that she could hardly wait for school to “take in,”
 she was so impatient to see Tom flogged for the injured spelling-book.
If she had had any lingering notion of exposing Alfred Temple, Tom's
offensive fling had driven it entirely away.

Poor girl, she did not know how fast she was nearing trouble herself.
The master, Mr. Dobbins, had reached middle age with an unsatisfied
ambition. The darling of his desires was, to be a doctor, but
poverty had decreed that he should be nothing higher than a village
schoolmaster. Every day he took a mysterious book out of his desk and
absorbed himself in it at times when no classes were reciting. He kept
that book under lock and key. There was not an urchin in school but was
perishing to have a glimpse of it, but the chance never came. Every boy
and girl had a theory about the nature of that book; but no two theories
were alike, and there was no way of getting at the facts in the case.
Now, as Becky was passing by the desk, which stood near the door, she
noticed that the key was in the lock! It was a precious moment. She
glanced around; found herself alone, and the next instant she had the
book in her hands. The titlepage--Professor Somebody's _Anatomy_--carried
no information to her mind; so she began to turn the leaves. She came at
once upon a handsomely engraved and colored frontispiece--a human figure,
stark naked. At that moment a shadow fell on the page and Tom Sawyer
stepped in at the door and caught a glimpse of the picture. Becky
snatched at the book to close it, and had the hard luck to tear the
pictured page half down the middle. She thrust the volume into the desk,
turned the key, and burst out crying with shame and vexation.

“Tom Sawyer, you are just as mean as you can be, to sneak up on a person
and look at what they're looking at.”

“How could I know you was looking at anything?”

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Tom Sawyer; you know you're
going to tell on me, and oh, what shall I do, what shall I do! I'll be
whipped, and I never was whipped in school.”

Then she stamped her little foot and said:

“_Be_ so mean if you want to! I know something that's going to happen.
You just wait and you'll see! Hateful, hateful, hateful!”--and she flung
out of the house with a new explosion of crying.

Tom stood still, rather flustered by this onslaught. Presently he said
to himself:

“What a curious kind of a fool a girl is! Never been licked in
school! Shucks! What's a licking! That's just like a girl--they're so
thin-skinned and chicken-hearted. Well, of course I ain't going to tell
old Dobbins on this little fool, because there's other ways of getting
even on her, that ain't so mean; but what of it? Old Dobbins will ask
who it was tore his book. Nobody'll answer. Then he'll do just the way
he always does--ask first one and then t'other, and when he comes to the
right girl he'll know it, without any telling. Girls' faces always tell
on them. They ain't got any backbone. She'll get licked. Well, it's a
kind of a tight place for Becky Thatcher, because there ain't any way
out of it.” Tom conned the thing a moment longer, and then added: “All
right, though; she'd like to see me in just such a fix--let her sweat it
out!”

Tom joined the mob of skylarking scholars outside. In a few moments the
master arrived and school “took in.” Tom did not feel a strong interest
in his studies. Every time he stole a glance at the girls' side of the
room Becky's face troubled him. Considering all things, he did not want
to pity her, and yet it was all he could do to help it. He could get
up no exultation that was really worthy the name. Presently the
spelling-book discovery was made, and Tom's mind was entirely full
of his own matters for a while after that. Becky roused up from her
lethargy of distress and showed good interest in the proceedings. She
did not expect that Tom could get out of his trouble by denying that he
spilt the ink on the book himself; and she was right. The denial only
seemed to make the thing worse for Tom. Becky supposed she would be glad
of that, and she tried to believe she was glad of it, but she found she
was not certain. When the worst came to the worst, she had an impulse
to get up and tell on Alfred Temple, but she made an effort and forced
herself to keep still--because, said she to herself, “he'll tell about me
tearing the picture sure. I wouldn't say a word, not to save his life!”

Tom took his whipping and went back to his seat not at all
broken-hearted, for he thought it was possible that he had unknowingly
upset the ink on the spelling-book himself, in some skylarking bout--he
had denied it for form's sake and because it was custom, and had stuck
to the denial from principle.

A whole hour drifted by, the master sat nodding in his throne, the air
was drowsy with the hum of study. By and by, Mr. Dobbins straightened
himself up, yawned, then unlocked his desk, and reached for his book,
but seemed undecided whether to take it out or leave it. Most of the
pupils glanced up languidly, but there were two among them that watched
his movements with intent eyes. Mr. Dobbins fingered his book absently
for a while, then took it out and settled himself in his chair to read!
Tom shot a glance at Becky. He had seen a hunted and helpless rabbit
look as she did, with a gun levelled at its head. Instantly he forgot
his quarrel with her. Quick--something must be done! done in a flash,
too! But the very imminence of the emergency paralyzed his invention.
Good!--he had an inspiration! He would run and snatch the book, spring
through the door and fly. But his resolution shook for one little
instant, and the chance was lost--the master opened the volume. If Tom
only had the wasted opportunity back again! Too late. There was no help
for Becky now, he said. The next moment the master faced the school.
Every eye sank under his gaze. There was that in it which smote even
the innocent with fear. There was silence while one might count ten--the
master was gathering his wrath. Then he spoke: “Who tore this book?”

There was not a sound. One could have heard a pin drop. The stillness
continued; the master searched face after face for signs of guilt.

“Benjamin Rogers, did you tear this book?”

A denial. Another pause.

“Joseph Harper, did you?”

Another denial. Tom's uneasiness grew more and more intense under the
slow torture of these proceedings. The master scanned the ranks of
boys--considered a while, then turned to the girls:

“Amy Lawrence?”

A shake of the head.

“Gracie Miller?”

The same sign.

“Susan Harper, did you do this?”

Another negative. The next girl was Becky Thatcher. Tom was trembling
from head to foot with excitement and a sense of the hopelessness of the
situation.

“Rebecca Thatcher” [Tom glanced at her face--it was white with
terror]--“did you tear--no, look me in the face” [her hands rose in
appeal]--“did you tear this book?”

A thought shot like lightning through Tom's brain. He sprang to his feet
and shouted--“I done it!”

The school stared in perplexity at this incredible folly. Tom stood a
moment, to gather his dismembered faculties; and when he stepped forward
to go to his punishment the surprise, the gratitude, the adoration that
shone upon him out of poor Becky's eyes seemed pay enough for a hundred
floggings. Inspired by the splendor of his own act, he took without
an outcry the most merciless flaying that even Mr. Dobbins had ever
administered; and also received with indifference the added cruelty of a
command to remain two hours after school should be dismissed--for he
knew who would wait for him outside till his captivity was done, and not
count the tedious time as loss, either.

Tom went to bed that night planning vengeance against Alfred Temple; for
with shame and repentance Becky had told him all, not forgetting her own
treachery; but even the longing for vengeance had to give way, soon, to
pleasanter musings, and he fell asleep at last with Becky's latest words
lingering dreamily in his ear--

“Tom, how _could_ you be so noble!”




CHAPTER XXI

VACATION was approaching. The schoolmaster, always severe, grew severer
and more exacting than ever, for he wanted the school to make a good
showing on “Examination” day. His rod and his ferule were seldom idle
now--at least among the smaller pupils. Only the biggest boys, and young
ladies of eighteen and twenty, escaped lashing. Mr. Dobbins' lashings
were very vigorous ones, too; for although he carried, under his wig, a
perfectly bald and shiny head, he had only reached middle age, and there
was no sign of feebleness in his muscle. As the great day approached,
all the tyranny that was in him came to the surface; he seemed to take a
vindictive pleasure in punishing the least shortcomings. The consequence
was, that the smaller boys spent their days in terror and suffering and
their nights in plotting revenge. They threw away no opportunity to do
the master a mischief. But he kept ahead all the time. The retribution
that followed every vengeful success was so sweeping and majestic that
the boys always retired from the field badly worsted. At last they
conspired together and hit upon a plan that promised a dazzling victory.
They swore in the signpainter's boy, told him the scheme, and asked his
help. He had his own reasons for being delighted, for the master boarded
in his father's family and had given the boy ample cause to hate him.
The master's wife would go on a visit to the country in a few days, and
there would be nothing to interfere with the plan; the master always
prepared himself for great occasions by getting pretty well fuddled, and
the signpainter's boy said that when the dominie had reached the proper
condition on Examination Evening he would “manage the thing” while he
napped in his chair; then he would have him awakened at the right time
and hurried away to school.

In the fulness of time the interesting occasion arrived. At eight in
the evening the schoolhouse was brilliantly lighted, and adorned with
wreaths and festoons of foliage and flowers. The master sat throned in
his great chair upon a raised platform, with his blackboard behind him.
He was looking tolerably mellow. Three rows of benches on each side and
six rows in front of him were occupied by the dignitaries of the town
and by the parents of the pupils. To his left, back of the rows of
citizens, was a spacious temporary platform upon which were seated the
scholars who were to take part in the exercises of the evening; rows of
small boys, washed and dressed to an intolerable state of discomfort;
rows of gawky big boys; snowbanks of girls and young ladies clad in
lawn and muslin and conspicuously conscious of their bare arms, their
grandmothers' ancient trinkets, their bits of pink and blue ribbon and
the flowers in their hair. All the rest of the house was filled with
non-participating scholars.

The exercises began. A very little boy stood up and sheepishly recited,
“You'd scarce expect one of my age to speak in public on the stage,”
 etc.--accompanying himself with the painfully exact and spasmodic
gestures which a machine might have used--supposing the machine to be a
trifle out of order. But he got through safely, though cruelly scared,
and got a fine round of applause when he made his manufactured bow and
retired.

A little shamefaced girl lisped, “Mary had a little lamb,” etc.,
performed a compassion-inspiring curtsy, got her meed of applause, and
sat down flushed and happy.

Tom Sawyer stepped forward with conceited confidence and soared into
the unquenchable and indestructible “Give me liberty or give me death”
 speech, with fine fury and frantic gesticulation, and broke down in the
middle of it. A ghastly stage-fright seized him, his legs quaked under
him and he was like to choke. True, he had the manifest sympathy of the
house but he had the house's silence, too, which was even worse than
its sympathy. The master frowned, and this completed the disaster. Tom
struggled awhile and then retired, utterly defeated. There was a weak
attempt at applause, but it died early.

“The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck” followed; also “The Assyrian Came
Down,” and other declamatory gems. Then there were reading exercises,
and a spelling fight. The meagre Latin class recited with honor. The
prime feature of the evening was in order, now--original “compositions”
 by the young ladies. Each in her turn stepped forward to the edge of the
platform, cleared her throat, held up her manuscript (tied with dainty
ribbon), and proceeded to read, with labored attention to “expression”
 and punctuation. The themes were the same that had been illuminated upon
similar occasions by their mothers before them, their grandmothers,
and doubtless all their ancestors in the female line clear back to the
Crusades. “Friendship” was one; “Memories of Other Days”; “Religion in
History”; “Dream Land”; “The Advantages of Culture”; “Forms of Political
Government Compared and Contrasted”; “Melancholy”; “Filial Love”; “Heart
Longings,” etc., etc.

A prevalent feature in these compositions was a nursed and petted
melancholy; another was a wasteful and opulent gush of “fine language”;
another was a tendency to lug in by the ears particularly prized words
and phrases until they were worn entirely out; and a peculiarity that
conspicuously marked and marred them was the inveterate and intolerable
sermon that wagged its crippled tail at the end of each and every one
of them. No matter what the subject might be, a brainracking effort was
made to squirm it into some aspect or other that the moral and religious
mind could contemplate with edification. The glaring insincerity of
these sermons was not sufficient to compass the banishment of the
fashion from the schools, and it is not sufficient today; it never will
be sufficient while the world stands, perhaps. There is no school in
all our land where the young ladies do not feel obliged to close their
compositions with a sermon; and you will find that the sermon of the
most frivolous and the least religious girl in the school is always
the longest and the most relentlessly pious. But enough of this. Homely
truth is unpalatable.

Let us return to the “Examination.” The first composition that was read
was one entitled “Is this, then, Life?” Perhaps the reader can endure an
extract from it:

“In the common walks of life, with what delightful emotions does the
youthful mind look forward to some anticipated scene of festivity!
Imagination is busy sketching rose-tinted pictures of joy. In fancy, the
voluptuous votary of fashion sees herself amid the festive throng, 'the
observed of all observers.' Her graceful form, arrayed in snowy robes,
is whirling through the mazes of the joyous dance; her eye is brightest,
her step is lightest in the gay assembly.

“In such delicious fancies time quickly glides by, and the welcome hour
arrives for her entrance into the Elysian world, of which she has
had such bright dreams. How fairy-like does everything appear to her
enchanted vision! Each new scene is more charming than the last. But
after a while she finds that beneath this goodly exterior, all is
vanity, the flattery which once charmed her soul, now grates harshly
upon her ear; the ballroom has lost its charms; and with wasted health
and imbittered heart, she turns away with the conviction that earthly
pleasures cannot satisfy the longings of the soul!”

And so forth and so on. There was a buzz of gratification from time to
time during the reading, accompanied by whispered ejaculations of “How
sweet!” “How eloquent!” “So true!” etc., and after the thing had closed
with a peculiarly afflicting sermon the applause was enthusiastic.

Then arose a slim, melancholy girl, whose face had the “interesting”
 paleness that comes of pills and indigestion, and read a “poem.” Two
stanzas of it will do:

“A MISSOURI MAIDEN'S FAREWELL TO ALABAMA

“Alabama, goodbye! I love thee well! But yet for a while do I leave thee
now! Sad, yes, sad thoughts of thee my heart doth swell, And burning
recollections throng my brow! For I have wandered through thy flowery
woods; Have roamed and read near Tallapoosa's stream; Have listened to
Tallassee's warring floods, And wooed on Coosa's side Aurora's beam.

“Yet shame I not to bear an o'erfull heart, Nor blush to turn behind
my tearful eyes; 'Tis from no stranger land I now must part, 'Tis to no
strangers left I yield these sighs. Welcome and home were mine within
this State, Whose vales I leave--whose spires fade fast from me And cold
must be mine eyes, and heart, and tete, When, dear Alabama! they turn
cold on thee!” There were very few there who knew what “tete” meant, but
the poem was very satisfactory, nevertheless.

Next appeared a dark-complexioned, black-eyed, black-haired young lady,
who paused an impressive moment, assumed a tragic expression, and began
to read in a measured, solemn tone:

“A VISION

“Dark and tempestuous was night. Around the throne on high not a single
star quivered; but the deep intonations of the heavy thunder constantly
vibrated upon the ear; whilst the terrific lightning revelled in angry
mood through the cloudy chambers of heaven, seeming to scorn the power
exerted over its terror by the illustrious Franklin! Even the boisterous
winds unanimously came forth from their mystic homes, and blustered
about as if to enhance by their aid the wildness of the scene.

“At such a time, so dark, so dreary, for human sympathy my very spirit
sighed; but instead thereof,

“'My dearest friend, my counsellor, my comforter and guide--My joy in
grief, my second bliss in joy,' came to my side. She moved like one of
those bright beings pictured in the sunny walks of fancy's Eden by
the romantic and young, a queen of beauty unadorned save by her own
transcendent loveliness. So soft was her step, it failed to make even a
sound, and but for the magical thrill imparted by her genial touch,
as other unobtrusive beauties, she would have glided away
unperceived--unsought. A strange sadness rested upon her features, like
icy tears upon the robe of December, as she pointed to the contending
elements without, and bade me contemplate the two beings presented.”

This nightmare occupied some ten pages of manuscript and wound up with a
sermon so destructive of all hope to non-Presbyterians that it took
the first prize. This composition was considered to be the very finest
effort of the evening. The mayor of the village, in delivering the prize
to the author of it, made a warm speech in which he said that it was by
far the most “eloquent” thing he had ever listened to, and that Daniel
Webster himself might well be proud of it.

It may be remarked, in passing, that the number of compositions in which
the word “beauteous” was over-fondled, and human experience referred to
as “life's page,” was up to the usual average.

Now the master, mellow almost to the verge of geniality, put his chair
aside, turned his back to the audience, and began to draw a map of
America on the blackboard, to exercise the geography class upon. But he
made a sad business of it with his unsteady hand, and a smothered titter
rippled over the house. He knew what the matter was, and set himself to
right it. He sponged out lines and remade them; but he only distorted
them more than ever, and the tittering was more pronounced. He threw his
entire attention upon his work, now, as if determined not to be put down
by the mirth. He felt that all eyes were fastened upon him; he imagined
he was succeeding, and yet the tittering continued; it even manifestly
increased. And well it might. There was a garret above, pierced with
a scuttle over his head; and down through this scuttle came a cat,
suspended around the haunches by a string; she had a rag tied about
her head and jaws to keep her from mewing; as she slowly descended she
curved upward and clawed at the string, she swung downward and clawed
at the intangible air. The tittering rose higher and higher--the cat was
within six inches of the absorbed teacher's head--down, down, a little
lower, and she grabbed his wig with her desperate claws, clung to it,
and was snatched up into the garret in an instant with her trophy still
in her possession! And how the light did blaze abroad from the master's
bald pate--for the signpainter's boy had _gilded_ it!

That broke up the meeting. The boys were avenged. Vacation had come.

NOTE:--The pretended “compositions” quoted in this chapter are taken
without alteration from a volume entitled “Prose and Poetry, by a
Western Lady”--but they are exactly and precisely after the schoolgirl
pattern, and hence are much happier than any mere imitations could be.




CHAPTER XXII

TOM joined the new order of Cadets of Temperance, being attracted by the
showy character of their “regalia.” He promised to abstain from smoking,
chewing, and profanity as long as he remained a member. Now he found out
a new thing--namely, that to promise not to do a thing is the surest way
in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing. Tom soon
found himself tormented with a desire to drink and swear; the desire
grew to be so intense that nothing but the hope of a chance to display
himself in his red sash kept him from withdrawing from the order. Fourth
of July was coming; but he soon gave that up--gave it up before he had
worn his shackles over forty-eight hours--and fixed his hopes upon old
Judge Frazer, justice of the peace, who was apparently on his deathbed
and would have a big public funeral, since he was so high an official.
During three days Tom was deeply concerned about the Judge's condition
and hungry for news of it. Sometimes his hopes ran high--so high that
he would venture to get out his regalia and practise before the
looking-glass. But the Judge had a most discouraging way of fluctuating.
At last he was pronounced upon the mend--and then convalescent. Tom was
disgusted; and felt a sense of injury, too. He handed in his resignation
at once--and that night the Judge suffered a relapse and died. Tom
resolved that he would never trust a man like that again.

The funeral was a fine thing. The Cadets paraded in a style calculated
to kill the late member with envy. Tom was a free boy again,
however--there was something in that. He could drink and swear, now--but
found to his surprise that he did not want to. The simple fact that he
could, took the desire away, and the charm of it.

Tom presently wondered to find that his coveted vacation was beginning
to hang a little heavily on his hands.

He attempted a diary--but nothing happened during three days, and so he
abandoned it.

The first of all the negro minstrel shows came to town, and made a
sensation. Tom and Joe Harper got up a band of performers and were happy
for two days.

Even the Glorious Fourth was in some sense a failure, for it rained
hard, there was no procession in consequence, and the greatest man
in the world (as Tom supposed), Mr. Benton, an actual United States
Senator, proved an overwhelming disappointment--for he was not
twenty-five feet high, nor even anywhere in the neighborhood of it.

A circus came. The boys played circus for three days afterward in tents
made of rag carpeting--admission, three pins for boys, two for girls--and
then circusing was abandoned.

A phrenologist and a mesmerizer came--and went again and left the village
duller and drearier than ever.

There were some boys-and-girls' parties, but they were so few and so
delightful that they only made the aching voids between ache the harder.

Becky Thatcher was gone to her Constantinople home to stay with her
parents during vacation--so there was no bright side to life anywhere.

The dreadful secret of the murder was a chronic misery. It was a very
cancer for permanency and pain.

Then came the measles.

During two long weeks Tom lay a prisoner, dead to the world and its
happenings. He was very ill, he was interested in nothing. When he got
upon his feet at last and moved feebly downtown, a melancholy change had
come over everything and every creature. There had been a “revival,” and
everybody had “got religion,” not only the adults, but even the boys and
girls. Tom went about, hoping against hope for the sight of one blessed
sinful face, but disappointment crossed him everywhere. He found Joe
Harper studying a Testament, and turned sadly away from the depressing
spectacle. He sought Ben Rogers, and found him visiting the poor with a
basket of tracts. He hunted up Jim Hollis, who called his attention to
the precious blessing of his late measles as a warning. Every boy
he encountered added another ton to his depression; and when, in
desperation, he flew for refuge at last to the bosom of Huckleberry Finn
and was received with a Scriptural quotation, his heart broke and he
crept home and to bed realizing that he alone of all the town was lost,
forever and forever.

And that night there came on a terrific storm, with driving rain, awful
claps of thunder and blinding sheets of lightning. He covered his head
with the bedclothes and waited in a horror of suspense for his doom; for
he had not the shadow of a doubt that all this hubbub was about him.
He believed he had taxed the forbearance of the powers above to the
extremity of endurance and that this was the result. It might have
seemed to him a waste of pomp and ammunition to kill a bug with a
battery of artillery, but there seemed nothing incongruous about the
getting up such an expensive thunderstorm as this to knock the turf from
under an insect like himself.

By and by the tempest spent itself and died without accomplishing its
object. The boy's first impulse was to be grateful, and reform. His
second was to wait--for there might not be any more storms.

The next day the doctors were back; Tom had relapsed. The three weeks he
spent on his back this time seemed an entire age. When he got abroad
at last he was hardly grateful that he had been spared, remembering how
lonely was his estate, how companionless and forlorn he was. He drifted
listlessly down the street and found Jim Hollis acting as judge in a
juvenile court that was trying a cat for murder, in the presence of her
victim, a bird. He found Joe Harper and Huck Finn up an alley eating a
stolen melon. Poor lads! they--like Tom--had suffered a relapse.




CHAPTER XXIII

AT last the sleepy atmosphere was stirred--and vigorously: the murder
trial came on in the court. It became the absorbing topic of village
talk immediately. Tom could not get away from it. Every reference to
the murder sent a shudder to his heart, for his troubled conscience
and fears almost persuaded him that these remarks were put forth in
his hearing as “feelers”; he did not see how he could be suspected of
knowing anything about the murder, but still he could not be comfortable
in the midst of this gossip. It kept him in a cold shiver all the time.
He took Huck to a lonely place to have a talk with him. It would be some
relief to unseal his tongue for a little while; to divide his burden of
distress with another sufferer. Moreover, he wanted to assure himself
that Huck had remained discreet.

“Huck, have you ever told anybody about--that?”

“'Bout what?”

“You know what.”

“Oh--'course I haven't.”

“Never a word?”

“Never a solitary word, so help me. What makes you ask?”

“Well, I was afeard.”

“Why, Tom Sawyer, we wouldn't be alive two days if that got found out.
_You_ know that.”

Tom felt more comfortable. After a pause:

“Huck, they couldn't anybody get you to tell, could they?”

“Get me to tell? Why, if I wanted that halfbreed devil to drownd me they
could get me to tell. They ain't no different way.”

“Well, that's all right, then. I reckon we're safe as long as we keep
mum. But let's swear again, anyway. It's more surer.”

“I'm agreed.”

So they swore again with dread solemnities.

“What is the talk around, Huck? I've heard a power of it.”

“Talk? Well, it's just Muff Potter, Muff Potter, Muff Potter all the
time. It keeps me in a sweat, constant, so's I want to hide som'ers.”

“That's just the same way they go on round me. I reckon he's a goner.
Don't you feel sorry for him, sometimes?”

“Most always--most always. He ain't no account; but then he hain't ever
done anything to hurt anybody. Just fishes a little, to get money to
get drunk on--and loafs around considerable; but lord, we all do
that--leastways most of us--preachers and such like. But he's kind of
good--he give me half a fish, once, when there warn't enough for two; and
lots of times he's kind of stood by me when I was out of luck.”

“Well, he's mended kites for me, Huck, and knitted hooks on to my line.
I wish we could get him out of there.”

“My! we couldn't get him out, Tom. And besides, 'twouldn't do any good;
they'd ketch him again.”

“Yes--so they would. But I hate to hear 'em abuse him so like the dickens
when he never done--that.”

“I do too, Tom. Lord, I hear 'em say he's the bloodiest looking villain
in this country, and they wonder he wasn't ever hung before.”

“Yes, they talk like that, all the time. I've heard 'em say that if he
was to get free they'd lynch him.”

“And they'd do it, too.”

The boys had a long talk, but it brought them little comfort. As the
twilight drew on, they found themselves hanging about the neighborhood
of the little isolated jail, perhaps with an undefined hope that
something would happen that might clear away their difficulties. But
nothing happened; there seemed to be no angels or fairies interested in
this luckless captive.

The boys did as they had often done before--went to the cell grating and
gave Potter some tobacco and matches. He was on the ground floor and
there were no guards.

His gratitude for their gifts had always smote their consciences
before--it cut deeper than ever, this time. They felt cowardly and
treacherous to the last degree when Potter said:

“You've been mighty good to me, boys--better'n anybody else in this town.
And I don't forget it, I don't. Often I says to myself, says I, 'I used
to mend all the boys' kites and things, and show 'em where the good
fishin' places was, and befriend 'em what I could, and now they've
all forgot old Muff when he's in trouble; but Tom don't, and Huck
don't--_they_ don't forget him, says I, 'and I don't forget them.' Well,
boys, I done an awful thing--drunk and crazy at the time--that's the only
way I account for it--and now I got to swing for it, and it's right.
Right, and _best_, too, I reckon--hope so, anyway. Well, we won't talk
about that. I don't want to make _you_ feel bad; you've befriended me.
But what I want to say, is, don't _you_ ever get drunk--then you won't
ever get here. Stand a litter furder west--so--that's it; it's a prime
comfort to see faces that's friendly when a body's in such a muck
of trouble, and there don't none come here but yourn. Good friendly
faces--good friendly faces. Git up on one another's backs and let me
touch 'em. That's it. Shake hands--yourn'll come through the bars, but
mine's too big. Little hands, and weak--but they've helped Muff Potter a
power, and they'd help him more if they could.”

Tom went home miserable, and his dreams that night were full of horrors.
The next day and the day after, he hung about the courtroom, drawn by an
almost irresistible impulse to go in, but forcing himself to stay out.
Huck was having the same experience. They studiously avoided each other.
Each wandered away, from time to time, but the same dismal fascination
always brought them back presently. Tom kept his ears open when idlers
sauntered out of the courtroom, but invariably heard distressing
news--the toils were closing more and more relentlessly around poor
Potter. At the end of the second day the village talk was to the effect
that Injun Joe's evidence stood firm and unshaken, and that there was
not the slightest question as to what the jury's verdict would be.

Tom was out late, that night, and came to bed through the window. He
was in a tremendous state of excitement. It was hours before he got to
sleep. All the village flocked to the courthouse the next morning, for
this was to be the great day. Both sexes were about equally represented
in the packed audience. After a long wait the jury filed in and took
their places; shortly afterward, Potter, pale and haggard, timid and
hopeless, was brought in, with chains upon him, and seated where all
the curious eyes could stare at him; no less conspicuous was Injun Joe,
stolid as ever. There was another pause, and then the judge arrived and
the sheriff proclaimed the opening of the court. The usual whisperings
among the lawyers and gathering together of papers followed. These
details and accompanying delays worked up an atmosphere of preparation
that was as impressive as it was fascinating.

Now a witness was called who testified that he found Muff Potter washing
in the brook, at an early hour of the morning that the murder was
discovered, and that he immediately sneaked away. After some further
questioning, counsel for the prosecution said:

“Take the witness.”

The prisoner raised his eyes for a moment, but dropped them again when
his own counsel said:

“I have no questions to ask him.”

The next witness proved the finding of the knife near the corpse.
Counsel for the prosecution said:

“Take the witness.”

“I have no questions to ask him,” Potter's lawyer replied.

A third witness swore he had often seen the knife in Potter's
possession.

“Take the witness.”

Counsel for Potter declined to question him. The faces of the audience
began to betray annoyance. Did this attorney mean to throw away his
client's life without an effort?

Several witnesses deposed concerning Potter's guilty behavior when
brought to the scene of the murder. They were allowed to leave the stand
without being cross-questioned.

Every detail of the damaging circumstances that occurred in the
graveyard upon that morning which all present remembered so well was
brought out by credible witnesses, but none of them were cross-examined
by Potter's lawyer. The perplexity and dissatisfaction of the house
expressed itself in murmurs and provoked a reproof from the bench.
Counsel for the prosecution now said:

“By the oaths of citizens whose simple word is above suspicion, we have
fastened this awful crime, beyond all possibility of question, upon the
unhappy prisoner at the bar. We rest our case here.”

A groan escaped from poor Potter, and he put his face in his hands and
rocked his body softly to and fro, while a painful silence reigned
in the courtroom. Many men were moved, and many women's compassion
testified itself in tears. Counsel for the defence rose and said:

“Your honor, in our remarks at the opening of this trial, we
foreshadowed our purpose to prove that our client did this fearful deed
while under the influence of a blind and irresponsible delirium produced
by drink. We have changed our mind. We shall not offer that plea.” [Then
to the clerk:] “Call Thomas Sawyer!”

A puzzled amazement awoke in every face in the house, not even excepting
Potter's. Every eye fastened itself with wondering interest upon Tom as
he rose and took his place upon the stand. The boy looked wild enough,
for he was badly scared. The oath was administered.

“Thomas Sawyer, where were you on the seventeenth of June, about the
hour of midnight?”

Tom glanced at Injun Joe's iron face and his tongue failed him. The
audience listened breathless, but the words refused to come. After a few
moments, however, the boy got a little of his strength back, and managed
to put enough of it into his voice to make part of the house hear:

“In the graveyard!”

“A little bit louder, please. Don't be afraid. You were--”

“In the graveyard.”

A contemptuous smile flitted across Injun Joe's face.

“Were you anywhere near Horse Williams' grave?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Speak up--just a trifle louder. How near were you?”

“Near as I am to you.”

“Were you hidden, or not?”

“I was hid.”

“Where?”

“Behind the elms that's on the edge of the grave.”

Injun Joe gave a barely perceptible start.

“Any one with you?”

“Yes, sir. I went there with--”

“Wait--wait a moment. Never mind mentioning your companion's name. We
will produce him at the proper time. Did you carry anything there with
you.”

Tom hesitated and looked confused.

“Speak out, my boy--don't be diffident. The truth is always respectable.
What did you take there?”

“Only a--a--dead cat.”

There was a ripple of mirth, which the court checked.

“We will produce the skeleton of that cat. Now, my boy, tell us
everything that occurred--tell it in your own way--don't skip anything,
and don't be afraid.”

Tom began--hesitatingly at first, but as he warmed to his subject his
words flowed more and more easily; in a little while every sound ceased
but his own voice; every eye fixed itself upon him; with parted lips and
bated breath the audience hung upon his words, taking no note of time,
rapt in the ghastly fascinations of the tale. The strain upon pent
emotion reached its climax when the boy said:

“--and as the doctor fetched the board around and Muff Potter fell, Injun
Joe jumped with the knife and--”

Crash! Quick as lightning the halfbreed sprang for a window, tore his
way through all opposers, and was gone!




CHAPTER XXIV

TOM was a glittering hero once more--the pet of the old, the envy of the
young. His name even went into immortal print, for the village paper
magnified him. There were some that believed he would be President, yet,
if he escaped hanging.

As usual, the fickle, unreasoning world took Muff Potter to its bosom
and fondled him as lavishly as it had abused him before. But that sort
of conduct is to the world's credit; therefore it is not well to find
fault with it.

Tom's days were days of splendor and exultation to him, but his nights
were seasons of horror. Injun Joe infested all his dreams, and always
with doom in his eye. Hardly any temptation could persuade the boy
to stir abroad after nightfall. Poor Huck was in the same state of
wretchedness and terror, for Tom had told the whole story to the lawyer
the night before the great day of the trial, and Huck was sore afraid
that his share in the business might leak out, yet, notwithstanding
Injun Joe's flight had saved him the suffering of testifying in court.
The poor fellow had got the attorney to promise secrecy, but what of
that? Since Tom's harassed conscience had managed to drive him to the
lawyer's house by night and wring a dread tale from lips that had
been sealed with the dismalest and most formidable of oaths, Huck's
confidence in the human race was wellnigh obliterated.

Daily Muff Potter's gratitude made Tom glad he had spoken; but nightly
he wished he had sealed up his tongue.

Half the time Tom was afraid Injun Joe would never be captured; the
other half he was afraid he would be. He felt sure he never could draw a
safe breath again until that man was dead and he had seen the corpse.

Rewards had been offered, the country had been scoured, but no Injun
Joe was found. One of those omniscient and aweinspiring marvels, a
detective, came up from St. Louis, moused around, shook his head, looked
wise, and made that sort of astounding success which members of that
craft usually achieve. That is to say, he “found a clew.” But you can't
hang a “clew” for murder, and so after that detective had got through
and gone home, Tom felt just as insecure as he was before.

The slow days drifted on, and each left behind it a slightly lightened
weight of apprehension.




CHAPTER XXV

THERE comes a time in every rightly-constructed boy's life when he has
a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure. This desire
suddenly came upon Tom one day. He sallied out to find Joe Harper,
but failed of success. Next he sought Ben Rogers; he had gone fishing.
Presently he stumbled upon Huck Finn the Red-Handed. Huck would
answer. Tom took him to a private place and opened the matter to him
confidentially. Huck was willing. Huck was always willing to take a hand
in any enterprise that offered entertainment and required no capital,
for he had a troublesome superabundance of that sort of time which is
not money. “Where'll we dig?” said Huck.

“Oh, most anywhere.”

“Why, is it hid all around?”

“No, indeed it ain't. It's hid in mighty particular places,
Huck--sometimes on islands, sometimes in rotten chests under the end of
a limb of an old dead tree, just where the shadow falls at midnight; but
mostly under the floor in ha'nted houses.”

“Who hides it?”

“Why, robbers, of course--who'd you reckon? Sunday-school
sup'rintendents?”

“I don't know. If 'twas mine I wouldn't hide it; I'd spend it and have a
good time.”

“So would I. But robbers don't do that way. They always hide it and
leave it there.”

“Don't they come after it any more?”

“No, they think they will, but they generally forget the marks, or else
they die. Anyway, it lays there a long time and gets rusty; and by and
by somebody finds an old yellow paper that tells how to find the marks--a
paper that's got to be ciphered over about a week because it's mostly
signs and hy'roglyphics.”

“Hyro--which?”

“Hy'roglyphics--pictures and things, you know, that don't seem to mean
anything.”

“Have you got one of them papers, Tom?”

“No.”

“Well then, how you going to find the marks?”

“I don't want any marks. They always bury it under a ha'nted house or on
an island, or under a dead tree that's got one limb sticking out. Well,
we've tried Jackson's Island a little, and we can try it again some
time; and there's the old ha'nted house up the Still-House branch, and
there's lots of dead-limb trees--dead loads of 'em.”

“Is it under all of them?”

“How you talk! No!”

“Then how you going to know which one to go for?”

“Go for all of 'em!”

“Why, Tom, it'll take all summer.”

“Well, what of that? Suppose you find a brass pot with a hundred dollars
in it, all rusty and gray, or rotten chest full of di'monds. How's
that?”

Huck's eyes glowed.

“That's bully. Plenty bully enough for me. Just you gimme the hundred
dollars and I don't want no di'monds.”

“All right. But I bet you I ain't going to throw off on di'monds. Some
of 'em's worth twenty dollars apiece--there ain't any, hardly, but's
worth six bits or a dollar.”

“No! Is that so?”

“Cert'nly--anybody'll tell you so. Hain't you ever seen one, Huck?”

“Not as I remember.”

“Oh, kings have slathers of them.”

“Well, I don' know no kings, Tom.”

“I reckon you don't. But if you was to go to Europe you'd see a raft of
'em hopping around.”

“Do they hop?”

“Hop?--your granny! No!”

“Well, what did you say they did, for?”

“Shucks, I only meant you'd _see_ 'em--not hopping, of course--what do
they want to hop for?--but I mean you'd just see 'em--scattered around,
you know, in a kind of a general way. Like that old humpbacked Richard.”

“Richard? What's his other name?”

“He didn't have any other name. Kings don't have any but a given name.”

“No?”

“But they don't.”

“Well, if they like it, Tom, all right; but I don't want to be a king
and have only just a given name, like a nigger. But say--where you going
to dig first?”

“Well, I don't know. S'pose we tackle that old dead-limb tree on the
hill t'other side of Still-House branch?”

“I'm agreed.”

So they got a crippled pick and a shovel, and set out on their
three-mile tramp. They arrived hot and panting, and threw themselves
down in the shade of a neighboring elm to rest and have a smoke.

“I like this,” said Tom.

“So do I.”

“Say, Huck, if we find a treasure here, what you going to do with your
share?”

“Well, I'll have pie and a glass of soda every day, and I'll go to every
circus that comes along. I bet I'll have a gay time.”

“Well, ain't you going to save any of it?”

“Save it? What for?”

“Why, so as to have something to live on, by and by.”

“Oh, that ain't any use. Pap would come back to thish-yer town some day
and get his claws on it if I didn't hurry up, and I tell you he'd clean
it out pretty quick. What you going to do with yourn, Tom?”

“I'm going to buy a new drum, and a sure'nough sword, and a red necktie
and a bull pup, and get married.”

“Married!”

“That's it.”

“Tom, you--why, you ain't in your right mind.”

“Wait--you'll see.”

“Well, that's the foolishest thing you could do. Look at pap and my
mother. Fight! Why, they used to fight all the time. I remember, mighty
well.”

“That ain't anything. The girl I'm going to marry won't fight.”

“Tom, I reckon they're all alike. They'll all comb a body. Now you
better think 'bout this awhile. I tell you you better. What's the name
of the gal?”

“It ain't a gal at all--it's a girl.”

“It's all the same, I reckon; some says gal, some says girl--both's
right, like enough. Anyway, what's her name, Tom?”

“I'll tell you some time--not now.”

“All right--that'll do. Only if you get married I'll be more lonesomer
than ever.”

“No you won't. You'll come and live with me. Now stir out of this and
we'll go to digging.”

They worked and sweated for half an hour. No result. They toiled another
halfhour. Still no result. Huck said:

“Do they always bury it as deep as this?”

“Sometimes--not always. Not generally. I reckon we haven't got the right
place.”

So they chose a new spot and began again. The labor dragged a little,
but still they made progress. They pegged away in silence for some time.
Finally Huck leaned on his shovel, swabbed the beaded drops from his
brow with his sleeve, and said:

“Where you going to dig next, after we get this one?”

“I reckon maybe we'll tackle the old tree that's over yonder on Cardiff
Hill back of the widow's.”

“I reckon that'll be a good one. But won't the widow take it away from
us, Tom? It's on her land.”

“_She_ take it away! Maybe she'd like to try it once. Whoever finds one
of these hid treasures, it belongs to him. It don't make any difference
whose land it's on.”

That was satisfactory. The work went on. By and by Huck said:

“Blame it, we must be in the wrong place again. What do you think?”

“It is mighty curious, Huck. I don't understand it. Sometimes witches
interfere. I reckon maybe that's what's the trouble now.”

“Shucks! Witches ain't got no power in the daytime.”

“Well, that's so. I didn't think of that. Oh, I know what the matter is!
What a blamed lot of fools we are! You got to find out where the shadow
of the limb falls at midnight, and that's where you dig!”

“Then consound it, we've fooled away all this work for nothing. Now hang
it all, we got to come back in the night. It's an awful long way. Can
you get out?”

“I bet I will. We've got to do it tonight, too, because if somebody sees
these holes they'll know in a minute what's here and they'll go for it.”

“Well, I'll come around and maow tonight.”

“All right. Let's hide the tools in the bushes.”

The boys were there that night, about the appointed time. They sat in
the shadow waiting. It was a lonely place, and an hour made solemn by
old traditions. Spirits whispered in the rustling leaves, ghosts lurked
in the murky nooks, the deep baying of a hound floated up out of the
distance, an owl answered with his sepulchral note. The boys were
subdued by these solemnities, and talked little. By and by they judged
that twelve had come; they marked where the shadow fell, and began to
dig. Their hopes commenced to rise. Their interest grew stronger, and
their industry kept pace with it. The hole deepened and still deepened,
but every time their hearts jumped to hear the pick strike upon
something, they only suffered a new disappointment. It was only a stone
or a chunk. At last Tom said:

“It ain't any use, Huck, we're wrong again.”

“Well, but we _can't_ be wrong. We spotted the shadder to a dot.”

“I know it, but then there's another thing.”

“What's that?”.

“Why, we only guessed at the time. Like enough it was too late or too
early.”

Huck dropped his shovel.

“That's it,” said he. “That's the very trouble. We got to give this one
up. We can't ever tell the right time, and besides this kind of thing's
too awful, here this time of night with witches and ghosts a-fluttering
around so. I feel as if something's behind me all the time;  and I'm
afeard to turn around, becuz maybe there's others in front a-waiting for
a chance. I been creeping all over, ever since I got here.”

“Well, I've been pretty much so, too, Huck. They most always put in a
dead man when they bury a treasure under a tree, to look out for it.”

“Lordy!”

“Yes, they do. I've always heard that.”

“Tom, I don't like to fool around much where there's dead people. A
body's bound to get into trouble with 'em, sure.”

“I don't like to stir 'em up, either. S'pose this one here was to stick
his skull out and say something!”

“Don't Tom! It's awful.”

“Well, it just is. Huck, I don't feel comfortable a bit.”

“Say, Tom, let's give this place up, and try somewheres else.”

“All right, I reckon we better.”

“What'll it be?”

Tom considered awhile; and then said:

“The ha'nted house. That's it!”

“Blame it, I don't like ha'nted houses, Tom. Why, they're a dern sight
worse'n dead people. Dead people might talk, maybe, but they don't come
sliding around in a shroud, when you ain't noticing, and peep over your
shoulder all of a sudden and grit their teeth, the way a ghost does. I
couldn't stand such a thing as that, Tom--nobody could.”

“Yes, but, Huck, ghosts don't travel around only at night. They won't
hender us from digging there in the daytime.”

“Well, that's so. But you know mighty well people don't go about that
ha'nted house in the day nor the night.”

“Well, that's mostly because they don't like to go where a man's been
murdered, anyway--but nothing's ever been seen around that house except
in the night--just some blue lights slipping by the windows--no regular
ghosts.”

“Well, where you see one of them blue lights flickering around, Tom,
you can bet there's a ghost mighty close behind it. It stands to reason.
Becuz you know that they don't anybody but ghosts use 'em.”

“Yes, that's so. But anyway they don't come around in the daytime, so
what's the use of our being afeard?”

“Well, all right. We'll tackle the ha'nted house if you say so--but I
reckon it's taking chances.”

They had started down the hill by this time. There in the middle of the
moonlit valley below them stood the “ha'nted” house, utterly isolated,
its fences gone long ago, rank weeds smothering the very doorsteps, the
chimney crumbled to ruin, the window-sashes vacant, a corner of the roof
caved in. The boys gazed awhile, half expecting to see a blue light flit
past a window; then talking in a low tone, as befitted the time and the
circumstances, they struck far off to the right, to give the haunted
house a wide berth, and took their way homeward through the woods that
adorned the rearward side of Cardiff Hill.




CHAPTER XVI

ABOUT noon the next day the boys arrived at the dead tree; they had come
for their tools. Tom was impatient to go to the haunted house; Huck was
measurably so, also--but suddenly said:

“Lookyhere, Tom, do you know what day it is?”

Tom mentally ran over the days of the week, and then quickly lifted his
eyes with a startled look in them--

“My! I never once thought of it, Huck!”

“Well, I didn't neither, but all at once it popped onto me that it was
Friday.”

“Blame it, a body can't be too careful, Huck. We might 'a' got into an
awful scrape, tackling such a thing on a Friday.”

“_Might_! Better say we _would_! There's some lucky days, maybe, but
Friday ain't.”

“Any fool knows that. I don't reckon _you_ was the first that found it
out, Huck.”

“Well, I never said I was, did I? And Friday ain't all, neither. I had a
rotten bad dream last night--dreampt about rats.”

“No! Sure sign of trouble. Did they fight?”

“No.”

“Well, that's good, Huck. When they don't fight it's only a sign that
there's trouble around, you know. All we got to do is to look mighty
sharp and keep out of it. We'll drop this thing for today, and play. Do
you know Robin Hood, Huck?”

“No. Who's Robin Hood?”

“Why, he was one of the greatest men that was ever in England--and the
best. He was a robber.”

“Cracky, I wisht I was. Who did he rob?”

“Only sheriffs and bishops and rich people and kings, and such like. But
he never bothered the poor. He loved 'em. He always divided up with 'em
perfectly square.”

“Well, he must 'a' been a brick.”

“I bet you he was, Huck. Oh, he was the noblest man that ever was.
They ain't any such men now, I can tell you. He could lick any man in
England, with one hand tied behind him; and he could take his yew bow
and plug a ten-cent piece every time, a mile and a half.”

“What's a _yew_ bow?”

“I don't know. It's some kind of a bow, of course. And if he hit that
dime only on the edge he would set down and cry--and curse. But we'll
play Robin Hood--it's nobby fun. I'll learn you.”

“I'm agreed.”

So they played Robin Hood all the afternoon, now and then casting a
yearning eye down upon the haunted house and passing a remark about the
morrow's prospects and possibilities there. As the sun began to sink
into the west they took their way homeward athwart the long shadows
of the trees and soon were buried from sight in the forests of Cardiff
Hill.

On Saturday, shortly after noon, the boys were at the dead tree again.
They had a smoke and a chat in the shade, and then dug a little in their
last hole, not with great hope, but merely because Tom said there were
so many cases where people had given up a treasure after getting down
within six inches of it, and then somebody else had come along and
turned it up with a single thrust of a shovel. The thing failed this
time, however, so the boys shouldered their tools and went away feeling
that they had not trifled with fortune, but had fulfilled all the
requirements that belong to the business of treasure-hunting.

When they reached the haunted house there was something so weird and
grisly about the dead silence that reigned there under the baking sun,
and something so depressing about the loneliness and desolation of the
place, that they were afraid, for a moment, to venture in. Then they
crept to the door and took a trembling peep. They saw a weedgrown,
floorless room, unplastered, an ancient fireplace, vacant windows,
a ruinous staircase; and here, there, and everywhere hung ragged and
abandoned cobwebs. They presently entered, softly, with quickened
pulses, talking in whispers, ears alert to catch the slightest sound,
and muscles tense and ready for instant retreat.

In a little while familiarity modified their fears and they gave the
place a critical and interested examination, rather admiring their own
boldness, and wondering at it, too. Next they wanted to look upstairs.
This was something like cutting off retreat, but they got to daring
each other, and of course there could be but one result--they threw their
tools into a corner and made the ascent. Up there were the same signs of
decay. In one corner they found a closet that promised mystery, but the
promise was a fraud--there was nothing in it. Their courage was up now
and well in hand. They were about to go down and begin work when--

“Sh!” said Tom.

“What is it?” whispered Huck, blanching with fright.

“Sh!... There!... Hear it?”

“Yes!... Oh, my! Let's run!”

“Keep still! Don't you budge! They're coming right toward the door.”

The boys stretched themselves upon the floor with their eyes to
knotholes in the planking, and lay waiting, in a misery of fear.

“They've stopped.... No--coming.... Here they are. Don't whisper another
word, Huck. My goodness, I wish I was out of this!”

Two men entered. Each boy said to himself: “There's the old deaf and
dumb Spaniard that's been about town once or twice lately--never saw
t'other man before.”

“T'other” was a ragged, unkempt creature, with nothing very pleasant
in his face. The Spaniard was wrapped in a serape; he had bushy white
whiskers; long white hair flowed from under his sombrero, and he wore
green goggles. When they came in, “t'other” was talking in a low voice;
they sat down on the ground, facing the door, with their backs to the
wall, and the speaker continued his remarks. His manner became less
guarded and his words more distinct as he proceeded:

“No,” said he, “I've thought it all over, and I don't like it. It's
dangerous.”

“Dangerous!” grunted the “deaf and dumb” Spaniard--to the vast surprise
of the boys. “Milksop!”

This voice made the boys gasp and quake. It was Injun Joe's! There was
silence for some time. Then Joe said:

“What's any more dangerous than that job up yonder--but nothing's come of
it.”

“That's different. Away up the river so, and not another house about.
'Twon't ever be known that we tried, anyway, long as we didn't succeed.”

“Well, what's more dangerous than coming here in the daytime!--anybody
would suspicion us that saw us.”

“I know that. But there warn't any other place as handy after that fool
of a job. I want to quit this shanty. I wanted to yesterday, only it
warn't any use trying to stir out of here, with those infernal boys
playing over there on the hill right in full view.”

“Those infernal boys” quaked again under the inspiration of this remark,
and thought how lucky it was that they had remembered it was Friday and
concluded to wait a day. They wished in their hearts they had waited a
year.

The two men got out some food and made a luncheon. After a long and
thoughtful silence, Injun Joe said:

“Look here, lad--you go back up the river where you belong. Wait there
till you hear from me. I'll take the chances on dropping into this town
just once more, for a look. We'll do that 'dangerous' job after I've
spied around a little and think things look well for it. Then for Texas!
We'll leg it together!”

This was satisfactory. Both men presently fell to yawning, and Injun Joe
said:

“I'm dead for sleep! It's your turn to watch.”

He curled down in the weeds and soon began to snore. His comrade stirred
him once or twice and he became quiet. Presently the watcher began to
nod; his head drooped lower and lower, both men began to snore now.

The boys drew a long, grateful breath. Tom whispered:

“Now's our chance--come!”

Huck said:

“I can't--I'd die if they was to wake.”

Tom urged--Huck held back. At last Tom rose slowly and softly, and
started alone. But the first step he made wrung such a hideous creak
from the crazy floor that he sank down almost dead with fright. He never
made a second attempt. The boys lay there counting the dragging moments
till it seemed to them that time must be done and eternity growing gray;
and then they were grateful to note that at last the sun was setting.

Now one snore ceased. Injun Joe sat up, stared around--smiled grimly upon
his comrade, whose head was drooping upon his knees--stirred him up with
his foot and said:

“Here! _You're_ a watchman, ain't you! All right, though--nothing's
happened.”

“My! have I been asleep?”

“Oh, partly, partly. Nearly time for us to be moving, pard. What'll we
do with what little swag we've got left?”

“I don't know--leave it here as we've always done, I reckon. No use to
take it away till we start south. Six hundred and fifty in silver's
something to carry.”

“Well--all right--it won't matter to come here once more.”

“No--but I'd say come in the night as we used to do--it's better.”

“Yes: but look here; it may be a good while before I get the right
chance at that job; accidents might happen; 'tain't in such a very good
place; we'll just regularly bury it--and bury it deep.”

“Good idea,” said the comrade, who walked across the room, knelt down,
raised one of the rearward hearth-stones and took out a bag that jingled
pleasantly. He subtracted from it twenty or thirty dollars for himself
and as much for Injun Joe, and passed the bag to the latter, who was on
his knees in the corner, now, digging with his bowie-knife.

The boys forgot all their fears, all their miseries in an instant. With
gloating eyes they watched every movement. Luck!--the splendor of it was
beyond all imagination! Six hundred dollars was money enough to make
half a dozen boys rich! Here was treasure-hunting under the happiest
auspices--there would not be any bothersome uncertainty as to where to
dig. They nudged each other every moment--eloquent nudges and easily
understood, for they simply meant--“Oh, but ain't you glad _now_ we're
here!”

Joe's knife struck upon something.

“Hello!” said he.

“What is it?” said his comrade.

“Half-rotten plank--no, it's a box, I believe. Here--bear a hand and we'll
see what it's here for. Never mind, I've broke a hole.”

He reached his hand in and drew it out--

“Man, it's money!”

The two men examined the handful of coins. They were gold. The boys
above were as excited as themselves, and as delighted.

Joe's comrade said:

“We'll make quick work of this. There's an old rusty pick over amongst
the weeds in the corner the other side of the fireplace--I saw it a
minute ago.”

He ran and brought the boys' pick and shovel. Injun Joe took the
pick, looked it over critically, shook his head, muttered something to
himself, and then began to use it. The box was soon unearthed. It was
not very large; it was iron bound and had been very strong before the
slow years had injured it. The men contemplated the treasure awhile in
blissful silence.

“Pard, there's thousands of dollars here,” said Injun Joe.

“'Twas always said that Murrel's gang used to be around here one
summer,” the stranger observed.

“I know it,” said Injun Joe; “and this looks like it, I should say.”

“Now you won't need to do that job.”

The halfbreed frowned. Said he:

“You don't know me. Least you don't know all about that thing. 'Tain't
robbery altogether--it's _revenge_!” and a wicked light flamed in his
eyes. “I'll need your help in it. When it's finished--then Texas. Go home
to your Nance and your kids, and stand by till you hear from me.”

“Well--if you say so; what'll we do with this--bury it again?”

“Yes. [Ravishing delight overhead.] _No_! by the great Sachem, no!
[Profound distress overhead.] I'd nearly forgot. That pick had fresh
earth on it! [The boys were sick with terror in a moment.] What business
has a pick and a shovel here? What business with fresh earth on
them? Who brought them here--and where are they gone? Have you heard
anybody?--seen anybody? What! bury it again and leave them to come and
see the ground disturbed? Not exactly--not exactly. We'll take it to my
den.”

“Why, of course! Might have thought of that before. You mean Number
One?”

“No--Number Two--under the cross. The other place is bad--too common.”

“All right. It's nearly dark enough to start.”

Injun Joe got up and went about from window to window cautiously peeping
out. Presently he said:

“Who could have brought those tools here? Do you reckon they can be
upstairs?”

The boys' breath forsook them. Injun Joe put his hand on his knife,
halted a moment, undecided, and then turned toward the stairway. The
boys thought of the closet, but their strength was gone. The steps came
creaking up the stairs--the intolerable distress of the situation woke
the stricken resolution of the lads--they were about to spring for the
closet, when there was a crash of rotten timbers and Injun Joe landed on
the ground amid the debris of the ruined stairway. He gathered himself
up cursing, and his comrade said:

“Now what's the use of all that? If it's anybody, and they're up there,
let them _stay_ there--who cares? If they want to jump down, now, and get
into trouble, who objects? It will be dark in fifteen minutes--and then
let them follow us if they want to. I'm willing. In my opinion, whoever
hove those things in here caught a sight of us and took us for ghosts or
devils or something. I'll bet they're running yet.”

Joe grumbled awhile; then he agreed with his friend that what daylight
was left ought to be economized in getting things ready for leaving.
Shortly afterward they slipped out of the house in the deepening
twilight, and moved toward the river with their precious box.

Tom and Huck rose up, weak but vastly relieved, and stared after them
through the chinks between the logs of the house. Follow? Not they. They
were content to reach ground again without broken necks, and take the
townward track over the hill. They did not talk much. They were too much
absorbed in hating themselves--hating the ill luck that made them take
the spade and the pick there. But for that, Injun Joe never would have
suspected. He would have hidden the silver with the gold to wait
there till his “revenge” was satisfied, and then he would have had the
misfortune to find that money turn up missing. Bitter, bitter luck that
the tools were ever brought there!

They resolved to keep a lookout for that Spaniard when he should come to
town spying out for chances to do his revengeful job, and follow him to
“Number Two,” wherever that might be. Then a ghastly thought occurred to
Tom.

“Revenge? What if he means _us_, Huck!”

“Oh, don't!” said Huck, nearly fainting.

They talked it all over, and as they entered town they agreed to believe
that he might possibly mean somebody else--at least that he might at
least mean nobody but Tom, since only Tom had testified.

Very, very small comfort it was to Tom to be alone in danger! Company
would be a palpable improvement, he thought.




CHAPTER XXVII

THE adventure of the day mightily tormented Tom's dreams that night.
Four times he had his hands on that rich treasure and four times
it wasted to nothingness in his fingers as sleep forsook him and
wakefulness brought back the hard reality of his misfortune. As he lay
in the early morning recalling the incidents of his great adventure, he
noticed that they seemed curiously subdued and far away--somewhat as if
they had happened in another world, or in a time long gone by. Then it
occurred to him that the great adventure itself must be a dream! There
was one very strong argument in favor of this idea--namely, that the
quantity of coin he had seen was too vast to be real. He had never seen
as much as fifty dollars in one mass before, and he was like all boys of
his age and station in life, in that he imagined that all references to
“hundreds” and “thousands” were mere fanciful forms of speech, and that
no such sums really existed in the world. He never had supposed for
a moment that so large a sum as a hundred dollars was to be found in
actual money in any one's possession. If his notions of hidden treasure
had been analyzed, they would have been found to consist of a handful of
real dimes and a bushel of vague, splendid, ungraspable dollars.

But the incidents of his adventure grew sensibly sharper and clearer
under the attrition of thinking them over, and so he presently found
himself leaning to the impression that the thing might not have been a
dream, after all. This uncertainty must be swept away. He would snatch a
hurried breakfast and go and find Huck. Huck was sitting on the gunwale
of a flatboat, listlessly dangling his feet in the water and looking
very melancholy. Tom concluded to let Huck lead up to the subject. If
he did not do it, then the adventure would be proved to have been only a
dream.

“Hello, Huck!”

“Hello, yourself.”

Silence, for a minute.

“Tom, if we'd 'a' left the blame tools at the dead tree, we'd 'a' got
the money. Oh, ain't it awful!”

“'Tain't a dream, then, 'tain't a dream! Somehow I most wish it was.
Dog'd if I don't, Huck.”

“What ain't a dream?”

“Oh, that thing yesterday. I been half thinking it was.”

“Dream! If them stairs hadn't broke down you'd 'a' seen how much dream
it was! I've had dreams enough all night--with that patch-eyed Spanish
devil going for me all through 'em--rot him!”

“No, not rot him. _Find_ him! Track the money!”

“Tom, we'll never find him. A feller don't have only one chance for such
a pile--and that one's lost. I'd feel mighty shaky if I was to see him,
anyway.”

“Well, so'd I; but I'd like to see him, anyway--and track him out--to his
Number Two.”

“Number Two--yes, that's it. I been thinking 'bout that. But I can't make
nothing out of it. What do you reckon it is?”

“I dono. It's too deep. Say, Huck--maybe it's the number of a house!”

“Goody!... No, Tom, that ain't it. If it is, it ain't in this one-horse
town. They ain't no numbers here.”

“Well, that's so. Lemme think a minute. Here--it's the number of a
room--in a tavern, you know!”

“Oh, that's the trick! They ain't only two taverns. We can find out
quick.”

“You stay here, Huck, till I come.”

Tom was off at once. He did not care to have Huck's company in public
places. He was gone half an hour. He found that in the best tavern, No.
2 had long been occupied by a young lawyer, and was still so occupied.
In the less ostentatious house, No. 2 was a mystery. The tavern-keeper's
young son said it was kept locked all the time, and he never saw anybody
go into it or come out of it except at night; he did not know any
particular reason for this state of things; had had some little
curiosity, but it was rather feeble; had made the most of the mystery
by entertaining himself with the idea that that room was “ha'nted”; had
noticed that there was a light in there the night before.

“That's what I've found out, Huck. I reckon that's the very No. 2 we're
after.”

“I reckon it is, Tom. Now what you going to do?”

“Lemme think.”

Tom thought a long time. Then he said:

“I'll tell you. The back door of that No. 2 is the door that comes out
into that little close alley between the tavern and the old rattle trap
of a brick store. Now you get hold of all the doorkeys you can find, and
I'll nip all of auntie's, and the first dark night we'll go there and
try 'em. And mind you, keep a lookout for Injun Joe, because he said he
was going to drop into town and spy around once more for a chance to get
his revenge. If you see him, you just follow him; and if he don't go to
that No. 2, that ain't the place.”

“Lordy, I don't want to foller him by myself!”

“Why, it'll be night, sure. He mightn't ever see you--and if he did,
maybe he'd never think anything.”

“Well, if it's pretty dark I reckon I'll track him. I dono--I dono. I'll
try.”

“You bet I'll follow him, if it's dark, Huck. Why, he might 'a' found
out he couldn't get his revenge, and be going right after that money.”

“It's so, Tom, it's so. I'll foller him; I will, by jingoes!”

“Now you're _talking_! Don't you ever weaken, Huck, and I won't.”




CHAPTER XXVIII

THAT night Tom and Huck were ready for their adventure. They hung about
the neighborhood of the tavern until after nine, one watching the alley
at a distance and the other the tavern door. Nobody entered the alley or
left it; nobody resembling the Spaniard entered or left the tavern
door. The night promised to be a fair one; so Tom went home with the
understanding that if a considerable degree of darkness came on, Huck
was to come and “maow,” whereupon he would slip out and try the keys.
But the night remained clear, and Huck closed his watch and retired to
bed in an empty sugar hogshead about twelve.

Tuesday the boys had the same ill luck. Also Wednesday. But Thursday
night promised better. Tom slipped out in good season with his aunt's
old tin lantern, and a large towel to blindfold it with. He hid the
lantern in Huck's sugar hogshead and the watch began. An hour before
midnight the tavern closed up and its lights (the only ones thereabouts)
were put out. No Spaniard had been seen. Nobody had entered or left the
alley. Everything was auspicious. The blackness of darkness reigned,
the perfect stillness was interrupted only by occasional mutterings of
distant thunder.

Tom got his lantern, lit it in the hogshead, wrapped it closely in the
towel, and the two adventurers crept in the gloom toward the tavern.
Huck stood sentry and Tom felt his way into the alley. Then there was
a season of waiting anxiety that weighed upon Huck's spirits like a
mountain. He began to wish he could see a flash from the lantern--it
would frighten him, but it would at least tell him that Tom was alive
yet. It seemed hours since Tom had disappeared. Surely he must have
fainted; maybe he was dead; maybe his heart had burst under terror and
excitement. In his uneasiness Huck found himself drawing closer
and closer to the alley; fearing all sorts of dreadful things, and
momentarily expecting some catastrophe to happen that would take away
his breath. There was not much to take away, for he seemed only able to
inhale it by thimblefuls, and his heart would soon wear itself out, the
way it was beating. Suddenly there was a flash of light and Tom came
tearing by him: “Run!” said he; “run, for your life!”

He needn't have repeated it; once was enough; Huck was making thirty or
forty miles an hour before the repetition was uttered. The boys never
stopped till they reached the shed of a deserted slaughter-house at the
lower end of the village. Just as they got within its shelter the storm
burst and the rain poured down. As soon as Tom got his breath he said:

“Huck, it was awful! I tried two of the keys, just as soft as I could;
but they seemed to make such a power of racket that I couldn't hardly
get my breath I was so scared. They wouldn't turn in the lock, either.
Well, without noticing what I was doing, I took hold of the knob, and
open comes the door! It warn't locked! I hopped in, and shook off the
towel, and, _Great Caesar's Ghost!_”

“What!--what'd you see, Tom?”

“Huck, I most stepped onto Injun Joe's hand!”

“No!”

“Yes! He was lying there, sound asleep on the floor, with his old patch
on his eye and his arms spread out.”

“Lordy, what did you do? Did he wake up?”

“No, never budged. Drunk, I reckon. I just grabbed that towel and
started!”

“I'd never 'a' thought of the towel, I bet!”

“Well, I would. My aunt would make me mighty sick if I lost it.”

“Say, Tom, did you see that box?”

“Huck, I didn't wait to look around. I didn't see the box, I didn't see
the cross. I didn't see anything but a bottle and a tin cup on the floor
by Injun Joe; yes, I saw two barrels and lots more bottles in the room.
Don't you see, now, what's the matter with that ha'nted room?”

“How?”

“Why, it's ha'nted with whiskey! Maybe _all_ the Temperance Taverns have
got a ha'nted room, hey, Huck?”

“Well, I reckon maybe that's so. Who'd 'a' thought such a thing? But
say, Tom, now's a mighty good time to get that box, if Injun Joe's
drunk.”

“It is, that! You try it!”

Huck shuddered.

“Well, no--I reckon not.”

“And I reckon not, Huck. Only one bottle alongside of Injun Joe ain't
enough. If there'd been three, he'd be drunk enough and I'd do it.”

There was a long pause for reflection, and then Tom said:

“Lookyhere, Huck, less not try that thing any more till we know Injun
Joe's not in there. It's too scary. Now, if we watch every night, we'll
be dead sure to see him go out, some time or other, and then we'll
snatch that box quicker'n lightning.”

“Well, I'm agreed. I'll watch the whole night long, and I'll do it every
night, too, if you'll do the other part of the job.”

“All right, I will. All you got to do is to trot up Hooper Street a
block and maow--and if I'm asleep, you throw some gravel at the window
and that'll fetch me.”

“Agreed, and good as wheat!”

“Now, Huck, the storm's over, and I'll go home. It'll begin to be
daylight in a couple of hours. You go back and watch that long, will
you?”

“I said I would, Tom, and I will. I'll ha'nt that tavern every night for
a year! I'll sleep all day and I'll stand watch all night.”

“That's all right. Now, where you going to sleep?”

“In Ben Rogers' hayloft. He lets me, and so does his pap's nigger man,
Uncle Jake. I tote water for Uncle Jake whenever he wants me to, and any
time I ask him he gives me a little something to eat if he can spare it.
That's a mighty good nigger, Tom. He likes me, becuz I don't ever act as
if I was above him. Sometime I've set right down and eat _with_ him. But
you needn't tell that. A body's got to do things when he's awful hungry
he wouldn't want to do as a steady thing.”

“Well, if I don't want you in the daytime, I'll let you sleep. I won't
come bothering around. Any time you see something's up, in the night,
just skip right around and maow.”




CHAPTER XXIX

THE first thing Tom heard on Friday morning was a glad piece of
news--Judge Thatcher's family had come back to town the night before.
Both Injun Joe and the treasure sunk into secondary importance for a
moment, and Becky took the chief place in the boy's interest. He saw her
and they had an exhausting good time playing “hispy” and “gully-keeper”
 with a crowd of their schoolmates. The day was completed and crowned in
a peculiarly satisfactory way: Becky teased her mother to appoint
the next day for the long-promised and long-delayed picnic, and she
consented. The child's delight was boundless; and Tom's not more
moderate. The invitations were sent out before sunset, and straightway
the young folks of the village were thrown into a fever of preparation
and pleasurable anticipation. Tom's excitement enabled him to keep
awake until a pretty late hour, and he had good hopes of hearing Huck's
“maow,” and of having his treasure to astonish Becky and the picnickers
with, next day; but he was disappointed. No signal came that night.

Morning came, eventually, and by ten or eleven o'clock a giddy and
rollicking company were gathered at Judge Thatcher's, and everything was
ready for a start. It was not the custom for elderly people to mar the
picnics with their presence. The children were considered safe enough
under the wings of a few young ladies of eighteen and a few young
gentlemen of twenty-three or thereabouts. The old steam ferry-boat was
chartered for the occasion; presently the gay throng filed up the main
street laden with provision-baskets. Sid was sick and had to miss
the fun; Mary remained at home to entertain him. The last thing Mrs.
Thatcher said to Becky, was:

“You'll not get back till late. Perhaps you'd better stay all night with
some of the girls that live near the ferry-landing, child.”

“Then I'll stay with Susy Harper, mamma.”

“Very well. And mind and behave yourself and don't be any trouble.”

Presently, as they tripped along, Tom said to Becky:

“Say--I'll tell you what we'll do. 'Stead of going to Joe Harper's we'll
climb right up the hill and stop at the Widow Douglas'. She'll have
ice-cream! She has it most every day--dead loads of it. And she'll be
awful glad to have us.”

“Oh, that will be fun!”

Then Becky reflected a moment and said:

“But what will mamma say?”

“How'll she ever know?”

The girl turned the idea over in her mind, and said reluctantly:

“I reckon it's wrong--but--”

“But shucks! Your mother won't know, and so what's the harm? All she
wants is that you'll be safe; and I bet you she'd 'a' said go there if
she'd 'a' thought of it. I know she would!”

The Widow Douglas' splendid hospitality was a tempting bait. It and
Tom's persuasions presently carried the day. So it was decided to say
nothing to anybody about the night's programme. Presently it occurred to
Tom that maybe Huck might come this very night and give the signal. The
thought took a deal of the spirit out of his anticipations. Still he
could not bear to give up the fun at Widow Douglas'. And why should he
give it up, he reasoned--the signal did not come the night before, so
why should it be any more likely to come tonight? The sure fun of the
evening outweighed the uncertain treasure; and, boy-like, he determined
to yield to the stronger inclination and not allow himself to think of
the box of money another time that day.

Three miles below town the ferryboat stopped at the mouth of a woody
hollow and tied up. The crowd swarmed ashore and soon the forest
distances and craggy heights echoed far and near with shoutings and
laughter. All the different ways of getting hot and tired were gone
through with, and by-and-by the rovers straggled back to camp fortified
with responsible appetites, and then the destruction of the good things
began. After the feast there was a refreshing season of rest and chat in
the shade of spreading oaks. By-and-by somebody shouted:

“Who's ready for the cave?”

Everybody was. Bundles of candles were procured, and straightway there
was a general scamper up the hill. The mouth of the cave was up the
hillside--an opening shaped like a letter A. Its massive oaken door stood
unbarred. Within was a small chamber, chilly as an icehouse, and walled
by Nature with solid limestone that was dewy with a cold sweat. It was
romantic and mysterious to stand here in the deep gloom and look out
upon the green valley shining in the sun. But the impressiveness of the
situation quickly wore off, and the romping began again. The moment
a candle was lighted there was a general rush upon the owner of it; a
struggle and a gallant defence followed, but the candle was soon knocked
down or blown out, and then there was a glad clamor of laughter and a
new chase. But all things have an end. By-and-by the procession went
filing down the steep descent of the main avenue, the flickering rank of
lights dimly revealing the lofty walls of rock almost to their point of
junction sixty feet overhead. This main avenue was not more than
eight or ten feet wide. Every few steps other lofty and still narrower
crevices branched from it on either hand--for McDougal's cave was but a
vast labyrinth of crooked aisles that ran into each other and out again
and led nowhere. It was said that one might wander days and nights
together through its intricate tangle of rifts and chasms, and never
find the end of the cave; and that he might go down, and down, and
still down, into the earth, and it was just the same--labyrinth under
labyrinth, and no end to any of them. No man “knew” the cave. That was
an impossible thing. Most of the young men knew a portion of it, and it
was not customary to venture much beyond this known portion. Tom Sawyer
knew as much of the cave as any one.

The procession moved along the main avenue some three-quarters of
a mile, and then groups and couples began to slip aside into branch
avenues, fly along the dismal corridors, and take each other by surprise
at points where the corridors joined again. Parties were able to elude
each other for the space of half an hour without going beyond the
“known” ground.

By-and-by, one group after another came straggling back to the mouth
of the cave, panting, hilarious, smeared from head to foot with tallow
drippings, daubed with clay, and entirely delighted with the success of
the day. Then they were astonished to find that they had been taking
no note of time and that night was about at hand. The clanging bell had
been calling for half an hour. However, this sort of close to the day's
adventures was romantic and therefore satisfactory. When the ferryboat
with her wild freight pushed into the stream, nobody cared sixpence for
the wasted time but the captain of the craft.

Huck was already upon his watch when the ferryboat's lights went
glinting past the wharf. He heard no noise on board, for the young
people were as subdued and still as people usually are who are nearly
tired to death. He wondered what boat it was, and why she did not
stop at the wharf--and then he dropped her out of his mind and put his
attention upon his business. The night was growing cloudy and dark. Ten
o'clock came, and the noise of vehicles ceased, scattered lights began
to wink out, all straggling foot-passengers disappeared, the village
betook itself to its slumbers and left the small watcher alone with the
silence and the ghosts. Eleven o'clock came, and the tavern lights were
put out; darkness everywhere, now. Huck waited what seemed a weary long
time, but nothing happened. His faith was weakening. Was there any use?
Was there really any use? Why not give it up and turn in?

A noise fell upon his ear. He was all attention in an instant. The alley
door closed softly. He sprang to the corner of the brick store. The next
moment two men brushed by him, and one seemed to have something under
his arm. It must be that box! So they were going to remove the treasure.
Why call Tom now? It would be absurd--the men would get away with the box
and never be found again. No, he would stick to their wake and follow
them; he would trust to the darkness for security from discovery. So
communing with himself, Huck stepped out and glided along behind the
men, cat-like, with bare feet, allowing them to keep just far enough
ahead not to be invisible.

They moved up the river street three blocks, then turned to the left up
a crossstreet. They went straight ahead, then, until they came to the
path that led up Cardiff Hill; this they took. They passed by the old
Welshman's house, halfway up the hill, without hesitating, and still
climbed upward. Good, thought Huck, they will bury it in the old quarry.
But they never stopped at the quarry. They passed on, up the summit.
They plunged into the narrow path between the tall sumach bushes, and
were at once hidden in the gloom. Huck closed up and shortened his
distance, now, for they would never be able to see him. He trotted along
awhile; then slackened his pace, fearing he was gaining too fast; moved
on a piece, then stopped altogether; listened; no sound; none, save that
he seemed to hear the beating of his own heart. The hooting of an
owl came over the hill--ominous sound! But no footsteps. Heavens, was
everything lost! He was about to spring with winged feet, when a man
cleared his throat not four feet from him! Huck's heart shot into his
throat, but he swallowed it again; and then he stood there shaking as
if a dozen agues had taken charge of him at once, and so weak that he
thought he must surely fall to the ground. He knew where he was. He
knew he was within five steps of the stile leading into Widow Douglas'
grounds. Very well, he thought, let them bury it there; it won't be hard
to find.

Now there was a voice--a very low voice--Injun Joe's:

“Damn her, maybe she's got company--there's lights, late as it is.”

“I can't see any.”

This was that stranger's voice--the stranger of the haunted house. A
deadly chill went to Huck's heart--this, then, was the “revenge” job! His
thought was, to fly. Then he remembered that the Widow Douglas had been
kind to him more than once, and maybe these men were going to murder
her. He wished he dared venture to warn her; but he knew he didn't
dare--they might come and catch him. He thought all this and more in
the moment that elapsed between the stranger's remark and Injun Joe's
next--which was--

“Because the bush is in your way. Now--this way--now you see, don't you?”

“Yes. Well, there _is_ company there, I reckon. Better give it up.”

“Give it up, and I just leaving this country forever! Give it up and
maybe never have another chance. I tell you again, as I've told you
before, I don't care for her swag--you may have it. But her husband was
rough on me--many times he was rough on me--and mainly he was the justice
of the peace that jugged me for a vagrant. And that ain't all. It ain't
a millionth part of it! He had me _horsewhipped_!--horsewhipped in
front of the jail, like a nigger!--with all the town looking on!
_Horsewhipped_!--do you understand? He took advantage of me and died. But
I'll take it out of _her_.”

“Oh, don't kill her! Don't do that!”

“Kill? Who said anything about killing? I would kill _him_ if he was
here; but not her. When you want to get revenge on a woman you don't
kill her--bosh! you go for her looks. You slit her nostrils--you notch her
ears like a sow!”

“By God, that's--”

“Keep your opinion to yourself! It will be safest for you. I'll tie her
to the bed. If she bleeds to death, is that my fault? I'll not cry, if
she does. My friend, you'll help me in this thing--for _my_ sake--that's
why you're here--I mightn't be able alone. If you flinch, I'll kill you.
Do you understand that? And if I have to kill you, I'll kill her--and
then I reckon nobody'll ever know much about who done this business.”

“Well, if it's got to be done, let's get at it. The quicker the
better--I'm all in a shiver.”

“Do it _now_? And company there? Look here--I'll get suspicious of you,
first thing you know. No--we'll wait till the lights are out--there's no
hurry.”

Huck felt that a silence was going to ensue--a thing still more awful
than any amount of murderous talk; so he held his breath and stepped
gingerly back; planted his foot carefully and firmly, after balancing,
one-legged, in a precarious way and almost toppling over, first on one
side and then on the other. He took another step back, with the same
elaboration and the same risks; then another and another, and--a twig
snapped under his foot! His breath stopped and he listened. There was no
sound--the stillness was perfect. His gratitude was measureless. Now he
turned in his tracks, between the walls of sumach bushes--turned
himself as carefully as if he were a ship--and then stepped quickly but
cautiously along. When he emerged at the quarry he felt secure, and
so he picked up his nimble heels and flew. Down, down he sped, till he
reached the Welshman's. He banged at the door, and presently the heads
of the old man and his two stalwart sons were thrust from windows.

“What's the row there? Who's banging? What do you want?”

“Let me in--quick! I'll tell everything.”

“Why, who are you?”

“Huckleberry Finn--quick, let me in!”

“Huckleberry Finn, indeed! It ain't a name to open many doors, I judge!
But let him in, lads, and let's see what's the trouble.”

“Please don't ever tell I told you,” were Huck's first words when he got
in. “Please don't--I'd be killed, sure--but the widow's been good friends
to me sometimes, and I want to tell--I _will_ tell if you'll promise you
won't ever say it was me.”

“By George, he _has_ got something to tell, or he wouldn't act so!”
 exclaimed the old man; “out with it and nobody here'll ever tell, lad.”

Three minutes later the old man and his sons, well armed, were up the
hill, and just entering the sumach path on tiptoe, their weapons in
their hands. Huck accompanied them no further. He hid behind a great
bowlder and fell to listening. There was a lagging, anxious silence, and
then all of a sudden there was an explosion of firearms and a cry.

Huck waited for no particulars. He sprang away and sped down the hill as
fast as his legs could carry him.




CHAPTER XXX

AS the earliest suspicion of dawn appeared on Sunday morning, Huck came
groping up the hill and rapped gently at the old Welshman's door. The
inmates were asleep, but it was a sleep that was set on a hair-trigger,
on account of the exciting episode of the night. A call came from a
window:

“Who's there!”

Huck's scared voice answered in a low tone:

“Please let me in! It's only Huck Finn!”

“It's a name that can open this door night or day, lad!--and welcome!”

These were strange words to the vagabond boy's ears, and the pleasantest
he had ever heard. He could not recollect that the closing word had ever
been applied in his case before. The door was quickly unlocked, and he
entered. Huck was given a seat and the old man and his brace of tall
sons speedily dressed themselves.

“Now, my boy, I hope you're good and hungry, because breakfast will be
ready as soon as the sun's up, and we'll have a piping hot one, too--make
yourself easy about that! I and the boys hoped you'd turn up and stop
here last night.”

“I was awful scared,” said Huck, “and I run. I took out when the pistols
went off, and I didn't stop for three mile. I've come now becuz I wanted
to know about it, you know; and I come before daylight becuz I didn't
want to run across them devils, even if they was dead.”

“Well, poor chap, you do look as if you'd had a hard night of it--but
there's a bed here for you when you've had your breakfast. No, they
ain't dead, lad--we are sorry enough for that. You see we knew right
where to put our hands on them, by your description; so we crept along
on tiptoe till we got within fifteen feet of them--dark as a cellar that
sumach path was--and just then I found I was going to sneeze. It was the
meanest kind of luck! I tried to keep it back, but no use--'twas bound to
come, and it did come! I was in the lead with my pistol raised, and when
the sneeze started those scoundrels a-rustling to get out of the path,
I sung out, 'Fire boys!' and blazed away at the place where the rustling
was. So did the boys. But they were off in a jiffy, those villains, and
we after them, down through the woods. I judge we never touched them.
They fired a shot apiece as they started, but their bullets whizzed by
and didn't do us any harm. As soon as we lost the sound of their feet
we quit chasing, and went down and stirred up the constables. They got a
posse together, and went off to guard the river bank, and as soon as it
is light the sheriff and a gang are going to beat up the woods. My boys
will be with them presently. I wish we had some sort of description of
those rascals--'twould help a good deal. But you couldn't see what they
were like, in the dark, lad, I suppose?”

“Oh yes; I saw them downtown and follered them.”

“Splendid! Describe them--describe them, my boy!”

“One's the old deaf and dumb Spaniard that's ben around here once or
twice, and t'other's a mean-looking, ragged--”

“That's enough, lad, we know the men! Happened on them in the woods back
of the widow's one day, and they slunk away. Off with you, boys, and
tell the sheriff--get your breakfast tomorrow morning!”

The Welshman's sons departed at once. As they were leaving the room Huck
sprang up and exclaimed:

“Oh, please don't tell _any_body it was me that blowed on them! Oh,
please!”

“All right if you say it, Huck, but you ought to have the credit of what
you did.”

“Oh no, no! Please don't tell!”

When the young men were gone, the old Welshman said:

“They won't tell--and I won't. But why don't you want it known?”

Huck would not explain, further than to say that he already knew too
much about one of those men and would not have the man know that he knew
anything against him for the whole world--he would be killed for knowing
it, sure.

The old man promised secrecy once more, and said:

“How did you come to follow these fellows, lad? Were they looking
suspicious?”

Huck was silent while he framed a duly cautious reply. Then he said:

“Well, you see, I'm a kind of a hard lot,--least everybody says so, and
I don't see nothing agin it--and sometimes I can't sleep much, on account
of thinking about it and sort of trying to strike out a new way of
doing. That was the way of it last night. I couldn't sleep, and so I
come along upstreet 'bout midnight, a-turning it all over, and when I
got to that old shackly brick store by the Temperance Tavern, I backed
up agin the wall to have another think. Well, just then along comes
these two chaps slipping along close by me, with something under their
arm, and I reckoned they'd stole it. One was a-smoking, and t'other one
wanted a light; so they stopped right before me and the cigars lit up
their faces and I see that the big one was the deaf and dumb Spaniard,
by his white whiskers and the patch on his eye, and t'other one was a
rusty, ragged-looking devil.”

“Could you see the rags by the light of the cigars?”

This staggered Huck for a moment. Then he said:

“Well, I don't know--but somehow it seems as if I did.”

“Then they went on, and you--”

“Follered 'em--yes. That was it. I wanted to see what was up--they sneaked
along so. I dogged 'em to the widder's stile, and stood in the dark and
heard the ragged one beg for the widder, and the Spaniard swear he'd
spile her looks just as I told you and your two--”

“What! The _deaf and dumb_ man said all that!”

Huck had made another terrible mistake! He was trying his best to keep
the old man from getting the faintest hint of who the Spaniard might be,
and yet his tongue seemed determined to get him into trouble in spite of
all he could do. He made several efforts to creep out of his scrape,
but the old man's eye was upon him and he made blunder after blunder.
Presently the Welshman said:

“My boy, don't be afraid of me. I wouldn't hurt a hair of your head for
all the world. No--I'd protect you--I'd protect you. This Spaniard is
not deaf and dumb; you've let that slip without intending it; you can't
cover that up now. You know something about that Spaniard that you want
to keep dark. Now trust me--tell me what it is, and trust me--I won't
betray you.”

Huck looked into the old man's honest eyes a moment, then bent over and
whispered in his ear:

“'Tain't a Spaniard--it's Injun Joe!”

The Welshman almost jumped out of his chair. In a moment he said:

“It's all plain enough, now. When you talked about notching ears and
slitting noses I judged that that was your own embellishment, because
white men don't take that sort of revenge. But an Injun! That's a
different matter altogether.”

During breakfast the talk went on, and in the course of it the old man
said that the last thing which he and his sons had done, before going
to bed, was to get a lantern and examine the stile and its vicinity for
marks of blood. They found none, but captured a bulky bundle of--

“Of _what_?”

If the words had been lightning they could not have leaped with a more
stunning suddenness from Huck's blanched lips. His eyes were staring
wide, now, and his breath suspended--waiting for the answer. The Welshman
started--stared in return--three seconds--five seconds--ten--then replied:

“Of burglar's tools. Why, what's the _matter_ with you?”

Huck sank back, panting gently, but deeply, unutterably grateful. The
Welshman eyed him gravely, curiously--and presently said:

“Yes, burglar's tools. That appears to relieve you a good deal. But what
did give you that turn? What were _you_ expecting we'd found?”

Huck was in a close place--the inquiring eye was upon him--he would have
given anything for material for a plausible answer--nothing suggested
itself--the inquiring eye was boring deeper and deeper--a senseless
reply offered--there was no time to weigh it, so at a venture he uttered
it--feebly:

“Sunday-school books, maybe.”

Poor Huck was too distressed to smile, but the old man laughed loud and
joyously, shook up the details of his anatomy from head to foot, and
ended by saying that such a laugh was money in a-man's pocket, because
it cut down the doctor's bill like everything. Then he added:

“Poor old chap, you're white and jaded--you ain't well a bit--no wonder
you're a little flighty and off your balance. But you'll come out of it.
Rest and sleep will fetch you out all right, I hope.”

Huck was irritated to think he had been such a goose and betrayed such
a suspicious excitement, for he had dropped the idea that the parcel
brought from the tavern was the treasure, as soon as he had heard the
talk at the widow's stile. He had only thought it was not the treasure,
however--he had not known that it wasn't--and so the suggestion of a
captured bundle was too much for his self-possession. But on the whole
he felt glad the little episode had happened, for now he knew beyond all
question that that bundle was not _the_ bundle, and so his mind was
at rest and exceedingly comfortable. In fact, everything seemed to be
drifting just in the right direction, now; the treasure must be still
in No. 2, the men would be captured and jailed that day, and he and
Tom could seize the gold that night without any trouble or any fear of
interruption.

Just as breakfast was completed there was a knock at the door. Huck
jumped for a hiding-place, for he had no mind to be connected even
remotely with the late event. The Welshman admitted several ladies and
gentlemen, among them the Widow Douglas, and noticed that groups of
citizens were climbing up the hill--to stare at the stile. So the news
had spread. The Welshman had to tell the story of the night to the
visitors. The widow's gratitude for her preservation was outspoken.

“Don't say a word about it, madam. There's another that you're more
beholden to than you are to me and my boys, maybe, but he don't allow me
to tell his name. We wouldn't have been there but for him.”

Of course this excited a curiosity so vast that it almost belittled the
main matter--but the Welshman allowed it to eat into the vitals of his
visitors, and through them be transmitted to the whole town, for he
refused to part with his secret. When all else had been learned, the
widow said:

“I went to sleep reading in bed and slept straight through all that
noise. Why didn't you come and wake me?”

“We judged it warn't worth while. Those fellows warn't likely to come
again--they hadn't any tools left to work with, and what was the use of
waking you up and scaring you to death? My three negro men stood guard
at your house all the rest of the night. They've just come back.”

More visitors came, and the story had to be told and retold for a couple
of hours more.

There was no Sabbath-school during day-school vacation, but everybody
was early at church. The stirring event was well canvassed. News came
that not a sign of the two villains had been yet discovered. When the
sermon was finished, Judge Thatcher's wife dropped alongside of Mrs.
Harper as she moved down the aisle with the crowd and said:

“Is my Becky going to sleep all day? I just expected she would be tired
to death.”

“Your Becky?”

“Yes,” with a startled look--“didn't she stay with you last night?”

“Why, no.”

Mrs. Thatcher turned pale, and sank into a pew, just as Aunt Polly,
talking briskly with a friend, passed by. Aunt Polly said:

“Goodmorning, Mrs. Thatcher. Goodmorning, Mrs. Harper. I've got a boy
that's turned up missing. I reckon my Tom stayed at your house last
night--one of you. And now he's afraid to come to church. I've got to
settle with him.”

Mrs. Thatcher shook her head feebly and turned paler than ever.

“He didn't stay with us,” said Mrs. Harper, beginning to look uneasy. A
marked anxiety came into Aunt Polly's face.

“Joe Harper, have you seen my Tom this morning?”

“No'm.”

“When did you see him last?”

Joe tried to remember, but was not sure he could say. The people had
stopped moving out of church. Whispers passed along, and a boding
uneasiness took possession of every countenance. Children were anxiously
questioned, and young teachers. They all said they had not noticed
whether Tom and Becky were on board the ferryboat on the homeward trip;
it was dark; no one thought of inquiring if any one was missing. One
young man finally blurted out his fear that they were still in the cave!
Mrs. Thatcher swooned away. Aunt Polly fell to crying and wringing her
hands.

The alarm swept from lip to lip, from group to group, from street to
street, and within five minutes the bells were wildly clanging and
the whole town was up! The Cardiff Hill episode sank into instant
insignificance, the burglars were forgotten, horses were saddled, skiffs
were manned, the ferryboat ordered out, and before the horror was half
an hour old, two hundred men were pouring down highroad and river toward
the cave.

All the long afternoon the village seemed empty and dead. Many women
visited Aunt Polly and Mrs. Thatcher and tried to comfort them. They
cried with them, too, and that was still better than words. All the
tedious night the town waited for news; but when the morning dawned at
last, all the word that came was, “Send more candles--and send food.”
 Mrs. Thatcher was almost crazed; and Aunt Polly, also. Judge Thatcher
sent messages of hope and encouragement from the cave, but they conveyed
no real cheer.

The old Welshman came home toward daylight, spattered with
candle-grease, smeared with clay, and almost worn out. He found Huck
still in the bed that had been provided for him, and delirious with
fever. The physicians were all at the cave, so the Widow Douglas came
and took charge of the patient. She said she would do her best by him,
because, whether he was good, bad, or indifferent, he was the Lord's,
and nothing that was the Lord's was a thing to be neglected. The
Welshman said Huck had good spots in him, and the widow said:

“You can depend on it. That's the Lord's mark. He don't leave it off.
He never does. Puts it somewhere on every creature that comes from his
hands.”

Early in the forenoon parties of jaded men began to straggle into the
village, but the strongest of the citizens continued searching. All the
news that could be gained was that remotenesses of the cavern were being
ransacked that had never been visited before; that every corner and
crevice was going to be thoroughly searched; that wherever one wandered
through the maze of passages, lights were to be seen flitting hither
and thither in the distance, and shoutings and pistol-shots sent their
hollow reverberations to the ear down the sombre aisles. In one place,
far from the section usually traversed by tourists, the names “BECKY &
TOM” had been found traced upon the rocky wall with candle-smoke, and
near at hand a grease-soiled bit of ribbon. Mrs. Thatcher recognized the
ribbon and cried over it. She said it was the last relic she should ever
have of her child; and that no other memorial of her could ever be so
precious, because this one parted latest from the living body before the
awful death came. Some said that now and then, in the cave, a far-away
speck of light would glimmer, and then a glorious shout would burst
forth and a score of men go trooping down the echoing aisle--and then a
sickening disappointment always followed; the children were not there;
it was only a searcher's light.

Three dreadful days and nights dragged their tedious hours along, and
the village sank into a hopeless stupor. No one had heart for anything.
The accidental discovery, just made, that the proprietor of the
Temperance Tavern kept liquor on his premises, scarcely fluttered the
public pulse, tremendous as the fact was. In a lucid interval, Huck
feebly led up to the subject of taverns, and finally asked--dimly
dreading the worst--if anything had been discovered at the Temperance
Tavern since he had been ill.

“Yes,” said the widow.

Huck started up in bed, wildeyed:

“What? What was it?”

“Liquor!--and the place has been shut up. Lie down, child--what a turn you
did give me!”

“Only tell me just one thing--only just one--please! Was it Tom Sawyer
that found it?”

The widow burst into tears. “Hush, hush, child, hush! I've told you
before, you must _not_ talk. You are very, very sick!”

Then nothing but liquor had been found; there would have been a great
powwow if it had been the gold. So the treasure was gone forever--gone
forever! But what could she be crying about? Curious that she should
cry.

These thoughts worked their dim way through Huck's mind, and under the
weariness they gave him he fell asleep. The widow said to herself:

“There--he's asleep, poor wreck. Tom Sawyer find it! Pity but somebody
could find Tom Sawyer! Ah, there ain't many left, now, that's got hope
enough, or strength enough, either, to go on searching.”




CHAPTER XXXI

NOW to return to Tom and Becky's share in the picnic. They tripped along
the murky aisles with the rest of the company, visiting the familiar
wonders of the cave--wonders dubbed with rather over-descriptive names,
such as “The Drawing-Room,” “The Cathedral,” “Aladdin's Palace,” and
so on. Presently the hide-and-seek frolicking began, and Tom and Becky
engaged in it with zeal until the exertion began to grow a trifle
wearisome; then they wandered down a sinuous avenue holding their
candles aloft and reading the tangled webwork of names, dates,
postoffice addresses, and mottoes with which the rocky walls had been
frescoed (in candle-smoke). Still drifting along and talking, they
scarcely noticed that they were now in a part of the cave whose walls
were not frescoed. They smoked their own names under an overhanging
shelf and moved on. Presently they came to a place where a little stream
of water, trickling over a ledge and carrying a limestone sediment with
it, had, in the slow-dragging ages, formed a laced and ruffled Niagara
in gleaming and imperishable stone. Tom squeezed his small body behind
it in order to illuminate it for Becky's gratification. He found that
it curtained a sort of steep natural stairway which was enclosed between
narrow walls, and at once the ambition to be a discoverer seized him.

Becky responded to his call, and they made a smoke-mark for future
guidance, and started upon their quest. They wound this way and that,
far down into the secret depths of the cave, made another mark, and
branched off in search of novelties to tell the upper world about. In
one place they found a spacious cavern, from whose ceiling depended a
multitude of shining stalactites of the length and circumference of
a man's leg; they walked all about it, wondering and admiring, and
presently left it by one of the numerous passages that opened into
it. This shortly brought them to a bewitching spring, whose basin was
incrusted with a frostwork of glittering crystals; it was in the midst
of a cavern whose walls were supported by many fantastic pillars which
had been formed by the joining of great stalactites and stalagmites
together, the result of the ceaseless water-drip of centuries. Under the
roof vast knots of bats had packed themselves together, thousands in a
bunch; the lights disturbed the creatures and they came flocking down by
hundreds, squeaking and darting furiously at the candles. Tom knew their
ways and the danger of this sort of conduct. He seized Becky's hand and
hurried her into the first corridor that offered; and none too soon, for
a bat struck Becky's light out with its wing while she was passing out
of the cavern. The bats chased the children a good distance; but the
fugitives plunged into every new passage that offered, and at last got
rid of the perilous things. Tom found a subterranean lake, shortly,
which stretched its dim length away until its shape was lost in the
shadows. He wanted to explore its borders, but concluded that it would
be best to sit down and rest awhile, first. Now, for the first time, the
deep stillness of the place laid a clammy hand upon the spirits of the
children. Becky said:

“Why, I didn't notice, but it seems ever so long since I heard any of
the others.”

“Come to think, Becky, we are away down below them--and I don't know how
far away north, or south, or east, or whichever it is. We couldn't hear
them here.”

Becky grew apprehensive.

“I wonder how long we've been down here, Tom? We better start back.”

“Yes, I reckon we better. P'raps we better.”

“Can you find the way, Tom? It's all a mixed-up crookedness to me.”

“I reckon I could find it--but then the bats. If they put our candles
out it will be an awful fix. Let's try some other way, so as not to go
through there.”

“Well. But I hope we won't get lost. It would be so awful!” and the girl
shuddered at the thought of the dreadful possibilities.

They started through a corridor, and traversed it in silence a long
way, glancing at each new opening, to see if there was anything familiar
about the look of it; but they were all strange. Every time Tom made an
examination, Becky would watch his face for an encouraging sign, and he
would say cheerily:

“Oh, it's all right. This ain't the one, but we'll come to it right
away!”

But he felt less and less hopeful with each failure, and presently began
to turn off into diverging avenues at sheer random, in desperate hope of
finding the one that was wanted. He still said it was “all right,” but
there was such a leaden dread at his heart that the words had lost their
ring and sounded just as if he had said, “All is lost!” Becky clung to
his side in an anguish of fear, and tried hard to keep back the tears,
but they would come. At last she said:

“Oh, Tom, never mind the bats, let's go back that way! We seem to get
worse and worse off all the time.”

“Listen!” said he.

Profound silence; silence so deep that even their breathings were
conspicuous in the hush. Tom shouted. The call went echoing down
the empty aisles and died out in the distance in a faint sound that
resembled a ripple of mocking laughter.

“Oh, don't do it again, Tom, it is too horrid,” said Becky.

“It is horrid, but I better, Becky; they might hear us, you know,” and
he shouted again.

The “might” was even a chillier horror than the ghostly laughter, it so
confessed a perishing hope. The children stood still and listened; but
there was no result. Tom turned upon the back track at once, and hurried
his steps. It was but a little while before a certain indecision in his
manner revealed another fearful fact to Becky--he could not find his way
back!

“Oh, Tom, you didn't make any marks!”

“Becky, I was such a fool! Such a fool! I never thought we might want to
come back! No--I can't find the way. It's all mixed up.”

“Tom, Tom, we're lost! we're lost! We never can get out of this awful
place! Oh, why _did_ we ever leave the others!”

She sank to the ground and burst into such a frenzy of crying that Tom
was appalled with the idea that she might die, or lose her reason. He
sat down by her and put his arms around her; she buried her face in
his bosom, she clung to him, she poured out her terrors, her unavailing
regrets, and the far echoes turned them all to jeering laughter. Tom
begged her to pluck up hope again, and she said she could not. He fell
to blaming and abusing himself for getting her into this miserable
situation; this had a better effect. She said she would try to hope
again, she would get up and follow wherever he might lead if only he
would not talk like that any more. For he was no more to blame than she,
she said.

So they moved on again--aimlessly--simply at random--all they could do
was to move, keep moving. For a little while, hope made a show of
reviving--not with any reason to back it, but only because it is its
nature to revive when the spring has not been taken out of it by age and
familiarity with failure.

By-and-by Tom took Becky's candle and blew it out. This economy meant so
much! Words were not needed. Becky understood, and her hope died again.
She knew that Tom had a whole candle and three or four pieces in his
pockets--yet he must economize.

By-and-by, fatigue began to assert its claims; the children tried to pay
attention, for it was dreadful to think of sitting down when time was
grown to be so precious, moving, in some direction, in any direction,
was at least progress and might bear fruit; but to sit down was to
invite death and shorten its pursuit.

At last Becky's frail limbs refused to carry her farther. She sat down.
Tom rested with her, and they talked of home, and the friends there,
and the comfortable beds and, above all, the light! Becky cried, and Tom
tried to think of some way of comforting her, but all his encouragements
were grown thread-bare with use, and sounded like sarcasms. Fatigue bore
so heavily upon Becky that she drowsed off to sleep. Tom was grateful.
He sat looking into her drawn face and saw it grow smooth and natural
under the influence of pleasant dreams; and by-and-by a smile dawned and
rested there. The peaceful face reflected somewhat of peace and healing
into his own spirit, and his thoughts wandered away to bygone times and
dreamy memories. While he was deep in his musings, Becky woke up with a
breezy little laugh--but it was stricken dead upon her lips, and a groan
followed it.

“Oh, how _could_ I sleep! I wish I never, never had waked! No! No, I
don't, Tom! Don't look so! I won't say it again.”

“I'm glad you've slept, Becky; you'll feel rested, now, and we'll find
the way out.”

“We can try, Tom; but I've seen such a beautiful country in my dream. I
reckon we are going there.”

“Maybe not, maybe not. Cheer up, Becky, and let's go on trying.”

They rose up and wandered along, hand in hand and hopeless. They tried
to estimate how long they had been in the cave, but all they knew was
that it seemed days and weeks, and yet it was plain that this could not
be, for their candles were not gone yet. A long time after this--they
could not tell how long--Tom said they must go softly and listen for
dripping water--they must find a spring. They found one presently, and
Tom said it was time to rest again. Both were cruelly tired, yet Becky
said she thought she could go a little farther. She was surprised to
hear Tom dissent. She could not understand it. They sat down, and Tom
fastened his candle to the wall in front of them with some clay. Thought
was soon busy; nothing was said for some time. Then Becky broke the
silence:

“Tom, I am so hungry!”

Tom took something out of his pocket.

“Do you remember this?” said he.

Becky almost smiled.

“It's our wedding-cake, Tom.”

“Yes--I wish it was as big as a barrel, for it's all we've got.”

“I saved it from the picnic for us to dream on, Tom, the way grownup
people do with wedding-cake--but it'll be our--”

She dropped the sentence where it was. Tom divided the cake and Becky
ate with good appetite, while Tom nibbled at his moiety. There was
abundance of cold water to finish the feast with. By-and-by Becky
suggested that they move on again. Tom was silent a moment. Then he
said:

“Becky, can you bear it if I tell you something?”

Becky's face paled, but she thought she could.

“Well, then, Becky, we must stay here, where there's water to drink.
That little piece is our last candle!”

Becky gave loose to tears and wailings. Tom did what he could to comfort
her, but with little effect. At length Becky said:

“Tom!”

“Well, Becky?”

“They'll miss us and hunt for us!”

“Yes, they will! Certainly they will!”

“Maybe they're hunting for us now, Tom.”

“Why, I reckon maybe they are. I hope they are.”

“When would they miss us, Tom?”

“When they get back to the boat, I reckon.”

“Tom, it might be dark then--would they notice we hadn't come?”

“I don't know. But anyway, your mother would miss you as soon as they
got home.”

A frightened look in Becky's face brought Tom to his senses and he saw
that he had made a blunder. Becky was not to have gone home that night!
The children became silent and thoughtful. In a moment a new burst of
grief from Becky showed Tom that the thing in his mind had struck hers
also--that the Sabbath morning might be half spent before Mrs. Thatcher
discovered that Becky was not at Mrs. Harper's.

The children fastened their eyes upon their bit of candle and watched it
melt slowly and pitilessly away; saw the half inch of wick stand alone
at last; saw the feeble flame rise and fall, climb the thin column of
smoke, linger at its top a moment, and then--the horror of utter darkness
reigned!

How long afterward it was that Becky came to a slow consciousness that
she was crying in Tom's arms, neither could tell. All that they knew
was, that after what seemed a mighty stretch of time, both awoke out of
a dead stupor of sleep and resumed their miseries once more. Tom said
it might be Sunday, now--maybe Monday. He tried to get Becky to talk, but
her sorrows were too oppressive, all her hopes were gone. Tom said that
they must have been missed long ago, and no doubt the search was going
on. He would shout and maybe some one would come. He tried it; but in
the darkness the distant echoes sounded so hideously that he tried it no
more.

The hours wasted away, and hunger came to torment the captives again. A
portion of Tom's half of the cake was left; they divided and ate it. But
they seemed hungrier than before. The poor morsel of food only whetted
desire.

By-and-by Tom said:

“SH! Did you hear that?”

Both held their breath and listened. There was a sound like the
faintest, far-off shout. Instantly Tom answered it, and leading Becky by
the hand, started groping down the corridor in its direction. Presently
he listened again; again the sound was heard, and apparently a little
nearer.

“It's them!” said Tom; “they're coming! Come along, Becky--we're all
right now!”

The joy of the prisoners was almost overwhelming. Their speed was slow,
however, because pitfalls were somewhat common, and had to be guarded
against. They shortly came to one and had to stop. It might be three
feet deep, it might be a hundred--there was no passing it at any rate.
Tom got down on his breast and reached as far down as he could. No
bottom. They must stay there and wait until the searchers came. They
listened; evidently the distant shoutings were growing more distant!
a moment or two more and they had gone altogether. The heart-sinking
misery of it! Tom whooped until he was hoarse, but it was of no use. He
talked hopefully to Becky; but an age of anxious waiting passed and no
sounds came again.

The children groped their way back to the spring. The weary time dragged
on; they slept again, and awoke famished and woe-stricken. Tom believed
it must be Tuesday by this time.

Now an idea struck him. There were some side passages near at hand. It
would be better to explore some of these than bear the weight of the
heavy time in idleness. He took a kite-line from his pocket, tied it to
a projection, and he and Becky started, Tom in the lead, unwinding the
line as he groped along. At the end of twenty steps the corridor ended
in a “jumping-off place.” Tom got down on his knees and felt below,
and then as far around the corner as he could reach with his hands
conveniently; he made an effort to stretch yet a little farther to the
right, and at that moment, not twenty yards away, a human hand, holding
a candle, appeared from behind a rock! Tom lifted up a glorious shout,
and instantly that hand was followed by the body it belonged to--Injun
Joe's! Tom was paralyzed; he could not move. He was vastly gratified the
next moment, to see the “Spaniard” take to his heels and get himself out
of sight. Tom wondered that Joe had not recognized his voice and come
over and killed him for testifying in court. But the echoes must have
disguised the voice. Without doubt, that was it, he reasoned. Tom's
fright weakened every muscle in his body. He said to himself that if he
had strength enough to get back to the spring he would stay there, and
nothing should tempt him to run the risk of meeting Injun Joe again. He
was careful to keep from Becky what it was he had seen. He told her he
had only shouted “for luck.”

But hunger and wretchedness rise superior to fears in the long run.
Another tedious wait at the spring and another long sleep brought
changes. The children awoke tortured with a raging hunger. Tom believed
that it must be Wednesday or Thursday or even Friday or Saturday, now,
and that the search had been given over. He proposed to explore another
passage. He felt willing to risk Injun Joe and all other terrors. But
Becky was very weak. She had sunk into a dreary apathy and would not be
roused. She said she would wait, now, where she was, and die--it would
not be long. She told Tom to go with the kite-line and explore if he
chose; but she implored him to come back every little while and speak
to her; and she made him promise that when the awful time came, he would
stay by her and hold her hand until all was over.

Tom kissed her, with a choking sensation in his throat, and made a show
of being confident of finding the searchers or an escape from the cave;
then he took the kite-line in his hand and went groping down one of the
passages on his hands and knees, distressed with hunger and sick with
bodings of coming doom.




CHAPTER XXXII

TUESDAY afternoon came, and waned to the twilight. The village of St.
Petersburg still mourned. The lost children had not been found. Public
prayers had been offered up for them, and many and many a private prayer
that had the petitioner's whole heart in it; but still no good news came
from the cave. The majority of the searchers had given up the quest
and gone back to their daily avocations, saying that it was plain the
children could never be found. Mrs. Thatcher was very ill, and a great
part of the time delirious. People said it was heartbreaking to hear her
call her child, and raise her head and listen a whole minute at a time,
then lay it wearily down again with a moan. Aunt Polly had drooped into
a settled melancholy, and her gray hair had grown almost white. The
village went to its rest on Tuesday night, sad and forlorn.

Away in the middle of the night a wild peal burst from the village
bells, and in a moment the streets were swarming with frantic half-clad
people, who shouted, “Turn out! turn out! they're found! they're found!”
 Tin pans and horns were added to the din, the population massed itself
and moved toward the river, met the children coming in an open carriage
drawn by shouting citizens, thronged around it, joined its homeward
march, and swept magnificently up the main street roaring huzzah after
huzzah!

The village was illuminated; nobody went to bed again; it was the
greatest night the little town had ever seen. During the first half-hour
a procession of villagers filed through Judge Thatcher's house, seized
the saved ones and kissed them, squeezed Mrs. Thatcher's hand, tried to
speak but couldn't--and drifted out raining tears all over the place.

Aunt Polly's happiness was complete, and Mrs. Thatcher's nearly so. It
would be complete, however, as soon as the messenger dispatched with the
great news to the cave should get the word to her husband. Tom lay upon
a sofa with an eager auditory about him and told the history of the
wonderful adventure, putting in many striking additions to adorn it
withal; and closed with a description of how he left Becky and went
on an exploring expedition; how he followed two avenues as far as his
kite-line would reach; how he followed a third to the fullest stretch
of the kite-line, and was about to turn back when he glimpsed a far-off
speck that looked like daylight; dropped the line and groped toward it,
pushed his head and shoulders through a small hole, and saw the broad
Mississippi rolling by!

And if it had only happened to be night he would not have seen that
speck of daylight and would not have explored that passage any more! He
told how he went back for Becky and broke the good news and she told
him not to fret her with such stuff, for she was tired, and knew she was
going to die, and wanted to. He described how he labored with her and
convinced her; and how she almost died for joy when she had groped to
where she actually saw the blue speck of daylight; how he pushed his way
out at the hole and then helped her out; how they sat there and cried
for gladness; how some men came along in a skiff and Tom hailed them
and told them their situation and their famished condition; how the men
didn't believe the wild tale at first, “because,” said they, “you are
five miles down the river below the valley the cave is in”--then took
them aboard, rowed to a house, gave them supper, made them rest till two
or three hours after dark and then brought them home.

Before day-dawn, Judge Thatcher and the handful of searchers with him
were tracked out, in the cave, by the twine clews they had strung behind
them, and informed of the great news.

Three days and nights of toil and hunger in the cave were not to
be shaken off at once, as Tom and Becky soon discovered. They were
bedridden all of Wednesday and Thursday, and seemed to grow more and
more tired and worn, all the time. Tom got about, a little, on Thursday,
was downtown Friday, and nearly as whole as ever Saturday; but Becky
did not leave her room until Sunday, and then she looked as if she had
passed through a wasting illness.

Tom learned of Huck's sickness and went to see him on Friday, but could
not be admitted to the bedroom; neither could he on Saturday or Sunday.
He was admitted daily after that, but was warned to keep still about his
adventure and introduce no exciting topic. The Widow Douglas stayed by
to see that he obeyed. At home Tom learned of the Cardiff Hill event;
also that the “ragged man's” body had eventually been found in the river
near the ferry-landing; he had been drowned while trying to escape,
perhaps.

About a fortnight after Tom's rescue from the cave, he started off to
visit Huck, who had grown plenty strong enough, now, to hear exciting
talk, and Tom had some that would interest him, he thought. Judge
Thatcher's house was on Tom's way, and he stopped to see Becky. The
Judge and some friends set Tom to talking, and some one asked him
ironically if he wouldn't like to go to the cave again. Tom said he
thought he wouldn't mind it. The Judge said:

“Well, there are others just like you, Tom, I've not the least doubt.
But we have taken care of that. Nobody will get lost in that cave any
more.”

“Why?”

“Because I had its big door sheathed with boiler iron two weeks ago, and
triple-locked--and I've got the keys.”

Tom turned as white as a sheet.

“What's the matter, boy! Here, run, somebody! Fetch a glass of water!”

The water was brought and thrown into Tom's face.

“Ah, now you're all right. What was the matter with you, Tom?”

“Oh, Judge, Injun Joe's in the cave!”




CHAPTER XXXIII

WITHIN a few minutes the news had spread, and a dozen skiff-loads of
men were on their way to McDougal's cave, and the ferryboat, well filled
with passengers, soon followed. Tom Sawyer was in the skiff that bore
Judge Thatcher.

When the cave door was unlocked, a sorrowful sight presented itself in
the dim twilight of the place. Injun Joe lay stretched upon the ground,
dead, with his face close to the crack of the door, as if his longing
eyes had been fixed, to the latest moment, upon the light and the cheer
of the free world outside. Tom was touched, for he knew by his own
experience how this wretch had suffered. His pity was moved, but
nevertheless he felt an abounding sense of relief and security, now,
which revealed to him in a degree which he had not fully appreciated
before how vast a weight of dread had been lying upon him since the day
he lifted his voice against this bloody-minded outcast.

Injun Joe's bowie-knife lay close by, its blade broken in two. The great
foundation-beam of the door had been chipped and hacked through, with
tedious labor; useless labor, too, it was, for the native rock formed a
sill outside it, and upon that stubborn material the knife had wrought
no effect; the only damage done was to the knife itself. But if there
had been no stony obstruction there the labor would have been useless
still, for if the beam had been wholly cut away Injun Joe could not have
squeezed his body under the door, and he knew it. So he had only hacked
that place in order to be doing something--in order to pass the weary
time--in order to employ his tortured faculties. Ordinarily one could
find half a dozen bits of candle stuck around in the crevices of this
vestibule, left there by tourists; but there were none now. The prisoner
had searched them out and eaten them. He had also contrived to catch a
few bats, and these, also, he had eaten, leaving only their claws. The
poor unfortunate had starved to death. In one place, near at hand, a
stalagmite had been slowly growing up from the ground for ages, builded
by the water-drip from a stalactite overhead. The captive had broken off
the stalagmite, and upon the stump had placed a stone, wherein he had
scooped a shallow hollow to catch the precious drop that fell once
in every three minutes with the dreary regularity of a clock-tick--a
dessertspoonful once in four and twenty hours. That drop was falling
when the Pyramids were new; when Troy fell; when the foundations of Rome
were laid; when Christ was crucified; when the Conqueror created the
British empire; when Columbus sailed; when the massacre at Lexington was
“news.”

It is falling now; it will still be falling when all these things shall
have sunk down the afternoon of history, and the twilight of tradition,
and been swallowed up in the thick night of oblivion. Has everything a
purpose and a mission? Did this drop fall patiently during five thousand
years to be ready for this flitting human insect's need? and has it
another important object to accomplish ten thousand years to come? No
matter. It is many and many a year since the hapless half-breed scooped
out the stone to catch the priceless drops, but to this day the tourist
stares longest at that pathetic stone and that slow-dropping water when
he comes to see the wonders of McDougal's cave. Injun Joe's cup stands
first in the list of the cavern's marvels; even “Aladdin's Palace”
 cannot rival it.

Injun Joe was buried near the mouth of the cave; and people flocked
there in boats and wagons from the towns and from all the farms and
hamlets for seven miles around; they brought their children, and
all sorts of provisions, and confessed that they had had almost as
satisfactory a time at the funeral as they could have had at the
hanging.

This funeral stopped the further growth of one thing--the petition to the
governor for Injun Joe's pardon. The petition had been largely signed;
many tearful and eloquent meetings had been held, and a committee of
sappy women been appointed to go in deep mourning and wail around the
governor, and implore him to be a merciful ass and trample his duty
under foot. Injun Joe was believed to have killed five citizens of the
village, but what of that? If he had been Satan himself there would
have been plenty of weaklings ready to scribble their names to a
pardon-petition, and drip a tear on it from their permanently impaired
and leaky water-works.

The morning after the funeral Tom took Huck to a private place to have
an important talk. Huck had learned all about Tom's adventure from the
Welshman and the Widow Douglas, by this time, but Tom said he reckoned
there was one thing they had not told him; that thing was what he wanted
to talk about now. Huck's face saddened. He said:

“I know what it is. You got into No. 2 and never found anything but
whiskey. Nobody told me it was you; but I just knowed it must 'a' ben
you, soon as I heard 'bout that whiskey business; and I knowed you
hadn't got the money becuz you'd 'a' got at me some way or other and
told me even if you was mum to everybody else. Tom, something's always
told me we'd never get holt of that swag.”

“Why, Huck, I never told on that tavern-keeper. _You_ know his tavern
was all right the Saturday I went to the picnic. Don't you remember you
was to watch there that night?”

“Oh yes! Why, it seems 'bout a year ago. It was that very night that I
follered Injun Joe to the widder's.”

“_You_ followed him?”

“Yes--but you keep mum. I reckon Injun Joe's left friends behind him, and
I don't want 'em souring on me and doing me mean tricks. If it hadn't
ben for me he'd be down in Texas now, all right.”

Then Huck told his entire adventure in confidence to Tom, who had only
heard of the Welshman's part of it before.

“Well,” said Huck, presently, coming back to the main question, “whoever
nipped the whiskey in No. 2, nipped the money, too, I reckon--anyways
it's a goner for us, Tom.”

“Huck, that money wasn't ever in No. 2!”

“What!” Huck searched his comrade's face keenly. “Tom, have you got on
the track of that money again?”

“Huck, it's in the cave!”

Huck's eyes blazed.

“Say it again, Tom.”

“The money's in the cave!”

“Tom--honest injun, now--is it fun, or earnest?”

“Earnest, Huck--just as earnest as ever I was in my life. Will you go in
there with me and help get it out?”

“I bet I will! I will if it's where we can blaze our way to it and not
get lost.”

“Huck, we can do that without the least little bit of trouble in the
world.”

“Good as wheat! What makes you think the money's--”

“Huck, you just wait till we get in there. If we don't find it I'll
agree to give you my drum and every thing I've got in the world. I will,
by jings.”

“All right--it's a whiz. When do you say?”

“Right now, if you say it. Are you strong enough?”

“Is it far in the cave? I ben on my pins a little, three or four days,
now, but I can't walk more'n a mile, Tom--least I don't think I could.”

“It's about five mile into there the way anybody but me would go, Huck,
but there's a mighty short cut that they don't anybody but me know
about. Huck, I'll take you right to it in a skiff. I'll float the skiff
down there, and I'll pull it back again all by myself. You needn't ever
turn your hand over.”

“Less start right off, Tom.”

“All right. We want some bread and meat, and our pipes, and a little
bag or two, and two or three kite-strings, and some of these new-fangled
things they call lucifer matches. I tell you, many's the time I wished I
had some when I was in there before.”

A trifle after noon the boys borrowed a small skiff from a citizen who
was absent, and got under way at once. When they were several miles
below “Cave Hollow,” Tom said:

“Now you see this bluff here looks all alike all the way down from the
cave hollow--no houses, no wood-yards, bushes all alike. But do you see
that white place up yonder where there's been a landslide? Well, that's
one of my marks. We'll get ashore, now.”

They landed.

“Now, Huck, where we're a-standing you could touch that hole I got out
of with a fishing-pole. See if you can find it.”

Huck searched all the place about, and found nothing. Tom proudly
marched into a thick clump of sumach bushes and said:

“Here you are! Look at it, Huck; it's the snuggest hole in this country.
You just keep mum about it. All along I've been wanting to be a robber,
but I knew I'd got to have a thing like this, and where to run across
it was the bother. We've got it now, and we'll keep it quiet, only we'll
let Joe Harper and Ben Rogers in--because of course there's got to be a
Gang, or else there wouldn't be any style about it. Tom Sawyer's Gang--it
sounds splendid, don't it, Huck?”

“Well, it just does, Tom. And who'll we rob?”

“Oh, most anybody. Waylay people--that's mostly the way.”

“And kill them?”

“No, not always. Hive them in the cave till they raise a ransom.”

“What's a ransom?”

“Money. You make them raise all they can, off'n their friends; and after
you've kept them a year, if it ain't raised then you kill them. That's
the general way. Only you don't kill the women. You shut up the women,
but you don't kill them. They're always beautiful and rich, and awfully
scared. You take their watches and things, but you always take your hat
off and talk polite. They ain't anybody as polite as robbers--you'll see
that in any book. Well, the women get to loving you, and after they've
been in the cave a week or two weeks they stop crying and after that
you couldn't get them to leave. If you drove them out they'd turn right
around and come back. It's so in all the books.”

“Why, it's real bully, Tom. I believe it's better'n to be a pirate.”

“Yes, it's better in some ways, because it's close to home and circuses
and all that.”

By this time everything was ready and the boys entered the hole, Tom in
the lead. They toiled their way to the farther end of the tunnel, then
made their spliced kite-strings fast and moved on. A few steps brought
them to the spring, and Tom felt a shudder quiver all through him.
He showed Huck the fragment of candle-wick perched on a lump of clay
against the wall, and described how he and Becky had watched the flame
struggle and expire.

The boys began to quiet down to whispers, now, for the stillness and
gloom of the place oppressed their spirits. They went on, and presently
entered and followed Tom's other corridor until they reached the
“jumping-off place.” The candles revealed the fact that it was not
really a precipice, but only a steep clay hill twenty or thirty feet
high. Tom whispered:

“Now I'll show you something, Huck.”

He held his candle aloft and said:

“Look as far around the corner as you can. Do you see that? There--on the
big rock over yonder--done with candle-smoke.”

“Tom, it's a _cross_!”

“_Now_ where's your Number Two? '_under the cross_,' hey? Right yonder's
where I saw Injun Joe poke up his candle, Huck!”

Huck stared at the mystic sign awhile, and then said with a shaky voice:

“Tom, less git out of here!”

“What! and leave the treasure?”

“Yes--leave it. Injun Joe's ghost is round about there, certain.”

“No it ain't, Huck, no it ain't. It would ha'nt the place where he
died--away out at the mouth of the cave--five mile from here.”

“No, Tom, it wouldn't. It would hang round the money. I know the ways of
ghosts, and so do you.”

Tom began to fear that Huck was right. Mis-givings gathered in his mind.
But presently an idea occurred to him--

“Lookyhere, Huck, what fools we're making of ourselves! Injun Joe's
ghost ain't a going to come around where there's a cross!”

The point was well taken. It had its effect.

“Tom, I didn't think of that. But that's so. It's luck for us, that
cross is. I reckon we'll climb down there and have a hunt for that box.”

Tom went first, cutting rude steps in the clay hill as he descended.
Huck followed. Four avenues opened out of the small cavern which the
great rock stood in. The boys examined three of them with no result.
They found a small recess in the one nearest the base of the rock, with
a pallet of blankets spread down in it; also an old suspender, some
bacon rind, and the well-gnawed bones of two or three fowls. But there
was no moneybox. The lads searched and researched this place, but in
vain. Tom said:

“He said _under_ the cross. Well, this comes nearest to being under the
cross. It can't be under the rock itself, because that sets solid on the
ground.”

They searched everywhere once more, and then sat down discouraged. Huck
could suggest nothing. By-and-by Tom said:

“Lookyhere, Huck, there's footprints and some candle-grease on the clay
about one side of this rock, but not on the other sides. Now, what's
that for? I bet you the money _is_ under the rock. I'm going to dig in
the clay.”

“That ain't no bad notion, Tom!” said Huck with animation.

Tom's “real Barlow” was out at once, and he had not dug four inches
before he struck wood.

“Hey, Huck!--you hear that?”

Huck began to dig and scratch now. Some boards were soon uncovered and
removed. They had concealed a natural chasm which led under the rock.
Tom got into this and held his candle as far under the rock as he
could, but said he could not see to the end of the rift. He proposed
to explore. He stooped and passed under; the narrow way descended
gradually. He followed its winding course, first to the right, then to
the left, Huck at his heels. Tom turned a short curve, by-and-by, and
exclaimed:

“My goodness, Huck, lookyhere!”

It was the treasure-box, sure enough, occupying a snug little cavern,
along with an empty powder-keg, a couple of guns in leather cases, two
or three pairs of old moccasins, a leather belt, and some other rubbish
well soaked with the water-drip.

“Got it at last!” said Huck, ploughing among the tarnished coins with
his hand. “My, but we're rich, Tom!”

“Huck, I always reckoned we'd get it. It's just too good to believe, but
we _have_ got it, sure! Say--let's not fool around here. Let's snake it
out. Lemme see if I can lift the box.”

It weighed about fifty pounds. Tom could lift it, after an awkward
fashion, but could not carry it conveniently.

“I thought so,” he said; “_They_ carried it like it was heavy, that day
at the ha'nted house. I noticed that. I reckon I was right to think of
fetching the little bags along.”

The money was soon in the bags and the boys took it up to the cross
rock.

“Now less fetch the guns and things,” said Huck.

“No, Huck--leave them there. They're just the tricks to have when we
go to robbing. We'll keep them there all the time, and we'll hold our
orgies there, too. It's an awful snug place for orgies.”

“What orgies?”

“I dono. But robbers always have orgies, and of course we've got to
have them, too. Come along, Huck, we've been in here a long time. It's
getting late, I reckon. I'm hungry, too. We'll eat and smoke when we get
to the skiff.”

They presently emerged into the clump of sumach bushes, looked warily
out, found the coast clear, and were soon lunching and smoking in the
skiff. As the sun dipped toward the horizon they pushed out and got
under way. Tom skimmed up the shore through the long twilight, chatting
cheerily with Huck, and landed shortly after dark.

“Now, Huck,” said Tom, “we'll hide the money in the loft of the widow's
woodshed, and I'll come up in the morning and we'll count it and divide,
and then we'll hunt up a place out in the woods for it where it will be
safe. Just you lay quiet here and watch the stuff till I run and hook
Benny Taylor's little wagon; I won't be gone a minute.”

He disappeared, and presently returned with the wagon, put the two small
sacks into it, threw some old rags on top of them, and started off,
dragging his cargo behind him. When the boys reached the Welshman's
house, they stopped to rest. Just as they were about to move on, the
Welshman stepped out and said:

“Hallo, who's that?”

“Huck and Tom Sawyer.”

“Good! Come along with me, boys, you are keeping everybody waiting.
Here--hurry up, trot ahead--I'll haul the wagon for you. Why, it's not as
light as it might be. Got bricks in it?--or old metal?”

“Old metal,” said Tom.

“I judged so; the boys in this town will take more trouble and fool away
more time hunting up six bits' worth of old iron to sell to the foundry
than they would to make twice the money at regular work. But that's
human nature--hurry along, hurry along!”

The boys wanted to know what the hurry was about.

“Never mind; you'll see, when we get to the Widow Douglas'.”

Huck said with some apprehension--for he was long used to being falsely
accused:

“Mr. Jones, we haven't been doing nothing.”

The Welshman laughed.

“Well, I don't know, Huck, my boy. I don't know about that. Ain't you
and the widow good friends?”

“Yes. Well, she's ben good friends to me, anyway.”

“All right, then. What do you want to be afraid for?”

This question was not entirely answered in Huck's slow mind before he
found himself pushed, along with Tom, into Mrs. Douglas' drawing-room.
Mr. Jones left the wagon near the door and followed.

The place was grandly lighted, and everybody that was of any consequence
in the village was there. The Thatchers were there, the Harpers, the
Rogerses, Aunt Polly, Sid, Mary, the minister, the editor, and a great
many more, and all dressed in their best. The widow received the boys
as heartily as any one could well receive two such looking beings. They
were covered with clay and candle-grease. Aunt Polly blushed crimson
with humiliation, and frowned and shook her head at Tom. Nobody suffered
half as much as the two boys did, however. Mr. Jones said:

“Tom wasn't at home, yet, so I gave him up; but I stumbled on him and
Huck right at my door, and so I just brought them along in a hurry.”

“And you did just right,” said the widow. “Come with me, boys.”

She took them to a bedchamber and said:

“Now wash and dress yourselves. Here are two new suits of
clothes--shirts, socks, everything complete. They're Huck's--no, no
thanks, Huck--Mr. Jones bought one and I the other. But they'll fit both
of you. Get into them. We'll wait--come down when you are slicked up
enough.”

Then she left.




CHAPTER XXXIV

HUCK said: “Tom, we can slope, if we can find a rope. The window ain't
high from the ground.”

“Shucks! what do you want to slope for?”

“Well, I ain't used to that kind of a crowd. I can't stand it. I ain't
going down there, Tom.”

“Oh, bother! It ain't anything. I don't mind it a bit. I'll take care of
you.”

Sid appeared.

“Tom,” said he, “auntie has been waiting for you all the afternoon. Mary
got your Sunday clothes ready, and everybody's been fretting about you.
Say--ain't this grease and clay, on your clothes?”

“Now, Mr. Siddy, you jist 'tend to your own business. What's all this
blowout about, anyway?”

“It's one of the widow's parties that she's always having. This time
it's for the Welshman and his sons, on account of that scrape they
helped her out of the other night. And say--I can tell you something, if
you want to know.”

“Well, what?”

“Why, old Mr. Jones is going to try to spring something on the people
here tonight, but I overheard him tell auntie today about it, as a
secret, but I reckon it's not much of a secret now. Everybody knows--the
widow, too, for all she tries to let on she don't. Mr. Jones was bound
Huck should be here--couldn't get along with his grand secret without
Huck, you know!”

“Secret about what, Sid?”

“About Huck tracking the robbers to the widow's. I reckon Mr. Jones was
going to make a grand time over his surprise, but I bet you it will drop
pretty flat.”

Sid chuckled in a very contented and satisfied way.

“Sid, was it you that told?”

“Oh, never mind who it was. _Somebody_ told--that's enough.”

“Sid, there's only one person in this town mean enough to do that, and
that's you. If you had been in Huck's place you'd 'a' sneaked down the
hill and never told anybody on the robbers. You can't do any but mean
things, and you can't bear to see anybody praised for doing good ones.
There--no thanks, as the widow says”--and Tom cuffed Sid's ears and helped
him to the door with several kicks. “Now go and tell auntie if you
dare--and tomorrow you'll catch it!”

Some minutes later the widow's guests were at the supper-table, and a
dozen children were propped up at little side-tables in the same room,
after the fashion of that country and that day. At the proper time Mr.
Jones made his little speech, in which he thanked the widow for the
honor she was doing himself and his sons, but said that there was
another person whose modesty--

And so forth and so on. He sprung his secret about Huck's share in
the adventure in the finest dramatic manner he was master of, but the
surprise it occasioned was largely counterfeit and not as clamorous and
effusive as it might have been under happier circumstances. However,
the widow made a pretty fair show of astonishment, and heaped so many
compliments and so much gratitude upon Huck that he almost forgot
the nearly intolerable discomfort of his new clothes in the entirely
intolerable discomfort of being set up as a target for everybody's gaze
and everybody's laudations.

The widow said she meant to give Huck a home under her roof and have him
educated; and that when she could spare the money she would start him in
business in a modest way. Tom's chance was come. He said:

“Huck don't need it. Huck's rich.”

Nothing but a heavy strain upon the good manners of the company kept
back the due and proper complimentary laugh at this pleasant joke. But
the silence was a little awkward. Tom broke it:

“Huck's got money. Maybe you don't believe it, but he's got lots of it.
Oh, you needn't smile--I reckon I can show you. You just wait a minute.”

Tom ran out of doors. The company looked at each other with a perplexed
interest--and inquiringly at Huck, who was tongue-tied.

“Sid, what ails Tom?” said Aunt Polly. “He--well, there ain't ever any
making of that boy out. I never--”

Tom entered, struggling with the weight of his sacks, and Aunt Polly
did not finish her sentence. Tom poured the mass of yellow coin upon the
table and said:

“There--what did I tell you? Half of it's Huck's and half of it's mine!”

The spectacle took the general breath away. All gazed, nobody spoke for
a moment. Then there was a unanimous call for an explanation. Tom said
he could furnish it, and he did. The tale was long, but brimful of
interest. There was scarcely an interruption from any one to break the
charm of its flow. When he had finished, Mr. Jones said:

“I thought I had fixed up a little surprise for this occasion, but it
don't amount to anything now. This one makes it sing mighty small, I'm
willing to allow.”

The money was counted. The sum amounted to a little over twelve thousand
dollars. It was more than any one present had ever seen at one time
before, though several persons were there who were worth considerably
more than that in property.




CHAPTER XXXV

THE reader may rest satisfied that Tom's and Huck's windfall made a
mighty stir in the poor little village of St. Petersburg. So vast a
sum, all in actual cash, seemed next to incredible. It was talked
about, gloated over, glorified, until the reason of many of the citizens
tottered under the strain of the unhealthy excitement. Every “haunted”
 house in St. Petersburg and the neighboring villages was dissected,
plank by plank, and its foundations dug up and ransacked for hidden
treasure--and not by boys, but men--pretty grave, unromantic men, too,
some of them. Wherever Tom and Huck appeared they were courted, admired,
stared at. The boys were not able to remember that their remarks had
possessed weight before; but now their sayings were treasured and
repeated; everything they did seemed somehow to be regarded as
remarkable; they had evidently lost the power of doing and saying
commonplace things; moreover, their past history was raked up and
discovered to bear marks of conspicuous originality. The village paper
published biographical sketches of the boys.

The Widow Douglas put Huck's money out at six per cent., and Judge
Thatcher did the same with Tom's at Aunt Polly's request. Each lad had
an income, now, that was simply prodigious--a dollar for every weekday in
the year and half of the Sundays. It was just what the minister got--no,
it was what he was promised--he generally couldn't collect it. A dollar
and a quarter a week would board, lodge, and school a boy in those old
simple days--and clothe him and wash him, too, for that matter.

Judge Thatcher had conceived a great opinion of Tom. He said that no
commonplace boy would ever have got his daughter out of the cave. When
Becky told her father, in strict confidence, how Tom had taken her
whipping at school, the Judge was visibly moved; and when she pleaded
grace for the mighty lie which Tom had told in order to shift that
whipping from her shoulders to his own, the Judge said with a fine
outburst that it was a noble, a generous, a magnanimous lie--a lie that
was worthy to hold up its head and march down through history breast to
breast with George Washington's lauded Truth about the hatchet! Becky
thought her father had never looked so tall and so superb as when he
walked the floor and stamped his foot and said that. She went straight
off and told Tom about it.

Judge Thatcher hoped to see Tom a great lawyer or a great soldier some
day. He said he meant to look to it that Tom should be admitted to the
National Military Academy and afterward trained in the best law school
in the country, in order that he might be ready for either career or
both.

Huck Finn's wealth and the fact that he was now under the Widow Douglas'
protection introduced him into society--no, dragged him into it, hurled
him into it--and his sufferings were almost more than he could bear. The
widow's servants kept him clean and neat, combed and brushed, and they
bedded him nightly in unsympathetic sheets that had not one little spot
or stain which he could press to his heart and know for a friend. He had
to eat with a knife and fork; he had to use napkin, cup, and plate;
he had to learn his book, he had to go to church; he had to talk so
properly that speech was become insipid in his mouth; whithersoever he
turned, the bars and shackles of civilization shut him in and bound him
hand and foot.

He bravely bore his miseries three weeks, and then one day turned up
missing. For forty-eight hours the widow hunted for him everywhere in
great distress. The public were profoundly concerned; they searched high
and low, they dragged the river for his body. Early the third morning
Tom Sawyer wisely went poking among some old empty hogsheads down behind
the abandoned slaughter-house, and in one of them he found the refugee.
Huck had slept there; he had just breakfasted upon some stolen odds and
ends of food, and was lying off, now, in comfort, with his pipe. He was
unkempt, uncombed, and clad in the same old ruin of rags that had made
him picturesque in the days when he was free and happy. Tom routed him
out, told him the trouble he had been causing, and urged him to go home.
Huck's face lost its tranquil content, and took a melancholy cast. He
said:

“Don't talk about it, Tom. I've tried it, and it don't work; it don't
work, Tom. It ain't for me; I ain't used to it. The widder's good to me,
and friendly; but I can't stand them ways. She makes me get up just
at the same time every morning; she makes me wash, they comb me all
to thunder; she won't let me sleep in the woodshed; I got to wear them
blamed clothes that just smothers me, Tom; they don't seem to any air
git through 'em, somehow; and they're so rotten nice that I can't
set down, nor lay down, nor roll around anywher's; I hain't slid on a
cellar-door for--well, it 'pears to be years; I got to go to church
and sweat and sweat--I hate them ornery sermons! I can't ketch a fly in
there, I can't chaw. I got to wear shoes all Sunday. The widder eats by
a bell; she goes to bed by a bell; she gits up by a bell--everything's so
awful reg'lar a body can't stand it.”

“Well, everybody does that way, Huck.”

“Tom, it don't make no difference. I ain't everybody, and I can't
_stand_ it. It's awful to be tied up so. And grub comes too easy--I don't
take no interest in vittles, that way. I got to ask to go a-fishing;
I got to ask to go in a-swimming--dern'd if I hain't got to ask to do
everything. Well, I'd got to talk so nice it wasn't no comfort--I'd got
to go up in the attic and rip out awhile, every day, to git a taste
in my mouth, or I'd a died, Tom. The widder wouldn't let me smoke;
she wouldn't let me yell, she wouldn't let me gape, nor stretch, nor
scratch, before folks--” [Then with a spasm of special irritation and
injury]--“And dad fetch it, she prayed all the time! I never see such a
woman! I _had_ to shove, Tom--I just had to. And besides, that school's
going to open, and I'd a had to go to it--well, I wouldn't stand _that_,
Tom. Looky-here, Tom, being rich ain't what it's cracked up to be. It's
just worry and worry, and sweat and sweat, and a-wishing you was dead
all the time. Now these clothes suits me, and this bar'l suits me, and
I ain't ever going to shake 'em any more. Tom, I wouldn't ever got into
all this trouble if it hadn't 'a' ben for that money; now you just take
my sheer of it along with your'n, and gimme a ten-center sometimes--not
many times, becuz I don't give a dern for a thing 'thout it's tollable
hard to git--and you go and beg off for me with the widder.”

“Oh, Huck, you know I can't do that. 'Tain't fair; and besides if you'll
try this thing just a while longer you'll come to like it.”

“Like it! Yes--the way I'd like a hot stove if I was to set on it long
enough. No, Tom, I won't be rich, and I won't live in them cussed
smothery houses. I like the woods, and the river, and hogsheads, and
I'll stick to 'em, too. Blame it all! just as we'd got guns, and a cave,
and all just fixed to rob, here this dern foolishness has got to come up
and spile it all!”

Tom saw his opportunity--

“Lookyhere, Huck, being rich ain't going to keep me back from turning
robber.”

“No! Oh, good-licks; are you in real dead-wood earnest, Tom?”

“Just as dead earnest as I'm sitting here. But Huck, we can't let you
into the gang if you ain't respectable, you know.”

Huck's joy was quenched.

“Can't let me in, Tom? Didn't you let me go for a pirate?”

“Yes, but that's different. A robber is more high-toned than what a
pirate is--as a general thing. In most countries they're awful high up in
the nobility--dukes and such.”

“Now, Tom, hain't you always ben friendly to me? You wouldn't shet me
out, would you, Tom? You wouldn't do that, now, _would_ you, Tom?”

“Huck, I wouldn't want to, and I _don't_ want to--but what would people
say? Why, they'd say, 'Mph! Tom Sawyer's Gang! pretty low characters in
it!' They'd mean you, Huck. You wouldn't like that, and I wouldn't.”

Huck was silent for some time, engaged in a mental struggle. Finally he
said:

“Well, I'll go back to the widder for a month and tackle it and see if I
can come to stand it, if you'll let me b'long to the gang, Tom.”

“All right, Huck, it's a whiz! Come along, old chap, and I'll ask the
widow to let up on you a little, Huck.”

“Will you, Tom--now will you? That's good. If she'll let up on some of
the roughest things, I'll smoke private and cuss private, and crowd
through or bust. When you going to start the gang and turn robbers?”

“Oh, right off. We'll get the boys together and have the initiation
tonight, maybe.”

“Have the which?”

“Have the initiation.”

“What's that?”

“It's to swear to stand by one another, and never tell the gang's
secrets, even if you're chopped all to flinders, and kill anybody and
all his family that hurts one of the gang.”

“That's gay--that's mighty gay, Tom, I tell you.”

“Well, I bet it is. And all that swearing's got to be done at midnight,
in the lonesomest, awfulest place you can find--a ha'nted house is the
best, but they're all ripped up now.”

“Well, midnight's good, anyway, Tom.”

“Yes, so it is. And you've got to swear on a coffin, and sign it with
blood.”

“Now, that's something _like_! Why, it's a million times bullier than
pirating. I'll stick to the widder till I rot, Tom; and if I git to be
a reg'lar ripper of a robber, and everybody talking 'bout it, I reckon
she'll be proud she snaked me in out of the wet.”

CONCLUSION

SO endeth this chronicle. It being strictly a history of a _boy_, it
must stop here; the story could not go much further without becoming the
history of a _man_. When one writes a novel about grown people, he knows
exactly where to stop--that is, with a marriage; but when he writes of
juveniles, he must stop where he best can.

Most of the characters that perform in this book still live, and are
prosperous and happy. Some day it may seem worth while to take up the
story of the younger ones again and see what sort of men and women they
turned out to be; therefore it will be wisest not to reveal any of that
part of their lives at present.



EXPLANATORY

IN this book a number of dialects are used, to wit:  the Missouri negro
dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods Southwestern dialect; the
ordinary “Pike County” dialect; and four modified varieties of this
last. The shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion, or by
guesswork; but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and
support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech.

I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers
would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and
not succeeding.

THE AUTHOR.




HUCKLEBERRY FINN

Scene:  The Mississippi Valley Time:  Forty to fifty years ago




CHAPTER I.

YOU don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter.  That book was made
by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly.  There was things
which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.  That is nothing.  I
never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt
Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary.  Aunt Polly--Tom's Aunt Polly, she
is--and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which
is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.

Now the way that the book winds up is this:  Tom and me found the money
that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich.  We got six
thousand dollars apiece--all gold.  It was an awful sight of money when
it was piled up.  Well, Judge Thatcher he took it and put it out
at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year
round--more than a body could tell what to do with.  The Widow Douglas
she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was
rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular
and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn't stand
it no longer I lit out.  I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead
again, and was free and satisfied.  But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and
said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I
would go back to the widow and be respectable.  So I went back.

The widow she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb, and she
called me a lot of other names, too, but she never meant no harm by
it. She put me in them new clothes again, and I couldn't do nothing but
sweat and sweat, and feel all cramped up.  Well, then, the old thing
commenced again.  The widow rung a bell for supper, and you had to come
to time. When you got to the table you couldn't go right to eating, but
you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little
over the victuals, though there warn't really anything the matter with
them,--that is, nothing only everything was cooked by itself.  In a
barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the
juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better.

After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the
Bulrushers, and I was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by and
by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so
then I didn't care no more about him, because I don't take no stock in
dead people.

Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me.  But she
wouldn't.  She said it was a mean practice and wasn't clean, and I must
try to not do it any more.  That is just the way with some people.  They
get down on a thing when they don't know nothing about it.  Here she was
a-bothering about Moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody,
being gone, you see, yet finding a power of fault with me for doing a
thing that had some good in it.  And she took snuff, too; of course that
was all right, because she done it herself.

Her sister, Miss Watson, a tolerable slim old maid, with goggles on,
had just come to live with her, and took a set at me now with a
spelling-book. She worked me middling hard for about an hour, and then
the widow made her ease up.  I couldn't stood it much longer.  Then for
an hour it was deadly dull, and I was fidgety.  Miss Watson would say,
“Don't put your feet up there, Huckleberry;” and “Don't scrunch up
like that, Huckleberry--set up straight;” and pretty soon she would
say, “Don't gap and stretch like that, Huckleberry--why don't you try to
behave?”  Then she told me all about the bad place, and I said I wished
I was there. She got mad then, but I didn't mean no harm.  All I wanted
was to go somewheres; all I wanted was a change, I warn't particular.
 She said it was wicked to say what I said; said she wouldn't say it for
the whole world; she was going to live so as to go to the good place.
 Well, I couldn't see no advantage in going where she was going, so I
made up my mind I wouldn't try for it.  But I never said so, because it
would only make trouble, and wouldn't do no good.

Now she had got a start, and she went on and told me all about the good
place.  She said all a body would have to do there was to go around all
day long with a harp and sing, forever and ever.  So I didn't think
much of it. But I never said so.  I asked her if she reckoned Tom Sawyer
would go there, and she said not by a considerable sight.  I was glad
about that, because I wanted him and me to be together.

Miss Watson she kept pecking at me, and it got tiresome and lonesome.
 By and by they fetched the niggers in and had prayers, and then
everybody was off to bed.  I went up to my room with a piece of candle,
and put it on the table.  Then I set down in a chair by the window and
tried to think of something cheerful, but it warn't no use.  I felt
so lonesome I most wished I was dead.  The stars were shining, and the
leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and I heard an owl, away
off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a
dog crying about somebody that was going to die; and the wind was trying
to whisper something to me, and I couldn't make out what it was, and so
it made the cold shivers run over me. Then away out in the woods I heard
that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about
something that's on its mind and can't make itself understood, and so
can't rest easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night
grieving.  I got so down-hearted and scared I did wish I had some
company.  Pretty soon a spider went crawling up my shoulder, and I
flipped it off and it lit in the candle; and before I could budge it
was all shriveled up.  I didn't need anybody to tell me that that was
an awful bad sign and would fetch me some bad luck, so I was scared
and most shook the clothes off of me. I got up and turned around in my
tracks three times and crossed my breast every time; and then I tied
up a little lock of my hair with a thread to keep witches away.  But
I hadn't no confidence.  You do that when you've lost a horseshoe that
you've found, instead of nailing it up over the door, but I hadn't ever
heard anybody say it was any way to keep off bad luck when you'd killed
a spider.

I set down again, a-shaking all over, and got out my pipe for a smoke;
for the house was all as still as death now, and so the widow wouldn't
know. Well, after a long time I heard the clock away off in the town
go boom--boom--boom--twelve licks; and all still again--stiller than
ever. Pretty soon I heard a twig snap down in the dark amongst the
trees--something was a stirring.  I set still and listened.  Directly I
could just barely hear a “me-yow! me-yow!” down there.  That was good!
 Says I, “me-yow! me-yow!” as soft as I could, and then I put out the
light and scrambled out of the window on to the shed.  Then I slipped
down to the ground and crawled in among the trees, and, sure enough,
there was Tom Sawyer waiting for me.




CHAPTER II.

WE went tiptoeing along a path amongst the trees back towards the end of
the widow's garden, stooping down so as the branches wouldn't scrape our
heads. When we was passing by the kitchen I fell over a root and made
a noise.  We scrouched down and laid still.  Miss Watson's big nigger,
named Jim, was setting in the kitchen door; we could see him pretty
clear, because there was a light behind him.  He got up and stretched
his neck out about a minute, listening.  Then he says:

“Who dah?”

He listened some more; then he come tiptoeing down and stood right
between us; we could a touched him, nearly.  Well, likely it was
minutes and minutes that there warn't a sound, and we all there so close
together.  There was a place on my ankle that got to itching, but I
dasn't scratch it; and then my ear begun to itch; and next my back,
right between my shoulders.  Seemed like I'd die if I couldn't scratch.
 Well, I've noticed that thing plenty times since.  If you are with
the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't
sleepy--if you are anywheres where it won't do for you to scratch, why
you will itch all over in upwards of a thousand places. Pretty soon Jim
says:

“Say, who is you?  Whar is you?  Dog my cats ef I didn' hear sumf'n.
Well, I know what I's gwyne to do:  I's gwyne to set down here and
listen tell I hears it agin.”

So he set down on the ground betwixt me and Tom.  He leaned his back up
against a tree, and stretched his legs out till one of them most touched
one of mine.  My nose begun to itch.  It itched till the tears come into
my eyes.  But I dasn't scratch.  Then it begun to itch on the inside.
Next I got to itching underneath.  I didn't know how I was going to set
still. This miserableness went on as much as six or seven minutes; but
it seemed a sight longer than that.  I was itching in eleven different
places now.  I reckoned I couldn't stand it more'n a minute longer,
but I set my teeth hard and got ready to try.  Just then Jim begun
to breathe heavy; next he begun to snore--and then I was pretty soon
comfortable again.

Tom he made a sign to me--kind of a little noise with his mouth--and we
went creeping away on our hands and knees.  When we was ten foot off Tom
whispered to me, and wanted to tie Jim to the tree for fun.  But I said
no; he might wake and make a disturbance, and then they'd find out I
warn't in. Then Tom said he hadn't got candles enough, and he would slip
in the kitchen and get some more.  I didn't want him to try.  I said Jim
might wake up and come.  But Tom wanted to resk it; so we slid in there
and got three candles, and Tom laid five cents on the table for pay.
Then we got out, and I was in a sweat to get away; but nothing would do
Tom but he must crawl to where Jim was, on his hands and knees, and play
something on him.  I waited, and it seemed a good while, everything was
so still and lonesome.

As soon as Tom was back we cut along the path, around the garden fence,
and by and by fetched up on the steep top of the hill the other side of
the house.  Tom said he slipped Jim's hat off of his head and hung it
on a limb right over him, and Jim stirred a little, but he didn't wake.
Afterwards Jim said the witches be witched him and put him in a trance,
and rode him all over the State, and then set him under the trees again,
and hung his hat on a limb to show who done it.  And next time Jim told
it he said they rode him down to New Orleans; and, after that, every
time he told it he spread it more and more, till by and by he said they
rode him all over the world, and tired him most to death, and his back
was all over saddle-boils.  Jim was monstrous proud about it, and he
got so he wouldn't hardly notice the other niggers.  Niggers would come
miles to hear Jim tell about it, and he was more looked up to than any
nigger in that country.  Strange niggers would stand with their mouths
open and look him all over, same as if he was a wonder.  Niggers is
always talking about witches in the dark by the kitchen fire; but
whenever one was talking and letting on to know all about such things,
Jim would happen in and say, “Hm!  What you know 'bout witches?” and
that nigger was corked up and had to take a back seat.  Jim always kept
that five-center piece round his neck with a string, and said it was a
charm the devil give to him with his own hands, and told him he could
cure anybody with it and fetch witches whenever he wanted to just by
saying something to it; but he never told what it was he said to it.
 Niggers would come from all around there and give Jim anything they
had, just for a sight of that five-center piece; but they wouldn't touch
it, because the devil had had his hands on it.  Jim was most ruined for
a servant, because he got stuck up on account of having seen the devil
and been rode by witches.

Well, when Tom and me got to the edge of the hilltop we looked away down
into the village and could see three or four lights twinkling, where
there was sick folks, maybe; and the stars over us was sparkling ever
so fine; and down by the village was the river, a whole mile broad, and
awful still and grand.  We went down the hill and found Jo Harper and
Ben Rogers, and two or three more of the boys, hid in the old tanyard.
 So we unhitched a skiff and pulled down the river two mile and a half,
to the big scar on the hillside, and went ashore.

We went to a clump of bushes, and Tom made everybody swear to keep the
secret, and then showed them a hole in the hill, right in the thickest
part of the bushes.  Then we lit the candles, and crawled in on our
hands and knees.  We went about two hundred yards, and then the cave
opened up. Tom poked about amongst the passages, and pretty soon ducked
under a wall where you wouldn't a noticed that there was a hole.  We
went along a narrow place and got into a kind of room, all damp and
sweaty and cold, and there we stopped.  Tom says:

“Now, we'll start this band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer's Gang.
Everybody that wants to join has got to take an oath, and write his name
in blood.”

Everybody was willing.  So Tom got out a sheet of paper that he had
wrote the oath on, and read it.  It swore every boy to stick to the
band, and never tell any of the secrets; and if anybody done anything to
any boy in the band, whichever boy was ordered to kill that person and
his family must do it, and he mustn't eat and he mustn't sleep till he
had killed them and hacked a cross in their breasts, which was the sign
of the band. And nobody that didn't belong to the band could use that
mark, and if he did he must be sued; and if he done it again he must be
killed.  And if anybody that belonged to the band told the secrets, he
must have his throat cut, and then have his carcass burnt up and the
ashes scattered all around, and his name blotted off of the list with
blood and never mentioned again by the gang, but have a curse put on it
and be forgot forever.

Everybody said it was a real beautiful oath, and asked Tom if he got
it out of his own head.  He said, some of it, but the rest was out of
pirate-books and robber-books, and every gang that was high-toned had
it.

Some thought it would be good to kill the _families_ of boys that told
the secrets.  Tom said it was a good idea, so he took a pencil and wrote
it in. Then Ben Rogers says:

“Here's Huck Finn, he hain't got no family; what you going to do 'bout
him?”

“Well, hain't he got a father?” says Tom Sawyer.

“Yes, he's got a father, but you can't never find him these days.  He
used to lay drunk with the hogs in the tanyard, but he hain't been seen
in these parts for a year or more.”

They talked it over, and they was going to rule me out, because they
said every boy must have a family or somebody to kill, or else it
wouldn't be fair and square for the others.  Well, nobody could think of
anything to do--everybody was stumped, and set still.  I was most ready
to cry; but all at once I thought of a way, and so I offered them Miss
Watson--they could kill her.  Everybody said:

“Oh, she'll do.  That's all right.  Huck can come in.”

Then they all stuck a pin in their fingers to get blood to sign with,
and I made my mark on the paper.

“Now,” says Ben Rogers, “what's the line of business of this Gang?”

“Nothing only robbery and murder,” Tom said.

“But who are we going to rob?--houses, or cattle, or--”

“Stuff! stealing cattle and such things ain't robbery; it's burglary,”
 says Tom Sawyer.  “We ain't burglars.  That ain't no sort of style.  We
are highwaymen.  We stop stages and carriages on the road, with masks
on, and kill the people and take their watches and money.”

“Must we always kill the people?”

“Oh, certainly.  It's best.  Some authorities think different, but
mostly it's considered best to kill them--except some that you bring to
the cave here, and keep them till they're ransomed.”

“Ransomed?  What's that?”

“I don't know.  But that's what they do.  I've seen it in books; and so
of course that's what we've got to do.”

“But how can we do it if we don't know what it is?”

“Why, blame it all, we've _got_ to do it.  Don't I tell you it's in the
books?  Do you want to go to doing different from what's in the books,
and get things all muddled up?”

“Oh, that's all very fine to _say_, Tom Sawyer, but how in the nation
are these fellows going to be ransomed if we don't know how to do it
to them?--that's the thing I want to get at.  Now, what do you reckon it
is?”

“Well, I don't know.  But per'aps if we keep them till they're ransomed,
it means that we keep them till they're dead.”

“Now, that's something _like_.  That'll answer.  Why couldn't you said
that before?  We'll keep them till they're ransomed to death; and a
bothersome lot they'll be, too--eating up everything, and always trying
to get loose.”

“How you talk, Ben Rogers.  How can they get loose when there's a guard
over them, ready to shoot them down if they move a peg?”

“A guard!  Well, that _is_ good.  So somebody's got to set up all night
and never get any sleep, just so as to watch them.  I think that's
foolishness. Why can't a body take a club and ransom them as soon as
they get here?”

“Because it ain't in the books so--that's why.  Now, Ben Rogers, do you
want to do things regular, or don't you?--that's the idea.  Don't you
reckon that the people that made the books knows what's the correct
thing to do?  Do you reckon _you_ can learn 'em anything?  Not by a good
deal. No, sir, we'll just go on and ransom them in the regular way.”

“All right.  I don't mind; but I say it's a fool way, anyhow.  Say, do
we kill the women, too?”

“Well, Ben Rogers, if I was as ignorant as you I wouldn't let on.  Kill
the women?  No; nobody ever saw anything in the books like that.  You
fetch them to the cave, and you're always as polite as pie to them;
and by and by they fall in love with you, and never want to go home any
more.”

“Well, if that's the way I'm agreed, but I don't take no stock in it.
Mighty soon we'll have the cave so cluttered up with women, and fellows
waiting to be ransomed, that there won't be no place for the robbers.
But go ahead, I ain't got nothing to say.”

Little Tommy Barnes was asleep now, and when they waked him up he was
scared, and cried, and said he wanted to go home to his ma, and didn't
want to be a robber any more.

So they all made fun of him, and called him cry-baby, and that made him
mad, and he said he would go straight and tell all the secrets.  But
Tom give him five cents to keep quiet, and said we would all go home and
meet next week, and rob somebody and kill some people.

Ben Rogers said he couldn't get out much, only Sundays, and so he wanted
to begin next Sunday; but all the boys said it would be wicked to do it
on Sunday, and that settled the thing.  They agreed to get together and
fix a day as soon as they could, and then we elected Tom Sawyer first
captain and Jo Harper second captain of the Gang, and so started home.

I clumb up the shed and crept into my window just before day was
breaking. My new clothes was all greased up and clayey, and I was
dog-tired.




CHAPTER III.

WELL, I got a good going-over in the morning from old Miss Watson on
account of my clothes; but the widow she didn't scold, but only cleaned
off the grease and clay, and looked so sorry that I thought I would
behave awhile if I could.  Then Miss Watson she took me in the closet
and prayed, but nothing come of it.  She told me to pray every day, and
whatever I asked for I would get it.  But it warn't so.  I tried it.
Once I got a fish-line, but no hooks.  It warn't any good to me without
hooks.  I tried for the hooks three or four times, but somehow I
couldn't make it work.  By and by, one day, I asked Miss Watson to
try for me, but she said I was a fool.  She never told me why, and I
couldn't make it out no way.

I set down one time back in the woods, and had a long think about it.
 I says to myself, if a body can get anything they pray for, why don't
Deacon Winn get back the money he lost on pork?  Why can't the widow get
back her silver snuffbox that was stole?  Why can't Miss Watson fat up?
No, says I to my self, there ain't nothing in it.  I went and told the
widow about it, and she said the thing a body could get by praying for
it was “spiritual gifts.”  This was too many for me, but she told me
what she meant--I must help other people, and do everything I could for
other people, and look out for them all the time, and never think about
myself. This was including Miss Watson, as I took it.  I went out in the
woods and turned it over in my mind a long time, but I couldn't see no
advantage about it--except for the other people; so at last I reckoned
I wouldn't worry about it any more, but just let it go.  Sometimes the
widow would take me one side and talk about Providence in a way to make
a body's mouth water; but maybe next day Miss Watson would take hold
and knock it all down again.  I judged I could see that there was two
Providences, and a poor chap would stand considerable show with the
widow's Providence, but if Miss Watson's got him there warn't no help
for him any more.  I thought it all out, and reckoned I would belong
to the widow's if he wanted me, though I couldn't make out how he was
a-going to be any better off then than what he was before, seeing I was
so ignorant, and so kind of low-down and ornery.

Pap he hadn't been seen for more than a year, and that was comfortable
for me; I didn't want to see him no more.  He used to always whale me
when he was sober and could get his hands on me; though I used to take
to the woods most of the time when he was around.  Well, about this time
he was found in the river drownded, about twelve mile above town, so
people said.  They judged it was him, anyway; said this drownded man was
just his size, and was ragged, and had uncommon long hair, which was all
like pap; but they couldn't make nothing out of the face, because it had
been in the water so long it warn't much like a face at all.  They said
he was floating on his back in the water.  They took him and buried him
on the bank.  But I warn't comfortable long, because I happened to think
of something.  I knowed mighty well that a drownded man don't float on
his back, but on his face.  So I knowed, then, that this warn't pap, but
a woman dressed up in a man's clothes.  So I was uncomfortable again.
 I judged the old man would turn up again by and by, though I wished he
wouldn't.

We played robber now and then about a month, and then I resigned.  All
the boys did.  We hadn't robbed nobody, hadn't killed any people, but
only just pretended.  We used to hop out of the woods and go charging
down on hog-drivers and women in carts taking garden stuff to market,
but we never hived any of them.  Tom Sawyer called the hogs “ingots,”
 and he called the turnips and stuff “julery,” and we would go to the
cave and powwow over what we had done, and how many people we had killed
and marked.  But I couldn't see no profit in it.  One time Tom sent a
boy to run about town with a blazing stick, which he called a slogan
(which was the sign for the Gang to get together), and then he said he
had got secret news by his spies that next day a whole parcel of Spanish
merchants and rich A-rabs was going to camp in Cave Hollow with two
hundred elephants, and six hundred camels, and over a thousand “sumter”
 mules, all loaded down with di'monds, and they didn't have only a guard
of four hundred soldiers, and so we would lay in ambuscade, as he called
it, and kill the lot and scoop the things.  He said we must slick up
our swords and guns, and get ready.  He never could go after even a
turnip-cart but he must have the swords and guns all scoured up for it,
though they was only lath and broomsticks, and you might scour at them
till you rotted, and then they warn't worth a mouthful of ashes more
than what they was before.  I didn't believe we could lick such a crowd
of Spaniards and A-rabs, but I wanted to see the camels and elephants,
so I was on hand next day, Saturday, in the ambuscade; and when we got
the word we rushed out of the woods and down the hill.  But there warn't
no Spaniards and A-rabs, and there warn't no camels nor no elephants.
 It warn't anything but a Sunday-school picnic, and only a primer-class
at that.  We busted it up, and chased the children up the hollow; but we
never got anything but some doughnuts and jam, though Ben Rogers got
a rag doll, and Jo Harper got a hymn-book and a tract; and then the
teacher charged in, and made us drop everything and cut.

 I didn't see no di'monds, and I told Tom Sawyer so.  He said there was
loads of them there, anyway; and he said there was A-rabs there, too,
and elephants and things.  I said, why couldn't we see them, then?  He
said if I warn't so ignorant, but had read a book called Don Quixote, I
would know without asking.  He said it was all done by enchantment.  He
said there was hundreds of soldiers there, and elephants and treasure,
and so on, but we had enemies which he called magicians; and they had
turned the whole thing into an infant Sunday-school, just out of spite.
 I said, all right; then the thing for us to do was to go for the
magicians.  Tom Sawyer said I was a numskull.

“Why,” said he, “a magician could call up a lot of genies, and they
would hash you up like nothing before you could say Jack Robinson.  They
are as tall as a tree and as big around as a church.”

“Well,” I says, “s'pose we got some genies to help _us_--can't we lick
the other crowd then?”

“How you going to get them?”

“I don't know.  How do _they_ get them?”

“Why, they rub an old tin lamp or an iron ring, and then the genies
come tearing in, with the thunder and lightning a-ripping around and the
smoke a-rolling, and everything they're told to do they up and do it.
 They don't think nothing of pulling a shot-tower up by the roots, and
belting a Sunday-school superintendent over the head with it--or any
other man.”

“Who makes them tear around so?”

“Why, whoever rubs the lamp or the ring.  They belong to whoever rubs
the lamp or the ring, and they've got to do whatever he says.  If he
tells them to build a palace forty miles long out of di'monds, and fill
it full of chewing-gum, or whatever you want, and fetch an emperor's
daughter from China for you to marry, they've got to do it--and they've
got to do it before sun-up next morning, too.  And more:  they've got
to waltz that palace around over the country wherever you want it, you
understand.”

“Well,” says I, “I think they are a pack of flat-heads for not keeping
the palace themselves 'stead of fooling them away like that.  And what's
more--if I was one of them I would see a man in Jericho before I would
drop my business and come to him for the rubbing of an old tin lamp.”

“How you talk, Huck Finn.  Why, you'd _have_ to come when he rubbed it,
whether you wanted to or not.”

“What! and I as high as a tree and as big as a church?  All right, then;
I _would_ come; but I lay I'd make that man climb the highest tree there
was in the country.”

“Shucks, it ain't no use to talk to you, Huck Finn.  You don't seem to
know anything, somehow--perfect saphead.”

I thought all this over for two or three days, and then I reckoned I
would see if there was anything in it.  I got an old tin lamp and an
iron ring, and went out in the woods and rubbed and rubbed till I sweat
like an Injun, calculating to build a palace and sell it; but it warn't
no use, none of the genies come.  So then I judged that all that stuff
was only just one of Tom Sawyer's lies.  I reckoned he believed in the
A-rabs and the elephants, but as for me I think different.  It had all
the marks of a Sunday-school.




CHAPTER IV.

WELL, three or four months run along, and it was well into the winter
now. I had been to school most all the time and could spell and read and
write just a little, and could say the multiplication table up to six
times seven is thirty-five, and I don't reckon I could ever get any
further than that if I was to live forever.  I don't take no stock in
mathematics, anyway.

At first I hated the school, but by and by I got so I could stand it.
Whenever I got uncommon tired I played hookey, and the hiding I got next
day done me good and cheered me up.  So the longer I went to school the
easier it got to be.  I was getting sort of used to the widow's ways,
too, and they warn't so raspy on me.  Living in a house and sleeping in
a bed pulled on me pretty tight mostly, but before the cold weather I
used to slide out and sleep in the woods sometimes, and so that was a
rest to me.  I liked the old ways best, but I was getting so I liked the
new ones, too, a little bit. The widow said I was coming along slow but
sure, and doing very satisfactory.  She said she warn't ashamed of me.

One morning I happened to turn over the salt-cellar at breakfast.
 I reached for some of it as quick as I could to throw over my left
shoulder and keep off the bad luck, but Miss Watson was in ahead of me,
and crossed me off. She says, “Take your hands away, Huckleberry; what
a mess you are always making!”  The widow put in a good word for me, but
that warn't going to keep off the bad luck, I knowed that well enough.
 I started out, after breakfast, feeling worried and shaky, and
wondering where it was going to fall on me, and what it was going to be.
 There is ways to keep off some kinds of bad luck, but this wasn't one
of them kind; so I never tried to do anything, but just poked along
low-spirited and on the watch-out.

I went down to the front garden and clumb over the stile where you go
through the high board fence.  There was an inch of new snow on the
ground, and I seen somebody's tracks.  They had come up from the quarry
and stood around the stile a while, and then went on around the garden
fence.  It was funny they hadn't come in, after standing around so.  I
couldn't make it out.  It was very curious, somehow.  I was going to
follow around, but I stooped down to look at the tracks first.  I didn't
notice anything at first, but next I did.  There was a cross in the left
boot-heel made with big nails, to keep off the devil.

I was up in a second and shinning down the hill.  I looked over my
shoulder every now and then, but I didn't see nobody.  I was at Judge
Thatcher's as quick as I could get there.  He said:

“Why, my boy, you are all out of breath.  Did you come for your
interest?”

“No, sir,” I says; “is there some for me?”

“Oh, yes, a half-yearly is in last night--over a hundred and fifty
dollars.  Quite a fortune for you.  You had better let me invest it
along with your six thousand, because if you take it you'll spend it.”

“No, sir,” I says, “I don't want to spend it.  I don't want it at
all--nor the six thousand, nuther.  I want you to take it; I want to give
it to you--the six thousand and all.”

He looked surprised.  He couldn't seem to make it out.  He says:

“Why, what can you mean, my boy?”

I says, “Don't you ask me no questions about it, please.  You'll take
it--won't you?”

He says:

“Well, I'm puzzled.  Is something the matter?”

“Please take it,” says I, “and don't ask me nothing--then I won't have to
tell no lies.”

He studied a while, and then he says:

“Oho-o!  I think I see.  You want to _sell_ all your property to me--not
give it.  That's the correct idea.”

Then he wrote something on a paper and read it over, and says:

“There; you see it says 'for a consideration.'  That means I have bought
it of you and paid you for it.  Here's a dollar for you.  Now you sign
it.”

So I signed it, and left.

Miss Watson's nigger, Jim, had a hair-ball as big as your fist, which
had been took out of the fourth stomach of an ox, and he used to do
magic with it.  He said there was a spirit inside of it, and it knowed
everything.  So I went to him that night and told him pap was here
again, for I found his tracks in the snow.  What I wanted to know was,
what he was going to do, and was he going to stay?  Jim got out his
hair-ball and said something over it, and then he held it up and dropped
it on the floor.  It fell pretty solid, and only rolled about an inch.
 Jim tried it again, and then another time, and it acted just the same.
 Jim got down on his knees, and put his ear against it and listened.
 But it warn't no use; he said it wouldn't talk. He said sometimes it
wouldn't talk without money.  I told him I had an old slick counterfeit
quarter that warn't no good because the brass showed through the silver
a little, and it wouldn't pass nohow, even if the brass didn't show,
because it was so slick it felt greasy, and so that would tell on it
every time.  (I reckoned I wouldn't say nothing about the dollar I got
from the judge.) I said it was pretty bad money, but maybe the hair-ball
would take it, because maybe it wouldn't know the difference.  Jim smelt
it and bit it and rubbed it, and said he would manage so the hair-ball
would think it was good.  He said he would split open a raw Irish potato
and stick the quarter in between and keep it there all night, and next
morning you couldn't see no brass, and it wouldn't feel greasy no more,
and so anybody in town would take it in a minute, let alone a hair-ball.
 Well, I knowed a potato would do that before, but I had forgot it.

Jim put the quarter under the hair-ball, and got down and listened
again. This time he said the hair-ball was all right.  He said it
would tell my whole fortune if I wanted it to.  I says, go on.  So the
hair-ball talked to Jim, and Jim told it to me.  He says:

“Yo' ole father doan' know yit what he's a-gwyne to do.  Sometimes he
spec he'll go 'way, en den agin he spec he'll stay.  De bes' way is to
res' easy en let de ole man take his own way.  Dey's two angels hoverin'
roun' 'bout him.  One uv 'em is white en shiny, en t'other one is black.
De white one gits him to go right a little while, den de black one sail
in en bust it all up.  A body can't tell yit which one gwyne to fetch
him at de las'.  But you is all right.  You gwyne to have considable
trouble in yo' life, en considable joy.  Sometimes you gwyne to git
hurt, en sometimes you gwyne to git sick; but every time you's gwyne
to git well agin.  Dey's two gals flyin' 'bout you in yo' life.  One
uv 'em's light en t'other one is dark. One is rich en t'other is po'.
 You's gwyne to marry de po' one fust en de rich one by en by.  You
wants to keep 'way fum de water as much as you kin, en don't run no
resk, 'kase it's down in de bills dat you's gwyne to git hung.”

When I lit my candle and went up to my room that night there sat pap his
own self!




CHAPTER V.

I had shut the door to.  Then I turned around and there he was.  I used
to be scared of him all the time, he tanned me so much.  I reckoned I
was scared now, too; but in a minute I see I was mistaken--that is, after
the first jolt, as you may say, when my breath sort of hitched, he being
so unexpected; but right away after I see I warn't scared of him worth
bothring about.

He was most fifty, and he looked it.  His hair was long and tangled and
greasy, and hung down, and you could see his eyes shining through
like he was behind vines.  It was all black, no gray; so was his long,
mixed-up whiskers.  There warn't no color in his face, where his face
showed; it was white; not like another man's white, but a white to make
a body sick, a white to make a body's flesh crawl--a tree-toad white, a
fish-belly white.  As for his clothes--just rags, that was all.  He had
one ankle resting on t'other knee; the boot on that foot was busted, and
two of his toes stuck through, and he worked them now and then.  His hat
was laying on the floor--an old black slouch with the top caved in, like
a lid.

I stood a-looking at him; he set there a-looking at me, with his chair
tilted back a little.  I set the candle down.  I noticed the window was
up; so he had clumb in by the shed.  He kept a-looking me all over.  By
and by he says:

“Starchy clothes--very.  You think you're a good deal of a big-bug,
_don't_ you?”

“Maybe I am, maybe I ain't,” I says.

“Don't you give me none o' your lip,” says he.  “You've put on
considerable many frills since I been away.  I'll take you down a peg
before I get done with you.  You're educated, too, they say--can read and
write.  You think you're better'n your father, now, don't you, because
he can't?  _I'll_ take it out of you.  Who told you you might meddle
with such hifalut'n foolishness, hey?--who told you you could?”

“The widow.  She told me.”

“The widow, hey?--and who told the widow she could put in her shovel
about a thing that ain't none of her business?”

“Nobody never told her.”

“Well, I'll learn her how to meddle.  And looky here--you drop that
school, you hear?  I'll learn people to bring up a boy to put on airs
over his own father and let on to be better'n what _he_ is.  You lemme
catch you fooling around that school again, you hear?  Your mother
couldn't read, and she couldn't write, nuther, before she died.  None
of the family couldn't before _they_ died.  I can't; and here you're
a-swelling yourself up like this.  I ain't the man to stand it--you hear?
Say, lemme hear you read.”

I took up a book and begun something about General Washington and the
wars. When I'd read about a half a minute, he fetched the book a whack
with his hand and knocked it across the house.  He says:

“It's so.  You can do it.  I had my doubts when you told me.  Now looky
here; you stop that putting on frills.  I won't have it.  I'll lay for
you, my smarty; and if I catch you about that school I'll tan you good.
First you know you'll get religion, too.  I never see such a son.”

He took up a little blue and yaller picture of some cows and a boy, and
says:

“What's this?”

“It's something they give me for learning my lessons good.”

He tore it up, and says:

“I'll give you something better--I'll give you a cowhide.”

He set there a-mumbling and a-growling a minute, and then he says:

“_Ain't_ you a sweet-scented dandy, though?  A bed; and bedclothes; and
a look'n'-glass; and a piece of carpet on the floor--and your own father
got to sleep with the hogs in the tanyard.  I never see such a son.  I
bet I'll take some o' these frills out o' you before I'm done with you.
Why, there ain't no end to your airs--they say you're rich.  Hey?--how's
that?”

“They lie--that's how.”

“Looky here--mind how you talk to me; I'm a-standing about all I can
stand now--so don't gimme no sass.  I've been in town two days, and I
hain't heard nothing but about you bein' rich.  I heard about it
away down the river, too.  That's why I come.  You git me that money
to-morrow--I want it.”

“I hain't got no money.”

“It's a lie.  Judge Thatcher's got it.  You git it.  I want it.”

“I hain't got no money, I tell you.  You ask Judge Thatcher; he'll tell
you the same.”

“All right.  I'll ask him; and I'll make him pungle, too, or I'll know
the reason why.  Say, how much you got in your pocket?  I want it.”

“I hain't got only a dollar, and I want that to--”

“It don't make no difference what you want it for--you just shell it
out.”

He took it and bit it to see if it was good, and then he said he was
going down town to get some whisky; said he hadn't had a drink all day.
When he had got out on the shed he put his head in again, and cussed
me for putting on frills and trying to be better than him; and when I
reckoned he was gone he come back and put his head in again, and told me
to mind about that school, because he was going to lay for me and lick
me if I didn't drop that.

Next day he was drunk, and he went to Judge Thatcher's and bullyragged
him, and tried to make him give up the money; but he couldn't, and then
he swore he'd make the law force him.

The judge and the widow went to law to get the court to take me away
from him and let one of them be my guardian; but it was a new judge that
had just come, and he didn't know the old man; so he said courts mustn't
interfere and separate families if they could help it; said he'd druther
not take a child away from its father.  So Judge Thatcher and the widow
had to quit on the business.

That pleased the old man till he couldn't rest.  He said he'd cowhide
me till I was black and blue if I didn't raise some money for him.  I
borrowed three dollars from Judge Thatcher, and pap took it and got
drunk, and went a-blowing around and cussing and whooping and carrying
on; and he kept it up all over town, with a tin pan, till most midnight;
then they jailed him, and next day they had him before court, and jailed
him again for a week.  But he said _he_ was satisfied; said he was boss
of his son, and he'd make it warm for _him_.

When he got out the new judge said he was a-going to make a man of him.
So he took him to his own house, and dressed him up clean and nice, and
had him to breakfast and dinner and supper with the family, and was just
old pie to him, so to speak.  And after supper he talked to him about
temperance and such things till the old man cried, and said he'd been
a fool, and fooled away his life; but now he was a-going to turn over
a new leaf and be a man nobody wouldn't be ashamed of, and he hoped the
judge would help him and not look down on him.  The judge said he could
hug him for them words; so he cried, and his wife she cried again; pap
said he'd been a man that had always been misunderstood before, and the
judge said he believed it.  The old man said that what a man wanted
that was down was sympathy, and the judge said it was so; so they cried
again.  And when it was bedtime the old man rose up and held out his
hand, and says:

“Look at it, gentlemen and ladies all; take a-hold of it; shake it.
There's a hand that was the hand of a hog; but it ain't so no more; it's
the hand of a man that's started in on a new life, and'll die before
he'll go back.  You mark them words--don't forget I said them.  It's a
clean hand now; shake it--don't be afeard.”

So they shook it, one after the other, all around, and cried.  The
judge's wife she kissed it.  Then the old man he signed a pledge--made
his mark. The judge said it was the holiest time on record, or something
like that. Then they tucked the old man into a beautiful room, which was
the spare room, and in the night some time he got powerful thirsty and
clumb out on to the porch-roof and slid down a stanchion and traded his
new coat for a jug of forty-rod, and clumb back again and had a good old
time; and towards daylight he crawled out again, drunk as a fiddler, and
rolled off the porch and broke his left arm in two places, and was most
froze to death when somebody found him after sun-up.  And when they come
to look at that spare room they had to take soundings before they could
navigate it.

The judge he felt kind of sore.  He said he reckoned a body could reform
the old man with a shotgun, maybe, but he didn't know no other way.




CHAPTER VI.

WELL, pretty soon the old man was up and around again, and then he went
for Judge Thatcher in the courts to make him give up that money, and he
went for me, too, for not stopping school.  He catched me a couple of
times and thrashed me, but I went to school just the same, and dodged
him or outrun him most of the time.  I didn't want to go to school much
before, but I reckoned I'd go now to spite pap.  That law trial was a
slow business--appeared like they warn't ever going to get started on it;
so every now and then I'd borrow two or three dollars off of the judge
for him, to keep from getting a cowhiding.  Every time he got money he
got drunk; and every time he got drunk he raised Cain around town; and
every time he raised Cain he got jailed.  He was just suited--this kind
of thing was right in his line.

He got to hanging around the widow's too much and so she told him at
last that if he didn't quit using around there she would make trouble
for him. Well, _wasn't_ he mad?  He said he would show who was Huck
Finn's boss.  So he watched out for me one day in the spring, and
catched me, and took me up the river about three mile in a skiff, and
crossed over to the Illinois shore where it was woody and there warn't
no houses but an old log hut in a place where the timber was so thick
you couldn't find it if you didn't know where it was.

He kept me with him all the time, and I never got a chance to run off.
We lived in that old cabin, and he always locked the door and put the
key under his head nights.  He had a gun which he had stole, I reckon,
and we fished and hunted, and that was what we lived on.  Every little
while he locked me in and went down to the store, three miles, to the
ferry, and traded fish and game for whisky, and fetched it home and got
drunk and had a good time, and licked me.  The widow she found out where
I was by and by, and she sent a man over to try to get hold of me; but
pap drove him off with the gun, and it warn't long after that till I was
used to being where I was, and liked it--all but the cowhide part.

It was kind of lazy and jolly, laying off comfortable all day, smoking
and fishing, and no books nor study.  Two months or more run along, and
my clothes got to be all rags and dirt, and I didn't see how I'd ever
got to like it so well at the widow's, where you had to wash, and eat on
a plate, and comb up, and go to bed and get up regular, and be forever
bothering over a book, and have old Miss Watson pecking at you all the
time.  I didn't want to go back no more.  I had stopped cussing, because
the widow didn't like it; but now I took to it again because pap hadn't
no objections.  It was pretty good times up in the woods there, take it
all around.

But by and by pap got too handy with his hick'ry, and I couldn't stand
it. I was all over welts.  He got to going away so much, too, and
locking me in.  Once he locked me in and was gone three days.  It was
dreadful lonesome.  I judged he had got drownded, and I wasn't ever
going to get out any more.  I was scared.  I made up my mind I would fix
up some way to leave there.  I had tried to get out of that cabin many
a time, but I couldn't find no way.  There warn't a window to it big
enough for a dog to get through.  I couldn't get up the chimbly; it
was too narrow.  The door was thick, solid oak slabs.  Pap was pretty
careful not to leave a knife or anything in the cabin when he was away;
I reckon I had hunted the place over as much as a hundred times; well, I
was most all the time at it, because it was about the only way to put in
the time.  But this time I found something at last; I found an old rusty
wood-saw without any handle; it was laid in between a rafter and the
clapboards of the roof. I greased it up and went to work.  There was an
old horse-blanket nailed against the logs at the far end of the cabin
behind the table, to keep the wind from blowing through the chinks and
putting the candle out.  I got under the table and raised the blanket,
and went to work to saw a section of the big bottom log out--big enough
to let me through.  Well, it was a good long job, but I was getting
towards the end of it when I heard pap's gun in the woods.  I got rid of
the signs of my work, and dropped the blanket and hid my saw, and pretty
soon pap come in.

Pap warn't in a good humor--so he was his natural self.  He said he was
down town, and everything was going wrong.  His lawyer said he reckoned
he would win his lawsuit and get the money if they ever got started on
the trial; but then there was ways to put it off a long time, and Judge
Thatcher knowed how to do it. And he said people allowed there'd be
another trial to get me away from him and give me to the widow for my
guardian, and they guessed it would win this time.  This shook me up
considerable, because I didn't want to go back to the widow's any more
and be so cramped up and sivilized, as they called it.  Then the old man
got to cussing, and cussed everything and everybody he could think of,
and then cussed them all over again to make sure he hadn't skipped any,
and after that he polished off with a kind of a general cuss all round,
including a considerable parcel of people which he didn't know the names
of, and so called them what's-his-name when he got to them, and went
right along with his cussing.

He said he would like to see the widow get me.  He said he would watch
out, and if they tried to come any such game on him he knowed of a place
six or seven mile off to stow me in, where they might hunt till they
dropped and they couldn't find me.  That made me pretty uneasy again,
but only for a minute; I reckoned I wouldn't stay on hand till he got
that chance.

The old man made me go to the skiff and fetch the things he had
got. There was a fifty-pound sack of corn meal, and a side of bacon,
ammunition, and a four-gallon jug of whisky, and an old book and two
newspapers for wadding, besides some tow.  I toted up a load, and went
back and set down on the bow of the skiff to rest.  I thought it all
over, and I reckoned I would walk off with the gun and some lines, and
take to the woods when I run away.  I guessed I wouldn't stay in one
place, but just tramp right across the country, mostly night times, and
hunt and fish to keep alive, and so get so far away that the old man nor
the widow couldn't ever find me any more.  I judged I would saw out and
leave that night if pap got drunk enough, and I reckoned he would.  I
got so full of it I didn't notice how long I was staying till the old
man hollered and asked me whether I was asleep or drownded.

I got the things all up to the cabin, and then it was about dark.  While
I was cooking supper the old man took a swig or two and got sort of
warmed up, and went to ripping again.  He had been drunk over in town,
and laid in the gutter all night, and he was a sight to look at.  A body
would a thought he was Adam--he was just all mud.  Whenever his liquor
begun to work he most always went for the govment, this time he says:

“Call this a govment! why, just look at it and see what it's like.
Here's the law a-standing ready to take a man's son away from him--a
man's own son, which he has had all the trouble and all the anxiety
and all the expense of raising.  Yes, just as that man has got that
son raised at last, and ready to go to work and begin to do suthin' for
_him_ and give him a rest, the law up and goes for him.  And they call
_that_ govment!  That ain't all, nuther.  The law backs that old Judge
Thatcher up and helps him to keep me out o' my property.  Here's what
the law does:  The law takes a man worth six thousand dollars and
up'ards, and jams him into an old trap of a cabin like this, and lets
him go round in clothes that ain't fitten for a hog. They call that
govment!  A man can't get his rights in a govment like this. Sometimes
I've a mighty notion to just leave the country for good and all. Yes,
and I _told_ 'em so; I told old Thatcher so to his face.  Lots of 'em
heard me, and can tell what I said.  Says I, for two cents I'd leave the
blamed country and never come a-near it agin.  Them's the very words.  I
says look at my hat--if you call it a hat--but the lid raises up and the
rest of it goes down till it's below my chin, and then it ain't rightly
a hat at all, but more like my head was shoved up through a jint o'
stove-pipe.  Look at it, says I--such a hat for me to wear--one of the
wealthiest men in this town if I could git my rights.

“Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful.  Why, looky here.
There was a free nigger there from Ohio--a mulatter, most as white as
a white man.  He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the
shiniest hat; and there ain't a man in that town that's got as fine
clothes as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a
silver-headed cane--the awfulest old gray-headed nabob in the State.  And
what do you think?  They said he was a p'fessor in a college, and could
talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything.  And that ain't the
wust. They said he could _vote_ when he was at home.  Well, that let me
out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to?  It was 'lection day,
and I was just about to go and vote myself if I warn't too drunk to get
there; but when they told me there was a State in this country where
they'd let that nigger vote, I drawed out.  I says I'll never vote agin.
 Them's the very words I said; they all heard me; and the country may
rot for all me--I'll never vote agin as long as I live.  And to see the
cool way of that nigger--why, he wouldn't a give me the road if I hadn't
shoved him out o' the way.  I says to the people, why ain't this nigger
put up at auction and sold?--that's what I want to know.  And what do you
reckon they said? Why, they said he couldn't be sold till he'd been in
the State six months, and he hadn't been there that long yet.  There,
now--that's a specimen.  They call that a govment that can't sell a free
nigger till he's been in the State six months.  Here's a govment that
calls itself a govment, and lets on to be a govment, and thinks it is a
govment, and yet's got to set stock-still for six whole months before
it can take a hold of a prowling, thieving, infernal, white-shirted free
nigger, and--”

Pap was agoing on so he never noticed where his old limber legs was
taking him to, so he went head over heels over the tub of salt pork and
barked both shins, and the rest of his speech was all the hottest kind
of language--mostly hove at the nigger and the govment, though he give
the tub some, too, all along, here and there.  He hopped around the
cabin considerable, first on one leg and then on the other, holding
first one shin and then the other one, and at last he let out with his
left foot all of a sudden and fetched the tub a rattling kick.  But it
warn't good judgment, because that was the boot that had a couple of his
toes leaking out of the front end of it; so now he raised a howl that
fairly made a body's hair raise, and down he went in the dirt, and
rolled there, and held his toes; and the cussing he done then laid over
anything he had ever done previous.  He said so his own self afterwards.
 He had heard old Sowberry Hagan in his best days, and he said it laid
over him, too; but I reckon that was sort of piling it on, maybe.

After supper pap took the jug, and said he had enough whisky there
for two drunks and one delirium tremens.  That was always his word.  I
judged he would be blind drunk in about an hour, and then I would steal
the key, or saw myself out, one or t'other.  He drank and drank, and
tumbled down on his blankets by and by; but luck didn't run my way.
 He didn't go sound asleep, but was uneasy.  He groaned and moaned and
thrashed around this way and that for a long time.  At last I got so
sleepy I couldn't keep my eyes open all I could do, and so before I
knowed what I was about I was sound asleep, and the candle burning.

I don't know how long I was asleep, but all of a sudden there was an
awful scream and I was up.  There was pap looking wild, and skipping
around every which way and yelling about snakes.  He said they was
crawling up his legs; and then he would give a jump and scream, and say
one had bit him on the cheek--but I couldn't see no snakes.  He started
and run round and round the cabin, hollering “Take him off! take him
off! he's biting me on the neck!”  I never see a man look so wild in the
eyes. Pretty soon he was all fagged out, and fell down panting; then he
rolled over and over wonderful fast, kicking things every which way,
and striking and grabbing at the air with his hands, and screaming and
saying there was devils a-hold of him.  He wore out by and by, and laid
still a while, moaning.  Then he laid stiller, and didn't make a sound.
 I could hear the owls and the wolves away off in the woods, and it
seemed terrible still.  He was laying over by the corner. By and by he
raised up part way and listened, with his head to one side.  He says,
very low:

“Tramp--tramp--tramp; that's the dead; tramp--tramp--tramp; they're coming
after me; but I won't go.  Oh, they're here! don't touch me--don't! hands
off--they're cold; let go.  Oh, let a poor devil alone!”

Then he went down on all fours and crawled off, begging them to let him
alone, and he rolled himself up in his blanket and wallowed in under the
old pine table, still a-begging; and then he went to crying.  I could
hear him through the blanket.

By and by he rolled out and jumped up on his feet looking wild, and he
see me and went for me.  He chased me round and round the place with a
clasp-knife, calling me the Angel of Death, and saying he would kill me,
and then I couldn't come for him no more.  I begged, and told him I
was only Huck; but he laughed _such_ a screechy laugh, and roared and
cussed, and kept on chasing me up.  Once when I turned short and
dodged under his arm he made a grab and got me by the jacket between my
shoulders, and I thought I was gone; but I slid out of the jacket quick
as lightning, and saved myself. Pretty soon he was all tired out, and
dropped down with his back against the door, and said he would rest a
minute and then kill me. He put his knife under him, and said he would
sleep and get strong, and then he would see who was who.

So he dozed off pretty soon.  By and by I got the old split-bottom chair
and clumb up as easy as I could, not to make any noise, and got down the
gun.  I slipped the ramrod down it to make sure it was loaded, then I
laid it across the turnip barrel, pointing towards pap, and set down
behind it to wait for him to stir.  And how slow and still the time did
drag along.




CHAPTER VII.

“GIT up!  What you 'bout?”

I opened my eyes and looked around, trying to make out where I was.  It
was after sun-up, and I had been sound asleep.  Pap was standing over me
looking sour and sick, too.  He says:

“What you doin' with this gun?”

I judged he didn't know nothing about what he had been doing, so I says:

“Somebody tried to get in, so I was laying for him.”

“Why didn't you roust me out?”

“Well, I tried to, but I couldn't; I couldn't budge you.”

“Well, all right.  Don't stand there palavering all day, but out with
you and see if there's a fish on the lines for breakfast.  I'll be along
in a minute.”

He unlocked the door, and I cleared out up the river-bank.  I noticed
some pieces of limbs and such things floating down, and a sprinkling of
bark; so I knowed the river had begun to rise.  I reckoned I would have
great times now if I was over at the town.  The June rise used to be
always luck for me; because as soon as that rise begins here comes
cordwood floating down, and pieces of log rafts--sometimes a dozen logs
together; so all you have to do is to catch them and sell them to the
wood-yards and the sawmill.

I went along up the bank with one eye out for pap and t'other one out
for what the rise might fetch along.  Well, all at once here comes a
canoe; just a beauty, too, about thirteen or fourteen foot long, riding
high like a duck.  I shot head-first off of the bank like a frog,
clothes and all on, and struck out for the canoe.  I just expected
there'd be somebody laying down in it, because people often done that
to fool folks, and when a chap had pulled a skiff out most to it they'd
raise up and laugh at him.  But it warn't so this time.  It was a
drift-canoe sure enough, and I clumb in and paddled her ashore.  Thinks
I, the old man will be glad when he sees this--she's worth ten dollars.
 But when I got to shore pap wasn't in sight yet, and as I was running
her into a little creek like a gully, all hung over with vines and
willows, I struck another idea:  I judged I'd hide her good, and then,
'stead of taking to the woods when I run off, I'd go down the river
about fifty mile and camp in one place for good, and not have such a
rough time tramping on foot.

It was pretty close to the shanty, and I thought I heard the old man
coming all the time; but I got her hid; and then I out and looked around
a bunch of willows, and there was the old man down the path a piece just
drawing a bead on a bird with his gun.  So he hadn't seen anything.

When he got along I was hard at it taking up a “trot” line.  He abused
me a little for being so slow; but I told him I fell in the river, and
that was what made me so long.  I knowed he would see I was wet, and
then he would be asking questions.  We got five catfish off the lines
and went home.

While we laid off after breakfast to sleep up, both of us being about
wore out, I got to thinking that if I could fix up some way to keep pap
and the widow from trying to follow me, it would be a certainer thing
than trusting to luck to get far enough off before they missed me; you
see, all kinds of things might happen.  Well, I didn't see no way for a
while, but by and by pap raised up a minute to drink another barrel of
water, and he says:

“Another time a man comes a-prowling round here you roust me out, you
hear? That man warn't here for no good.  I'd a shot him.  Next time you
roust me out, you hear?”

Then he dropped down and went to sleep again; but what he had been
saying give me the very idea I wanted.  I says to myself, I can fix it
now so nobody won't think of following me.

About twelve o'clock we turned out and went along up the bank.  The
river was coming up pretty fast, and lots of driftwood going by on the
rise. By and by along comes part of a log raft--nine logs fast together.
 We went out with the skiff and towed it ashore.  Then we had dinner.
Anybody but pap would a waited and seen the day through, so as to catch
more stuff; but that warn't pap's style.  Nine logs was enough for one
time; he must shove right over to town and sell.  So he locked me in and
took the skiff, and started off towing the raft about half-past three.
 I judged he wouldn't come back that night.  I waited till I reckoned he
had got a good start; then I out with my saw, and went to work on that
log again.  Before he was t'other side of the river I was out of the
hole; him and his raft was just a speck on the water away off yonder.

I took the sack of corn meal and took it to where the canoe was hid, and
shoved the vines and branches apart and put it in; then I done the same
with the side of bacon; then the whisky-jug.  I took all the coffee and
sugar there was, and all the ammunition; I took the wadding; I took the
bucket and gourd; I took a dipper and a tin cup, and my old saw and two
blankets, and the skillet and the coffee-pot.  I took fish-lines and
matches and other things--everything that was worth a cent.  I cleaned
out the place.  I wanted an axe, but there wasn't any, only the one out
at the woodpile, and I knowed why I was going to leave that.  I fetched
out the gun, and now I was done.

I had wore the ground a good deal crawling out of the hole and dragging
out so many things.  So I fixed that as good as I could from the outside
by scattering dust on the place, which covered up the smoothness and the
sawdust.  Then I fixed the piece of log back into its place, and put two
rocks under it and one against it to hold it there, for it was bent up
at that place and didn't quite touch ground.  If you stood four or five
foot away and didn't know it was sawed, you wouldn't never notice
it; and besides, this was the back of the cabin, and it warn't likely
anybody would go fooling around there.

It was all grass clear to the canoe, so I hadn't left a track.  I
followed around to see.  I stood on the bank and looked out over the
river.  All safe.  So I took the gun and went up a piece into the woods,
and was hunting around for some birds when I see a wild pig; hogs soon
went wild in them bottoms after they had got away from the prairie
farms. I shot this fellow and took him into camp.

I took the axe and smashed in the door.  I beat it and hacked it
considerable a-doing it.  I fetched the pig in, and took him back nearly
to the table and hacked into his throat with the axe, and laid him down
on the ground to bleed; I say ground because it was ground--hard packed,
and no boards.  Well, next I took an old sack and put a lot of big rocks
in it--all I could drag--and I started it from the pig, and dragged it to
the door and through the woods down to the river and dumped it in, and
down it sunk, out of sight.  You could easy see that something had been
dragged over the ground.  I did wish Tom Sawyer was there; I knowed he
would take an interest in this kind of business, and throw in the fancy
touches.  Nobody could spread himself like Tom Sawyer in such a thing as
that.

Well, last I pulled out some of my hair, and blooded the axe good, and
stuck it on the back side, and slung the axe in the corner.  Then I
took up the pig and held him to my breast with my jacket (so he couldn't
drip) till I got a good piece below the house and then dumped him into
the river.  Now I thought of something else.  So I went and got the bag
of meal and my old saw out of the canoe, and fetched them to the house.
 I took the bag to where it used to stand, and ripped a hole in the
bottom of it with the saw, for there warn't no knives and forks on the
place--pap done everything with his clasp-knife about the cooking.  Then
I carried the sack about a hundred yards across the grass and through
the willows east of the house, to a shallow lake that was five mile wide
and full of rushes--and ducks too, you might say, in the season.  There
was a slough or a creek leading out of it on the other side that went
miles away, I don't know where, but it didn't go to the river.  The meal
sifted out and made a little track all the way to the lake.  I dropped
pap's whetstone there too, so as to look like it had been done by
accident. Then I tied up the rip in the meal sack with a string, so it
wouldn't leak no more, and took it and my saw to the canoe again.

It was about dark now; so I dropped the canoe down the river under some
willows that hung over the bank, and waited for the moon to rise.  I
made fast to a willow; then I took a bite to eat, and by and by laid
down in the canoe to smoke a pipe and lay out a plan.  I says to myself,
they'll follow the track of that sackful of rocks to the shore and then
drag the river for me.  And they'll follow that meal track to the lake
and go browsing down the creek that leads out of it to find the robbers
that killed me and took the things.  They won't ever hunt the river for
anything but my dead carcass. They'll soon get tired of that, and won't
bother no more about me.  All right; I can stop anywhere I want to.
Jackson's Island is good enough for me; I know that island pretty well,
and nobody ever comes there.  And then I can paddle over to town nights,
and slink around and pick up things I want. Jackson's Island's the
place.

I was pretty tired, and the first thing I knowed I was asleep.  When
I woke up I didn't know where I was for a minute.  I set up and looked
around, a little scared.  Then I remembered.  The river looked miles and
miles across.  The moon was so bright I could a counted the drift logs
that went a-slipping along, black and still, hundreds of yards out from
shore. Everything was dead quiet, and it looked late, and _smelt_ late.
You know what I mean--I don't know the words to put it in.

I took a good gap and a stretch, and was just going to unhitch and start
when I heard a sound away over the water.  I listened.  Pretty soon I
made it out.  It was that dull kind of a regular sound that comes from
oars working in rowlocks when it's a still night.  I peeped out through
the willow branches, and there it was--a skiff, away across the water.
 I couldn't tell how many was in it.  It kept a-coming, and when it was
abreast of me I see there warn't but one man in it.  Think's I, maybe
it's pap, though I warn't expecting him.  He dropped below me with the
current, and by and by he came a-swinging up shore in the easy water,
and he went by so close I could a reached out the gun and touched him.
 Well, it _was_ pap, sure enough--and sober, too, by the way he laid his
oars.

I didn't lose no time.  The next minute I was a-spinning down stream
soft but quick in the shade of the bank.  I made two mile and a half,
and then struck out a quarter of a mile or more towards the middle of
the river, because pretty soon I would be passing the ferry landing, and
people might see me and hail me.  I got out amongst the driftwood, and
then laid down in the bottom of the canoe and let her float.

 I laid there, and had a good rest and a smoke out of my pipe, looking
away into the sky; not a cloud in it.  The sky looks ever so deep when
you lay down on your back in the moonshine; I never knowed it before.
 And how far a body can hear on the water such nights!  I heard people
talking at the ferry landing. I heard what they said, too--every word
of it.  One man said it was getting towards the long days and the short
nights now.  T'other one said _this_ warn't one of the short ones, he
reckoned--and then they laughed, and he said it over again, and they
laughed again; then they waked up another fellow and told him, and
laughed, but he didn't laugh; he ripped out something brisk, and said
let him alone.  The first fellow said he 'lowed to tell it to his
old woman--she would think it was pretty good; but he said that warn't
nothing to some things he had said in his time. I heard one man say it
was nearly three o'clock, and he hoped daylight wouldn't wait more than
about a week longer.  After that the talk got further and further away,
and I couldn't make out the words any more; but I could hear the mumble,
and now and then a laugh, too, but it seemed a long ways off.

I was away below the ferry now.  I rose up, and there was Jackson's
Island, about two mile and a half down stream, heavy timbered and
standing up out of the middle of the river, big and dark and solid, like
a steamboat without any lights.  There warn't any signs of the bar at
the head--it was all under water now.

It didn't take me long to get there.  I shot past the head at a ripping
rate, the current was so swift, and then I got into the dead water and
landed on the side towards the Illinois shore.  I run the canoe into
a deep dent in the bank that I knowed about; I had to part the willow
branches to get in; and when I made fast nobody could a seen the canoe
from the outside.

I went up and set down on a log at the head of the island, and looked
out on the big river and the black driftwood and away over to the town,
three mile away, where there was three or four lights twinkling.  A
monstrous big lumber-raft was about a mile up stream, coming along down,
with a lantern in the middle of it.  I watched it come creeping down,
and when it was most abreast of where I stood I heard a man say, “Stern
oars, there! heave her head to stabboard!”  I heard that just as plain
as if the man was by my side.

There was a little gray in the sky now; so I stepped into the woods, and
laid down for a nap before breakfast.




CHAPTER VIII.

THE sun was up so high when I waked that I judged it was after eight
o'clock.  I laid there in the grass and the cool shade thinking about
things, and feeling rested and ruther comfortable and satisfied.  I
could see the sun out at one or two holes, but mostly it was big trees
all about, and gloomy in there amongst them.  There was freckled places
on the ground where the light sifted down through the leaves, and the
freckled places swapped about a little, showing there was a little
breeze up there.  A couple of squirrels set on a limb and jabbered at me
very friendly.

I was powerful lazy and comfortable--didn't want to get up and cook
breakfast.  Well, I was dozing off again when I thinks I hears a deep
sound of “boom!” away up the river.  I rouses up, and rests on my elbow
and listens; pretty soon I hears it again.  I hopped up, and went and
looked out at a hole in the leaves, and I see a bunch of smoke laying
on the water a long ways up--about abreast the ferry.  And there was the
ferryboat full of people floating along down.  I knowed what was the
matter now.  “Boom!” I see the white smoke squirt out of the ferryboat's
side.  You see, they was firing cannon over the water, trying to make my
carcass come to the top.

I was pretty hungry, but it warn't going to do for me to start a fire,
because they might see the smoke.  So I set there and watched the
cannon-smoke and listened to the boom.  The river was a mile wide there,
and it always looks pretty on a summer morning--so I was having a good
enough time seeing them hunt for my remainders if I only had a bite to
eat. Well, then I happened to think how they always put quicksilver in
loaves of bread and float them off, because they always go right to the
drownded carcass and stop there.  So, says I, I'll keep a lookout, and
if any of them's floating around after me I'll give them a show.  I
changed to the Illinois edge of the island to see what luck I could
have, and I warn't disappointed.  A big double loaf come along, and I
most got it with a long stick, but my foot slipped and she floated out
further.  Of course I was where the current set in the closest to the
shore--I knowed enough for that.  But by and by along comes another one,
and this time I won.  I took out the plug and shook out the little dab
of quicksilver, and set my teeth in.  It was “baker's bread”--what the
quality eat; none of your low-down corn-pone.

I got a good place amongst the leaves, and set there on a log, munching
the bread and watching the ferry-boat, and very well satisfied.  And
then something struck me.  I says, now I reckon the widow or the parson
or somebody prayed that this bread would find me, and here it has gone
and done it.  So there ain't no doubt but there is something in that
thing--that is, there's something in it when a body like the widow or the
parson prays, but it don't work for me, and I reckon it don't work for
only just the right kind.

I lit a pipe and had a good long smoke, and went on watching.  The
ferryboat was floating with the current, and I allowed I'd have a chance
to see who was aboard when she come along, because she would come in
close, where the bread did.  When she'd got pretty well along down
towards me, I put out my pipe and went to where I fished out the bread,
and laid down behind a log on the bank in a little open place.  Where
the log forked I could peep through.

By and by she come along, and she drifted in so close that they could
a run out a plank and walked ashore.  Most everybody was on the boat.
 Pap, and Judge Thatcher, and Bessie Thatcher, and Jo Harper, and Tom
Sawyer, and his old Aunt Polly, and Sid and Mary, and plenty more.
 Everybody was talking about the murder, but the captain broke in and
says:

“Look sharp, now; the current sets in the closest here, and maybe he's
washed ashore and got tangled amongst the brush at the water's edge.  I
hope so, anyway.”

I didn't hope so.  They all crowded up and leaned over the rails, nearly
in my face, and kept still, watching with all their might.  I could see
them first-rate, but they couldn't see me.  Then the captain sung out:

“Stand away!” and the cannon let off such a blast right before me that
it made me deef with the noise and pretty near blind with the smoke, and
I judged I was gone.  If they'd a had some bullets in, I reckon they'd
a got the corpse they was after.  Well, I see I warn't hurt, thanks to
goodness. The boat floated on and went out of sight around the shoulder
of the island.  I could hear the booming now and then, further and
further off, and by and by, after an hour, I didn't hear it no more.
 The island was three mile long.  I judged they had got to the foot, and
was giving it up.  But they didn't yet a while.  They turned around
the foot of the island and started up the channel on the Missouri side,
under steam, and booming once in a while as they went.  I crossed over
to that side and watched them. When they got abreast the head of the
island they quit shooting and dropped over to the Missouri shore and
went home to the town.

I knowed I was all right now.  Nobody else would come a-hunting after
me. I got my traps out of the canoe and made me a nice camp in the thick
woods.  I made a kind of a tent out of my blankets to put my things
under so the rain couldn't get at them.  I catched a catfish and haggled
him open with my saw, and towards sundown I started my camp fire and had
supper.  Then I set out a line to catch some fish for breakfast.

When it was dark I set by my camp fire smoking, and feeling pretty well
satisfied; but by and by it got sort of lonesome, and so I went and set
on the bank and listened to the current swashing along, and counted the
stars and drift logs and rafts that come down, and then went to bed;
there ain't no better way to put in time when you are lonesome; you
can't stay so, you soon get over it.

And so for three days and nights.  No difference--just the same thing.
But the next day I went exploring around down through the island.  I was
boss of it; it all belonged to me, so to say, and I wanted to know
all about it; but mainly I wanted to put in the time.  I found plenty
strawberries, ripe and prime; and green summer grapes, and green
razberries; and the green blackberries was just beginning to show.  They
would all come handy by and by, I judged.

Well, I went fooling along in the deep woods till I judged I warn't
far from the foot of the island.  I had my gun along, but I hadn't shot
nothing; it was for protection; thought I would kill some game nigh
home. About this time I mighty near stepped on a good-sized snake,
and it went sliding off through the grass and flowers, and I after
it, trying to get a shot at it. I clipped along, and all of a sudden I
bounded right on to the ashes of a camp fire that was still smoking.

My heart jumped up amongst my lungs.  I never waited for to look
further, but uncocked my gun and went sneaking back on my tiptoes as
fast as ever I could.  Every now and then I stopped a second amongst the
thick leaves and listened, but my breath come so hard I couldn't hear
nothing else.  I slunk along another piece further, then listened again;
and so on, and so on.  If I see a stump, I took it for a man; if I trod
on a stick and broke it, it made me feel like a person had cut one of my
breaths in two and I only got half, and the short half, too.

When I got to camp I warn't feeling very brash, there warn't much sand
in my craw; but I says, this ain't no time to be fooling around.  So I
got all my traps into my canoe again so as to have them out of sight,
and I put out the fire and scattered the ashes around to look like an
old last year's camp, and then clumb a tree.

I reckon I was up in the tree two hours; but I didn't see nothing,
I didn't hear nothing--I only _thought_ I heard and seen as much as a
thousand things.  Well, I couldn't stay up there forever; so at last I
got down, but I kept in the thick woods and on the lookout all the
time. All I could get to eat was berries and what was left over from
breakfast.

By the time it was night I was pretty hungry.  So when it was good
and dark I slid out from shore before moonrise and paddled over to the
Illinois bank--about a quarter of a mile.  I went out in the woods and
cooked a supper, and I had about made up my mind I would stay there
all night when I hear a _plunkety-plunk, plunkety-plunk_, and says
to myself, horses coming; and next I hear people's voices.  I got
everything into the canoe as quick as I could, and then went creeping
through the woods to see what I could find out.  I hadn't got far when I
hear a man say:

“We better camp here if we can find a good place; the horses is about
beat out.  Let's look around.”

I didn't wait, but shoved out and paddled away easy.  I tied up in the
old place, and reckoned I would sleep in the canoe.

I didn't sleep much.  I couldn't, somehow, for thinking.  And every time
I waked up I thought somebody had me by the neck.  So the sleep didn't
do me no good.  By and by I says to myself, I can't live this way; I'm
a-going to find out who it is that's here on the island with me; I'll
find it out or bust.  Well, I felt better right off.

So I took my paddle and slid out from shore just a step or two, and
then let the canoe drop along down amongst the shadows.  The moon was
shining, and outside of the shadows it made it most as light as day.
 I poked along well on to an hour, everything still as rocks and sound
asleep. Well, by this time I was most down to the foot of the island.  A
little ripply, cool breeze begun to blow, and that was as good as saying
the night was about done.  I give her a turn with the paddle and brung
her nose to shore; then I got my gun and slipped out and into the edge
of the woods.  I sat down there on a log, and looked out through the
leaves.  I see the moon go off watch, and the darkness begin to blanket
the river. But in a little while I see a pale streak over the treetops,
and knowed the day was coming.  So I took my gun and slipped off towards
where I had run across that camp fire, stopping every minute or two
to listen.  But I hadn't no luck somehow; I couldn't seem to find the
place.  But by and by, sure enough, I catched a glimpse of fire away
through the trees.  I went for it, cautious and slow.  By and by I was
close enough to have a look, and there laid a man on the ground.  It
most give me the fan-tods. He had a blanket around his head, and his
head was nearly in the fire.  I set there behind a clump of bushes, in
about six foot of him, and kept my eyes on him steady.  It was getting
gray daylight now.  Pretty soon he gapped and stretched himself and hove
off the blanket, and it was Miss Watson's Jim!  I bet I was glad to see
him.  I says:

“Hello, Jim!” and skipped out.

He bounced up and stared at me wild.  Then he drops down on his knees,
and puts his hands together and says:

“Doan' hurt me--don't!  I hain't ever done no harm to a ghos'.  I alwuz
liked dead people, en done all I could for 'em.  You go en git in de
river agin, whah you b'longs, en doan' do nuffn to Ole Jim, 'at 'uz
awluz yo' fren'.”

Well, I warn't long making him understand I warn't dead.  I was ever so
glad to see Jim.  I warn't lonesome now.  I told him I warn't afraid of
_him_ telling the people where I was.  I talked along, but he only set
there and looked at me; never said nothing.  Then I says:

“It's good daylight.  Le's get breakfast.  Make up your camp fire good.”

“What's de use er makin' up de camp fire to cook strawbries en sich
truck? But you got a gun, hain't you?  Den we kin git sumfn better den
strawbries.”

“Strawberries and such truck,” I says.  “Is that what you live on?”

“I couldn' git nuffn else,” he says.

“Why, how long you been on the island, Jim?”

“I come heah de night arter you's killed.”

“What, all that time?”

“Yes--indeedy.”

“And ain't you had nothing but that kind of rubbage to eat?”

“No, sah--nuffn else.”

“Well, you must be most starved, ain't you?”

“I reck'n I could eat a hoss.  I think I could. How long you ben on de
islan'?”

“Since the night I got killed.”

“No!  W'y, what has you lived on?  But you got a gun.  Oh, yes, you got
a gun.  Dat's good.  Now you kill sumfn en I'll make up de fire.”

So we went over to where the canoe was, and while he built a fire in
a grassy open place amongst the trees, I fetched meal and bacon and
coffee, and coffee-pot and frying-pan, and sugar and tin cups, and the
nigger was set back considerable, because he reckoned it was all done
with witchcraft. I catched a good big catfish, too, and Jim cleaned him
with his knife, and fried him.

When breakfast was ready we lolled on the grass and eat it smoking hot.
Jim laid it in with all his might, for he was most about starved.  Then
when we had got pretty well stuffed, we laid off and lazied.  By and by
Jim says:

“But looky here, Huck, who wuz it dat 'uz killed in dat shanty ef it
warn't you?”

Then I told him the whole thing, and he said it was smart.  He said Tom
Sawyer couldn't get up no better plan than what I had.  Then I says:

“How do you come to be here, Jim, and how'd you get here?”

He looked pretty uneasy, and didn't say nothing for a minute.  Then he
says:

“Maybe I better not tell.”

“Why, Jim?”

“Well, dey's reasons.  But you wouldn' tell on me ef I uz to tell you,
would you, Huck?”

“Blamed if I would, Jim.”

“Well, I b'lieve you, Huck.  I--_I run off_.”

“Jim!”

“But mind, you said you wouldn' tell--you know you said you wouldn' tell,
Huck.”

“Well, I did.  I said I wouldn't, and I'll stick to it.  Honest _injun_,
I will.  People would call me a low-down Abolitionist and despise me for
keeping mum--but that don't make no difference.  I ain't a-going to tell,
and I ain't a-going back there, anyways.  So, now, le's know all about
it.”

“Well, you see, it 'uz dis way.  Ole missus--dat's Miss Watson--she pecks
on me all de time, en treats me pooty rough, but she awluz said she
wouldn' sell me down to Orleans.  But I noticed dey wuz a nigger trader
roun' de place considable lately, en I begin to git oneasy.  Well, one
night I creeps to de do' pooty late, en de do' warn't quite shet, en I
hear old missus tell de widder she gwyne to sell me down to Orleans, but
she didn' want to, but she could git eight hund'd dollars for me, en it
'uz sich a big stack o' money she couldn' resis'.  De widder she try to
git her to say she wouldn' do it, but I never waited to hear de res'.  I
lit out mighty quick, I tell you.

“I tuck out en shin down de hill, en 'spec to steal a skift 'long de
sho' som'ers 'bove de town, but dey wuz people a-stirring yit, so I hid
in de ole tumble-down cooper-shop on de bank to wait for everybody to
go 'way. Well, I wuz dah all night.  Dey wuz somebody roun' all de time.
 'Long 'bout six in de mawnin' skifts begin to go by, en 'bout eight er
nine every skift dat went 'long wuz talkin' 'bout how yo' pap come over
to de town en say you's killed.  Dese las' skifts wuz full o' ladies en
genlmen a-goin' over for to see de place.  Sometimes dey'd pull up at
de sho' en take a res' b'fo' dey started acrost, so by de talk I got to
know all 'bout de killin'.  I 'uz powerful sorry you's killed, Huck, but
I ain't no mo' now.

“I laid dah under de shavin's all day.  I 'uz hungry, but I warn't
afeard; bekase I knowed ole missus en de widder wuz goin' to start to
de camp-meet'n' right arter breakfas' en be gone all day, en dey knows
I goes off wid de cattle 'bout daylight, so dey wouldn' 'spec to see me
roun' de place, en so dey wouldn' miss me tell arter dark in de evenin'.
De yuther servants wouldn' miss me, kase dey'd shin out en take holiday
soon as de ole folks 'uz out'n de way.

“Well, when it come dark I tuck out up de river road, en went 'bout two
mile er more to whah dey warn't no houses.  I'd made up my mine 'bout
what I's agwyne to do.  You see, ef I kep' on tryin' to git away afoot,
de dogs 'ud track me; ef I stole a skift to cross over, dey'd miss dat
skift, you see, en dey'd know 'bout whah I'd lan' on de yuther side, en
whah to pick up my track.  So I says, a raff is what I's arter; it doan'
_make_ no track.

“I see a light a-comin' roun' de p'int bymeby, so I wade' in en shove'
a log ahead o' me en swum more'n half way acrost de river, en got in
'mongst de drift-wood, en kep' my head down low, en kinder swum agin de
current tell de raff come along.  Den I swum to de stern uv it en tuck
a-holt.  It clouded up en 'uz pooty dark for a little while.  So I clumb
up en laid down on de planks.  De men 'uz all 'way yonder in de middle,
whah de lantern wuz.  De river wuz a-risin', en dey wuz a good current;
so I reck'n'd 'at by fo' in de mawnin' I'd be twenty-five mile down de
river, en den I'd slip in jis b'fo' daylight en swim asho', en take to
de woods on de Illinois side.

“But I didn' have no luck.  When we 'uz mos' down to de head er de
islan' a man begin to come aft wid de lantern, I see it warn't no use
fer to wait, so I slid overboard en struck out fer de islan'.  Well, I
had a notion I could lan' mos' anywhers, but I couldn't--bank too bluff.
 I 'uz mos' to de foot er de islan' b'fo' I found' a good place.  I went
into de woods en jedged I wouldn' fool wid raffs no mo', long as dey
move de lantern roun' so.  I had my pipe en a plug er dog-leg, en some
matches in my cap, en dey warn't wet, so I 'uz all right.”

“And so you ain't had no meat nor bread to eat all this time?  Why
didn't you get mud-turkles?”

“How you gwyne to git 'm?  You can't slip up on um en grab um; en how's
a body gwyne to hit um wid a rock?  How could a body do it in de night?
 En I warn't gwyne to show mysef on de bank in de daytime.”

“Well, that's so.  You've had to keep in the woods all the time, of
course. Did you hear 'em shooting the cannon?”

“Oh, yes.  I knowed dey was arter you.  I see um go by heah--watched um
thoo de bushes.”

Some young birds come along, flying a yard or two at a time and
lighting. Jim said it was a sign it was going to rain.  He said it was
a sign when young chickens flew that way, and so he reckoned it was the
same way when young birds done it.  I was going to catch some of them,
but Jim wouldn't let me.  He said it was death.  He said his father laid
mighty sick once, and some of them catched a bird, and his old granny
said his father would die, and he did.

And Jim said you mustn't count the things you are going to cook for
dinner, because that would bring bad luck.  The same if you shook the
table-cloth after sundown.  And he said if a man owned a beehive
and that man died, the bees must be told about it before sun-up next
morning, or else the bees would all weaken down and quit work and die.
 Jim said bees wouldn't sting idiots; but I didn't believe that, because
I had tried them lots of times myself, and they wouldn't sting me.

I had heard about some of these things before, but not all of them.  Jim
knowed all kinds of signs.  He said he knowed most everything.  I said
it looked to me like all the signs was about bad luck, and so I asked
him if there warn't any good-luck signs.  He says:

“Mighty few--an' _dey_ ain't no use to a body.  What you want to know
when good luck's a-comin' for?  Want to keep it off?”  And he said:  “Ef
you's got hairy arms en a hairy breas', it's a sign dat you's agwyne
to be rich. Well, dey's some use in a sign like dat, 'kase it's so fur
ahead. You see, maybe you's got to be po' a long time fust, en so you
might git discourage' en kill yo'sef 'f you didn' know by de sign dat
you gwyne to be rich bymeby.”

“Have you got hairy arms and a hairy breast, Jim?”

“What's de use to ax dat question?  Don't you see I has?”

“Well, are you rich?”

“No, but I ben rich wunst, and gwyne to be rich agin.  Wunst I had
foteen dollars, but I tuck to specalat'n', en got busted out.”

“What did you speculate in, Jim?”

“Well, fust I tackled stock.”

“What kind of stock?”

“Why, live stock--cattle, you know.  I put ten dollars in a cow.  But
I ain' gwyne to resk no mo' money in stock.  De cow up 'n' died on my
han's.”

“So you lost the ten dollars.”

“No, I didn't lose it all.  I on'y los' 'bout nine of it.  I sole de
hide en taller for a dollar en ten cents.”

“You had five dollars and ten cents left.  Did you speculate any more?”

“Yes.  You know that one-laigged nigger dat b'longs to old Misto
Bradish? Well, he sot up a bank, en say anybody dat put in a dollar
would git fo' dollars mo' at de en' er de year.  Well, all de niggers
went in, but dey didn't have much.  I wuz de on'y one dat had much.  So
I stuck out for mo' dan fo' dollars, en I said 'f I didn' git it I'd
start a bank mysef. Well, o' course dat nigger want' to keep me out er
de business, bekase he says dey warn't business 'nough for two banks, so
he say I could put in my five dollars en he pay me thirty-five at de en'
er de year.

“So I done it.  Den I reck'n'd I'd inves' de thirty-five dollars right
off en keep things a-movin'.  Dey wuz a nigger name' Bob, dat had
ketched a wood-flat, en his marster didn' know it; en I bought it off'n
him en told him to take de thirty-five dollars when de en' er de
year come; but somebody stole de wood-flat dat night, en nex day de
one-laigged nigger say de bank's busted.  So dey didn' none uv us git no
money.”

“What did you do with the ten cents, Jim?”

“Well, I 'uz gwyne to spen' it, but I had a dream, en de dream tole me
to give it to a nigger name' Balum--Balum's Ass dey call him for short;
he's one er dem chuckleheads, you know.  But he's lucky, dey say, en I
see I warn't lucky.  De dream say let Balum inves' de ten cents en he'd
make a raise for me.  Well, Balum he tuck de money, en when he wuz in
church he hear de preacher say dat whoever give to de po' len' to de
Lord, en boun' to git his money back a hund'd times.  So Balum he tuck
en give de ten cents to de po', en laid low to see what wuz gwyne to
come of it.”

“Well, what did come of it, Jim?”

“Nuffn never come of it.  I couldn' manage to k'leck dat money no way;
en Balum he couldn'.  I ain' gwyne to len' no mo' money 'dout I see de
security.  Boun' to git yo' money back a hund'd times, de preacher says!
Ef I could git de ten _cents_ back, I'd call it squah, en be glad er de
chanst.”

“Well, it's all right anyway, Jim, long as you're going to be rich again
some time or other.”

“Yes; en I's rich now, come to look at it.  I owns mysef, en I's wuth
eight hund'd dollars.  I wisht I had de money, I wouldn' want no mo'.”




CHAPTER IX.

I wanted to go and look at a place right about the middle of the island
that I'd found when I was exploring; so we started and soon got to it,
because the island was only three miles long and a quarter of a mile
wide.

This place was a tolerable long, steep hill or ridge about forty foot
high. We had a rough time getting to the top, the sides was so steep and
the bushes so thick.  We tramped and clumb around all over it, and by
and by found a good big cavern in the rock, most up to the top on the
side towards Illinois.  The cavern was as big as two or three rooms
bunched together, and Jim could stand up straight in it.  It was cool in
there. Jim was for putting our traps in there right away, but I said we
didn't want to be climbing up and down there all the time.

Jim said if we had the canoe hid in a good place, and had all the traps
in the cavern, we could rush there if anybody was to come to the island,
and they would never find us without dogs.  And, besides, he said them
little birds had said it was going to rain, and did I want the things to
get wet?

So we went back and got the canoe, and paddled up abreast the cavern,
and lugged all the traps up there.  Then we hunted up a place close by
to hide the canoe in, amongst the thick willows.  We took some fish off
of the lines and set them again, and begun to get ready for dinner.

The door of the cavern was big enough to roll a hogshead in, and on one
side of the door the floor stuck out a little bit, and was flat and a
good place to build a fire on.  So we built it there and cooked dinner.

We spread the blankets inside for a carpet, and eat our dinner in there.
We put all the other things handy at the back of the cavern.  Pretty
soon it darkened up, and begun to thunder and lighten; so the birds was
right about it.  Directly it begun to rain, and it rained like all fury,
too, and I never see the wind blow so.  It was one of these regular
summer storms.  It would get so dark that it looked all blue-black
outside, and lovely; and the rain would thrash along by so thick that
the trees off a little ways looked dim and spider-webby; and here would
come a blast of wind that would bend the trees down and turn up the
pale underside of the leaves; and then a perfect ripper of a gust would
follow along and set the branches to tossing their arms as if they
was just wild; and next, when it was just about the bluest and
blackest--_FST_! it was as bright as glory, and you'd have a little
glimpse of tree-tops a-plunging about away off yonder in the storm,
hundreds of yards further than you could see before; dark as sin again
in a second, and now you'd hear the thunder let go with an awful crash,
and then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling, down the sky towards the
under side of the world, like rolling empty barrels down stairs--where
it's long stairs and they bounce a good deal, you know.

“Jim, this is nice,” I says.  “I wouldn't want to be nowhere else but
here. Pass me along another hunk of fish and some hot corn-bread.”

“Well, you wouldn't a ben here 'f it hadn't a ben for Jim.  You'd a ben
down dah in de woods widout any dinner, en gittn' mos' drownded, too;
dat you would, honey.  Chickens knows when it's gwyne to rain, en so do
de birds, chile.”

The river went on raising and raising for ten or twelve days, till at
last it was over the banks.  The water was three or four foot deep on
the island in the low places and on the Illinois bottom.  On that side
it was a good many miles wide, but on the Missouri side it was the same
old distance across--a half a mile--because the Missouri shore was just a
wall of high bluffs.

Daytimes we paddled all over the island in the canoe, It was mighty cool
and shady in the deep woods, even if the sun was blazing outside.  We
went winding in and out amongst the trees, and sometimes the vines hung
so thick we had to back away and go some other way.  Well, on every old
broken-down tree you could see rabbits and snakes and such things; and
when the island had been overflowed a day or two they got so tame, on
account of being hungry, that you could paddle right up and put your
hand on them if you wanted to; but not the snakes and turtles--they would
slide off in the water.  The ridge our cavern was in was full of them.
We could a had pets enough if we'd wanted them.

One night we catched a little section of a lumber raft--nice pine planks.
It was twelve foot wide and about fifteen or sixteen foot long, and
the top stood above water six or seven inches--a solid, level floor.  We
could see saw-logs go by in the daylight sometimes, but we let them go;
we didn't show ourselves in daylight.

Another night when we was up at the head of the island, just before
daylight, here comes a frame-house down, on the west side.  She was
a two-story, and tilted over considerable.  We paddled out and got
aboard--clumb in at an upstairs window.  But it was too dark to see yet,
so we made the canoe fast and set in her to wait for daylight.

The light begun to come before we got to the foot of the island.  Then
we looked in at the window.  We could make out a bed, and a table, and
two old chairs, and lots of things around about on the floor, and there
was clothes hanging against the wall.  There was something laying on the
floor in the far corner that looked like a man.  So Jim says:

“Hello, you!”

But it didn't budge.  So I hollered again, and then Jim says:

“De man ain't asleep--he's dead.  You hold still--I'll go en see.”

He went, and bent down and looked, and says:

“It's a dead man.  Yes, indeedy; naked, too.  He's ben shot in de back.
I reck'n he's ben dead two er three days.  Come in, Huck, but doan' look
at his face--it's too gashly.”

I didn't look at him at all.  Jim throwed some old rags over him, but
he needn't done it; I didn't want to see him.  There was heaps of old
greasy cards scattered around over the floor, and old whisky bottles,
and a couple of masks made out of black cloth; and all over the walls
was the ignorantest kind of words and pictures made with charcoal.
 There was two old dirty calico dresses, and a sun-bonnet, and some
women's underclothes hanging against the wall, and some men's clothing,
too.  We put the lot into the canoe--it might come good.  There was a
boy's old speckled straw hat on the floor; I took that, too.  And there
was a bottle that had had milk in it, and it had a rag stopper for a
baby to suck.  We would a took the bottle, but it was broke.  There was
a seedy old chest, and an old hair trunk with the hinges broke.  They
stood open, but there warn't nothing left in them that was any account.
 The way things was scattered about we reckoned the people left in a
hurry, and warn't fixed so as to carry off most of their stuff.

We got an old tin lantern, and a butcher-knife without any handle, and
a bran-new Barlow knife worth two bits in any store, and a lot of tallow
candles, and a tin candlestick, and a gourd, and a tin cup, and a ratty
old bedquilt off the bed, and a reticule with needles and pins and
beeswax and buttons and thread and all such truck in it, and a hatchet
and some nails, and a fishline as thick as my little finger with some
monstrous hooks on it, and a roll of buckskin, and a leather dog-collar,
and a horseshoe, and some vials of medicine that didn't have no label
on them; and just as we was leaving I found a tolerable good curry-comb,
and Jim he found a ratty old fiddle-bow, and a wooden leg.  The straps
was broke off of it, but, barring that, it was a good enough leg, though
it was too long for me and not long enough for Jim, and we couldn't find
the other one, though we hunted all around.

And so, take it all around, we made a good haul.  When we was ready to
shove off we was a quarter of a mile below the island, and it was pretty
broad day; so I made Jim lay down in the canoe and cover up with the
quilt, because if he set up people could tell he was a nigger a good
ways off.  I paddled over to the Illinois shore, and drifted down most
a half a mile doing it.  I crept up the dead water under the bank, and
hadn't no accidents and didn't see nobody.  We got home all safe.




CHAPTER X.

AFTER breakfast I wanted to talk about the dead man and guess out how he
come to be killed, but Jim didn't want to.  He said it would fetch bad
luck; and besides, he said, he might come and ha'nt us; he said a man
that warn't buried was more likely to go a-ha'nting around than one
that was planted and comfortable.  That sounded pretty reasonable, so
I didn't say no more; but I couldn't keep from studying over it and
wishing I knowed who shot the man, and what they done it for.

We rummaged the clothes we'd got, and found eight dollars in silver
sewed up in the lining of an old blanket overcoat.  Jim said he reckoned
the people in that house stole the coat, because if they'd a knowed the
money was there they wouldn't a left it.  I said I reckoned they killed
him, too; but Jim didn't want to talk about that.  I says:

“Now you think it's bad luck; but what did you say when I fetched in the
snake-skin that I found on the top of the ridge day before yesterday?
You said it was the worst bad luck in the world to touch a snake-skin
with my hands.  Well, here's your bad luck!  We've raked in all this
truck and eight dollars besides.  I wish we could have some bad luck
like this every day, Jim.”

“Never you mind, honey, never you mind.  Don't you git too peart.  It's
a-comin'.  Mind I tell you, it's a-comin'.”

It did come, too.  It was a Tuesday that we had that talk.  Well, after
dinner Friday we was laying around in the grass at the upper end of the
ridge, and got out of tobacco.  I went to the cavern to get some, and
found a rattlesnake in there.  I killed him, and curled him up on the
foot of Jim's blanket, ever so natural, thinking there'd be some fun
when Jim found him there.  Well, by night I forgot all about the snake,
and when Jim flung himself down on the blanket while I struck a light
the snake's mate was there, and bit him.

He jumped up yelling, and the first thing the light showed was the
varmint curled up and ready for another spring.  I laid him out in a
second with a stick, and Jim grabbed pap's whisky-jug and begun to pour
it down.

He was barefooted, and the snake bit him right on the heel.  That all
comes of my being such a fool as to not remember that wherever you leave
a dead snake its mate always comes there and curls around it.  Jim told
me to chop off the snake's head and throw it away, and then skin the
body and roast a piece of it.  I done it, and he eat it and said it
would help cure him. He made me take off the rattles and tie them around
his wrist, too.  He said that that would help.  Then I slid out quiet
and throwed the snakes clear away amongst the bushes; for I warn't going
to let Jim find out it was all my fault, not if I could help it.

Jim sucked and sucked at the jug, and now and then he got out of his
head and pitched around and yelled; but every time he come to himself he
went to sucking at the jug again.  His foot swelled up pretty big, and
so did his leg; but by and by the drunk begun to come, and so I judged
he was all right; but I'd druther been bit with a snake than pap's
whisky.

Jim was laid up for four days and nights.  Then the swelling was all
gone and he was around again.  I made up my mind I wouldn't ever take
a-holt of a snake-skin again with my hands, now that I see what had come
of it. Jim said he reckoned I would believe him next time.  And he said
that handling a snake-skin was such awful bad luck that maybe we hadn't
got to the end of it yet.  He said he druther see the new moon over his
left shoulder as much as a thousand times than take up a snake-skin
in his hand.  Well, I was getting to feel that way myself, though I've
always reckoned that looking at the new moon over your left shoulder is
one of the carelessest and foolishest things a body can do.  Old Hank
Bunker done it once, and bragged about it; and in less than two years he
got drunk and fell off of the shot-tower, and spread himself out so
that he was just a kind of a layer, as you may say; and they slid him
edgeways between two barn doors for a coffin, and buried him so, so
they say, but I didn't see it.  Pap told me.  But anyway it all come of
looking at the moon that way, like a fool.

Well, the days went along, and the river went down between its banks
again; and about the first thing we done was to bait one of the big
hooks with a skinned rabbit and set it and catch a catfish that was
as big as a man, being six foot two inches long, and weighed over two
hundred pounds. We couldn't handle him, of course; he would a flung us
into Illinois.  We just set there and watched him rip and tear around
till he drownded.  We found a brass button in his stomach and a round
ball, and lots of rubbage.  We split the ball open with the hatchet,
and there was a spool in it.  Jim said he'd had it there a long time, to
coat it over so and make a ball of it.  It was as big a fish as was ever
catched in the Mississippi, I reckon.  Jim said he hadn't ever seen
a bigger one.  He would a been worth a good deal over at the village.
 They peddle out such a fish as that by the pound in the market-house
there; everybody buys some of him; his meat's as white as snow and makes
a good fry.

Next morning I said it was getting slow and dull, and I wanted to get a
stirring up some way.  I said I reckoned I would slip over the river and
find out what was going on.  Jim liked that notion; but he said I
must go in the dark and look sharp.  Then he studied it over and said,
couldn't I put on some of them old things and dress up like a girl?
 That was a good notion, too.  So we shortened up one of the calico
gowns, and I turned up my trouser-legs to my knees and got into it.  Jim
hitched it behind with the hooks, and it was a fair fit.  I put on the
sun-bonnet and tied it under my chin, and then for a body to look in
and see my face was like looking down a joint of stove-pipe.  Jim said
nobody would know me, even in the daytime, hardly.  I practiced around
all day to get the hang of the things, and by and by I could do pretty
well in them, only Jim said I didn't walk like a girl; and he said
I must quit pulling up my gown to get at my britches-pocket.  I took
notice, and done better.

I started up the Illinois shore in the canoe just after dark.

I started across to the town from a little below the ferry-landing, and
the drift of the current fetched me in at the bottom of the town.  I
tied up and started along the bank.  There was a light burning in a
little shanty that hadn't been lived in for a long time, and I wondered
who had took up quarters there.  I slipped up and peeped in at the
window.  There was a woman about forty year old in there knitting by
a candle that was on a pine table.  I didn't know her face; she was a
stranger, for you couldn't start a face in that town that I didn't know.
 Now this was lucky, because I was weakening; I was getting afraid I had
come; people might know my voice and find me out.  But if this woman had
been in such a little town two days she could tell me all I wanted to
know; so I knocked at the door, and made up my mind I wouldn't forget I
was a girl.




CHAPTER XI.

“COME in,” says the woman, and I did.  She says:  “Take a cheer.”

I done it.  She looked me all over with her little shiny eyes, and says:

“What might your name be?”

“Sarah Williams.”

“Where 'bouts do you live?  In this neighborhood?'

“No'm.  In Hookerville, seven mile below.  I've walked all the way and
I'm all tired out.”

“Hungry, too, I reckon.  I'll find you something.”

“No'm, I ain't hungry.  I was so hungry I had to stop two miles below
here at a farm; so I ain't hungry no more.  It's what makes me so late.
My mother's down sick, and out of money and everything, and I come to
tell my uncle Abner Moore.  He lives at the upper end of the town, she
says.  I hain't ever been here before.  Do you know him?”

“No; but I don't know everybody yet.  I haven't lived here quite two
weeks. It's a considerable ways to the upper end of the town.  You
better stay here all night.  Take off your bonnet.”

“No,” I says; “I'll rest a while, I reckon, and go on.  I ain't afeared
of the dark.”

She said she wouldn't let me go by myself, but her husband would be in
by and by, maybe in a hour and a half, and she'd send him along with me.
Then she got to talking about her husband, and about her relations up
the river, and her relations down the river, and about how much better
off they used to was, and how they didn't know but they'd made a mistake
coming to our town, instead of letting well alone--and so on and so on,
till I was afeard I had made a mistake coming to her to find out what
was going on in the town; but by and by she dropped on to pap and the
murder, and then I was pretty willing to let her clatter right along.
 She told about me and Tom Sawyer finding the six thousand dollars (only
she got it ten) and all about pap and what a hard lot he was, and what
a hard lot I was, and at last she got down to where I was murdered.  I
says:

“Who done it?  We've heard considerable about these goings on down in
Hookerville, but we don't know who 'twas that killed Huck Finn.”

“Well, I reckon there's a right smart chance of people _here_ that'd
like to know who killed him.  Some think old Finn done it himself.”

“No--is that so?”

“Most everybody thought it at first.  He'll never know how nigh he come
to getting lynched.  But before night they changed around and judged it
was done by a runaway nigger named Jim.”

“Why _he_--”

I stopped.  I reckoned I better keep still.  She run on, and never
noticed I had put in at all:

“The nigger run off the very night Huck Finn was killed.  So there's a
reward out for him--three hundred dollars.  And there's a reward out for
old Finn, too--two hundred dollars.  You see, he come to town the
morning after the murder, and told about it, and was out with 'em on the
ferryboat hunt, and right away after he up and left.  Before night they
wanted to lynch him, but he was gone, you see.  Well, next day they
found out the nigger was gone; they found out he hadn't ben seen sence
ten o'clock the night the murder was done.  So then they put it on him,
you see; and while they was full of it, next day, back comes old Finn,
and went boo-hooing to Judge Thatcher to get money to hunt for the
nigger all over Illinois with. The judge gave him some, and that evening
he got drunk, and was around till after midnight with a couple of mighty
hard-looking strangers, and then went off with them.  Well, he hain't
come back sence, and they ain't looking for him back till this thing
blows over a little, for people thinks now that he killed his boy and
fixed things so folks would think robbers done it, and then he'd get
Huck's money without having to bother a long time with a lawsuit.
 People do say he warn't any too good to do it.  Oh, he's sly, I reckon.
 If he don't come back for a year he'll be all right.  You can't prove
anything on him, you know; everything will be quieted down then, and
he'll walk in Huck's money as easy as nothing.”

“Yes, I reckon so, 'm.  I don't see nothing in the way of it.  Has
everybody quit thinking the nigger done it?”

“Oh, no, not everybody.  A good many thinks he done it.  But they'll get
the nigger pretty soon now, and maybe they can scare it out of him.”

“Why, are they after him yet?”

“Well, you're innocent, ain't you!  Does three hundred dollars lay
around every day for people to pick up?  Some folks think the nigger
ain't far from here.  I'm one of them--but I hain't talked it around.  A
few days ago I was talking with an old couple that lives next door in
the log shanty, and they happened to say hardly anybody ever goes to
that island over yonder that they call Jackson's Island.  Don't anybody
live there? says I. No, nobody, says they.  I didn't say any more, but
I done some thinking.  I was pretty near certain I'd seen smoke over
there, about the head of the island, a day or two before that, so I says
to myself, like as not that nigger's hiding over there; anyway, says
I, it's worth the trouble to give the place a hunt.  I hain't seen any
smoke sence, so I reckon maybe he's gone, if it was him; but husband's
going over to see--him and another man.  He was gone up the river; but he
got back to-day, and I told him as soon as he got here two hours ago.”

I had got so uneasy I couldn't set still.  I had to do something with my
hands; so I took up a needle off of the table and went to threading
it. My hands shook, and I was making a bad job of it.  When the woman
stopped talking I looked up, and she was looking at me pretty curious
and smiling a little.  I put down the needle and thread, and let on to
be interested--and I was, too--and says:

“Three hundred dollars is a power of money.  I wish my mother could get
it. Is your husband going over there to-night?”

“Oh, yes.  He went up-town with the man I was telling you of, to get a
boat and see if they could borrow another gun.  They'll go over after
midnight.”

“Couldn't they see better if they was to wait till daytime?”

“Yes.  And couldn't the nigger see better, too?  After midnight he'll
likely be asleep, and they can slip around through the woods and hunt up
his camp fire all the better for the dark, if he's got one.”

“I didn't think of that.”

The woman kept looking at me pretty curious, and I didn't feel a bit
comfortable.  Pretty soon she says,

“What did you say your name was, honey?”

“M--Mary Williams.”

Somehow it didn't seem to me that I said it was Mary before, so I didn't
look up--seemed to me I said it was Sarah; so I felt sort of cornered,
and was afeared maybe I was looking it, too.  I wished the woman would
say something more; the longer she set still the uneasier I was.  But
now she says:

“Honey, I thought you said it was Sarah when you first come in?”

“Oh, yes'm, I did.  Sarah Mary Williams.  Sarah's my first name.  Some
calls me Sarah, some calls me Mary.”

“Oh, that's the way of it?”

“Yes'm.”

I was feeling better then, but I wished I was out of there, anyway.  I
couldn't look up yet.

Well, the woman fell to talking about how hard times was, and how poor
they had to live, and how the rats was as free as if they owned the
place, and so forth and so on, and then I got easy again.  She was right
about the rats. You'd see one stick his nose out of a hole in the corner
every little while.  She said she had to have things handy to throw at
them when she was alone, or they wouldn't give her no peace.  She showed
me a bar of lead twisted up into a knot, and said she was a good shot
with it generly, but she'd wrenched her arm a day or two ago, and didn't
know whether she could throw true now.  But she watched for a chance,
and directly banged away at a rat; but she missed him wide, and said
“Ouch!” it hurt her arm so.  Then she told me to try for the next one.
 I wanted to be getting away before the old man got back, but of course
I didn't let on.  I got the thing, and the first rat that showed his
nose I let drive, and if he'd a stayed where he was he'd a been a
tolerable sick rat.  She said that was first-rate, and she reckoned I
would hive the next one.  She went and got the lump of lead and fetched
it back, and brought along a hank of yarn which she wanted me to help
her with.  I held up my two hands and she put the hank over them, and
went on talking about her and her husband's matters.  But she broke off
to say:

“Keep your eye on the rats.  You better have the lead in your lap,
handy.”

So she dropped the lump into my lap just at that moment, and I clapped
my legs together on it and she went on talking.  But only about a
minute. Then she took off the hank and looked me straight in the face,
and very pleasant, and says:

“Come, now, what's your real name?”

“Wh--what, mum?”

“What's your real name?  Is it Bill, or Tom, or Bob?--or what is it?”

I reckon I shook like a leaf, and I didn't know hardly what to do.  But
I says:

“Please to don't poke fun at a poor girl like me, mum.  If I'm in the
way here, I'll--”

“No, you won't.  Set down and stay where you are.  I ain't going to hurt
you, and I ain't going to tell on you, nuther.  You just tell me your
secret, and trust me.  I'll keep it; and, what's more, I'll help
you. So'll my old man if you want him to.  You see, you're a runaway
'prentice, that's all.  It ain't anything.  There ain't no harm in it.
You've been treated bad, and you made up your mind to cut.  Bless you,
child, I wouldn't tell on you.  Tell me all about it now, that's a good
boy.”

So I said it wouldn't be no use to try to play it any longer, and I
would just make a clean breast and tell her everything, but she musn't
go back on her promise.  Then I told her my father and mother was dead,
and the law had bound me out to a mean old farmer in the country thirty
mile back from the river, and he treated me so bad I couldn't stand it
no longer; he went away to be gone a couple of days, and so I took my
chance and stole some of his daughter's old clothes and cleared out, and
I had been three nights coming the thirty miles.  I traveled nights,
and hid daytimes and slept, and the bag of bread and meat I carried from
home lasted me all the way, and I had a-plenty.  I said I believed my
uncle Abner Moore would take care of me, and so that was why I struck
out for this town of Goshen.

“Goshen, child?  This ain't Goshen.  This is St. Petersburg.  Goshen's
ten mile further up the river.  Who told you this was Goshen?”

“Why, a man I met at daybreak this morning, just as I was going to turn
into the woods for my regular sleep.  He told me when the roads forked I
must take the right hand, and five mile would fetch me to Goshen.”

“He was drunk, I reckon.  He told you just exactly wrong.”

“Well, he did act like he was drunk, but it ain't no matter now.  I got
to be moving along.  I'll fetch Goshen before daylight.”

“Hold on a minute.  I'll put you up a snack to eat.  You might want it.”

So she put me up a snack, and says:

“Say, when a cow's laying down, which end of her gets up first?  Answer
up prompt now--don't stop to study over it.  Which end gets up first?”

“The hind end, mum.”

“Well, then, a horse?”

“The for'rard end, mum.”

“Which side of a tree does the moss grow on?”

“North side.”

“If fifteen cows is browsing on a hillside, how many of them eats with
their heads pointed the same direction?”

“The whole fifteen, mum.”

“Well, I reckon you _have_ lived in the country.  I thought maybe you
was trying to hocus me again.  What's your real name, now?”

“George Peters, mum.”

“Well, try to remember it, George.  Don't forget and tell me it's
Elexander before you go, and then get out by saying it's George
Elexander when I catch you.  And don't go about women in that old
calico.  You do a girl tolerable poor, but you might fool men, maybe.
 Bless you, child, when you set out to thread a needle don't hold the
thread still and fetch the needle up to it; hold the needle still and
poke the thread at it; that's the way a woman most always does, but a
man always does t'other way.  And when you throw at a rat or anything,
hitch yourself up a tiptoe and fetch your hand up over your head as
awkward as you can, and miss your rat about six or seven foot. Throw
stiff-armed from the shoulder, like there was a pivot there for it to
turn on, like a girl; not from the wrist and elbow, with your arm out
to one side, like a boy.  And, mind you, when a girl tries to catch
anything in her lap she throws her knees apart; she don't clap them
together, the way you did when you catched the lump of lead.  Why, I
spotted you for a boy when you was threading the needle; and I contrived
the other things just to make certain.  Now trot along to your uncle,
Sarah Mary Williams George Elexander Peters, and if you get into trouble
you send word to Mrs. Judith Loftus, which is me, and I'll do what I can
to get you out of it.  Keep the river road all the way, and next time
you tramp take shoes and socks with you. The river road's a rocky one,
and your feet'll be in a condition when you get to Goshen, I reckon.”

I went up the bank about fifty yards, and then I doubled on my tracks
and slipped back to where my canoe was, a good piece below the house.  I
jumped in, and was off in a hurry.  I went up-stream far enough to
make the head of the island, and then started across.  I took off the
sun-bonnet, for I didn't want no blinders on then.  When I was about the
middle I heard the clock begin to strike, so I stops and listens; the
sound come faint over the water but clear--eleven.  When I struck the
head of the island I never waited to blow, though I was most winded, but
I shoved right into the timber where my old camp used to be, and started
a good fire there on a high and dry spot.

Then I jumped in the canoe and dug out for our place, a mile and a half
below, as hard as I could go.  I landed, and slopped through the timber
and up the ridge and into the cavern.  There Jim laid, sound asleep on
the ground.  I roused him out and says:

“Git up and hump yourself, Jim!  There ain't a minute to lose.  They're
after us!”

Jim never asked no questions, he never said a word; but the way he
worked for the next half an hour showed about how he was scared.  By
that time everything we had in the world was on our raft, and she was
ready to be shoved out from the willow cove where she was hid.  We
put out the camp fire at the cavern the first thing, and didn't show a
candle outside after that.

I took the canoe out from the shore a little piece, and took a look;
but if there was a boat around I couldn't see it, for stars and shadows
ain't good to see by.  Then we got out the raft and slipped along down
in the shade, past the foot of the island dead still--never saying a
word.




CHAPTER XII.

IT must a been close on to one o'clock when we got below the island at
last, and the raft did seem to go mighty slow.  If a boat was to come
along we was going to take to the canoe and break for the Illinois
shore; and it was well a boat didn't come, for we hadn't ever thought to
put the gun in the canoe, or a fishing-line, or anything to eat.  We
was in ruther too much of a sweat to think of so many things.  It warn't
good judgment to put _everything_ on the raft.

If the men went to the island I just expect they found the camp fire I
built, and watched it all night for Jim to come.  Anyways, they stayed
away from us, and if my building the fire never fooled them it warn't no
fault of mine.  I played it as low down on them as I could.

When the first streak of day began to show we tied up to a towhead in a
big bend on the Illinois side, and hacked off cottonwood branches with
the hatchet, and covered up the raft with them so she looked like there
had been a cave-in in the bank there.  A tow-head is a sandbar that has
cottonwoods on it as thick as harrow-teeth.

We had mountains on the Missouri shore and heavy timber on the Illinois
side, and the channel was down the Missouri shore at that place, so we
warn't afraid of anybody running across us.  We laid there all day,
and watched the rafts and steamboats spin down the Missouri shore, and
up-bound steamboats fight the big river in the middle.  I told Jim all
about the time I had jabbering with that woman; and Jim said she was
a smart one, and if she was to start after us herself she wouldn't set
down and watch a camp fire--no, sir, she'd fetch a dog.  Well, then, I
said, why couldn't she tell her husband to fetch a dog?  Jim said he
bet she did think of it by the time the men was ready to start, and he
believed they must a gone up-town to get a dog and so they lost all that
time, or else we wouldn't be here on a towhead sixteen or seventeen mile
below the village--no, indeedy, we would be in that same old town again.
 So I said I didn't care what was the reason they didn't get us as long
as they didn't.

When it was beginning to come on dark we poked our heads out of the
cottonwood thicket, and looked up and down and across; nothing in sight;
so Jim took up some of the top planks of the raft and built a snug
wigwam to get under in blazing weather and rainy, and to keep the things
dry. Jim made a floor for the wigwam, and raised it a foot or more above
the level of the raft, so now the blankets and all the traps was out of
reach of steamboat waves.  Right in the middle of the wigwam we made a
layer of dirt about five or six inches deep with a frame around it for
to hold it to its place; this was to build a fire on in sloppy weather
or chilly; the wigwam would keep it from being seen.  We made an extra
steering-oar, too, because one of the others might get broke on a snag
or something. We fixed up a short forked stick to hang the old lantern
on, because we must always light the lantern whenever we see a steamboat
coming down-stream, to keep from getting run over; but we wouldn't have
to light it for up-stream boats unless we see we was in what they call
a “crossing”; for the river was pretty high yet, very low banks being
still a little under water; so up-bound boats didn't always run the
channel, but hunted easy water.

This second night we run between seven and eight hours, with a current
that was making over four mile an hour.  We catched fish and talked,
and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness.  It was kind of
solemn, drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs looking
up at the stars, and we didn't ever feel like talking loud, and it
warn't often that we laughed--only a little kind of a low chuckle.  We
had mighty good weather as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to
us at all--that night, nor the next, nor the next.

Every night we passed towns, some of them away up on black hillsides,
nothing but just a shiny bed of lights; not a house could you see.  The
fifth night we passed St. Louis, and it was like the whole world lit up.
In St. Petersburg they used to say there was twenty or thirty thousand
people in St. Louis, but I never believed it till I see that wonderful
spread of lights at two o'clock that still night.  There warn't a sound
there; everybody was asleep.

Every night now I used to slip ashore towards ten o'clock at some little
village, and buy ten or fifteen cents' worth of meal or bacon or other
stuff to eat; and sometimes I lifted a chicken that warn't roosting
comfortable, and took him along.  Pap always said, take a chicken when
you get a chance, because if you don't want him yourself you can easy
find somebody that does, and a good deed ain't ever forgot.  I never see
pap when he didn't want the chicken himself, but that is what he used to
say, anyway.

Mornings before daylight I slipped into cornfields and borrowed a
watermelon, or a mushmelon, or a punkin, or some new corn, or things of
that kind.  Pap always said it warn't no harm to borrow things if you
was meaning to pay them back some time; but the widow said it warn't
anything but a soft name for stealing, and no decent body would do it.
 Jim said he reckoned the widow was partly right and pap was partly
right; so the best way would be for us to pick out two or three things
from the list and say we wouldn't borrow them any more--then he reckoned
it wouldn't be no harm to borrow the others.  So we talked it over all
one night, drifting along down the river, trying to make up our minds
whether to drop the watermelons, or the cantelopes, or the mushmelons,
or what.  But towards daylight we got it all settled satisfactory, and
concluded to drop crabapples and p'simmons.  We warn't feeling just
right before that, but it was all comfortable now.  I was glad the way
it come out, too, because crabapples ain't ever good, and the p'simmons
wouldn't be ripe for two or three months yet.

We shot a water-fowl now and then that got up too early in the morning
or didn't go to bed early enough in the evening.  Take it all round, we
lived pretty high.

The fifth night below St. Louis we had a big storm after midnight, with
a power of thunder and lightning, and the rain poured down in a solid
sheet. We stayed in the wigwam and let the raft take care of itself.
When the lightning glared out we could see a big straight river ahead,
and high, rocky bluffs on both sides.  By and by says I, “Hel-_lo_, Jim,
looky yonder!” It was a steamboat that had killed herself on a rock.
 We was drifting straight down for her.  The lightning showed her very
distinct.  She was leaning over, with part of her upper deck above
water, and you could see every little chimbly-guy clean and clear, and a
chair by the big bell, with an old slouch hat hanging on the back of it,
when the flashes come.

Well, it being away in the night and stormy, and all so mysterious-like,
I felt just the way any other boy would a felt when I see that wreck
laying there so mournful and lonesome in the middle of the river.  I
wanted to get aboard of her and slink around a little, and see what
there was there.  So I says:

“Le's land on her, Jim.”

But Jim was dead against it at first.  He says:

“I doan' want to go fool'n 'long er no wrack.  We's doin' blame' well,
en we better let blame' well alone, as de good book says.  Like as not
dey's a watchman on dat wrack.”

“Watchman your grandmother,” I says; “there ain't nothing to watch but
the texas and the pilot-house; and do you reckon anybody's going to resk
his life for a texas and a pilot-house such a night as this, when
it's likely to break up and wash off down the river any minute?”  Jim
couldn't say nothing to that, so he didn't try.  “And besides,” I says,
“we might borrow something worth having out of the captain's stateroom.
 Seegars, I bet you--and cost five cents apiece, solid cash.  Steamboat
captains is always rich, and get sixty dollars a month, and _they_ don't
care a cent what a thing costs, you know, long as they want it.  Stick a
candle in your pocket; I can't rest, Jim, till we give her a rummaging.
 Do you reckon Tom Sawyer would ever go by this thing?  Not for pie, he
wouldn't. He'd call it an adventure--that's what he'd call it; and he'd
land on that wreck if it was his last act.  And wouldn't he throw style
into it?--wouldn't he spread himself, nor nothing?  Why, you'd think it
was Christopher C'lumbus discovering Kingdom-Come.  I wish Tom Sawyer
_was_ here.”

Jim he grumbled a little, but give in.  He said we mustn't talk any more
than we could help, and then talk mighty low.  The lightning showed us
the wreck again just in time, and we fetched the stabboard derrick, and
made fast there.

The deck was high out here.  We went sneaking down the slope of it to
labboard, in the dark, towards the texas, feeling our way slow with our
feet, and spreading our hands out to fend off the guys, for it was so
dark we couldn't see no sign of them.  Pretty soon we struck the forward
end of the skylight, and clumb on to it; and the next step fetched us in
front of the captain's door, which was open, and by Jimminy, away down
through the texas-hall we see a light! and all in the same second we
seem to hear low voices in yonder!

Jim whispered and said he was feeling powerful sick, and told me to come
along.  I says, all right, and was going to start for the raft; but just
then I heard a voice wail out and say:

“Oh, please don't, boys; I swear I won't ever tell!”

Another voice said, pretty loud:

“It's a lie, Jim Turner.  You've acted this way before.  You always want
more'n your share of the truck, and you've always got it, too, because
you've swore 't if you didn't you'd tell.  But this time you've said
it jest one time too many.  You're the meanest, treacherousest hound in
this country.”

By this time Jim was gone for the raft.  I was just a-biling with
curiosity; and I says to myself, Tom Sawyer wouldn't back out now,
and so I won't either; I'm a-going to see what's going on here.  So I
dropped on my hands and knees in the little passage, and crept aft
in the dark till there warn't but one stateroom betwixt me and the
cross-hall of the texas.  Then in there I see a man stretched on the
floor and tied hand and foot, and two men standing over him, and one
of them had a dim lantern in his hand, and the other one had a pistol.
 This one kept pointing the pistol at the man's head on the floor, and
saying:

“I'd _like_ to!  And I orter, too--a mean skunk!”

The man on the floor would shrivel up and say, “Oh, please don't, Bill;
I hain't ever goin' to tell.”

And every time he said that the man with the lantern would laugh and
say:

“'Deed you _ain't!_  You never said no truer thing 'n that, you bet
you.” And once he said:  “Hear him beg! and yit if we hadn't got the
best of him and tied him he'd a killed us both.  And what _for_?  Jist
for noth'n. Jist because we stood on our _rights_--that's what for.  But
I lay you ain't a-goin' to threaten nobody any more, Jim Turner.  Put
_up_ that pistol, Bill.”

Bill says:

“I don't want to, Jake Packard.  I'm for killin' him--and didn't he kill
old Hatfield jist the same way--and don't he deserve it?”

“But I don't _want_ him killed, and I've got my reasons for it.”

“Bless yo' heart for them words, Jake Packard!  I'll never forgit you
long's I live!” says the man on the floor, sort of blubbering.

Packard didn't take no notice of that, but hung up his lantern on a nail
and started towards where I was there in the dark, and motioned Bill
to come.  I crawfished as fast as I could about two yards, but the boat
slanted so that I couldn't make very good time; so to keep from getting
run over and catched I crawled into a stateroom on the upper side.
 The man came a-pawing along in the dark, and when Packard got to my
stateroom, he says:

“Here--come in here.”

And in he come, and Bill after him.  But before they got in I was up
in the upper berth, cornered, and sorry I come.  Then they stood there,
with their hands on the ledge of the berth, and talked.  I couldn't see
them, but I could tell where they was by the whisky they'd been having.
 I was glad I didn't drink whisky; but it wouldn't made much difference
anyway, because most of the time they couldn't a treed me because I
didn't breathe.  I was too scared.  And, besides, a body _couldn't_
breathe and hear such talk.  They talked low and earnest.  Bill wanted
to kill Turner.  He says:

“He's said he'll tell, and he will.  If we was to give both our shares
to him _now_ it wouldn't make no difference after the row and the way
we've served him.  Shore's you're born, he'll turn State's evidence; now
you hear _me_.  I'm for putting him out of his troubles.”

“So'm I,” says Packard, very quiet.

“Blame it, I'd sorter begun to think you wasn't.  Well, then, that's all
right.  Le's go and do it.”

“Hold on a minute; I hain't had my say yit.  You listen to me.
Shooting's good, but there's quieter ways if the thing's _got_ to be
done. But what I say is this:  it ain't good sense to go court'n around
after a halter if you can git at what you're up to in some way that's
jist as good and at the same time don't bring you into no resks.  Ain't
that so?”

“You bet it is.  But how you goin' to manage it this time?”

“Well, my idea is this:  we'll rustle around and gather up whatever
pickins we've overlooked in the staterooms, and shove for shore and hide
the truck. Then we'll wait.  Now I say it ain't a-goin' to be more'n two
hours befo' this wrack breaks up and washes off down the river.  See?
He'll be drownded, and won't have nobody to blame for it but his own
self.  I reckon that's a considerble sight better 'n killin' of him.
 I'm unfavorable to killin' a man as long as you can git aroun' it; it
ain't good sense, it ain't good morals.  Ain't I right?”

“Yes, I reck'n you are.  But s'pose she _don't_ break up and wash off?”

“Well, we can wait the two hours anyway and see, can't we?”

“All right, then; come along.”

So they started, and I lit out, all in a cold sweat, and scrambled
forward. It was dark as pitch there; but I said, in a kind of a coarse
whisper, “Jim!” and he answered up, right at my elbow, with a sort of a
moan, and I says:

“Quick, Jim, it ain't no time for fooling around and moaning; there's a
gang of murderers in yonder, and if we don't hunt up their boat and set
her drifting down the river so these fellows can't get away from the
wreck there's one of 'em going to be in a bad fix.  But if we find their
boat we can put _all_ of 'em in a bad fix--for the sheriff 'll get 'em.
Quick--hurry!  I'll hunt the labboard side, you hunt the stabboard. You
start at the raft, and--”

“Oh, my lordy, lordy!  _raf'_?  Dey ain' no raf' no mo'; she done broke
loose en gone I--en here we is!”




CHAPTER XIII.

WELL, I catched my breath and most fainted.  Shut up on a wreck with
such a gang as that!  But it warn't no time to be sentimentering.  We'd
_got_ to find that boat now--had to have it for ourselves.  So we went
a-quaking and shaking down the stabboard side, and slow work it was,
too--seemed a week before we got to the stern.  No sign of a boat.  Jim
said he didn't believe he could go any further--so scared he hadn't
hardly any strength left, he said.  But I said, come on, if we get left
on this wreck we are in a fix, sure.  So on we prowled again.  We struck
for the stern of the texas, and found it, and then scrabbled along
forwards on the skylight, hanging on from shutter to shutter, for the
edge of the skylight was in the water.  When we got pretty close to the
cross-hall door there was the skiff, sure enough!  I could just barely
see her.  I felt ever so thankful.  In another second I would a been
aboard of her, but just then the door opened.  One of the men stuck his
head out only about a couple of foot from me, and I thought I was gone;
but he jerked it in again, and says:

“Heave that blame lantern out o' sight, Bill!”

He flung a bag of something into the boat, and then got in himself and
set down.  It was Packard.  Then Bill _he_ come out and got in.  Packard
says, in a low voice:

“All ready--shove off!”

I couldn't hardly hang on to the shutters, I was so weak.  But Bill
says:

“Hold on--'d you go through him?”

“No.  Didn't you?”

“No.  So he's got his share o' the cash yet.”

“Well, then, come along; no use to take truck and leave money.”

“Say, won't he suspicion what we're up to?”

“Maybe he won't.  But we got to have it anyway. Come along.”

So they got out and went in.

The door slammed to because it was on the careened side; and in a half
second I was in the boat, and Jim come tumbling after me.  I out with my
knife and cut the rope, and away we went!

We didn't touch an oar, and we didn't speak nor whisper, nor hardly even
breathe.  We went gliding swift along, dead silent, past the tip of the
paddle-box, and past the stern; then in a second or two more we was a
hundred yards below the wreck, and the darkness soaked her up, every
last sign of her, and we was safe, and knowed it.

When we was three or four hundred yards down-stream we see the lantern
show like a little spark at the texas door for a second, and we knowed
by that that the rascals had missed their boat, and was beginning to
understand that they was in just as much trouble now as Jim Turner was.

Then Jim manned the oars, and we took out after our raft.  Now was the
first time that I begun to worry about the men--I reckon I hadn't
had time to before.  I begun to think how dreadful it was, even for
murderers, to be in such a fix.  I says to myself, there ain't no
telling but I might come to be a murderer myself yet, and then how would
I like it?  So says I to Jim:

“The first light we see we'll land a hundred yards below it or above
it, in a place where it's a good hiding-place for you and the skiff, and
then I'll go and fix up some kind of a yarn, and get somebody to go for
that gang and get them out of their scrape, so they can be hung when
their time comes.”

But that idea was a failure; for pretty soon it begun to storm again,
and this time worse than ever.  The rain poured down, and never a light
showed; everybody in bed, I reckon.  We boomed along down the river,
watching for lights and watching for our raft.  After a long time the
rain let up, but the clouds stayed, and the lightning kept whimpering,
and by and by a flash showed us a black thing ahead, floating, and we
made for it.

It was the raft, and mighty glad was we to get aboard of it again.  We
seen a light now away down to the right, on shore.  So I said I would
go for it. The skiff was half full of plunder which that gang had stole
there on the wreck.  We hustled it on to the raft in a pile, and I told
Jim to float along down, and show a light when he judged he had gone
about two mile, and keep it burning till I come; then I manned my oars
and shoved for the light.  As I got down towards it three or four more
showed--up on a hillside.  It was a village.  I closed in above the shore
light, and laid on my oars and floated.  As I went by I see it was a
lantern hanging on the jackstaff of a double-hull ferryboat.  I skimmed
around for the watchman, a-wondering whereabouts he slept; and by and
by I found him roosting on the bitts forward, with his head down between
his knees.  I gave his shoulder two or three little shoves, and begun to
cry.

He stirred up in a kind of a startlish way; but when he see it was only
me he took a good gap and stretch, and then he says:

“Hello, what's up?  Don't cry, bub.  What's the trouble?”

I says:

“Pap, and mam, and sis, and--”

Then I broke down.  He says:

“Oh, dang it now, _don't_ take on so; we all has to have our troubles,
and this 'n 'll come out all right.  What's the matter with 'em?”

“They're--they're--are you the watchman of the boat?”

“Yes,” he says, kind of pretty-well-satisfied like.  “I'm the captain
and the owner and the mate and the pilot and watchman and head
deck-hand; and sometimes I'm the freight and passengers.  I ain't as
rich as old Jim Hornback, and I can't be so blame' generous and good
to Tom, Dick, and Harry as what he is, and slam around money the way he
does; but I've told him a many a time 't I wouldn't trade places with
him; for, says I, a sailor's life's the life for me, and I'm derned if
_I'd_ live two mile out o' town, where there ain't nothing ever goin'
on, not for all his spondulicks and as much more on top of it.  Says I--”

I broke in and says:

“They're in an awful peck of trouble, and--”

“_Who_ is?”

“Why, pap and mam and sis and Miss Hooker; and if you'd take your
ferryboat and go up there--”

“Up where?  Where are they?”

“On the wreck.”

“What wreck?”

“Why, there ain't but one.”

“What, you don't mean the Walter Scott?”

“Yes.”

“Good land! what are they doin' _there_, for gracious sakes?”

“Well, they didn't go there a-purpose.”

“I bet they didn't!  Why, great goodness, there ain't no chance for 'em
if they don't git off mighty quick!  Why, how in the nation did they
ever git into such a scrape?”

“Easy enough.  Miss Hooker was a-visiting up there to the town--”

“Yes, Booth's Landing--go on.”

“She was a-visiting there at Booth's Landing, and just in the edge of
the evening she started over with her nigger woman in the horse-ferry
to stay all night at her friend's house, Miss What-you-may-call-her I
disremember her name--and they lost their steering-oar, and swung
around and went a-floating down, stern first, about two mile, and
saddle-baggsed on the wreck, and the ferryman and the nigger woman and
the horses was all lost, but Miss Hooker she made a grab and got aboard
the wreck.  Well, about an hour after dark we come along down in our
trading-scow, and it was so dark we didn't notice the wreck till we was
right on it; and so _we_ saddle-baggsed; but all of us was saved but
Bill Whipple--and oh, he _was_ the best cretur!--I most wish 't it had
been me, I do.”

“My George!  It's the beatenest thing I ever struck.  And _then_ what
did you all do?”

“Well, we hollered and took on, but it's so wide there we couldn't
make nobody hear.  So pap said somebody got to get ashore and get help
somehow. I was the only one that could swim, so I made a dash for it,
and Miss Hooker she said if I didn't strike help sooner, come here and
hunt up her uncle, and he'd fix the thing.  I made the land about a mile
below, and been fooling along ever since, trying to get people to do
something, but they said, 'What, in such a night and such a current?
There ain't no sense in it; go for the steam ferry.'  Now if you'll go
and--”

“By Jackson, I'd _like_ to, and, blame it, I don't know but I will; but
who in the dingnation's a-going' to _pay_ for it?  Do you reckon your
pap--”

“Why _that's_ all right.  Miss Hooker she tole me, _particular_, that
her uncle Hornback--”

“Great guns! is _he_ her uncle?  Looky here, you break for that light
over yonder-way, and turn out west when you git there, and about a
quarter of a mile out you'll come to the tavern; tell 'em to dart you
out to Jim Hornback's, and he'll foot the bill.  And don't you fool
around any, because he'll want to know the news.  Tell him I'll have
his niece all safe before he can get to town.  Hump yourself, now; I'm
a-going up around the corner here to roust out my engineer.”

I struck for the light, but as soon as he turned the corner I went back
and got into my skiff and bailed her out, and then pulled up shore in
the easy water about six hundred yards, and tucked myself in among
some woodboats; for I couldn't rest easy till I could see the ferryboat
start. But take it all around, I was feeling ruther comfortable on
accounts of taking all this trouble for that gang, for not many would
a done it.  I wished the widow knowed about it.  I judged she would be
proud of me for helping these rapscallions, because rapscallions and
dead beats is the kind the widow and good people takes the most interest
in.

Well, before long here comes the wreck, dim and dusky, sliding along
down! A kind of cold shiver went through me, and then I struck out for
her.  She was very deep, and I see in a minute there warn't much chance
for anybody being alive in her.  I pulled all around her and hollered
a little, but there wasn't any answer; all dead still.  I felt a little
bit heavy-hearted about the gang, but not much, for I reckoned if they
could stand it I could.

Then here comes the ferryboat; so I shoved for the middle of the river
on a long down-stream slant; and when I judged I was out of eye-reach
I laid on my oars, and looked back and see her go and smell around the
wreck for Miss Hooker's remainders, because the captain would know her
uncle Hornback would want them; and then pretty soon the ferryboat give
it up and went for the shore, and I laid into my work and went a-booming
down the river.

It did seem a powerful long time before Jim's light showed up; and when
it did show it looked like it was a thousand mile off.  By the time I
got there the sky was beginning to get a little gray in the east; so we
struck for an island, and hid the raft, and sunk the skiff, and turned
in and slept like dead people.




CHAPTER XIV.

BY and by, when we got up, we turned over the truck the gang had stole
off of the wreck, and found boots, and blankets, and clothes, and all
sorts of other things, and a lot of books, and a spyglass, and three
boxes of seegars.  We hadn't ever been this rich before in neither of
our lives.  The seegars was prime.  We laid off all the afternoon in the
woods talking, and me reading the books, and having a general good
time. I told Jim all about what happened inside the wreck and at the
ferryboat, and I said these kinds of things was adventures; but he said
he didn't want no more adventures.  He said that when I went in the
texas and he crawled back to get on the raft and found her gone he
nearly died, because he judged it was all up with _him_ anyway it could
be fixed; for if he didn't get saved he would get drownded; and if he
did get saved, whoever saved him would send him back home so as to get
the reward, and then Miss Watson would sell him South, sure.  Well, he
was right; he was most always right; he had an uncommon level head for a
nigger.

I read considerable to Jim about kings and dukes and earls and such, and
how gaudy they dressed, and how much style they put on, and called each
other your majesty, and your grace, and your lordship, and so on, 'stead
of mister; and Jim's eyes bugged out, and he was interested.  He says:

“I didn' know dey was so many un um.  I hain't hearn 'bout none un um,
skasely, but ole King Sollermun, onless you counts dem kings dat's in a
pack er k'yards.  How much do a king git?”

“Get?”  I says; “why, they get a thousand dollars a month if they want
it; they can have just as much as they want; everything belongs to
them.”

“_Ain'_ dat gay?  En what dey got to do, Huck?”

“_They_ don't do nothing!  Why, how you talk! They just set around.”

“No; is dat so?”

“Of course it is.  They just set around--except, maybe, when there's a
war; then they go to the war.  But other times they just lazy around; or
go hawking--just hawking and sp--Sh!--d' you hear a noise?”

We skipped out and looked; but it warn't nothing but the flutter of a
steamboat's wheel away down, coming around the point; so we come back.

“Yes,” says I, “and other times, when things is dull, they fuss with the
parlyment; and if everybody don't go just so he whacks their heads off.
But mostly they hang round the harem.”

“Roun' de which?”

“Harem.”

“What's de harem?”

“The place where he keeps his wives.  Don't you know about the harem?
Solomon had one; he had about a million wives.”

“Why, yes, dat's so; I--I'd done forgot it.  A harem's a bo'd'n-house, I
reck'n.  Mos' likely dey has rackety times in de nussery.  En I reck'n
de wives quarrels considable; en dat 'crease de racket.  Yit dey say
Sollermun de wises' man dat ever live'.  I doan' take no stock in
dat. Bekase why: would a wise man want to live in de mids' er sich a
blim-blammin' all de time?  No--'deed he wouldn't.  A wise man 'ud take
en buil' a biler-factry; en den he could shet _down_ de biler-factry
when he want to res'.”

“Well, but he _was_ the wisest man, anyway; because the widow she told
me so, her own self.”

“I doan k'yer what de widder say, he _warn't_ no wise man nuther.  He
had some er de dad-fetchedes' ways I ever see.  Does you know 'bout dat
chile dat he 'uz gwyne to chop in two?”

“Yes, the widow told me all about it.”

“_Well_, den!  Warn' dat de beatenes' notion in de worl'?  You jes'
take en look at it a minute.  Dah's de stump, dah--dat's one er de women;
heah's you--dat's de yuther one; I's Sollermun; en dish yer dollar bill's
de chile.  Bofe un you claims it.  What does I do?  Does I shin aroun'
mongs' de neighbors en fine out which un you de bill _do_ b'long to, en
han' it over to de right one, all safe en soun', de way dat anybody dat
had any gumption would?  No; I take en whack de bill in _two_, en give
half un it to you, en de yuther half to de yuther woman.  Dat's de way
Sollermun was gwyne to do wid de chile.  Now I want to ast you:  what's
de use er dat half a bill?--can't buy noth'n wid it.  En what use is a
half a chile?  I wouldn' give a dern for a million un um.”

“But hang it, Jim, you've clean missed the point--blame it, you've missed
it a thousand mile.”

“Who?  Me?  Go 'long.  Doan' talk to me 'bout yo' pints.  I reck'n I
knows sense when I sees it; en dey ain' no sense in sich doin's as
dat. De 'spute warn't 'bout a half a chile, de 'spute was 'bout a whole
chile; en de man dat think he kin settle a 'spute 'bout a whole chile
wid a half a chile doan' know enough to come in out'n de rain.  Doan'
talk to me 'bout Sollermun, Huck, I knows him by de back.”

“But I tell you you don't get the point.”

“Blame de point!  I reck'n I knows what I knows.  En mine you, de _real_
pint is down furder--it's down deeper.  It lays in de way Sollermun was
raised.  You take a man dat's got on'y one or two chillen; is dat man
gwyne to be waseful o' chillen?  No, he ain't; he can't 'ford it.  _He_
know how to value 'em.  But you take a man dat's got 'bout five million
chillen runnin' roun' de house, en it's diffunt.  _He_ as soon chop a
chile in two as a cat. Dey's plenty mo'.  A chile er two, mo' er less,
warn't no consekens to Sollermun, dad fatch him!”

I never see such a nigger.  If he got a notion in his head once, there
warn't no getting it out again.  He was the most down on Solomon of
any nigger I ever see.  So I went to talking about other kings, and let
Solomon slide.  I told about Louis Sixteenth that got his head cut off
in France long time ago; and about his little boy the dolphin, that
would a been a king, but they took and shut him up in jail, and some say
he died there.

“Po' little chap.”

“But some says he got out and got away, and come to America.”

“Dat's good!  But he'll be pooty lonesome--dey ain' no kings here, is
dey, Huck?”

“No.”

“Den he cain't git no situation.  What he gwyne to do?”

“Well, I don't know.  Some of them gets on the police, and some of them
learns people how to talk French.”

“Why, Huck, doan' de French people talk de same way we does?”

“_No_, Jim; you couldn't understand a word they said--not a single word.”

“Well, now, I be ding-busted!  How do dat come?”

“I don't know; but it's so.  I got some of their jabber out of a book.
S'pose a man was to come to you and say Polly-voo-franzy--what would you
think?”

“I wouldn' think nuff'n; I'd take en bust him over de head--dat is, if he
warn't white.  I wouldn't 'low no nigger to call me dat.”

“Shucks, it ain't calling you anything.  It's only saying, do you know
how to talk French?”

“Well, den, why couldn't he _say_ it?”

“Why, he _is_ a-saying it.  That's a Frenchman's _way_ of saying it.”

“Well, it's a blame ridicklous way, en I doan' want to hear no mo' 'bout
it.  Dey ain' no sense in it.”

“Looky here, Jim; does a cat talk like we do?”

“No, a cat don't.”

“Well, does a cow?”

“No, a cow don't, nuther.”

“Does a cat talk like a cow, or a cow talk like a cat?”

“No, dey don't.”

“It's natural and right for 'em to talk different from each other, ain't
it?”

“Course.”

“And ain't it natural and right for a cat and a cow to talk different
from _us_?”

“Why, mos' sholy it is.”

“Well, then, why ain't it natural and right for a _Frenchman_ to talk
different from us?  You answer me that.”

“Is a cat a man, Huck?”

“No.”

“Well, den, dey ain't no sense in a cat talkin' like a man.  Is a cow a
man?--er is a cow a cat?”

“No, she ain't either of them.”

“Well, den, she ain't got no business to talk like either one er the
yuther of 'em.  Is a Frenchman a man?”

“Yes.”

“_Well_, den!  Dad blame it, why doan' he _talk_ like a man?  You answer
me _dat_!”

I see it warn't no use wasting words--you can't learn a nigger to argue.
So I quit.




CHAPTER XV.

WE judged that three nights more would fetch us to Cairo, at the bottom
of Illinois, where the Ohio River comes in, and that was what we was
after.  We would sell the raft and get on a steamboat and go way up the
Ohio amongst the free States, and then be out of trouble.

Well, the second night a fog begun to come on, and we made for a towhead
to tie to, for it wouldn't do to try to run in a fog; but when I paddled
ahead in the canoe, with the line to make fast, there warn't anything
but little saplings to tie to.  I passed the line around one of them
right on the edge of the cut bank, but there was a stiff current, and
the raft come booming down so lively she tore it out by the roots and
away she went.  I see the fog closing down, and it made me so sick and
scared I couldn't budge for most a half a minute it seemed to me--and
then there warn't no raft in sight; you couldn't see twenty yards.  I
jumped into the canoe and run back to the stern, and grabbed the paddle
and set her back a stroke.  But she didn't come.  I was in such a hurry
I hadn't untied her.  I got up and tried to untie her, but I was so
excited my hands shook so I couldn't hardly do anything with them.

As soon as I got started I took out after the raft, hot and heavy, right
down the towhead.  That was all right as far as it went, but the towhead
warn't sixty yards long, and the minute I flew by the foot of it I shot
out into the solid white fog, and hadn't no more idea which way I was
going than a dead man.

Thinks I, it won't do to paddle; first I know I'll run into the bank
or a towhead or something; I got to set still and float, and yet it's
mighty fidgety business to have to hold your hands still at such a time.
 I whooped and listened.  Away down there somewheres I hears a small
whoop, and up comes my spirits.  I went tearing after it, listening
sharp to hear it again.  The next time it come I see I warn't heading
for it, but heading away to the right of it.  And the next time I was
heading away to the left of it--and not gaining on it much either, for
I was flying around, this way and that and t'other, but it was going
straight ahead all the time.

I did wish the fool would think to beat a tin pan, and beat it all the
time, but he never did, and it was the still places between the whoops
that was making the trouble for me.  Well, I fought along, and directly
I hears the whoop _behind_ me.  I was tangled good now.  That was
somebody else's whoop, or else I was turned around.

I throwed the paddle down.  I heard the whoop again; it was behind me
yet, but in a different place; it kept coming, and kept changing its
place, and I kept answering, till by and by it was in front of me again,
and I knowed the current had swung the canoe's head down-stream, and I
was all right if that was Jim and not some other raftsman hollering.
 I couldn't tell nothing about voices in a fog, for nothing don't look
natural nor sound natural in a fog.

The whooping went on, and in about a minute I come a-booming down on a
cut bank with smoky ghosts of big trees on it, and the current throwed
me off to the left and shot by, amongst a lot of snags that fairly
roared, the currrent was tearing by them so swift.

In another second or two it was solid white and still again.  I set
perfectly still then, listening to my heart thump, and I reckon I didn't
draw a breath while it thumped a hundred.

I just give up then.  I knowed what the matter was.  That cut bank
was an island, and Jim had gone down t'other side of it.  It warn't no
towhead that you could float by in ten minutes.  It had the big timber
of a regular island; it might be five or six miles long and more than
half a mile wide.

I kept quiet, with my ears cocked, about fifteen minutes, I reckon.  I
was floating along, of course, four or five miles an hour; but you don't
ever think of that.  No, you _feel_ like you are laying dead still on
the water; and if a little glimpse of a snag slips by you don't think to
yourself how fast _you're_ going, but you catch your breath and think,
my! how that snag's tearing along.  If you think it ain't dismal and
lonesome out in a fog that way by yourself in the night, you try it
once--you'll see.

Next, for about a half an hour, I whoops now and then; at last I hears
the answer a long ways off, and tries to follow it, but I couldn't do
it, and directly I judged I'd got into a nest of towheads, for I had
little dim glimpses of them on both sides of me--sometimes just a narrow
channel between, and some that I couldn't see I knowed was there because
I'd hear the wash of the current against the old dead brush and trash
that hung over the banks.  Well, I warn't long loosing the whoops down
amongst the towheads; and I only tried to chase them a little while,
anyway, because it was worse than chasing a Jack-o'-lantern.  You never
knowed a sound dodge around so, and swap places so quick and so much.

I had to claw away from the bank pretty lively four or five times, to
keep from knocking the islands out of the river; and so I judged the
raft must be butting into the bank every now and then, or else it would
get further ahead and clear out of hearing--it was floating a little
faster than what I was.

Well, I seemed to be in the open river again by and by, but I couldn't
hear no sign of a whoop nowheres.  I reckoned Jim had fetched up on a
snag, maybe, and it was all up with him.  I was good and tired, so I
laid down in the canoe and said I wouldn't bother no more.  I didn't
want to go to sleep, of course; but I was so sleepy I couldn't help it;
so I thought I would take jest one little cat-nap.

But I reckon it was more than a cat-nap, for when I waked up the stars
was shining bright, the fog was all gone, and I was spinning down a
big bend stern first.  First I didn't know where I was; I thought I was
dreaming; and when things began to come back to me they seemed to come
up dim out of last week.

It was a monstrous big river here, with the tallest and the thickest
kind of timber on both banks; just a solid wall, as well as I could see
by the stars.  I looked away down-stream, and seen a black speck on the
water. I took after it; but when I got to it it warn't nothing but a
couple of sawlogs made fast together.  Then I see another speck, and
chased that; then another, and this time I was right.  It was the raft.

When I got to it Jim was setting there with his head down between his
knees, asleep, with his right arm hanging over the steering-oar.  The
other oar was smashed off, and the raft was littered up with leaves and
branches and dirt.  So she'd had a rough time.

I made fast and laid down under Jim's nose on the raft, and began to
gap, and stretch my fists out against Jim, and says:

“Hello, Jim, have I been asleep?  Why didn't you stir me up?”

“Goodness gracious, is dat you, Huck?  En you ain' dead--you ain'
drownded--you's back agin?  It's too good for true, honey, it's too good
for true. Lemme look at you chile, lemme feel o' you.  No, you ain'
dead! you's back agin, 'live en soun', jis de same ole Huck--de same ole
Huck, thanks to goodness!”

“What's the matter with you, Jim?  You been a-drinking?”

“Drinkin'?  Has I ben a-drinkin'?  Has I had a chance to be a-drinkin'?”

“Well, then, what makes you talk so wild?”

“How does I talk wild?”

“_How_?  Why, hain't you been talking about my coming back, and all that
stuff, as if I'd been gone away?”

“Huck--Huck Finn, you look me in de eye; look me in de eye.  _Hain't_ you
ben gone away?”

“Gone away?  Why, what in the nation do you mean?  I hain't been gone
anywheres.  Where would I go to?”

“Well, looky here, boss, dey's sumf'n wrong, dey is.  Is I _me_, or who
_is_ I? Is I heah, or whah _is_ I?  Now dat's what I wants to know.”

“Well, I think you're here, plain enough, but I think you're a
tangle-headed old fool, Jim.”

“I is, is I?  Well, you answer me dis:  Didn't you tote out de line in
de canoe fer to make fas' to de tow-head?”

“No, I didn't.  What tow-head?  I hain't see no tow-head.”

“You hain't seen no towhead?  Looky here, didn't de line pull loose en
de raf' go a-hummin' down de river, en leave you en de canoe behine in
de fog?”

“What fog?”

“Why, de fog!--de fog dat's been aroun' all night.  En didn't you whoop,
en didn't I whoop, tell we got mix' up in de islands en one un us got
los' en t'other one was jis' as good as los', 'kase he didn' know whah
he wuz? En didn't I bust up agin a lot er dem islands en have a turrible
time en mos' git drownded?  Now ain' dat so, boss--ain't it so?  You
answer me dat.”

“Well, this is too many for me, Jim.  I hain't seen no fog, nor no
islands, nor no troubles, nor nothing.  I been setting here talking with
you all night till you went to sleep about ten minutes ago, and I reckon
I done the same.  You couldn't a got drunk in that time, so of course
you've been dreaming.”

“Dad fetch it, how is I gwyne to dream all dat in ten minutes?”

“Well, hang it all, you did dream it, because there didn't any of it
happen.”

“But, Huck, it's all jis' as plain to me as--”

“It don't make no difference how plain it is; there ain't nothing in it.
I know, because I've been here all the time.”

Jim didn't say nothing for about five minutes, but set there studying
over it.  Then he says:

“Well, den, I reck'n I did dream it, Huck; but dog my cats ef it ain't
de powerfullest dream I ever see.  En I hain't ever had no dream b'fo'
dat's tired me like dis one.”

“Oh, well, that's all right, because a dream does tire a body like
everything sometimes.  But this one was a staving dream; tell me all
about it, Jim.”

So Jim went to work and told me the whole thing right through, just as
it happened, only he painted it up considerable.  Then he said he must
start in and “'terpret” it, because it was sent for a warning.  He said
the first towhead stood for a man that would try to do us some good, but
the current was another man that would get us away from him.  The whoops
was warnings that would come to us every now and then, and if we didn't
try hard to make out to understand them they'd just take us into bad
luck, 'stead of keeping us out of it.  The lot of towheads was troubles
we was going to get into with quarrelsome people and all kinds of mean
folks, but if we minded our business and didn't talk back and aggravate
them, we would pull through and get out of the fog and into the big
clear river, which was the free States, and wouldn't have no more
trouble.

It had clouded up pretty dark just after I got on to the raft, but it
was clearing up again now.

“Oh, well, that's all interpreted well enough as far as it goes, Jim,” I
says; “but what does _these_ things stand for?”

It was the leaves and rubbish on the raft and the smashed oar.  You
could see them first-rate now.

Jim looked at the trash, and then looked at me, and back at the trash
again.  He had got the dream fixed so strong in his head that he
couldn't seem to shake it loose and get the facts back into its place
again right away.  But when he did get the thing straightened around he
looked at me steady without ever smiling, and says:

“What do dey stan' for?  I'se gwyne to tell you.  When I got all wore
out wid work, en wid de callin' for you, en went to sleep, my heart wuz
mos' broke bekase you wuz los', en I didn' k'yer no' mo' what become
er me en de raf'.  En when I wake up en fine you back agin, all safe
en soun', de tears come, en I could a got down on my knees en kiss yo'
foot, I's so thankful. En all you wuz thinkin' 'bout wuz how you could
make a fool uv ole Jim wid a lie.  Dat truck dah is _trash_; en trash
is what people is dat puts dirt on de head er dey fren's en makes 'em
ashamed.”

Then he got up slow and walked to the wigwam, and went in there without
saying anything but that.  But that was enough.  It made me feel so mean
I could almost kissed _his_ foot to get him to take it back.

It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble
myself to a nigger; but I done it, and I warn't ever sorry for it
afterwards, neither.  I didn't do him no more mean tricks, and I
wouldn't done that one if I'd a knowed it would make him feel that way.




CHAPTER XVI.

WE slept most all day, and started out at night, a little ways behind a
monstrous long raft that was as long going by as a procession.  She had
four long sweeps at each end, so we judged she carried as many as thirty
men, likely.  She had five big wigwams aboard, wide apart, and an open
camp fire in the middle, and a tall flag-pole at each end.  There was a
power of style about her.  It _amounted_ to something being a raftsman
on such a craft as that.

We went drifting down into a big bend, and the night clouded up and got
hot.  The river was very wide, and was walled with solid timber on
both sides; you couldn't see a break in it hardly ever, or a light.  We
talked about Cairo, and wondered whether we would know it when we got to
it.  I said likely we wouldn't, because I had heard say there warn't but
about a dozen houses there, and if they didn't happen to have them lit
up, how was we going to know we was passing a town?  Jim said if the two
big rivers joined together there, that would show.  But I said maybe
we might think we was passing the foot of an island and coming into the
same old river again. That disturbed Jim--and me too.  So the question
was, what to do?  I said, paddle ashore the first time a light showed,
and tell them pap was behind, coming along with a trading-scow, and
was a green hand at the business, and wanted to know how far it was to
Cairo.  Jim thought it was a good idea, so we took a smoke on it and
waited.

There warn't nothing to do now but to look out sharp for the town, and
not pass it without seeing it.  He said he'd be mighty sure to see it,
because he'd be a free man the minute he seen it, but if he missed it
he'd be in a slave country again and no more show for freedom.  Every
little while he jumps up and says:

“Dah she is?”

But it warn't.  It was Jack-o'-lanterns, or lightning bugs; so he set
down again, and went to watching, same as before.  Jim said it made him
all over trembly and feverish to be so close to freedom.  Well, I can
tell you it made me all over trembly and feverish, too, to hear him,
because I begun to get it through my head that he _was_ most free--and
who was to blame for it?  Why, _me_.  I couldn't get that out of my
conscience, no how nor no way. It got to troubling me so I couldn't
rest; I couldn't stay still in one place.  It hadn't ever come home to
me before, what this thing was that I was doing.  But now it did; and it
stayed with me, and scorched me more and more.  I tried to make out to
myself that I warn't to blame, because I didn't run Jim off from his
rightful owner; but it warn't no use, conscience up and says, every
time, “But you knowed he was running for his freedom, and you could a
paddled ashore and told somebody.”  That was so--I couldn't get around
that noway.  That was where it pinched.  Conscience says to me, “What
had poor Miss Watson done to you that you could see her nigger go off
right under your eyes and never say one single word?  What did that poor
old woman do to you that you could treat her so mean?  Why, she tried to
learn you your book, she tried to learn you your manners, she tried to
be good to you every way she knowed how.  _That's_ what she done.”

I got to feeling so mean and so miserable I most wished I was dead.  I
fidgeted up and down the raft, abusing myself to myself, and Jim was
fidgeting up and down past me.  We neither of us could keep still.
 Every time he danced around and says, “Dah's Cairo!” it went through me
like a shot, and I thought if it _was_ Cairo I reckoned I would die of
miserableness.

Jim talked out loud all the time while I was talking to myself.  He was
saying how the first thing he would do when he got to a free State he
would go to saving up money and never spend a single cent, and when he
got enough he would buy his wife, which was owned on a farm close to
where Miss Watson lived; and then they would both work to buy the
two children, and if their master wouldn't sell them, they'd get an
Ab'litionist to go and steal them.

It most froze me to hear such talk.  He wouldn't ever dared to talk such
talk in his life before.  Just see what a difference it made in him the
minute he judged he was about free.  It was according to the old saying,
“Give a nigger an inch and he'll take an ell.”  Thinks I, this is what
comes of my not thinking.  Here was this nigger, which I had as good
as helped to run away, coming right out flat-footed and saying he would
steal his children--children that belonged to a man I didn't even know; a
man that hadn't ever done me no harm.

I was sorry to hear Jim say that, it was such a lowering of him.  My
conscience got to stirring me up hotter than ever, until at last I says
to it, “Let up on me--it ain't too late yet--I'll paddle ashore at the
first light and tell.”  I felt easy and happy and light as a feather
right off.  All my troubles was gone.  I went to looking out sharp for a
light, and sort of singing to myself.  By and by one showed.  Jim sings
out:

“We's safe, Huck, we's safe!  Jump up and crack yo' heels!  Dat's de
good ole Cairo at las', I jis knows it!”

I says:

“I'll take the canoe and go and see, Jim.  It mightn't be, you know.”

He jumped and got the canoe ready, and put his old coat in the bottom
for me to set on, and give me the paddle; and as I shoved off, he says:

“Pooty soon I'll be a-shout'n' for joy, en I'll say, it's all on
accounts o' Huck; I's a free man, en I couldn't ever ben free ef it
hadn' ben for Huck; Huck done it.  Jim won't ever forgit you, Huck;
you's de bes' fren' Jim's ever had; en you's de _only_ fren' ole Jim's
got now.”

I was paddling off, all in a sweat to tell on him; but when he says
this, it seemed to kind of take the tuck all out of me.  I went along
slow then, and I warn't right down certain whether I was glad I started
or whether I warn't.  When I was fifty yards off, Jim says:

“Dah you goes, de ole true Huck; de on'y white genlman dat ever kep' his
promise to ole Jim.”

Well, I just felt sick.  But I says, I _got_ to do it--I can't get _out_
of it.  Right then along comes a skiff with two men in it with guns, and
they stopped and I stopped.  One of them says:

“What's that yonder?”

“A piece of a raft,” I says.

“Do you belong on it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Any men on it?”

“Only one, sir.”

“Well, there's five niggers run off to-night up yonder, above the head
of the bend.  Is your man white or black?”

I didn't answer up prompt.  I tried to, but the words wouldn't come. I
tried for a second or two to brace up and out with it, but I warn't man
enough--hadn't the spunk of a rabbit.  I see I was weakening; so I just
give up trying, and up and says:

“He's white.”

“I reckon we'll go and see for ourselves.”

“I wish you would,” says I, “because it's pap that's there, and maybe
you'd help me tow the raft ashore where the light is.  He's sick--and so
is mam and Mary Ann.”

“Oh, the devil! we're in a hurry, boy.  But I s'pose we've got to.
 Come, buckle to your paddle, and let's get along.”

I buckled to my paddle and they laid to their oars.  When we had made a
stroke or two, I says:

“Pap'll be mighty much obleeged to you, I can tell you.  Everybody goes
away when I want them to help me tow the raft ashore, and I can't do it
by myself.”

“Well, that's infernal mean.  Odd, too.  Say, boy, what's the matter
with your father?”

“It's the--a--the--well, it ain't anything much.”

They stopped pulling.  It warn't but a mighty little ways to the raft
now. One says:

“Boy, that's a lie.  What _is_ the matter with your pap?  Answer up
square now, and it'll be the better for you.”

“I will, sir, I will, honest--but don't leave us, please.  It's
the--the--Gentlemen, if you'll only pull ahead, and let me heave you the
headline, you won't have to come a-near the raft--please do.”

“Set her back, John, set her back!” says one.  They backed water.  “Keep
away, boy--keep to looard.  Confound it, I just expect the wind has
blowed it to us.  Your pap's got the small-pox, and you know it precious
well.  Why didn't you come out and say so?  Do you want to spread it all
over?”

“Well,” says I, a-blubbering, “I've told everybody before, and they just
went away and left us.”

“Poor devil, there's something in that.  We are right down sorry for
you, but we--well, hang it, we don't want the small-pox, you see.  Look
here, I'll tell you what to do.  Don't you try to land by yourself, or
you'll smash everything to pieces.  You float along down about twenty
miles, and you'll come to a town on the left-hand side of the river.  It
will be long after sun-up then, and when you ask for help you tell them
your folks are all down with chills and fever.  Don't be a fool again,
and let people guess what is the matter.  Now we're trying to do you a
kindness; so you just put twenty miles between us, that's a good boy.
 It wouldn't do any good to land yonder where the light is--it's only a
wood-yard. Say, I reckon your father's poor, and I'm bound to say he's
in pretty hard luck.  Here, I'll put a twenty-dollar gold piece on this
board, and you get it when it floats by.  I feel mighty mean to leave
you; but my kingdom! it won't do to fool with small-pox, don't you see?”

“Hold on, Parker,” says the other man, “here's a twenty to put on the
board for me.  Good-bye, boy; you do as Mr. Parker told you, and you'll
be all right.”

“That's so, my boy--good-bye, good-bye.  If you see any runaway niggers
you get help and nab them, and you can make some money by it.”

“Good-bye, sir,” says I; “I won't let no runaway niggers get by me if I
can help it.”

They went off and I got aboard the raft, feeling bad and low, because I
knowed very well I had done wrong, and I see it warn't no use for me
to try to learn to do right; a body that don't get _started_ right when
he's little ain't got no show--when the pinch comes there ain't nothing
to back him up and keep him to his work, and so he gets beat.  Then I
thought a minute, and says to myself, hold on; s'pose you'd a done right
and give Jim up, would you felt better than what you do now?  No, says
I, I'd feel bad--I'd feel just the same way I do now.  Well, then, says
I, what's the use you learning to do right when it's troublesome to do
right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?
 I was stuck.  I couldn't answer that.  So I reckoned I wouldn't bother
no more about it, but after this always do whichever come handiest at
the time.

I went into the wigwam; Jim warn't there.  I looked all around; he
warn't anywhere.  I says:

“Jim!”

“Here I is, Huck.  Is dey out o' sight yit?  Don't talk loud.”

He was in the river under the stern oar, with just his nose out.  I told
him they were out of sight, so he come aboard.  He says:

“I was a-listenin' to all de talk, en I slips into de river en was gwyne
to shove for sho' if dey come aboard.  Den I was gwyne to swim to de
raf' agin when dey was gone.  But lawsy, how you did fool 'em, Huck!
 Dat _wuz_ de smartes' dodge!  I tell you, chile, I'spec it save' ole
Jim--ole Jim ain't going to forgit you for dat, honey.”

Then we talked about the money.  It was a pretty good raise--twenty
dollars apiece.  Jim said we could take deck passage on a steamboat
now, and the money would last us as far as we wanted to go in the free
States. He said twenty mile more warn't far for the raft to go, but he
wished we was already there.

Towards daybreak we tied up, and Jim was mighty particular about hiding
the raft good.  Then he worked all day fixing things in bundles, and
getting all ready to quit rafting.

That night about ten we hove in sight of the lights of a town away down
in a left-hand bend.

I went off in the canoe to ask about it.  Pretty soon I found a man out
in the river with a skiff, setting a trot-line.  I ranged up and says:

“Mister, is that town Cairo?”

“Cairo? no.  You must be a blame' fool.”

“What town is it, mister?”

“If you want to know, go and find out.  If you stay here botherin'
around me for about a half a minute longer you'll get something you
won't want.”

I paddled to the raft.  Jim was awful disappointed, but I said never
mind, Cairo would be the next place, I reckoned.

We passed another town before daylight, and I was going out again; but
it was high ground, so I didn't go.  No high ground about Cairo, Jim
said. I had forgot it.  We laid up for the day on a towhead tolerable
close to the left-hand bank.  I begun to suspicion something.  So did
Jim.  I says:

“Maybe we went by Cairo in the fog that night.”

He says:

“Doan' le's talk about it, Huck.  Po' niggers can't have no luck.  I
awluz 'spected dat rattlesnake-skin warn't done wid its work.”

“I wish I'd never seen that snake-skin, Jim--I do wish I'd never laid
eyes on it.”

“It ain't yo' fault, Huck; you didn' know.  Don't you blame yo'self
'bout it.”

When it was daylight, here was the clear Ohio water inshore, sure
enough, and outside was the old regular Muddy!  So it was all up with
Cairo.

We talked it all over.  It wouldn't do to take to the shore; we couldn't
take the raft up the stream, of course.  There warn't no way but to wait
for dark, and start back in the canoe and take the chances.  So we slept
all day amongst the cottonwood thicket, so as to be fresh for the work,
and when we went back to the raft about dark the canoe was gone!

We didn't say a word for a good while.  There warn't anything to
say.  We both knowed well enough it was some more work of the
rattlesnake-skin; so what was the use to talk about it?  It would only
look like we was finding fault, and that would be bound to fetch more
bad luck--and keep on fetching it, too, till we knowed enough to keep
still.

By and by we talked about what we better do, and found there warn't no
way but just to go along down with the raft till we got a chance to buy
a canoe to go back in.  We warn't going to borrow it when there warn't
anybody around, the way pap would do, for that might set people after
us.

So we shoved out after dark on the raft.

Anybody that don't believe yet that it's foolishness to handle a
snake-skin, after all that that snake-skin done for us, will believe it
now if they read on and see what more it done for us.

The place to buy canoes is off of rafts laying up at shore.  But we
didn't see no rafts laying up; so we went along during three hours and
more.  Well, the night got gray and ruther thick, which is the next
meanest thing to fog.  You can't tell the shape of the river, and you
can't see no distance. It got to be very late and still, and then along
comes a steamboat up the river.  We lit the lantern, and judged she
would see it.  Up-stream boats didn't generly come close to us; they
go out and follow the bars and hunt for easy water under the reefs; but
nights like this they bull right up the channel against the whole river.

We could hear her pounding along, but we didn't see her good till she
was close.  She aimed right for us.  Often they do that and try to see
how close they can come without touching; sometimes the wheel bites off
a sweep, and then the pilot sticks his head out and laughs, and thinks
he's mighty smart.  Well, here she comes, and we said she was going to
try and shave us; but she didn't seem to be sheering off a bit.  She
was a big one, and she was coming in a hurry, too, looking like a black
cloud with rows of glow-worms around it; but all of a sudden she bulged
out, big and scary, with a long row of wide-open furnace doors shining
like red-hot teeth, and her monstrous bows and guards hanging right
over us.  There was a yell at us, and a jingling of bells to stop the
engines, a powwow of cussing, and whistling of steam--and as Jim went
overboard on one side and I on the other, she come smashing straight
through the raft.

I dived--and I aimed to find the bottom, too, for a thirty-foot wheel
had got to go over me, and I wanted it to have plenty of room.  I could
always stay under water a minute; this time I reckon I stayed under a
minute and a half.  Then I bounced for the top in a hurry, for I was
nearly busting.  I popped out to my armpits and blowed the water out of
my nose, and puffed a bit.  Of course there was a booming current; and
of course that boat started her engines again ten seconds after she
stopped them, for they never cared much for raftsmen; so now she was
churning along up the river, out of sight in the thick weather, though I
could hear her.

I sung out for Jim about a dozen times, but I didn't get any answer;
so I grabbed a plank that touched me while I was “treading water,” and
struck out for shore, shoving it ahead of me.  But I made out to see
that the drift of the current was towards the left-hand shore, which
meant that I was in a crossing; so I changed off and went that way.

It was one of these long, slanting, two-mile crossings; so I was a good
long time in getting over.  I made a safe landing, and clumb up the
bank. I couldn't see but a little ways, but I went poking along over
rough ground for a quarter of a mile or more, and then I run across a
big old-fashioned double log-house before I noticed it.  I was going to
rush by and get away, but a lot of dogs jumped out and went to howling
and barking at me, and I knowed better than to move another peg.




CHAPTER XVII.

IN about a minute somebody spoke out of a window without putting his
head out, and says:

“Be done, boys!  Who's there?”

I says:

“It's me.”

“Who's me?”

“George Jackson, sir.”

“What do you want?”

“I don't want nothing, sir.  I only want to go along by, but the dogs
won't let me.”

“What are you prowling around here this time of night for--hey?”

“I warn't prowling around, sir, I fell overboard off of the steamboat.”

“Oh, you did, did you?  Strike a light there, somebody.  What did you
say your name was?”

“George Jackson, sir.  I'm only a boy.”

“Look here, if you're telling the truth you needn't be afraid--nobody'll
hurt you.  But don't try to budge; stand right where you are.  Rouse out
Bob and Tom, some of you, and fetch the guns.  George Jackson, is there
anybody with you?”

“No, sir, nobody.”

I heard the people stirring around in the house now, and see a light.
The man sung out:

“Snatch that light away, Betsy, you old fool--ain't you got any sense?
Put it on the floor behind the front door.  Bob, if you and Tom are
ready, take your places.”

“All ready.”

“Now, George Jackson, do you know the Shepherdsons?”

“No, sir; I never heard of them.”

“Well, that may be so, and it mayn't.  Now, all ready.  Step forward,
George Jackson.  And mind, don't you hurry--come mighty slow.  If there's
anybody with you, let him keep back--if he shows himself he'll be shot.
Come along now.  Come slow; push the door open yourself--just enough to
squeeze in, d' you hear?”

I didn't hurry; I couldn't if I'd a wanted to.  I took one slow step at
a time and there warn't a sound, only I thought I could hear my heart.
 The dogs were as still as the humans, but they followed a little behind
me. When I got to the three log doorsteps I heard them unlocking and
unbarring and unbolting.  I put my hand on the door and pushed it a
little and a little more till somebody said, “There, that's enough--put
your head in.” I done it, but I judged they would take it off.

The candle was on the floor, and there they all was, looking at me, and
me at them, for about a quarter of a minute:  Three big men with guns
pointed at me, which made me wince, I tell you; the oldest, gray
and about sixty, the other two thirty or more--all of them fine and
handsome--and the sweetest old gray-headed lady, and back of her two
young women which I couldn't see right well.  The old gentleman says:

“There; I reckon it's all right.  Come in.”

As soon as I was in the old gentleman he locked the door and barred it
and bolted it, and told the young men to come in with their guns, and
they all went in a big parlor that had a new rag carpet on the floor,
and got together in a corner that was out of the range of the front
windows--there warn't none on the side.  They held the candle, and took a
good look at me, and all said, “Why, _he_ ain't a Shepherdson--no, there
ain't any Shepherdson about him.”  Then the old man said he hoped I
wouldn't mind being searched for arms, because he didn't mean no harm by
it--it was only to make sure.  So he didn't pry into my pockets, but only
felt outside with his hands, and said it was all right.  He told me to
make myself easy and at home, and tell all about myself; but the old
lady says:

“Why, bless you, Saul, the poor thing's as wet as he can be; and don't
you reckon it may be he's hungry?”

“True for you, Rachel--I forgot.”

So the old lady says:

“Betsy” (this was a nigger woman), “you fly around and get him something
to eat as quick as you can, poor thing; and one of you girls go and wake
up Buck and tell him--oh, here he is himself.  Buck, take this little
stranger and get the wet clothes off from him and dress him up in some
of yours that's dry.”

Buck looked about as old as me--thirteen or fourteen or along there,
though he was a little bigger than me.  He hadn't on anything but a
shirt, and he was very frowzy-headed.  He came in gaping and digging one
fist into his eyes, and he was dragging a gun along with the other one.
He says:

“Ain't they no Shepherdsons around?”

They said, no, 'twas a false alarm.

“Well,” he says, “if they'd a ben some, I reckon I'd a got one.”

They all laughed, and Bob says:

“Why, Buck, they might have scalped us all, you've been so slow in
coming.”

“Well, nobody come after me, and it ain't right I'm always kept down; I
don't get no show.”

“Never mind, Buck, my boy,” says the old man, “you'll have show enough,
all in good time, don't you fret about that.  Go 'long with you now, and
do as your mother told you.”

When we got up-stairs to his room he got me a coarse shirt and a
roundabout and pants of his, and I put them on.  While I was at it he
asked me what my name was, but before I could tell him he started to
tell me about a bluejay and a young rabbit he had catched in the woods
day before yesterday, and he asked me where Moses was when the candle
went out.  I said I didn't know; I hadn't heard about it before, no way.

“Well, guess,” he says.

“How'm I going to guess,” says I, “when I never heard tell of it
before?”

“But you can guess, can't you?  It's just as easy.”

“_Which_ candle?”  I says.

“Why, any candle,” he says.

“I don't know where he was,” says I; “where was he?”

“Why, he was in the _dark_!  That's where he was!”

“Well, if you knowed where he was, what did you ask me for?”

“Why, blame it, it's a riddle, don't you see?  Say, how long are you
going to stay here?  You got to stay always.  We can just have booming
times--they don't have no school now.  Do you own a dog?  I've got a
dog--and he'll go in the river and bring out chips that you throw in.  Do
you like to comb up Sundays, and all that kind of foolishness?  You bet
I don't, but ma she makes me.  Confound these ole britches!  I reckon
I'd better put 'em on, but I'd ruther not, it's so warm.  Are you all
ready? All right.  Come along, old hoss.”

Cold corn-pone, cold corn-beef, butter and buttermilk--that is what they
had for me down there, and there ain't nothing better that ever I've
come across yet.  Buck and his ma and all of them smoked cob pipes,
except the nigger woman, which was gone, and the two young women.  They
all smoked and talked, and I eat and talked.  The young women had
quilts around them, and their hair down their backs.  They all asked me
questions, and I told them how pap and me and all the family was living
on a little farm down at the bottom of Arkansaw, and my sister Mary Ann
run off and got married and never was heard of no more, and Bill went
to hunt them and he warn't heard of no more, and Tom and Mort died,
and then there warn't nobody but just me and pap left, and he was just
trimmed down to nothing, on account of his troubles; so when he died
I took what there was left, because the farm didn't belong to us, and
started up the river, deck passage, and fell overboard; and that was how
I come to be here.  So they said I could have a home there as long as I
wanted it.  Then it was most daylight and everybody went to bed, and I
went to bed with Buck, and when I waked up in the morning, drat it all,
I had forgot what my name was. So I laid there about an hour trying to
think, and when Buck waked up I says:

“Can you spell, Buck?”

“Yes,” he says.

“I bet you can't spell my name,” says I.

“I bet you what you dare I can,” says he.

“All right,” says I, “go ahead.”

“G-e-o-r-g-e J-a-x-o-n--there now,” he says.

“Well,” says I, “you done it, but I didn't think you could.  It ain't no
slouch of a name to spell--right off without studying.”

I set it down, private, because somebody might want _me_ to spell it
next, and so I wanted to be handy with it and rattle it off like I was
used to it.

It was a mighty nice family, and a mighty nice house, too.  I hadn't
seen no house out in the country before that was so nice and had so much
style.  It didn't have an iron latch on the front door, nor a wooden one
with a buckskin string, but a brass knob to turn, the same as houses in
town. There warn't no bed in the parlor, nor a sign of a bed; but heaps
of parlors in towns has beds in them.  There was a big fireplace that
was bricked on the bottom, and the bricks was kept clean and red by
pouring water on them and scrubbing them with another brick; sometimes
they wash them over with red water-paint that they call Spanish-brown,
same as they do in town.  They had big brass dog-irons that could hold
up a saw-log. There was a clock on the middle of the mantelpiece, with
a picture of a town painted on the bottom half of the glass front, and
a round place in the middle of it for the sun, and you could see the
pendulum swinging behind it.  It was beautiful to hear that clock tick;
and sometimes when one of these peddlers had been along and scoured her
up and got her in good shape, she would start in and strike a hundred
and fifty before she got tuckered out.  They wouldn't took any money for
her.

Well, there was a big outlandish parrot on each side of the clock,
made out of something like chalk, and painted up gaudy.  By one of the
parrots was a cat made of crockery, and a crockery dog by the other;
and when you pressed down on them they squeaked, but didn't open
their mouths nor look different nor interested.  They squeaked through
underneath.  There was a couple of big wild-turkey-wing fans spread out
behind those things.  On the table in the middle of the room was a kind
of a lovely crockery basket that had apples and oranges and peaches and
grapes piled up in it, which was much redder and yellower and prettier
than real ones is, but they warn't real because you could see where
pieces had got chipped off and showed the white chalk, or whatever it
was, underneath.

This table had a cover made out of beautiful oilcloth, with a red and
blue spread-eagle painted on it, and a painted border all around.  It
come all the way from Philadelphia, they said.  There was some books,
too, piled up perfectly exact, on each corner of the table.  One was a
big family Bible full of pictures.  One was Pilgrim's Progress, about a
man that left his family, it didn't say why.  I read considerable in it
now and then.  The statements was interesting, but tough.  Another was
Friendship's Offering, full of beautiful stuff and poetry; but I didn't
read the poetry.  Another was Henry Clay's Speeches, and another was Dr.
Gunn's Family Medicine, which told you all about what to do if a body
was sick or dead.  There was a hymn book, and a lot of other books.  And
there was nice split-bottom chairs, and perfectly sound, too--not bagged
down in the middle and busted, like an old basket.

They had pictures hung on the walls--mainly Washingtons and Lafayettes,
and battles, and Highland Marys, and one called “Signing the
Declaration.” There was some that they called crayons, which one of the
daughters which was dead made her own self when she was only
fifteen years old.  They was different from any pictures I ever see
before--blacker, mostly, than is common.  One was a woman in a slim black
dress, belted small under the armpits, with bulges like a cabbage in
the middle of the sleeves, and a large black scoop-shovel bonnet with
a black veil, and white slim ankles crossed about with black tape, and
very wee black slippers, like a chisel, and she was leaning pensive on a
tombstone on her right elbow, under a weeping willow, and her other hand
hanging down her side holding a white handkerchief and a reticule,
and underneath the picture it said “Shall I Never See Thee More Alas.”
  Another one was a young lady with her hair all combed up straight
to the top of her head, and knotted there in front of a comb like a
chair-back, and she was crying into a handkerchief and had a dead bird
laying on its back in her other hand with its heels up, and underneath
the picture it said “I Shall Never Hear Thy Sweet Chirrup More Alas.”
  There was one where a young lady was at a window looking up at the
moon, and tears running down her cheeks; and she had an open letter in
one hand with black sealing wax showing on one edge of it, and she was
mashing a locket with a chain to it against her mouth, and underneath
the picture it said “And Art Thou Gone Yes Thou Art Gone Alas.”  These
was all nice pictures, I reckon, but I didn't somehow seem to take
to them, because if ever I was down a little they always give me the
fan-tods.  Everybody was sorry she died, because she had laid out a lot
more of these pictures to do, and a body could see by what she had done
what they had lost.  But I reckoned that with her disposition she was
having a better time in the graveyard.  She was at work on what they
said was her greatest picture when she took sick, and every day and
every night it was her prayer to be allowed to live till she got it
done, but she never got the chance.  It was a picture of a young woman
in a long white gown, standing on the rail of a bridge all ready to jump
off, with her hair all down her back, and looking up to the moon, with
the tears running down her face, and she had two arms folded across her
breast, and two arms stretched out in front, and two more reaching up
towards the moon--and the idea was to see which pair would look best,
and then scratch out all the other arms; but, as I was saying, she died
before she got her mind made up, and now they kept this picture over the
head of the bed in her room, and every time her birthday come they hung
flowers on it.  Other times it was hid with a little curtain.  The young
woman in the picture had a kind of a nice sweet face, but there was so
many arms it made her look too spidery, seemed to me.

This young girl kept a scrap-book when she was alive, and used to paste
obituaries and accidents and cases of patient suffering in it out of the
Presbyterian Observer, and write poetry after them out of her own head.
It was very good poetry. This is what she wrote about a boy by the name
of Stephen Dowling Bots that fell down a well and was drownded:

ODE TO STEPHEN DOWLING BOTS, DEC'D

And did young Stephen sicken,    And did young Stephen die? And did the
sad hearts thicken,    And did the mourners cry?

No; such was not the fate of    Young Stephen Dowling Bots; Though sad
hearts round him thickened,    'Twas not from sickness' shots.

No whooping-cough did rack his frame,    Nor measles drear with spots;
Not these impaired the sacred name    Of Stephen Dowling Bots.

Despised love struck not with woe    That head of curly knots, Nor
stomach troubles laid him low,    Young Stephen Dowling Bots.

O no. Then list with tearful eye,    Whilst I his fate do tell. His soul
did from this cold world fly    By falling down a well.

They got him out and emptied him;    Alas it was too late; His spirit
was gone for to sport aloft    In the realms of the good and great.

If Emmeline Grangerford could make poetry like that before she was
fourteen, there ain't no telling what she could a done by and by.  Buck
said she could rattle off poetry like nothing.  She didn't ever have to
stop to think.  He said she would slap down a line, and if she couldn't
find anything to rhyme with it would just scratch it out and slap down
another one, and go ahead. She warn't particular; she could write about
anything you choose to give her to write about just so it was sadful.
Every time a man died, or a woman died, or a child died, she would be on
hand with her “tribute” before he was cold.  She called them tributes.
The neighbors said it was the doctor first, then Emmeline, then the
undertaker--the undertaker never got in ahead of Emmeline but once, and
then she hung fire on a rhyme for the dead person's name, which was
Whistler.  She warn't ever the same after that; she never complained,
but she kinder pined away and did not live long.  Poor thing, many's the
time I made myself go up to the little room that used to be hers and get
out her poor old scrap-book and read in it when her pictures had been
aggravating me and I had soured on her a little.  I liked all that
family, dead ones and all, and warn't going to let anything come between
us.  Poor Emmeline made poetry about all the dead people when she was
alive, and it didn't seem right that there warn't nobody to make some
about her now she was gone; so I tried to sweat out a verse or two
myself, but I couldn't seem to make it go somehow.  They kept Emmeline's
room trim and nice, and all the things fixed in it just the way she
liked to have them when she was alive, and nobody ever slept there.
 The old lady took care of the room herself, though there was plenty
of niggers, and she sewed there a good deal and read her Bible there
mostly.

Well, as I was saying about the parlor, there was beautiful curtains on
the windows:  white, with pictures painted on them of castles with vines
all down the walls, and cattle coming down to drink.  There was a little
old piano, too, that had tin pans in it, I reckon, and nothing was ever
so lovely as to hear the young ladies sing “The Last Link is Broken”
 and play “The Battle of Prague” on it.  The walls of all the rooms was
plastered, and most had carpets on the floors, and the whole house was
whitewashed on the outside.

It was a double house, and the big open place betwixt them was roofed
and floored, and sometimes the table was set there in the middle of the
day, and it was a cool, comfortable place.  Nothing couldn't be better.
 And warn't the cooking good, and just bushels of it too!




CHAPTER XVIII.

COL.  Grangerford was a gentleman, you see.  He was a gentleman all
over; and so was his family.  He was well born, as the saying is, and
that's worth as much in a man as it is in a horse, so the Widow Douglas
said, and nobody ever denied that she was of the first aristocracy
in our town; and pap he always said it, too, though he warn't no more
quality than a mudcat himself.  Col.  Grangerford was very tall and
very slim, and had a darkish-paly complexion, not a sign of red in it
anywheres; he was clean shaved every morning all over his thin face, and
he had the thinnest kind of lips, and the thinnest kind of nostrils, and
a high nose, and heavy eyebrows, and the blackest kind of eyes, sunk so
deep back that they seemed like they was looking out of caverns at
you, as you may say.  His forehead was high, and his hair was black and
straight and hung to his shoulders. His hands was long and thin, and
every day of his life he put on a clean shirt and a full suit from head
to foot made out of linen so white it hurt your eyes to look at it;
and on Sundays he wore a blue tail-coat with brass buttons on it.  He
carried a mahogany cane with a silver head to it.  There warn't no
frivolishness about him, not a bit, and he warn't ever loud.  He was
as kind as he could be--you could feel that, you know, and so you had
confidence.  Sometimes he smiled, and it was good to see; but when he
straightened himself up like a liberty-pole, and the lightning begun to
flicker out from under his eyebrows, you wanted to climb a tree first,
and find out what the matter was afterwards.  He didn't ever have to
tell anybody to mind their manners--everybody was always good-mannered
where he was.  Everybody loved to have him around, too; he was sunshine
most always--I mean he made it seem like good weather.  When he turned
into a cloudbank it was awful dark for half a minute, and that was
enough; there wouldn't nothing go wrong again for a week.

When him and the old lady come down in the morning all the family got
up out of their chairs and give them good-day, and didn't set down again
till they had set down.  Then Tom and Bob went to the sideboard where
the decanter was, and mixed a glass of bitters and handed it to him, and
he held it in his hand and waited till Tom's and Bob's was mixed, and
then they bowed and said, “Our duty to you, sir, and madam;” and _they_
bowed the least bit in the world and said thank you, and so they drank,
all three, and Bob and Tom poured a spoonful of water on the sugar and
the mite of whisky or apple brandy in the bottom of their tumblers, and
give it to me and Buck, and we drank to the old people too.

Bob was the oldest and Tom next--tall, beautiful men with very broad
shoulders and brown faces, and long black hair and black eyes.  They
dressed in white linen from head to foot, like the old gentleman, and
wore broad Panama hats.

Then there was Miss Charlotte; she was twenty-five, and tall and proud
and grand, but as good as she could be when she warn't stirred up; but
when she was she had a look that would make you wilt in your tracks,
like her father.  She was beautiful.

So was her sister, Miss Sophia, but it was a different kind.  She was
gentle and sweet like a dove, and she was only twenty.

Each person had their own nigger to wait on them--Buck too.  My nigger
had a monstrous easy time, because I warn't used to having anybody do
anything for me, but Buck's was on the jump most of the time.

This was all there was of the family now, but there used to be
more--three sons; they got killed; and Emmeline that died.

The old gentleman owned a lot of farms and over a hundred niggers.
Sometimes a stack of people would come there, horseback, from ten or
fifteen mile around, and stay five or six days, and have such junketings
round about and on the river, and dances and picnics in the woods
daytimes, and balls at the house nights.  These people was mostly
kinfolks of the family.  The men brought their guns with them.  It was a
handsome lot of quality, I tell you.

There was another clan of aristocracy around there--five or six
families--mostly of the name of Shepherdson.  They was as high-toned
and well born and rich and grand as the tribe of Grangerfords.  The
Shepherdsons and Grangerfords used the same steamboat landing, which was
about two mile above our house; so sometimes when I went up there with a
lot of our folks I used to see a lot of the Shepherdsons there on their
fine horses.

One day Buck and me was away out in the woods hunting, and heard a horse
coming.  We was crossing the road.  Buck says:

“Quick!  Jump for the woods!”

We done it, and then peeped down the woods through the leaves.  Pretty
soon a splendid young man come galloping down the road, setting his
horse easy and looking like a soldier.  He had his gun across his
pommel.  I had seen him before.  It was young Harney Shepherdson.  I
heard Buck's gun go off at my ear, and Harney's hat tumbled off from his
head.  He grabbed his gun and rode straight to the place where we was
hid.  But we didn't wait.  We started through the woods on a run.  The
woods warn't thick, so I looked over my shoulder to dodge the bullet,
and twice I seen Harney cover Buck with his gun; and then he rode away
the way he come--to get his hat, I reckon, but I couldn't see.  We never
stopped running till we got home.  The old gentleman's eyes blazed a
minute--'twas pleasure, mainly, I judged--then his face sort of smoothed
down, and he says, kind of gentle:

“I don't like that shooting from behind a bush.  Why didn't you step
into the road, my boy?”

“The Shepherdsons don't, father.  They always take advantage.”

Miss Charlotte she held her head up like a queen while Buck was telling
his tale, and her nostrils spread and her eyes snapped.  The two young
men looked dark, but never said nothing.  Miss Sophia she turned pale,
but the color come back when she found the man warn't hurt.

Soon as I could get Buck down by the corn-cribs under the trees by
ourselves, I says:

“Did you want to kill him, Buck?”

“Well, I bet I did.”

“What did he do to you?”

“Him?  He never done nothing to me.”

“Well, then, what did you want to kill him for?”

“Why, nothing--only it's on account of the feud.”

“What's a feud?”

“Why, where was you raised?  Don't you know what a feud is?”

“Never heard of it before--tell me about it.”

“Well,” says Buck, “a feud is this way:  A man has a quarrel with
another man, and kills him; then that other man's brother kills _him_;
then the other brothers, on both sides, goes for one another; then the
_cousins_ chip in--and by and by everybody's killed off, and there ain't
no more feud.  But it's kind of slow, and takes a long time.”

“Has this one been going on long, Buck?”

“Well, I should _reckon_!  It started thirty year ago, or som'ers along
there.  There was trouble 'bout something, and then a lawsuit to settle
it; and the suit went agin one of the men, and so he up and shot the
man that won the suit--which he would naturally do, of course.  Anybody
would.”

“What was the trouble about, Buck?--land?”

“I reckon maybe--I don't know.”

“Well, who done the shooting?  Was it a Grangerford or a Shepherdson?”

“Laws, how do I know?  It was so long ago.”

“Don't anybody know?”

“Oh, yes, pa knows, I reckon, and some of the other old people; but they
don't know now what the row was about in the first place.”

“Has there been many killed, Buck?”

“Yes; right smart chance of funerals.  But they don't always kill.  Pa's
got a few buckshot in him; but he don't mind it 'cuz he don't weigh
much, anyway.  Bob's been carved up some with a bowie, and Tom's been
hurt once or twice.”

“Has anybody been killed this year, Buck?”

“Yes; we got one and they got one.  'Bout three months ago my cousin
Bud, fourteen year old, was riding through the woods on t'other side
of the river, and didn't have no weapon with him, which was blame'
foolishness, and in a lonesome place he hears a horse a-coming behind
him, and sees old Baldy Shepherdson a-linkin' after him with his gun in
his hand and his white hair a-flying in the wind; and 'stead of jumping
off and taking to the brush, Bud 'lowed he could out-run him; so they
had it, nip and tuck, for five mile or more, the old man a-gaining all
the time; so at last Bud seen it warn't any use, so he stopped and faced
around so as to have the bullet holes in front, you know, and the old
man he rode up and shot him down.  But he didn't git much chance to
enjoy his luck, for inside of a week our folks laid _him_ out.”

“I reckon that old man was a coward, Buck.”

“I reckon he _warn't_ a coward.  Not by a blame' sight.  There ain't a
coward amongst them Shepherdsons--not a one.  And there ain't no cowards
amongst the Grangerfords either.  Why, that old man kep' up his end in a
fight one day for half an hour against three Grangerfords, and come
out winner.  They was all a-horseback; he lit off of his horse and got
behind a little woodpile, and kep' his horse before him to stop the
bullets; but the Grangerfords stayed on their horses and capered around
the old man, and peppered away at him, and he peppered away at them.
 Him and his horse both went home pretty leaky and crippled, but the
Grangerfords had to be _fetched_ home--and one of 'em was dead, and
another died the next day.  No, sir; if a body's out hunting for cowards
he don't want to fool away any time amongst them Shepherdsons, becuz
they don't breed any of that _kind_.”

Next Sunday we all went to church, about three mile, everybody
a-horseback. The men took their guns along, so did Buck, and kept
them between their knees or stood them handy against the wall.  The
Shepherdsons done the same.  It was pretty ornery preaching--all about
brotherly love, and such-like tiresomeness; but everybody said it was
a good sermon, and they all talked it over going home, and had such
a powerful lot to say about faith and good works and free grace and
preforeordestination, and I don't know what all, that it did seem to me
to be one of the roughest Sundays I had run across yet.

About an hour after dinner everybody was dozing around, some in their
chairs and some in their rooms, and it got to be pretty dull.  Buck and
a dog was stretched out on the grass in the sun sound asleep.  I went up
to our room, and judged I would take a nap myself.  I found that sweet
Miss Sophia standing in her door, which was next to ours, and she took
me in her room and shut the door very soft, and asked me if I liked her,
and I said I did; and she asked me if I would do something for her and
not tell anybody, and I said I would.  Then she said she'd forgot her
Testament, and left it in the seat at church between two other books,
and would I slip out quiet and go there and fetch it to her, and not say
nothing to nobody.  I said I would. So I slid out and slipped off up the
road, and there warn't anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two,
for there warn't any lock on the door, and hogs likes a puncheon floor
in summer-time because it's cool.  If you notice, most folks don't go to
church only when they've got to; but a hog is different.

Says I to myself, something's up; it ain't natural for a girl to be in
such a sweat about a Testament.  So I give it a shake, and out drops a
little piece of paper with “HALF-PAST TWO” wrote on it with a pencil.  I
ransacked it, but couldn't find anything else.  I couldn't make anything
out of that, so I put the paper in the book again, and when I got home
and upstairs there was Miss Sophia in her door waiting for me.  She
pulled me in and shut the door; then she looked in the Testament till
she found the paper, and as soon as she read it she looked glad; and
before a body could think she grabbed me and give me a squeeze, and
said I was the best boy in the world, and not to tell anybody.  She was
mighty red in the face for a minute, and her eyes lighted up, and it
made her powerful pretty.  I was a good deal astonished, but when I got
my breath I asked her what the paper was about, and she asked me if I
had read it, and I said no, and she asked me if I could read writing,
and I told her “no, only coarse-hand,” and then she said the paper
warn't anything but a book-mark to keep her place, and I might go and
play now.

I went off down to the river, studying over this thing, and pretty soon
I noticed that my nigger was following along behind.  When we was out
of sight of the house he looked back and around a second, and then comes
a-running, and says:

“Mars Jawge, if you'll come down into de swamp I'll show you a whole
stack o' water-moccasins.”

Thinks I, that's mighty curious; he said that yesterday.  He oughter
know a body don't love water-moccasins enough to go around hunting for
them. What is he up to, anyway?  So I says:

“All right; trot ahead.”

I followed a half a mile; then he struck out over the swamp, and waded
ankle deep as much as another half-mile.  We come to a little flat piece
of land which was dry and very thick with trees and bushes and vines,
and he says:

“You shove right in dah jist a few steps, Mars Jawge; dah's whah dey is.
I's seed 'm befo'; I don't k'yer to see 'em no mo'.”

Then he slopped right along and went away, and pretty soon the trees hid
him.  I poked into the place a-ways and come to a little open patch
as big as a bedroom all hung around with vines, and found a man laying
there asleep--and, by jings, it was my old Jim!

I waked him up, and I reckoned it was going to be a grand surprise to
him to see me again, but it warn't.  He nearly cried he was so glad, but
he warn't surprised.  Said he swum along behind me that night, and heard
me yell every time, but dasn't answer, because he didn't want nobody to
pick _him_ up and take him into slavery again.  Says he:

“I got hurt a little, en couldn't swim fas', so I wuz a considable ways
behine you towards de las'; when you landed I reck'ned I could ketch
up wid you on de lan' 'dout havin' to shout at you, but when I see dat
house I begin to go slow.  I 'uz off too fur to hear what dey say to
you--I wuz 'fraid o' de dogs; but when it 'uz all quiet agin I knowed
you's in de house, so I struck out for de woods to wait for day.  Early
in de mawnin' some er de niggers come along, gwyne to de fields, en dey
tuk me en showed me dis place, whah de dogs can't track me on accounts
o' de water, en dey brings me truck to eat every night, en tells me how
you's a-gitt'n along.”

“Why didn't you tell my Jack to fetch me here sooner, Jim?”

“Well, 'twarn't no use to 'sturb you, Huck, tell we could do sumfn--but
we's all right now.  I ben a-buyin' pots en pans en vittles, as I got a
chanst, en a-patchin' up de raf' nights when--”

“_What_ raft, Jim?”

“Our ole raf'.”

“You mean to say our old raft warn't smashed all to flinders?”

“No, she warn't.  She was tore up a good deal--one en' of her was; but
dey warn't no great harm done, on'y our traps was mos' all los'.  Ef we
hadn' dive' so deep en swum so fur under water, en de night hadn' ben
so dark, en we warn't so sk'yerd, en ben sich punkin-heads, as de sayin'
is, we'd a seed de raf'.  But it's jis' as well we didn't, 'kase now
she's all fixed up agin mos' as good as new, en we's got a new lot o'
stuff, in de place o' what 'uz los'.”

“Why, how did you get hold of the raft again, Jim--did you catch her?”

“How I gwyne to ketch her en I out in de woods?  No; some er de niggers
foun' her ketched on a snag along heah in de ben', en dey hid her in a
crick 'mongst de willows, en dey wuz so much jawin' 'bout which un 'um
she b'long to de mos' dat I come to heah 'bout it pooty soon, so I ups
en settles de trouble by tellin' 'um she don't b'long to none uv um, but
to you en me; en I ast 'm if dey gwyne to grab a young white genlman's
propaty, en git a hid'n for it?  Den I gin 'm ten cents apiece, en dey
'uz mighty well satisfied, en wisht some mo' raf's 'ud come along en
make 'm rich agin. Dey's mighty good to me, dese niggers is, en whatever
I wants 'm to do fur me I doan' have to ast 'm twice, honey.  Dat Jack's
a good nigger, en pooty smart.”

“Yes, he is.  He ain't ever told me you was here; told me to come, and
he'd show me a lot of water-moccasins.  If anything happens _he_ ain't
mixed up in it.  He can say he never seen us together, and it 'll be the
truth.”

I don't want to talk much about the next day.  I reckon I'll cut it
pretty short.  I waked up about dawn, and was a-going to turn over and
go to sleep again when I noticed how still it was--didn't seem to be
anybody stirring.  That warn't usual.  Next I noticed that Buck was
up and gone. Well, I gets up, a-wondering, and goes down stairs--nobody
around; everything as still as a mouse.  Just the same outside.  Thinks
I, what does it mean?  Down by the wood-pile I comes across my Jack, and
says:

“What's it all about?”

Says he:

“Don't you know, Mars Jawge?”

“No,” says I, “I don't.”

“Well, den, Miss Sophia's run off! 'deed she has.  She run off in de
night some time--nobody don't know jis' when; run off to get married
to dat young Harney Shepherdson, you know--leastways, so dey 'spec.  De
fambly foun' it out 'bout half an hour ago--maybe a little mo'--en' I
_tell_ you dey warn't no time los'.  Sich another hurryin' up guns
en hosses _you_ never see!  De women folks has gone for to stir up de
relations, en ole Mars Saul en de boys tuck dey guns en rode up de
river road for to try to ketch dat young man en kill him 'fo' he kin
git acrost de river wid Miss Sophia.  I reck'n dey's gwyne to be mighty
rough times.”

“Buck went off 'thout waking me up.”

“Well, I reck'n he _did_!  Dey warn't gwyne to mix you up in it.
 Mars Buck he loaded up his gun en 'lowed he's gwyne to fetch home a
Shepherdson or bust. Well, dey'll be plenty un 'm dah, I reck'n, en you
bet you he'll fetch one ef he gits a chanst.”

I took up the river road as hard as I could put.  By and by I begin to
hear guns a good ways off.  When I come in sight of the log store and
the woodpile where the steamboats lands I worked along under the trees
and brush till I got to a good place, and then I clumb up into the
forks of a cottonwood that was out of reach, and watched.  There was a
wood-rank four foot high a little ways in front of the tree, and first I
was going to hide behind that; but maybe it was luckier I didn't.

There was four or five men cavorting around on their horses in the open
place before the log store, cussing and yelling, and trying to get at
a couple of young chaps that was behind the wood-rank alongside of the
steamboat landing; but they couldn't come it.  Every time one of them
showed himself on the river side of the woodpile he got shot at.  The
two boys was squatting back to back behind the pile, so they could watch
both ways.

By and by the men stopped cavorting around and yelling.  They started
riding towards the store; then up gets one of the boys, draws a steady
bead over the wood-rank, and drops one of them out of his saddle.  All
the men jumped off of their horses and grabbed the hurt one and started
to carry him to the store; and that minute the two boys started on the
run.  They got half way to the tree I was in before the men noticed.
Then the men see them, and jumped on their horses and took out after
them.  They gained on the boys, but it didn't do no good, the boys had
too good a start; they got to the woodpile that was in front of my tree,
and slipped in behind it, and so they had the bulge on the men again.
One of the boys was Buck, and the other was a slim young chap about
nineteen years old.

The men ripped around awhile, and then rode away.  As soon as they was
out of sight I sung out to Buck and told him.  He didn't know what
to make of my voice coming out of the tree at first.  He was awful
surprised.  He told me to watch out sharp and let him know when the
men come in sight again; said they was up to some devilment or
other--wouldn't be gone long.  I wished I was out of that tree, but I
dasn't come down.  Buck begun to cry and rip, and 'lowed that him and
his cousin Joe (that was the other young chap) would make up for this
day yet.  He said his father and his two brothers was killed, and two
or three of the enemy.  Said the Shepherdsons laid for them in
ambush.  Buck said his father and brothers ought to waited for their
relations--the Shepherdsons was too strong for them.  I asked him what
was become of young Harney and Miss Sophia.  He said they'd got across
the river and was safe.  I was glad of that; but the way Buck did take
on because he didn't manage to kill Harney that day he shot at him--I
hain't ever heard anything like it.

All of a sudden, bang! bang! bang! goes three or four guns--the men had
slipped around through the woods and come in from behind without their
horses!  The boys jumped for the river--both of them hurt--and as they
swum down the current the men run along the bank shooting at them and
singing out, “Kill them, kill them!”  It made me so sick I most fell out
of the tree.  I ain't a-going to tell _all_ that happened--it would make
me sick again if I was to do that.  I wished I hadn't ever come ashore
that night to see such things.  I ain't ever going to get shut of
them--lots of times I dream about them.

I stayed in the tree till it begun to get dark, afraid to come down.
Sometimes I heard guns away off in the woods; and twice I seen little
gangs of men gallop past the log store with guns; so I reckoned the
trouble was still a-going on.  I was mighty downhearted; so I made up my
mind I wouldn't ever go anear that house again, because I reckoned I
was to blame, somehow. I judged that that piece of paper meant that Miss
Sophia was to meet Harney somewheres at half-past two and run off; and
I judged I ought to told her father about that paper and the curious way
she acted, and then maybe he would a locked her up, and this awful mess
wouldn't ever happened.

When I got down out of the tree I crept along down the river bank a
piece, and found the two bodies laying in the edge of the water, and
tugged at them till I got them ashore; then I covered up their faces,
and got away as quick as I could.  I cried a little when I was covering
up Buck's face, for he was mighty good to me.

It was just dark now.  I never went near the house, but struck through
the woods and made for the swamp.  Jim warn't on his island, so I
tramped off in a hurry for the crick, and crowded through the willows,
red-hot to jump aboard and get out of that awful country.  The raft was
gone!  My souls, but I was scared!  I couldn't get my breath for most
a minute. Then I raised a yell.  A voice not twenty-five foot from me
says:

“Good lan'! is dat you, honey?  Doan' make no noise.”

It was Jim's voice--nothing ever sounded so good before.  I run along the
bank a piece and got aboard, and Jim he grabbed me and hugged me, he was
so glad to see me.  He says:

“Laws bless you, chile, I 'uz right down sho' you's dead agin.  Jack's
been heah; he say he reck'n you's ben shot, kase you didn' come home no
mo'; so I's jes' dis minute a startin' de raf' down towards de mouf er
de crick, so's to be all ready for to shove out en leave soon as Jack
comes agin en tells me for certain you _is_ dead.  Lawsy, I's mighty
glad to git you back again, honey.”

I says:

“All right--that's mighty good; they won't find me, and they'll think
I've been killed, and floated down the river--there's something up there
that 'll help them think so--so don't you lose no time, Jim, but just
shove off for the big water as fast as ever you can.”

I never felt easy till the raft was two mile below there and out in
the middle of the Mississippi.  Then we hung up our signal lantern, and
judged that we was free and safe once more.  I hadn't had a bite to eat
since yesterday, so Jim he got out some corn-dodgers and buttermilk,
and pork and cabbage and greens--there ain't nothing in the world so good
when it's cooked right--and whilst I eat my supper we talked and had a
good time.  I was powerful glad to get away from the feuds, and so was
Jim to get away from the swamp.  We said there warn't no home like a
raft, after all.  Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a
raft don't.  You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.




CHAPTER XIX.

TWO or three days and nights went by; I reckon I might say they swum by,
they slid along so quiet and smooth and lovely.  Here is the way we put
in the time.  It was a monstrous big river down there--sometimes a mile
and a half wide; we run nights, and laid up and hid daytimes; soon as
night was most gone we stopped navigating and tied up--nearly always
in the dead water under a towhead; and then cut young cottonwoods and
willows, and hid the raft with them.  Then we set out the lines.  Next
we slid into the river and had a swim, so as to freshen up and cool
off; then we set down on the sandy bottom where the water was about knee
deep, and watched the daylight come.  Not a sound anywheres--perfectly
still--just like the whole world was asleep, only sometimes the bullfrogs
a-cluttering, maybe.  The first thing to see, looking away over the
water, was a kind of dull line--that was the woods on t'other side; you
couldn't make nothing else out; then a pale place in the sky; then more
paleness spreading around; then the river softened up away off, and
warn't black any more, but gray; you could see little dark spots
drifting along ever so far away--trading scows, and such things; and
long black streaks--rafts; sometimes you could hear a sweep screaking; or
jumbled up voices, it was so still, and sounds come so far; and by and
by you could see a streak on the water which you know by the look of the
streak that there's a snag there in a swift current which breaks on it
and makes that streak look that way; and you see the mist curl up off
of the water, and the east reddens up, and the river, and you make out a
log-cabin in the edge of the woods, away on the bank on t'other side of
the river, being a woodyard, likely, and piled by them cheats so you can
throw a dog through it anywheres; then the nice breeze springs up, and
comes fanning you from over there, so cool and fresh and sweet to smell
on account of the woods and the flowers; but sometimes not that way,
because they've left dead fish laying around, gars and such, and they
do get pretty rank; and next you've got the full day, and everything
smiling in the sun, and the song-birds just going it!

A little smoke couldn't be noticed now, so we would take some fish off
of the lines and cook up a hot breakfast.  And afterwards we would watch
the lonesomeness of the river, and kind of lazy along, and by and by
lazy off to sleep.  Wake up by and by, and look to see what done it, and
maybe see a steamboat coughing along up-stream, so far off towards the
other side you couldn't tell nothing about her only whether she was
a stern-wheel or side-wheel; then for about an hour there wouldn't be
nothing to hear nor nothing to see--just solid lonesomeness.  Next
you'd see a raft sliding by, away off yonder, and maybe a galoot on it
chopping, because they're most always doing it on a raft; you'd see the
axe flash and come down--you don't hear nothing; you see that axe go
up again, and by the time it's above the man's head then you hear the
_k'chunk_!--it had took all that time to come over the water.  So we
would put in the day, lazying around, listening to the stillness.  Once
there was a thick fog, and the rafts and things that went by was beating
tin pans so the steamboats wouldn't run over them.  A scow or a
raft went by so close we could hear them talking and cussing and
laughing--heard them plain; but we couldn't see no sign of them; it made
you feel crawly; it was like spirits carrying on that way in the air.
 Jim said he believed it was spirits; but I says:

“No; spirits wouldn't say, 'Dern the dern fog.'”

Soon as it was night out we shoved; when we got her out to about the
middle we let her alone, and let her float wherever the current wanted
her to; then we lit the pipes, and dangled our legs in the water, and
talked about all kinds of things--we was always naked, day and night,
whenever the mosquitoes would let us--the new clothes Buck's folks made
for me was too good to be comfortable, and besides I didn't go much on
clothes, nohow.

Sometimes we'd have that whole river all to ourselves for the longest
time. Yonder was the banks and the islands, across the water; and maybe
a spark--which was a candle in a cabin window; and sometimes on the water
you could see a spark or two--on a raft or a scow, you know; and maybe
you could hear a fiddle or a song coming over from one of them crafts.
It's lovely to live on a raft.  We had the sky up there, all speckled
with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and
discuss about whether they was made or only just happened.  Jim he
allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I judged it would
have took too long to _make_ so many.  Jim said the moon could a _laid_
them; well, that looked kind of reasonable, so I didn't say nothing
against it, because I've seen a frog lay most as many, so of course it
could be done. We used to watch the stars that fell, too, and see them
streak down.  Jim allowed they'd got spoiled and was hove out of the
nest.

Once or twice of a night we would see a steamboat slipping along in the
dark, and now and then she would belch a whole world of sparks up out
of her chimbleys, and they would rain down in the river and look awful
pretty; then she would turn a corner and her lights would wink out and
her powwow shut off and leave the river still again; and by and by her
waves would get to us, a long time after she was gone, and joggle the
raft a bit, and after that you wouldn't hear nothing for you couldn't
tell how long, except maybe frogs or something.

After midnight the people on shore went to bed, and then for two or
three hours the shores was black--no more sparks in the cabin windows.
 These sparks was our clock--the first one that showed again meant
morning was coming, so we hunted a place to hide and tie up right away.

One morning about daybreak I found a canoe and crossed over a chute to
the main shore--it was only two hundred yards--and paddled about a mile
up a crick amongst the cypress woods, to see if I couldn't get some
berries. Just as I was passing a place where a kind of a cowpath crossed
the crick, here comes a couple of men tearing up the path as tight as
they could foot it.  I thought I was a goner, for whenever anybody was
after anybody I judged it was _me_--or maybe Jim.  I was about to dig out
from there in a hurry, but they was pretty close to me then, and sung
out and begged me to save their lives--said they hadn't been doing
nothing, and was being chased for it--said there was men and dogs
a-coming.  They wanted to jump right in, but I says:

“Don't you do it.  I don't hear the dogs and horses yet; you've got time
to crowd through the brush and get up the crick a little ways; then you
take to the water and wade down to me and get in--that'll throw the dogs
off the scent.”

They done it, and soon as they was aboard I lit out for our towhead,
and in about five or ten minutes we heard the dogs and the men away off,
shouting. We heard them come along towards the crick, but couldn't
see them; they seemed to stop and fool around a while; then, as we got
further and further away all the time, we couldn't hardly hear them at
all; by the time we had left a mile of woods behind us and struck the
river, everything was quiet, and we paddled over to the towhead and hid
in the cottonwoods and was safe.

One of these fellows was about seventy or upwards, and had a bald head
and very gray whiskers.  He had an old battered-up slouch hat on, and
a greasy blue woollen shirt, and ragged old blue jeans britches stuffed
into his boot-tops, and home-knit galluses--no, he only had one.  He had
an old long-tailed blue jeans coat with slick brass buttons flung over
his arm, and both of them had big, fat, ratty-looking carpet-bags.

The other fellow was about thirty, and dressed about as ornery.  After
breakfast we all laid off and talked, and the first thing that come out
was that these chaps didn't know one another.

“What got you into trouble?” says the baldhead to t'other chap.

“Well, I'd been selling an article to take the tartar off the teeth--and
it does take it off, too, and generly the enamel along with it--but I
stayed about one night longer than I ought to, and was just in the act
of sliding out when I ran across you on the trail this side of town, and
you told me they were coming, and begged me to help you to get off.  So
I told you I was expecting trouble myself, and would scatter out _with_
you. That's the whole yarn--what's yourn?

“Well, I'd ben a-running' a little temperance revival thar 'bout a week,
and was the pet of the women folks, big and little, for I was makin' it
mighty warm for the rummies, I _tell_ you, and takin' as much as five
or six dollars a night--ten cents a head, children and niggers free--and
business a-growin' all the time, when somehow or another a little report
got around last night that I had a way of puttin' in my time with a
private jug on the sly.  A nigger rousted me out this mornin', and told
me the people was getherin' on the quiet with their dogs and horses, and
they'd be along pretty soon and give me 'bout half an hour's start,
and then run me down if they could; and if they got me they'd tar
and feather me and ride me on a rail, sure.  I didn't wait for no
breakfast--I warn't hungry.”

“Old man,” said the young one, “I reckon we might double-team it
together; what do you think?”

“I ain't undisposed.  What's your line--mainly?”

“Jour printer by trade; do a little in patent medicines;
theater-actor--tragedy, you know; take a turn to mesmerism and phrenology
when there's a chance; teach singing-geography school for a change;
sling a lecture sometimes--oh, I do lots of things--most anything that
comes handy, so it ain't work.  What's your lay?”

“I've done considerble in the doctoring way in my time.  Layin' on o'
hands is my best holt--for cancer and paralysis, and sich things; and I
k'n tell a fortune pretty good when I've got somebody along to find out
the facts for me.  Preachin's my line, too, and workin' camp-meetin's,
and missionaryin' around.”

Nobody never said anything for a while; then the young man hove a sigh
and says:

“Alas!”

“What 're you alassin' about?” says the bald-head.

“To think I should have lived to be leading such a life, and be degraded
down into such company.”  And he begun to wipe the corner of his eye
with a rag.

“Dern your skin, ain't the company good enough for you?” says the
baldhead, pretty pert and uppish.

“Yes, it _is_ good enough for me; it's as good as I deserve; for who
fetched me so low when I was so high?  I did myself.  I don't blame
_you_, gentlemen--far from it; I don't blame anybody.  I deserve it
all.  Let the cold world do its worst; one thing I know--there's a grave
somewhere for me. The world may go on just as it's always done, and take
everything from me--loved ones, property, everything; but it can't take
that. Some day I'll lie down in it and forget it all, and my poor broken
heart will be at rest.”  He went on a-wiping.

“Drot your pore broken heart,” says the baldhead; “what are you heaving
your pore broken heart at _us_ f'r?  _we_ hain't done nothing.”

“No, I know you haven't.  I ain't blaming you, gentlemen.  I brought
myself down--yes, I did it myself.  It's right I should suffer--perfectly
right--I don't make any moan.”

“Brought you down from whar?  Whar was you brought down from?”

“Ah, you would not believe me; the world never believes--let it pass--'tis
no matter.  The secret of my birth--”

“The secret of your birth!  Do you mean to say--”

“Gentlemen,” says the young man, very solemn, “I will reveal it to you,
for I feel I may have confidence in you.  By rights I am a duke!”

Jim's eyes bugged out when he heard that; and I reckon mine did, too.
Then the baldhead says:  “No! you can't mean it?”

“Yes.  My great-grandfather, eldest son of the Duke of Bridgewater, fled
to this country about the end of the last century, to breathe the pure
air of freedom; married here, and died, leaving a son, his own father
dying about the same time.  The second son of the late duke seized the
titles and estates--the infant real duke was ignored.  I am the lineal
descendant of that infant--I am the rightful Duke of Bridgewater; and
here am I, forlorn, torn from my high estate, hunted of men, despised
by the cold world, ragged, worn, heart-broken, and degraded to the
companionship of felons on a raft!”

Jim pitied him ever so much, and so did I. We tried to comfort him, but
he said it warn't much use, he couldn't be much comforted; said if we
was a mind to acknowledge him, that would do him more good than most
anything else; so we said we would, if he would tell us how.  He said we
ought to bow when we spoke to him, and say “Your Grace,” or “My Lord,”
 or “Your Lordship”--and he wouldn't mind it if we called him plain
“Bridgewater,” which, he said, was a title anyway, and not a name; and
one of us ought to wait on him at dinner, and do any little thing for
him he wanted done.

Well, that was all easy, so we done it.  All through dinner Jim stood
around and waited on him, and says, “Will yo' Grace have some o' dis or
some o' dat?” and so on, and a body could see it was mighty pleasing to
him.

But the old man got pretty silent by and by--didn't have much to say, and
didn't look pretty comfortable over all that petting that was going on
around that duke.  He seemed to have something on his mind.  So, along
in the afternoon, he says:

“Looky here, Bilgewater,” he says, “I'm nation sorry for you, but you
ain't the only person that's had troubles like that.”

“No?”

“No you ain't.  You ain't the only person that's ben snaked down
wrongfully out'n a high place.”

“Alas!”

“No, you ain't the only person that's had a secret of his birth.”  And,
by jings, _he_ begins to cry.

“Hold!  What do you mean?”

“Bilgewater, kin I trust you?” says the old man, still sort of sobbing.

“To the bitter death!”  He took the old man by the hand and squeezed it,
and says, “That secret of your being:  speak!”

“Bilgewater, I am the late Dauphin!”

You bet you, Jim and me stared this time.  Then the duke says:

“You are what?”

“Yes, my friend, it is too true--your eyes is lookin' at this very moment
on the pore disappeared Dauphin, Looy the Seventeen, son of Looy the
Sixteen and Marry Antonette.”

“You!  At your age!  No!  You mean you're the late Charlemagne; you must
be six or seven hundred years old, at the very least.”

“Trouble has done it, Bilgewater, trouble has done it; trouble has brung
these gray hairs and this premature balditude.  Yes, gentlemen, you
see before you, in blue jeans and misery, the wanderin', exiled,
trampled-on, and sufferin' rightful King of France.”

Well, he cried and took on so that me and Jim didn't know hardly what to
do, we was so sorry--and so glad and proud we'd got him with us, too.
 So we set in, like we done before with the duke, and tried to comfort
_him_. But he said it warn't no use, nothing but to be dead and done
with it all could do him any good; though he said it often made him feel
easier and better for a while if people treated him according to his
rights, and got down on one knee to speak to him, and always called him
“Your Majesty,” and waited on him first at meals, and didn't set down
in his presence till he asked them. So Jim and me set to majestying him,
and doing this and that and t'other for him, and standing up till he
told us we might set down.  This done him heaps of good, and so he
got cheerful and comfortable.  But the duke kind of soured on him, and
didn't look a bit satisfied with the way things was going; still,
the king acted real friendly towards him, and said the duke's
great-grandfather and all the other Dukes of Bilgewater was a good
deal thought of by _his_ father, and was allowed to come to the palace
considerable; but the duke stayed huffy a good while, till by and by the
king says:

“Like as not we got to be together a blamed long time on this h-yer
raft, Bilgewater, and so what's the use o' your bein' sour?  It 'll only
make things oncomfortable.  It ain't my fault I warn't born a duke,
it ain't your fault you warn't born a king--so what's the use to worry?
 Make the best o' things the way you find 'em, says I--that's my motto.
 This ain't no bad thing that we've struck here--plenty grub and an easy
life--come, give us your hand, duke, and le's all be friends.”

The duke done it, and Jim and me was pretty glad to see it.  It took
away all the uncomfortableness and we felt mighty good over it, because
it would a been a miserable business to have any unfriendliness on the
raft; for what you want, above all things, on a raft, is for everybody
to be satisfied, and feel right and kind towards the others.

It didn't take me long to make up my mind that these liars warn't no
kings nor dukes at all, but just low-down humbugs and frauds.  But I
never said nothing, never let on; kept it to myself; it's the best way;
then you don't have no quarrels, and don't get into no trouble.  If they
wanted us to call them kings and dukes, I hadn't no objections, 'long as
it would keep peace in the family; and it warn't no use to tell Jim, so
I didn't tell him.  If I never learnt nothing else out of pap, I learnt
that the best way to get along with his kind of people is to let them
have their own way.




CHAPTER XX.

THEY asked us considerable many questions; wanted to know what we
covered up the raft that way for, and laid by in the daytime instead of
running--was Jim a runaway nigger?  Says I:

“Goodness sakes! would a runaway nigger run _south_?”

No, they allowed he wouldn't.  I had to account for things some way, so
I says:

“My folks was living in Pike County, in Missouri, where I was born, and
they all died off but me and pa and my brother Ike.  Pa, he 'lowed
he'd break up and go down and live with Uncle Ben, who's got a little
one-horse place on the river, forty-four mile below Orleans.  Pa was
pretty poor, and had some debts; so when he'd squared up there warn't
nothing left but sixteen dollars and our nigger, Jim.  That warn't
enough to take us fourteen hundred mile, deck passage nor no other way.
 Well, when the river rose pa had a streak of luck one day; he ketched
this piece of a raft; so we reckoned we'd go down to Orleans on it.
 Pa's luck didn't hold out; a steamboat run over the forrard corner of
the raft one night, and we all went overboard and dove under the wheel;
Jim and me come up all right, but pa was drunk, and Ike was only four
years old, so they never come up no more.  Well, for the next day or
two we had considerable trouble, because people was always coming out in
skiffs and trying to take Jim away from me, saying they believed he was
a runaway nigger.  We don't run daytimes no more now; nights they don't
bother us.”

The duke says:

“Leave me alone to cipher out a way so we can run in the daytime if we
want to.  I'll think the thing over--I'll invent a plan that'll fix it.
We'll let it alone for to-day, because of course we don't want to go by
that town yonder in daylight--it mightn't be healthy.”

Towards night it begun to darken up and look like rain; the heat
lightning was squirting around low down in the sky, and the leaves was
beginning to shiver--it was going to be pretty ugly, it was easy to see
that.  So the duke and the king went to overhauling our wigwam, to see
what the beds was like.  My bed was a straw tick better than Jim's,
which was a corn-shuck tick; there's always cobs around about in a shuck
tick, and they poke into you and hurt; and when you roll over the dry
shucks sound like you was rolling over in a pile of dead leaves; it
makes such a rustling that you wake up.  Well, the duke allowed he would
take my bed; but the king allowed he wouldn't.  He says:

“I should a reckoned the difference in rank would a sejested to you that
a corn-shuck bed warn't just fitten for me to sleep on.  Your Grace 'll
take the shuck bed yourself.”

Jim and me was in a sweat again for a minute, being afraid there was
going to be some more trouble amongst them; so we was pretty glad when
the duke says:

“'Tis my fate to be always ground into the mire under the iron heel of
oppression.  Misfortune has broken my once haughty spirit; I yield, I
submit; 'tis my fate.  I am alone in the world--let me suffer; can bear
it.”

We got away as soon as it was good and dark.  The king told us to stand
well out towards the middle of the river, and not show a light till we
got a long ways below the town.  We come in sight of the little bunch of
lights by and by--that was the town, you know--and slid by, about a half
a mile out, all right.  When we was three-quarters of a mile below we
hoisted up our signal lantern; and about ten o'clock it come on to rain
and blow and thunder and lighten like everything; so the king told us
to both stay on watch till the weather got better; then him and the duke
crawled into the wigwam and turned in for the night.  It was my watch
below till twelve, but I wouldn't a turned in anyway if I'd had a bed,
because a body don't see such a storm as that every day in the week, not
by a long sight.  My souls, how the wind did scream along!  And every
second or two there'd come a glare that lit up the white-caps for a half
a mile around, and you'd see the islands looking dusty through the rain,
and the trees thrashing around in the wind; then comes a H-WHACK!--bum!
bum! bumble-umble-um-bum-bum-bum-bum--and the thunder would go rumbling
and grumbling away, and quit--and then RIP comes another flash and
another sockdolager.  The waves most washed me off the raft sometimes,
but I hadn't any clothes on, and didn't mind.  We didn't have no trouble
about snags; the lightning was glaring and flittering around so constant
that we could see them plenty soon enough to throw her head this way or
that and miss them.

I had the middle watch, you know, but I was pretty sleepy by that time,
so Jim he said he would stand the first half of it for me; he was always
mighty good that way, Jim was.  I crawled into the wigwam, but the king
and the duke had their legs sprawled around so there warn't no show for
me; so I laid outside--I didn't mind the rain, because it was warm, and
the waves warn't running so high now.  About two they come up again,
though, and Jim was going to call me; but he changed his mind, because
he reckoned they warn't high enough yet to do any harm; but he was
mistaken about that, for pretty soon all of a sudden along comes a
regular ripper and washed me overboard.  It most killed Jim a-laughing.
 He was the easiest nigger to laugh that ever was, anyway.

I took the watch, and Jim he laid down and snored away; and by and by
the storm let up for good and all; and the first cabin-light that showed
I rousted him out, and we slid the raft into hiding quarters for the
day.

The king got out an old ratty deck of cards after breakfast, and him
and the duke played seven-up a while, five cents a game.  Then they got
tired of it, and allowed they would “lay out a campaign,” as they called
it. The duke went down into his carpet-bag, and fetched up a lot of
little printed bills and read them out loud.  One bill said, “The
celebrated Dr. Armand de Montalban, of Paris,” would “lecture on the
Science of Phrenology” at such and such a place, on the blank day of
blank, at ten cents admission, and “furnish charts of character at
twenty-five cents apiece.”  The duke said that was _him_.  In another
bill he was the “world-renowned Shakespearian tragedian, Garrick the
Younger, of Drury Lane, London.”  In other bills he had a lot of other
names and done other wonderful things, like finding water and gold with
a “divining-rod,” “dissipating witch spells,” and so on.  By and by he
says:

“But the histrionic muse is the darling.  Have you ever trod the boards,
Royalty?”

“No,” says the king.

“You shall, then, before you're three days older, Fallen Grandeur,” says
the duke.  “The first good town we come to we'll hire a hall and do the
sword fight in Richard III. and the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet.
How does that strike you?”

“I'm in, up to the hub, for anything that will pay, Bilgewater; but, you
see, I don't know nothing about play-actin', and hain't ever seen much
of it.  I was too small when pap used to have 'em at the palace.  Do you
reckon you can learn me?”

“Easy!”

“All right.  I'm jist a-freezn' for something fresh, anyway.  Le's
commence right away.”

So the duke he told him all about who Romeo was and who Juliet was, and
said he was used to being Romeo, so the king could be Juliet.

“But if Juliet's such a young gal, duke, my peeled head and my white
whiskers is goin' to look oncommon odd on her, maybe.”

“No, don't you worry; these country jakes won't ever think of that.
Besides, you know, you'll be in costume, and that makes all the
difference in the world; Juliet's in a balcony, enjoying the moonlight
before she goes to bed, and she's got on her night-gown and her ruffled
nightcap.  Here are the costumes for the parts.”

He got out two or three curtain-calico suits, which he said was
meedyevil armor for Richard III. and t'other chap, and a long white
cotton nightshirt and a ruffled nightcap to match.  The king was
satisfied; so the duke got out his book and read the parts over in the
most splendid spread-eagle way, prancing around and acting at the same
time, to show how it had got to be done; then he give the book to the
king and told him to get his part by heart.

There was a little one-horse town about three mile down the bend, and
after dinner the duke said he had ciphered out his idea about how to run
in daylight without it being dangersome for Jim; so he allowed he would
go down to the town and fix that thing.  The king allowed he would go,
too, and see if he couldn't strike something.  We was out of coffee, so
Jim said I better go along with them in the canoe and get some.

When we got there there warn't nobody stirring; streets empty, and
perfectly dead and still, like Sunday.  We found a sick nigger sunning
himself in a back yard, and he said everybody that warn't too young or
too sick or too old was gone to camp-meeting, about two mile back in the
woods.  The king got the directions, and allowed he'd go and work that
camp-meeting for all it was worth, and I might go, too.

The duke said what he was after was a printing-office.  We found it;
a little bit of a concern, up over a carpenter shop--carpenters and
printers all gone to the meeting, and no doors locked.  It was a dirty,
littered-up place, and had ink marks, and handbills with pictures of
horses and runaway niggers on them, all over the walls.  The duke shed
his coat and said he was all right now.  So me and the king lit out for
the camp-meeting.

We got there in about a half an hour fairly dripping, for it was a most
awful hot day.  There was as much as a thousand people there from
twenty mile around.  The woods was full of teams and wagons, hitched
everywheres, feeding out of the wagon-troughs and stomping to keep
off the flies.  There was sheds made out of poles and roofed over with
branches, where they had lemonade and gingerbread to sell, and piles of
watermelons and green corn and such-like truck.

The preaching was going on under the same kinds of sheds, only they was
bigger and held crowds of people.  The benches was made out of outside
slabs of logs, with holes bored in the round side to drive sticks into
for legs. They didn't have no backs.  The preachers had high platforms
to stand on at one end of the sheds.  The women had on sun-bonnets;
and some had linsey-woolsey frocks, some gingham ones, and a few of the
young ones had on calico.  Some of the young men was barefooted, and
some of the children didn't have on any clothes but just a tow-linen
shirt.  Some of the old women was knitting, and some of the young folks
was courting on the sly.

The first shed we come to the preacher was lining out a hymn.  He lined
out two lines, everybody sung it, and it was kind of grand to hear it,
there was so many of them and they done it in such a rousing way; then
he lined out two more for them to sing--and so on.  The people woke up
more and more, and sung louder and louder; and towards the end some
begun to groan, and some begun to shout.  Then the preacher begun to
preach, and begun in earnest, too; and went weaving first to one side of
the platform and then the other, and then a-leaning down over the front
of it, with his arms and his body going all the time, and shouting his
words out with all his might; and every now and then he would hold up
his Bible and spread it open, and kind of pass it around this way and
that, shouting, “It's the brazen serpent in the wilderness!  Look upon
it and live!”  And people would shout out, “Glory!--A-a-_men_!”  And so
he went on, and the people groaning and crying and saying amen:

“Oh, come to the mourners' bench! come, black with sin! (_Amen_!) come,
sick and sore! (_Amen_!) come, lame and halt and blind! (_Amen_!) come,
pore and needy, sunk in shame! (_A-A-Men_!) come, all that's worn and
soiled and suffering!--come with a broken spirit! come with a contrite
heart! come in your rags and sin and dirt! the waters that cleanse
is free, the door of heaven stands open--oh, enter in and be at rest!”
 (_A-A-Men_!  _Glory, Glory Hallelujah!_)

And so on.  You couldn't make out what the preacher said any more, on
account of the shouting and crying.  Folks got up everywheres in the
crowd, and worked their way just by main strength to the mourners'
bench, with the tears running down their faces; and when all the
mourners had got up there to the front benches in a crowd, they sung and
shouted and flung themselves down on the straw, just crazy and wild.

Well, the first I knowed the king got a-going, and you could hear him
over everybody; and next he went a-charging up on to the platform, and
the preacher he begged him to speak to the people, and he done it.  He
told them he was a pirate--been a pirate for thirty years out in the
Indian Ocean--and his crew was thinned out considerable last spring in
a fight, and he was home now to take out some fresh men, and thanks to
goodness he'd been robbed last night and put ashore off of a steamboat
without a cent, and he was glad of it; it was the blessedest thing that
ever happened to him, because he was a changed man now, and happy for
the first time in his life; and, poor as he was, he was going to start
right off and work his way back to the Indian Ocean, and put in the rest
of his life trying to turn the pirates into the true path; for he could
do it better than anybody else, being acquainted with all pirate crews
in that ocean; and though it would take him a long time to get there
without money, he would get there anyway, and every time he convinced
a pirate he would say to him, “Don't you thank me, don't you give me no
credit; it all belongs to them dear people in Pokeville camp-meeting,
natural brothers and benefactors of the race, and that dear preacher
there, the truest friend a pirate ever had!”

And then he busted into tears, and so did everybody.  Then somebody
sings out, “Take up a collection for him, take up a collection!”  Well,
a half a dozen made a jump to do it, but somebody sings out, “Let _him_
pass the hat around!”  Then everybody said it, the preacher too.

So the king went all through the crowd with his hat swabbing his eyes,
and blessing the people and praising them and thanking them for being
so good to the poor pirates away off there; and every little while the
prettiest kind of girls, with the tears running down their cheeks, would
up and ask him would he let them kiss him for to remember him by; and he
always done it; and some of them he hugged and kissed as many as five or
six times--and he was invited to stay a week; and everybody wanted him to
live in their houses, and said they'd think it was an honor; but he said
as this was the last day of the camp-meeting he couldn't do no good, and
besides he was in a sweat to get to the Indian Ocean right off and go to
work on the pirates.

When we got back to the raft and he come to count up he found he had
collected eighty-seven dollars and seventy-five cents.  And then he had
fetched away a three-gallon jug of whisky, too, that he found under a
wagon when he was starting home through the woods.  The king said,
take it all around, it laid over any day he'd ever put in in the
missionarying line.  He said it warn't no use talking, heathens don't
amount to shucks alongside of pirates to work a camp-meeting with.

The duke was thinking _he'd_ been doing pretty well till the king come
to show up, but after that he didn't think so so much.  He had set
up and printed off two little jobs for farmers in that
printing-office--horse bills--and took the money, four dollars.  And he
had got in ten dollars' worth of advertisements for the paper, which he
said he would put in for four dollars if they would pay in advance--so
they done it. The price of the paper was two dollars a year, but he took
in three subscriptions for half a dollar apiece on condition of them
paying him in advance; they were going to pay in cordwood and onions as
usual, but he said he had just bought the concern and knocked down the
price as low as he could afford it, and was going to run it for cash.
 He set up a little piece of poetry, which he made, himself, out of
his own head--three verses--kind of sweet and saddish--the name of it was,
“Yes, crush, cold world, this breaking heart”--and he left that all set
up and ready to print in the paper, and didn't charge nothing for it.
 Well, he took in nine dollars and a half, and said he'd done a pretty
square day's work for it.

Then he showed us another little job he'd printed and hadn't charged
for, because it was for us.  It had a picture of a runaway nigger with
a bundle on a stick over his shoulder, and “$200 reward” under it.  The
reading was all about Jim, and just described him to a dot.  It said
he run away from St. Jacques' plantation, forty mile below New Orleans,
last winter, and likely went north, and whoever would catch him and send
him back he could have the reward and expenses.

“Now,” says the duke, “after to-night we can run in the daytime if we
want to.  Whenever we see anybody coming we can tie Jim hand and foot
with a rope, and lay him in the wigwam and show this handbill and say we
captured him up the river, and were too poor to travel on a steamboat,
so we got this little raft on credit from our friends and are going down
to get the reward.  Handcuffs and chains would look still better on Jim,
but it wouldn't go well with the story of us being so poor.  Too much
like jewelry.  Ropes are the correct thing--we must preserve the unities,
as we say on the boards.”

We all said the duke was pretty smart, and there couldn't be no trouble
about running daytimes.  We judged we could make miles enough that night
to get out of the reach of the powwow we reckoned the duke's work in
the printing office was going to make in that little town; then we could
boom right along if we wanted to.

We laid low and kept still, and never shoved out till nearly ten
o'clock; then we slid by, pretty wide away from the town, and didn't
hoist our lantern till we was clear out of sight of it.

When Jim called me to take the watch at four in the morning, he says:

“Huck, does you reck'n we gwyne to run acrost any mo' kings on dis
trip?”

“No,” I says, “I reckon not.”

“Well,” says he, “dat's all right, den.  I doan' mine one er two kings,
but dat's enough.  Dis one's powerful drunk, en de duke ain' much
better.”

I found Jim had been trying to get him to talk French, so he could hear
what it was like; but he said he had been in this country so long, and
had so much trouble, he'd forgot it.




CHAPTER XXI.

IT was after sun-up now, but we went right on and didn't tie up.  The
king and the duke turned out by and by looking pretty rusty; but after
they'd jumped overboard and took a swim it chippered them up a good
deal. After breakfast the king he took a seat on the corner of the raft,
and pulled off his boots and rolled up his britches, and let his legs
dangle in the water, so as to be comfortable, and lit his pipe, and went
to getting his Romeo and Juliet by heart.  When he had got it pretty
good him and the duke begun to practice it together.  The duke had to
learn him over and over again how to say every speech; and he made him
sigh, and put his hand on his heart, and after a while he said he done
it pretty well; “only,” he says, “you mustn't bellow out _Romeo_!
that way, like a bull--you must say it soft and sick and languishy,
so--R-o-o-meo! that is the idea; for Juliet's a dear sweet mere child of
a girl, you know, and she doesn't bray like a jackass.”

Well, next they got out a couple of long swords that the duke made out
of oak laths, and begun to practice the sword fight--the duke called
himself Richard III.; and the way they laid on and pranced around
the raft was grand to see.  But by and by the king tripped and fell
overboard, and after that they took a rest, and had a talk about all
kinds of adventures they'd had in other times along the river.

After dinner the duke says:

“Well, Capet, we'll want to make this a first-class show, you know, so
I guess we'll add a little more to it.  We want a little something to
answer encores with, anyway.”

“What's onkores, Bilgewater?”

The duke told him, and then says:

“I'll answer by doing the Highland fling or the sailor's hornpipe; and
you--well, let me see--oh, I've got it--you can do Hamlet's soliloquy.”

“Hamlet's which?”

“Hamlet's soliloquy, you know; the most celebrated thing in Shakespeare.
Ah, it's sublime, sublime!  Always fetches the house.  I haven't got
it in the book--I've only got one volume--but I reckon I can piece it out
from memory.  I'll just walk up and down a minute, and see if I can call
it back from recollection's vaults.”

So he went to marching up and down, thinking, and frowning horrible
every now and then; then he would hoist up his eyebrows; next he would
squeeze his hand on his forehead and stagger back and kind of moan; next
he would sigh, and next he'd let on to drop a tear.  It was beautiful
to see him. By and by he got it.  He told us to give attention.  Then
he strikes a most noble attitude, with one leg shoved forwards, and his
arms stretched away up, and his head tilted back, looking up at the sky;
and then he begins to rip and rave and grit his teeth; and after that,
all through his speech, he howled, and spread around, and swelled up his
chest, and just knocked the spots out of any acting ever I see before.
 This is the speech--I learned it, easy enough, while he was learning it
to the king:

To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin That makes calamity of
so long life; For who would fardels bear, till Birnam Wood do come
to Dunsinane, But that the fear of something after death Murders the
innocent sleep, Great nature's second course, And makes us rather sling
the arrows of outrageous fortune Than fly to others that we know not of.
There's the respect must give us pause: Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I
would thou couldst; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The
oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The law's delay, and the
quietus which his pangs might take. In the dead waste and middle of the
night, when churchyards yawn In customary suits of solemn black, But
that the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns,
Breathes forth contagion on the world, And thus the native hue of
resolution, like the poor cat i' the adage, Is sicklied o'er with care.
And all the clouds that lowered o'er our housetops, With this
regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action. 'Tis a
consummation devoutly to be wished. But soft you, the fair Ophelia: Ope
not thy ponderous and marble jaws. But get thee to a nunnery—go!

Well, the old man he liked that speech, and he mighty soon got it so he
could do it first rate. It seemed like he was just born for it; and when
he had his hand in and was excited, it was perfectly lovely the way he
would rip and tear and rair up behind when he was getting it off.

The first chance we got, the duke he had some show bills printed; and
after that, for two or three days as we floated along, the raft was a
most uncommon lively place, for there warn't nothing but sword-fighting
and rehearsing--as the duke called it--going on all the time. One morning,
when we was pretty well down the State of Arkansaw, we come in sight
of a little one-horse town in a big bend; so we tied up about
three-quarters of a mile above it, in the mouth of a crick which was
shut in like a tunnel by the cypress trees, and all of us but Jim took
the canoe and went down there to see if there was any chance in that
place for our show.

We struck it mighty lucky; there was going to be a circus there that
afternoon, and the country people was already beginning to come in, in
all kinds of old shackly wagons, and on horses. The circus would leave
before night, so our show would have a pretty good chance. The duke he
hired the court house, and we went around and stuck up our bills. They
read like this:

Shaksperean Revival!!!

Wonderful Attraction!

For One Night Only! The world renowned tragedians,

David Garrick the younger, of Drury Lane Theatre, London,

and

Edmund Kean the elder, of the Royal Haymarket Theatre, Whitechapel,
Pudding Lane, Piccadilly, London, and the Royal Continental Theatres, in
their sublime Shaksperean Spectacle entitled The Balcony Scene in

Romeo and Juliet!!!

Romeo...................................... Mr. Garrick.

Juliet..................................... Mr. Kean.

Assisted by the whole strength of the company!

New costumes, new scenery, new appointments!

Also:

The thrilling, masterly, and blood-curdling Broad-sword conflict In
Richard III.!!!

Richard III................................ Mr. Garrick.

Richmond................................... Mr. Kean.

also:

(by special request,)

Hamlet's Immortal Soliloquy!!

By the Illustrious Kean!

Done by him 300 consecutive nights in Paris!

For One Night Only,

On account of imperative European engagements!

Admission 25 cents; children and servants, 10 cents.

Then we went loafing around the town. The stores and houses was most all
old shackly dried-up frame concerns that hadn't ever been painted; they
was set up three or four foot above ground on stilts, so as to be out of
reach of the water when the river was overflowed. The houses had little
gardens around them, but they didn't seem to raise hardly anything in
them but jimpson weeds, and sunflowers, and ash-piles, and old curled-up
boots and shoes, and pieces of bottles, and rags, and played-out
tin-ware. The fences was made of different kinds of boards, nailed on
at different times; and they leaned every which-way, and had gates that
didn't generly have but one hinge--a leather one. Some of the fences
had been whitewashed, some time or another, but the duke said it was in
Clumbus's time, like enough. There was generly hogs in the garden, and
people driving them out.

All the stores was along one street.  They had white domestic awnings in
front, and the country people hitched their horses to the awning-posts.
There was empty drygoods boxes under the awnings, and loafers roosting
on them all day long, whittling them with their Barlow knives; and
chawing tobacco, and gaping and yawning and stretching--a mighty ornery
lot. They generly had on yellow straw hats most as wide as an umbrella,
but didn't wear no coats nor waistcoats, they called one another Bill,
and Buck, and Hank, and Joe, and Andy, and talked lazy and drawly, and
used considerable many cuss words.  There was as many as one loafer
leaning up against every awning-post, and he most always had his hands
in his britches-pockets, except when he fetched them out to lend a chaw
of tobacco or scratch.  What a body was hearing amongst them all the
time was:

“Gimme a chaw 'v tobacker, Hank.”

“Cain't; I hain't got but one chaw left.  Ask Bill.”

Maybe Bill he gives him a chaw; maybe he lies and says he ain't got
none. Some of them kinds of loafers never has a cent in the world, nor a
chaw of tobacco of their own.  They get all their chawing by borrowing;
they say to a fellow, “I wisht you'd len' me a chaw, Jack, I jist this
minute give Ben Thompson the last chaw I had”--which is a lie pretty
much everytime; it don't fool nobody but a stranger; but Jack ain't no
stranger, so he says:

“_You_ give him a chaw, did you?  So did your sister's cat's
grandmother. You pay me back the chaws you've awready borry'd off'n me,
Lafe Buckner, then I'll loan you one or two ton of it, and won't charge
you no back intrust, nuther.”

“Well, I _did_ pay you back some of it wunst.”

“Yes, you did--'bout six chaws.  You borry'd store tobacker and paid back
nigger-head.”

Store tobacco is flat black plug, but these fellows mostly chaws the
natural leaf twisted.  When they borrow a chaw they don't generly cut it
off with a knife, but set the plug in between their teeth, and gnaw with
their teeth and tug at the plug with their hands till they get it in
two; then sometimes the one that owns the tobacco looks mournful at it
when it's handed back, and says, sarcastic:

“Here, gimme the _chaw_, and you take the _plug_.”

All the streets and lanes was just mud; they warn't nothing else _but_
mud--mud as black as tar and nigh about a foot deep in some places,
and two or three inches deep in _all_ the places.  The hogs loafed and
grunted around everywheres.  You'd see a muddy sow and a litter of pigs
come lazying along the street and whollop herself right down in the way,
where folks had to walk around her, and she'd stretch out and shut her
eyes and wave her ears whilst the pigs was milking her, and look as
happy as if she was on salary. And pretty soon you'd hear a loafer
sing out, “Hi!  _so_ boy! sick him, Tige!” and away the sow would go,
squealing most horrible, with a dog or two swinging to each ear, and
three or four dozen more a-coming; and then you would see all the
loafers get up and watch the thing out of sight, and laugh at the fun
and look grateful for the noise.  Then they'd settle back again till
there was a dog fight.  There couldn't anything wake them up all over,
and make them happy all over, like a dog fight--unless it might be
putting turpentine on a stray dog and setting fire to him, or tying a
tin pan to his tail and see him run himself to death.

On the river front some of the houses was sticking out over the bank,
and they was bowed and bent, and about ready to tumble in. The people
had moved out of them.  The bank was caved away under one corner of some
others, and that corner was hanging over.  People lived in them yet, but
it was dangersome, because sometimes a strip of land as wide as a house
caves in at a time.  Sometimes a belt of land a quarter of a mile deep
will start in and cave along and cave along till it all caves into the
river in one summer. Such a town as that has to be always moving back,
and back, and back, because the river's always gnawing at it.

The nearer it got to noon that day the thicker and thicker was the
wagons and horses in the streets, and more coming all the time.
 Families fetched their dinners with them from the country, and eat them
in the wagons.  There was considerable whisky drinking going on, and I
seen three fights.  By and by somebody sings out:

“Here comes old Boggs!--in from the country for his little old monthly
drunk; here he comes, boys!”

All the loafers looked glad; I reckoned they was used to having fun out
of Boggs.  One of them says:

“Wonder who he's a-gwyne to chaw up this time.  If he'd a-chawed up all
the men he's ben a-gwyne to chaw up in the last twenty year he'd have
considerable ruputation now.”

Another one says, “I wisht old Boggs 'd threaten me, 'cuz then I'd know
I warn't gwyne to die for a thousan' year.”

Boggs comes a-tearing along on his horse, whooping and yelling like an
Injun, and singing out:

“Cler the track, thar.  I'm on the waw-path, and the price uv coffins is
a-gwyne to raise.”

He was drunk, and weaving about in his saddle; he was over fifty year
old, and had a very red face.  Everybody yelled at him and laughed at
him and sassed him, and he sassed back, and said he'd attend to them and
lay them out in their regular turns, but he couldn't wait now because
he'd come to town to kill old Colonel Sherburn, and his motto was, “Meat
first, and spoon vittles to top off on.”

He see me, and rode up and says:

“Whar'd you come f'm, boy?  You prepared to die?”

Then he rode on.  I was scared, but a man says:

“He don't mean nothing; he's always a-carryin' on like that when he's
drunk.  He's the best naturedest old fool in Arkansaw--never hurt nobody,
drunk nor sober.”

Boggs rode up before the biggest store in town, and bent his head down
so he could see under the curtain of the awning and yells:

“Come out here, Sherburn! Come out and meet the man you've swindled.
You're the houn' I'm after, and I'm a-gwyne to have you, too!”

And so he went on, calling Sherburn everything he could lay his tongue
to, and the whole street packed with people listening and laughing and
going on.  By and by a proud-looking man about fifty-five--and he was a
heap the best dressed man in that town, too--steps out of the store, and
the crowd drops back on each side to let him come.  He says to Boggs,
mighty ca'm and slow--he says:

“I'm tired of this, but I'll endure it till one o'clock.  Till one
o'clock, mind--no longer.  If you open your mouth against me only once
after that time you can't travel so far but I will find you.”

Then he turns and goes in.  The crowd looked mighty sober; nobody
stirred, and there warn't no more laughing.  Boggs rode off
blackguarding Sherburn as loud as he could yell, all down the street;
and pretty soon back he comes and stops before the store, still keeping
it up.  Some men crowded around him and tried to get him to shut up,
but he wouldn't; they told him it would be one o'clock in about fifteen
minutes, and so he _must_ go home--he must go right away.  But it didn't
do no good.  He cussed away with all his might, and throwed his hat down
in the mud and rode over it, and pretty soon away he went a-raging down
the street again, with his gray hair a-flying. Everybody that could get
a chance at him tried their best to coax him off of his horse so they
could lock him up and get him sober; but it warn't no use--up the street
he would tear again, and give Sherburn another cussing.  By and by
somebody says:

“Go for his daughter!--quick, go for his daughter; sometimes he'll listen
to her.  If anybody can persuade him, she can.”

So somebody started on a run.  I walked down street a ways and stopped.
In about five or ten minutes here comes Boggs again, but not on his
horse.  He was a-reeling across the street towards me, bare-headed, with
a friend on both sides of him a-holt of his arms and hurrying him along.
He was quiet, and looked uneasy; and he warn't hanging back any, but was
doing some of the hurrying himself.  Somebody sings out:

“Boggs!”

I looked over there to see who said it, and it was that Colonel
Sherburn. He was standing perfectly still in the street, and had a
pistol raised in his right hand--not aiming it, but holding it out with
the barrel tilted up towards the sky.  The same second I see a young
girl coming on the run, and two men with her.  Boggs and the men turned
round to see who called him, and when they see the pistol the men
jumped to one side, and the pistol-barrel come down slow and steady to
a level--both barrels cocked. Boggs throws up both of his hands and says,
“O Lord, don't shoot!”  Bang! goes the first shot, and he staggers back,
clawing at the air--bang! goes the second one, and he tumbles backwards
on to the ground, heavy and solid, with his arms spread out.  That young
girl screamed out and comes rushing, and down she throws herself on her
father, crying, and saying, “Oh, he's killed him, he's killed him!”  The
crowd closed up around them, and shouldered and jammed one another, with
their necks stretched, trying to see, and people on the inside trying to
shove them back and shouting, “Back, back! give him air, give him air!”

Colonel Sherburn he tossed his pistol on to the ground, and turned
around on his heels and walked off.

They took Boggs to a little drug store, the crowd pressing around just
the same, and the whole town following, and I rushed and got a good
place at the window, where I was close to him and could see in.  They
laid him on the floor and put one large Bible under his head, and opened
another one and spread it on his breast; but they tore open his shirt
first, and I seen where one of the bullets went in.  He made about a
dozen long gasps, his breast lifting the Bible up when he drawed in his
breath, and letting it down again when he breathed it out--and after that
he laid still; he was dead.  Then they pulled his daughter away from
him, screaming and crying, and took her off.  She was about sixteen, and
very sweet and gentle looking, but awful pale and scared.

Well, pretty soon the whole town was there, squirming and scrouging and
pushing and shoving to get at the window and have a look, but people
that had the places wouldn't give them up, and folks behind them was
saying all the time, “Say, now, you've looked enough, you fellows;
'tain't right and 'tain't fair for you to stay thar all the time, and
never give nobody a chance; other folks has their rights as well as
you.”

There was considerable jawing back, so I slid out, thinking maybe
there was going to be trouble.  The streets was full, and everybody was
excited. Everybody that seen the shooting was telling how it happened,
and there was a big crowd packed around each one of these fellows,
stretching their necks and listening.  One long, lanky man, with long
hair and a big white fur stovepipe hat on the back of his head, and a
crooked-handled cane, marked out the places on the ground where Boggs
stood and where Sherburn stood, and the people following him around from
one place to t'other and watching everything he done, and bobbing their
heads to show they understood, and stooping a little and resting their
hands on their thighs to watch him mark the places on the ground with
his cane; and then he stood up straight and stiff where Sherburn had
stood, frowning and having his hat-brim down over his eyes, and sung
out, “Boggs!” and then fetched his cane down slow to a level, and says
“Bang!” staggered backwards, says “Bang!” again, and fell down flat on
his back. The people that had seen the thing said he done it perfect;
said it was just exactly the way it all happened.  Then as much as a
dozen people got out their bottles and treated him.

Well, by and by somebody said Sherburn ought to be lynched.  In about a
minute everybody was saying it; so away they went, mad and yelling, and
snatching down every clothes-line they come to to do the hanging with.




CHAPTER XXII.

THEY swarmed up towards Sherburn's house, a-whooping and raging like
Injuns, and everything had to clear the way or get run over and tromped
to mush, and it was awful to see.  Children was heeling it ahead of the
mob, screaming and trying to get out of the way; and every window along
the road was full of women's heads, and there was nigger boys in every
tree, and bucks and wenches looking over every fence; and as soon as the
mob would get nearly to them they would break and skaddle back out of
reach.  Lots of the women and girls was crying and taking on, scared
most to death.

They swarmed up in front of Sherburn's palings as thick as they could
jam together, and you couldn't hear yourself think for the noise.  It
was a little twenty-foot yard.  Some sung out “Tear down the fence! tear
down the fence!”  Then there was a racket of ripping and tearing and
smashing, and down she goes, and the front wall of the crowd begins to
roll in like a wave.

Just then Sherburn steps out on to the roof of his little front porch,
with a double-barrel gun in his hand, and takes his stand, perfectly
ca'm and deliberate, not saying a word.  The racket stopped, and the
wave sucked back.

Sherburn never said a word--just stood there, looking down.  The
stillness was awful creepy and uncomfortable.  Sherburn run his eye slow
along the crowd; and wherever it struck the people tried a little to
out-gaze him, but they couldn't; they dropped their eyes and looked
sneaky. Then pretty soon Sherburn sort of laughed; not the pleasant
kind, but the kind that makes you feel like when you are eating bread
that's got sand in it.

Then he says, slow and scornful:

“The idea of _you_ lynching anybody!  It's amusing.  The idea of you
thinking you had pluck enough to lynch a _man_!  Because you're brave
enough to tar and feather poor friendless cast-out women that come along
here, did that make you think you had grit enough to lay your hands on a
_man_?  Why, a _man's_ safe in the hands of ten thousand of your kind--as
long as it's daytime and you're not behind him.

“Do I know you?  I know you clear through. I was born and raised in the
South, and I've lived in the North; so I know the average all around.
The average man's a coward.  In the North he lets anybody walk over him
that wants to, and goes home and prays for a humble spirit to bear it.
In the South one man all by himself, has stopped a stage full of men
in the daytime, and robbed the lot.  Your newspapers call you a
brave people so much that you think you are braver than any other
people--whereas you're just _as_ brave, and no braver.  Why don't your
juries hang murderers?  Because they're afraid the man's friends will
shoot them in the back, in the dark--and it's just what they _would_ do.

“So they always acquit; and then a _man_ goes in the night, with a
hundred masked cowards at his back and lynches the rascal.  Your mistake
is, that you didn't bring a man with you; that's one mistake, and the
other is that you didn't come in the dark and fetch your masks.  You
brought _part_ of a man--Buck Harkness, there--and if you hadn't had him
to start you, you'd a taken it out in blowing.

“You didn't want to come.  The average man don't like trouble and
danger. _You_ don't like trouble and danger.  But if only _half_ a
man--like Buck Harkness, there--shouts 'Lynch him! lynch him!' you're
afraid to back down--afraid you'll be found out to be what you
are--_cowards_--and so you raise a yell, and hang yourselves on to that
half-a-man's coat-tail, and come raging up here, swearing what big
things you're going to do. The pitifulest thing out is a mob; that's
what an army is--a mob; they don't fight with courage that's born in
them, but with courage that's borrowed from their mass, and from their
officers.  But a mob without any _man_ at the head of it is _beneath_
pitifulness.  Now the thing for _you_ to do is to droop your tails and
go home and crawl in a hole.  If any real lynching's going to be done it
will be done in the dark, Southern fashion; and when they come they'll
bring their masks, and fetch a _man_ along.  Now _leave_--and take your
half-a-man with you”--tossing his gun up across his left arm and cocking
it when he says this.

The crowd washed back sudden, and then broke all apart, and went tearing
off every which way, and Buck Harkness he heeled it after them, looking
tolerable cheap.  I could a stayed if I wanted to, but I didn't want to.

I went to the circus and loafed around the back side till the watchman
went by, and then dived in under the tent.  I had my twenty-dollar gold
piece and some other money, but I reckoned I better save it, because
there ain't no telling how soon you are going to need it, away from
home and amongst strangers that way.  You can't be too careful.  I ain't
opposed to spending money on circuses when there ain't no other way, but
there ain't no use in _wasting_ it on them.

It was a real bully circus.  It was the splendidest sight that ever was
when they all come riding in, two and two, a gentleman and lady, side
by side, the men just in their drawers and undershirts, and no shoes
nor stirrups, and resting their hands on their thighs easy and
comfortable--there must a been twenty of them--and every lady with a
lovely complexion, and perfectly beautiful, and looking just like a gang
of real sure-enough queens, and dressed in clothes that cost millions of
dollars, and just littered with diamonds.  It was a powerful fine sight;
I never see anything so lovely.  And then one by one they got up
and stood, and went a-weaving around the ring so gentle and wavy and
graceful, the men looking ever so tall and airy and straight, with their
heads bobbing and skimming along, away up there under the tent-roof, and
every lady's rose-leafy dress flapping soft and silky around her hips,
and she looking like the most loveliest parasol.

And then faster and faster they went, all of them dancing, first one
foot out in the air and then the other, the horses leaning more and
more, and the ringmaster going round and round the center-pole, cracking
his whip and shouting “Hi!--hi!” and the clown cracking jokes behind
him; and by and by all hands dropped the reins, and every lady put her
knuckles on her hips and every gentleman folded his arms, and then how
the horses did lean over and hump themselves!  And so one after the
other they all skipped off into the ring, and made the sweetest bow I
ever see, and then scampered out, and everybody clapped their hands and
went just about wild.

Well, all through the circus they done the most astonishing things; and
all the time that clown carried on so it most killed the people.  The
ringmaster couldn't ever say a word to him but he was back at him quick
as a wink with the funniest things a body ever said; and how he ever
_could_ think of so many of them, and so sudden and so pat, was what I
couldn't noway understand. Why, I couldn't a thought of them in a year.
And by and by a drunk man tried to get into the ring--said he wanted to
ride; said he could ride as well as anybody that ever was.  They argued
and tried to keep him out, but he wouldn't listen, and the whole show
come to a standstill.  Then the people begun to holler at him and make
fun of him, and that made him mad, and he begun to rip and tear; so that
stirred up the people, and a lot of men begun to pile down off of the
benches and swarm towards the ring, saying, “Knock him down! throw him
out!” and one or two women begun to scream.  So, then, the ringmaster
he made a little speech, and said he hoped there wouldn't be no
disturbance, and if the man would promise he wouldn't make no more
trouble he would let him ride if he thought he could stay on the horse.
 So everybody laughed and said all right, and the man got on. The minute
he was on, the horse begun to rip and tear and jump and cavort around,
with two circus men hanging on to his bridle trying to hold him, and the
drunk man hanging on to his neck, and his heels flying in the air every
jump, and the whole crowd of people standing up shouting and laughing
till tears rolled down.  And at last, sure enough, all the circus men
could do, the horse broke loose, and away he went like the very nation,
round and round the ring, with that sot laying down on him and hanging
to his neck, with first one leg hanging most to the ground on one side,
and then t'other one on t'other side, and the people just crazy.  It
warn't funny to me, though; I was all of a tremble to see his danger.
 But pretty soon he struggled up astraddle and grabbed the bridle,
a-reeling this way and that; and the next minute he sprung up and
dropped the bridle and stood! and the horse a-going like a house afire
too.  He just stood up there, a-sailing around as easy and comfortable
as if he warn't ever drunk in his life--and then he begun to pull off his
clothes and sling them.  He shed them so thick they kind of clogged up
the air, and altogether he shed seventeen suits. And, then, there he
was, slim and handsome, and dressed the gaudiest and prettiest you
ever saw, and he lit into that horse with his whip and made him fairly
hum--and finally skipped off, and made his bow and danced off to
the dressing-room, and everybody just a-howling with pleasure and
astonishment.

Then the ringmaster he see how he had been fooled, and he _was_ the
sickest ringmaster you ever see, I reckon.  Why, it was one of his own
men!  He had got up that joke all out of his own head, and never let on
to nobody. Well, I felt sheepish enough to be took in so, but I wouldn't
a been in that ringmaster's place, not for a thousand dollars.  I don't
know; there may be bullier circuses than what that one was, but I
never struck them yet. Anyways, it was plenty good enough for _me_; and
wherever I run across it, it can have all of _my_ custom every time.

Well, that night we had _our_ show; but there warn't only about twelve
people there--just enough to pay expenses.  And they laughed all the
time, and that made the duke mad; and everybody left, anyway, before
the show was over, but one boy which was asleep.  So the duke said these
Arkansaw lunkheads couldn't come up to Shakespeare; what they wanted
was low comedy--and maybe something ruther worse than low comedy, he
reckoned.  He said he could size their style.  So next morning he got
some big sheets of wrapping paper and some black paint, and drawed off
some handbills, and stuck them up all over the village.  The bills said:




CHAPTER XXIII.

WELL, all day him and the king was hard at it, rigging up a stage and
a curtain and a row of candles for footlights; and that night the house
was jam full of men in no time.  When the place couldn't hold no more,
the duke he quit tending door and went around the back way and come on
to the stage and stood up before the curtain and made a little speech,
and praised up this tragedy, and said it was the most thrillingest one
that ever was; and so he went on a-bragging about the tragedy, and about
Edmund Kean the Elder, which was to play the main principal part in it;
and at last when he'd got everybody's expectations up high enough, he
rolled up the curtain, and the next minute the king come a-prancing
out on all fours, naked; and he was painted all over,
ring-streaked-and-striped, all sorts of colors, as splendid as a
rainbow.  And--but never mind the rest of his outfit; it was just wild,
but it was awful funny. The people most killed themselves laughing; and
when the king got done capering and capered off behind the scenes, they
roared and clapped and stormed and haw-hawed till he come back and done
it over again, and after that they made him do it another time. Well, it
would make a cow laugh to see the shines that old idiot cut.

Then the duke he lets the curtain down, and bows to the people, and says
the great tragedy will be performed only two nights more, on accounts of
pressing London engagements, where the seats is all sold already for it
in Drury Lane; and then he makes them another bow, and says if he has
succeeded in pleasing them and instructing them, he will be deeply
obleeged if they will mention it to their friends and get them to come
and see it.

Twenty people sings out:

“What, is it over?  Is that _all_?”

The duke says yes.  Then there was a fine time.  Everybody sings
out, “Sold!” and rose up mad, and was a-going for that stage and them
tragedians.  But a big, fine looking man jumps up on a bench and shouts:

“Hold on!  Just a word, gentlemen.”  They stopped to listen.  “We are
sold--mighty badly sold.  But we don't want to be the laughing stock of
this whole town, I reckon, and never hear the last of this thing as long
as we live.  _No_.  What we want is to go out of here quiet, and talk
this show up, and sell the _rest_ of the town!  Then we'll all be in the
same boat.  Ain't that sensible?” (“You bet it is!--the jedge is right!”
 everybody sings out.) “All right, then--not a word about any sell.  Go
along home, and advise everybody to come and see the tragedy.”

Next day you couldn't hear nothing around that town but how splendid
that show was.  House was jammed again that night, and we sold this
crowd the same way.  When me and the king and the duke got home to the
raft we all had a supper; and by and by, about midnight, they made Jim
and me back her out and float her down the middle of the river, and
fetch her in and hide her about two mile below town.

The third night the house was crammed again--and they warn't new-comers
this time, but people that was at the show the other two nights.  I
stood by the duke at the door, and I see that every man that went in had
his pockets bulging, or something muffled up under his coat--and I see it
warn't no perfumery, neither, not by a long sight.  I smelt sickly eggs
by the barrel, and rotten cabbages, and such things; and if I know the
signs of a dead cat being around, and I bet I do, there was sixty-four
of them went in.  I shoved in there for a minute, but it was too various
for me; I couldn't stand it.  Well, when the place couldn't hold no more
people the duke he give a fellow a quarter and told him to tend door
for him a minute, and then he started around for the stage door, I after
him; but the minute we turned the corner and was in the dark he says:

“Walk fast now till you get away from the houses, and then shin for the
raft like the dickens was after you!”

I done it, and he done the same.  We struck the raft at the same time,
and in less than two seconds we was gliding down stream, all dark and
still, and edging towards the middle of the river, nobody saying a
word. I reckoned the poor king was in for a gaudy time of it with the
audience, but nothing of the sort; pretty soon he crawls out from under
the wigwam, and says:

“Well, how'd the old thing pan out this time, duke?”  He hadn't been
up-town at all.

We never showed a light till we was about ten mile below the village.
Then we lit up and had a supper, and the king and the duke fairly
laughed their bones loose over the way they'd served them people.  The
duke says:

“Greenhorns, flatheads!  I knew the first house would keep mum and let
the rest of the town get roped in; and I knew they'd lay for us the
third night, and consider it was _their_ turn now.  Well, it _is_ their
turn, and I'd give something to know how much they'd take for it.  I
_would_ just like to know how they're putting in their opportunity.
 They can turn it into a picnic if they want to--they brought plenty
provisions.”

Them rapscallions took in four hundred and sixty-five dollars in that
three nights.  I never see money hauled in by the wagon-load like that
before.  By and by, when they was asleep and snoring, Jim says:

“Don't it s'prise you de way dem kings carries on, Huck?”

“No,” I says, “it don't.”

“Why don't it, Huck?”

“Well, it don't, because it's in the breed.  I reckon they're all
alike.”

“But, Huck, dese kings o' ourn is reglar rapscallions; dat's jist what
dey is; dey's reglar rapscallions.”

“Well, that's what I'm a-saying; all kings is mostly rapscallions, as
fur as I can make out.”

“Is dat so?”

“You read about them once--you'll see.  Look at Henry the Eight; this 'n
's a Sunday-school Superintendent to _him_.  And look at Charles Second,
and Louis Fourteen, and Louis Fifteen, and James Second, and Edward
Second, and Richard Third, and forty more; besides all them Saxon
heptarchies that used to rip around so in old times and raise Cain.  My,
you ought to seen old Henry the Eight when he was in bloom.  He _was_ a
blossom.  He used to marry a new wife every day, and chop off her head
next morning.  And he would do it just as indifferent as if he was
ordering up eggs.  'Fetch up Nell Gwynn,' he says.  They fetch her up.
Next morning, 'Chop off her head!'  And they chop it off.  'Fetch up
Jane Shore,' he says; and up she comes, Next morning, 'Chop off her
head'--and they chop it off.  'Ring up Fair Rosamun.'  Fair Rosamun
answers the bell.  Next morning, 'Chop off her head.'  And he made every
one of them tell him a tale every night; and he kept that up till he had
hogged a thousand and one tales that way, and then he put them all in a
book, and called it Domesday Book--which was a good name and stated the
case.  You don't know kings, Jim, but I know them; and this old rip
of ourn is one of the cleanest I've struck in history.  Well, Henry he
takes a notion he wants to get up some trouble with this country. How
does he go at it--give notice?--give the country a show?  No.  All of a
sudden he heaves all the tea in Boston Harbor overboard, and whacks
out a declaration of independence, and dares them to come on.  That was
_his_ style--he never give anybody a chance.  He had suspicions of his
father, the Duke of Wellington.  Well, what did he do?  Ask him to show
up?  No--drownded him in a butt of mamsey, like a cat.  S'pose people
left money laying around where he was--what did he do?  He collared it.
 S'pose he contracted to do a thing, and you paid him, and didn't set
down there and see that he done it--what did he do?  He always done the
other thing. S'pose he opened his mouth--what then?  If he didn't shut it
up powerful quick he'd lose a lie every time.  That's the kind of a bug
Henry was; and if we'd a had him along 'stead of our kings he'd a fooled
that town a heap worse than ourn done.  I don't say that ourn is lambs,
because they ain't, when you come right down to the cold facts; but they
ain't nothing to _that_ old ram, anyway.  All I say is, kings is kings,
and you got to make allowances.  Take them all around, they're a mighty
ornery lot. It's the way they're raised.”

“But dis one do _smell_ so like de nation, Huck.”

“Well, they all do, Jim.  We can't help the way a king smells; history
don't tell no way.”

“Now de duke, he's a tolerble likely man in some ways.”

“Yes, a duke's different.  But not very different.  This one's
a middling hard lot for a duke.  When he's drunk there ain't no
near-sighted man could tell him from a king.”

“Well, anyways, I doan' hanker for no mo' un um, Huck.  Dese is all I
kin stan'.”

“It's the way I feel, too, Jim.  But we've got them on our hands, and we
got to remember what they are, and make allowances.  Sometimes I wish we
could hear of a country that's out of kings.”

What was the use to tell Jim these warn't real kings and dukes?  It
wouldn't a done no good; and, besides, it was just as I said:  you
couldn't tell them from the real kind.

I went to sleep, and Jim didn't call me when it was my turn.  He often
done that.  When I waked up just at daybreak he was sitting there with
his head down betwixt his knees, moaning and mourning to himself.  I
didn't take notice nor let on.  I knowed what it was about.  He was
thinking about his wife and his children, away up yonder, and he was low
and homesick; because he hadn't ever been away from home before in his
life; and I do believe he cared just as much for his people as white
folks does for their'n.  It don't seem natural, but I reckon it's so.
 He was often moaning and mourning that way nights, when he judged I
was asleep, and saying, “Po' little 'Lizabeth! po' little Johnny! it's
mighty hard; I spec' I ain't ever gwyne to see you no mo', no mo'!”  He
was a mighty good nigger, Jim was.

But this time I somehow got to talking to him about his wife and young
ones; and by and by he says:

“What makes me feel so bad dis time 'uz bekase I hear sumpn over yonder
on de bank like a whack, er a slam, while ago, en it mine me er de time
I treat my little 'Lizabeth so ornery.  She warn't on'y 'bout fo' year
ole, en she tuck de sk'yarlet fever, en had a powful rough spell; but
she got well, en one day she was a-stannin' aroun', en I says to her, I
says:

“'Shet de do'.'

“She never done it; jis' stood dah, kiner smilin' up at me.  It make me
mad; en I says agin, mighty loud, I says:

“'Doan' you hear me?  Shet de do'!'

“She jis stood de same way, kiner smilin' up.  I was a-bilin'!  I says:

“'I lay I _make_ you mine!'

“En wid dat I fetch' her a slap side de head dat sont her a-sprawlin'.
Den I went into de yuther room, en 'uz gone 'bout ten minutes; en when
I come back dah was dat do' a-stannin' open _yit_, en dat chile stannin'
mos' right in it, a-lookin' down and mournin', en de tears runnin' down.
 My, but I _wuz_ mad!  I was a-gwyne for de chile, but jis' den--it was a
do' dat open innerds--jis' den, 'long come de wind en slam it to, behine
de chile, ker-BLAM!--en my lan', de chile never move'!  My breff mos'
hop outer me; en I feel so--so--I doan' know HOW I feel.  I crope out,
all a-tremblin', en crope aroun' en open de do' easy en slow, en poke my
head in behine de chile, sof' en still, en all uv a sudden I says POW!
jis' as loud as I could yell.  _She never budge!_  Oh, Huck, I bust out
a-cryin' en grab her up in my arms, en say, 'Oh, de po' little thing!
 De Lord God Amighty fogive po' ole Jim, kaze he never gwyne to fogive
hisself as long's he live!'  Oh, she was plumb deef en dumb, Huck, plumb
deef en dumb--en I'd ben a-treat'n her so!”




CHAPTER XXIV.

NEXT day, towards night, we laid up under a little willow towhead out in
the middle, where there was a village on each side of the river, and the
duke and the king begun 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 the 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 around it.

He was uncommon bright, the duke was, and he soon struck it.  He dressed
Jim up in King Lear's outfit--it was a long curtain-calico gown, and a
white horse-hair wig and whiskers; and then he took his theater 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 drownded nine days.  Blamed if
he warn'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, he didn't only look like he was
dead, he looked considerable more than that.

These rapscallions wanted to try the Nonesuch again, because there was
so much money in it, but they judged it wouldn't be safe, because maybe
the news might a 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 Arkansaw village; and the king he allowed he would drop
over to t'other village without any plan, but just trust in Providence
to lead him the profitable way--meaning the devil, I reckon.  We had all
bought store clothes where we stopped last; and now the king put his'n
on, and he told me to put mine on.  I done it, of course.  The king's
duds was all black, and he did look real swell and starchy.  I never
knowed how clothes could change a body before.  Why, before, he looked
like the orneriest 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 mile above the town--been there a couple
of hours, taking on freight.  Says the king:

“Seein' how I'm dressed, I reckon maybe I 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.  Pretty 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.

“Run her nose in shore,” says the king.  I done it.  “Wher' you bound
for, young man?”

“For the steamboat; going to Orleans.”

“Git aboard,” says the king.  “Hold on a minute, my servant 'll he'p you
with them bags.  Jump out and he'p 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, 'It's Mr. Wilks, 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--Elexander Blodgett--_Reverend_ Elexander
Blodgett, I s'pose I must say, as I'm one o' the Lord's poor servants.
 But still I'm jist as able to be sorry for Mr. Wilks for not arriving
in time, all the same, if he's missed anything by it--which I hope he
hasn't.”

“Well, he don't miss any property by it, because he'll get that all
right; but he's missed seeing his brother Peter die--which he mayn't
mind, nobody can tell as to that--but his brother would a give anything
in this world to see _him_ before he died; never talked about nothing
else all these three weeks; hadn't seen him since they was boys
together--and hadn't ever seen his brother William at all--that's the deef
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 'em word?”

“Oh, yes; a month or two ago, when Peter was first took; because Peter
said then that he sorter felt like he warn't going to get well this
time. You see, he was pretty old, and George's g'yirls 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 g'yirls 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?  Wher' 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 a
got the letter at all, you know.”

“Too bad, too bad he couldn't a lived to see his brothers, poor soul.
You going to Orleans, you say?”

“Yes, but that ain't only a part of it.  I'm going in a ship, next
Wednesday, for Ryo Janeero, where my uncle lives.”

“It's a pretty long journey.  But it'll be lovely; wisht I was a-going.
Is Mary Jane the oldest?  How old is the others?”

“Mary Jane's nineteen, Susan's fifteen, and Joanna's about
fourteen--that's the one that gives herself to good works and has a
hare-lip.”

“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 Babtis'
preacher; and Deacon Lot Hovey, and Ben Rucker, and Abner Shackleford,
and Levi Bell, the lawyer; and Dr. Robinson, and their wives, and the
widow Bartley, and--well, there's a lot of them; but these are the ones
that Peter was thickest with, and used to write about sometimes, when
he wrote home; so Harvey 'll know where to look for friends when he gets
here.”

Well, the old man went on asking questions till he just fairly emptied
that young fellow.  Blamed if he didn't inquire about everybody and
everything in that blessed town, and all about the Wilkses; 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.  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 afeard 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.”

“Was Peter Wilks well off?”

“Oh, yes, pretty well off.  He had houses and land, and it's reckoned he
left three or four thousand in cash hid up som'ers.”

“When did you say he died?”

“I didn't say, but it was last night.”

“Funeral to-morrow, likely?”

“Yes, 'bout 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 t'other side, go over there and
git him.  And tell him to git 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 set 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 a-doing it he
tried to talk like an Englishman; and he done it pretty well, too, for
a slouch. I can't imitate him, and so I ain't a-going to try to; but he
really done it pretty good.  Then he says:

“How are you on the deef and dumb, Bilgewater?”

The duke said, leave him alone for that; said he had played a deef
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 yawl, and we went
aboard, and she was from Cincinnati; and when they found we only wanted
to go four or five mile they was booming mad, and gave us a cussing, and
said they wouldn't land us.  But the king was ca'm.  He says:

“If gentlemen kin afford to pay a dollar a mile apiece to be took on and
put off in a yawl, a steamboat kin afford to carry 'em, 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 yawl a-coming, and when the king says:

“Kin any of you gentlemen tell me wher' Mr. Peter Wilks lives?” they
give a glance at one another, and nodded their heads, as much as to say,
“What d' I tell you?”  Then one of them says, kind of soft and gentle:

“I'm sorry sir, but the best we can do is to tell you where he _did_
live yesterday evening.”

Sudden as winking the ornery old cretur went an to smash, and fell up
against the man, and put his chin on his shoulder, and cried down his
back, and says:

“Alas, alas, our poor brother--gone, and we never got to see him; oh,
it's too, too hard!”

Then he turns around, blubbering, and makes a lot of idiotic signs to
the duke on his hands, and blamed if he didn't drop a carpet-bag and
bust out a-crying.  If they warn't the beatenest lot, them two frauds,
that ever I struck.

Well, the men gathered around 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.

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 march.  The windows and
dooryards was full; and every minute somebody would say, over a fence:

“Is it _them_?”

And somebody trotting along with the gang would answer back and say:

“You bet it is.”

When we got to the house the street in front of it was packed, and the
three girls was 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 hare-lip jumped for the duke, and there they had it!
 Everybody most, leastways women, cried for joy to see them meet again
at last and have such good times.

Then the king he hunched the duke private--I see him do it--and then he
looked around and see the coffin, over in the corner on two chairs; so
then him and the duke, with a hand across each other's shoulder, and
t'other hand to their eyes, walked slow and solemn over there, everybody
dropping back to give them room, and all the talk and noise stopping,
people saying “Sh!” and all the men taking their hats off and drooping
their heads, so you could a heard a pin fall.  And when they got there
they bent over and looked in the coffin, and took one sight, and then
they bust out a-crying so you could a heard them to Orleans, most; and
then they put their arms around 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 never see anything
like it. Then one of them got on one side of the coffin, and t'other on
t'other side, and they kneeled down and rested their foreheads on the
coffin, and let on to pray all to themselves.  Well, when it come
to that it worked the crowd like you never see anything like it, and
everybody broke down and went to 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 towards 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 a speech, all full of tears and
flapdoodle 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 mile, but it's a trial that's sweetened and
sanctified 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 a pious goody-goody Amen, and turns himself loose and goes to crying
fit to bust.

And the minute the words were out of his mouth somebody over in the
crowd struck up the doxolojer, 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 jaw again, and says how him and his
nieces would be glad if a few of the main principal friends of the
family would take supper here with them this evening, and help set up
with the ashes of the diseased; and says if his poor brother 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 wit, as follows, vizz.:--Rev. 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.

Rev. 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 t'other
world, and the preacher was pinting him right.  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 a-smiling and bobbing their heads like a passel of sapheads whilst
he made all sorts of signs with his hands and said “Goo-goo--goo-goo-goo”
 all the time, like a baby that can't talk.

So the king he blattered along, and managed to inquire about pretty
much everybody and dog in town, by his name, and mentioned all sorts
of little things that happened one time or another in the town, or to
George's family, or to Peter.  And he always let on that Peter wrote him
the things; but that was a lie:  he got every blessed one of them out of
that young flathead that we 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.  It give the dwelling-house
and three thousand dollars, gold, to the girls; and it 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 them
yaller-boys.  My, the way the king's eyes did shine!  He slaps the duke
on the shoulder and says:

“Oh, _this_ ain't bully nor noth'n!  Oh, no, I reckon not!  Why,
_bully_, it beats the Nonesuch, _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 talkin'; bein' brothers to a rich dead man and
representatives of furrin heirs that's got left is the line for you and
me, Bilge.  Thish yer comes of trust'n to Providence.  It's the best
way, in the long run.  I've tried 'em all, and ther' ain't no better
way.”

Most everybody would a been satisfied with the pile, and took it on
trust; but no, they must count it.  So they counts it, and it comes out
four hundred and fifteen dollars short.  Says the king:

“Dern him, I wonder what he done with that four hundred and fifteen
dollars?”

They worried over that awhile, 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's to let it go, and keep still about
it.  We can spare it.”

“Oh, shucks, yes, we can _spare_ it.  I don't k'yer noth'n 'bout
that--it's the _count_ I'm thinkin' about.  We want to be awful square
and open and above-board here, you know.  We want to lug this h-yer
money up stairs and count it before everybody--then ther' ain't noth'n
suspicious.  But when the dead man says ther's six thous'n dollars, you
know, we don't want to--”

“Hold on,” says the duke.  “Le's make up the deffisit,” and he begun to
haul out yaller-boys out of his pocket.

“It's a most amaz'n' good idea, duke--you _have_ got a rattlin' clever
head on you,” says the king.  “Blest if the old Nonesuch ain't a heppin'
us out agin,” and _he_ begun to haul out yaller-jackets and stack them
up.

It most busted them, but they made up the six thousand clean and clear.

“Say,” says the duke, “I got another idea.  Le's go up stairs and count
this money, and then take and _give it to the girls_.”

“Good land, duke, lemme hug you!  It's the most dazzling idea 'at ever a
man struck.  You have cert'nly got the most astonishin' head I ever see.
Oh, this is the boss dodge, ther' ain't no mistake 'bout it.  Let 'em
fetch along their suspicions now if they want to--this 'll lay 'em out.”

When we got up-stairs everybody gethered around 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 vale of sorrers.  He has done generous by
these yer 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 a done _more_ generous by 'em if he hadn't ben afeard o' woundin'
his dear William and me.  Now, _wouldn't_ he?  Ther' ain't no question
'bout it in _my_ mind.  Well, then, what kind o' brothers would it be
that 'd stand in his way at sech a time?  And what kind o' uncles would
it be that 'd rob--yes, _rob_--sech poor sweet lambs as these 'at he loved
so at sech a time?  If I know William--and I _think_ I do--he--well, I'll
jest 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 a while; then all of a sudden he seems to catch his
meaning, and jumps for the king, goo-gooing with all his might for joy,
and hugs him about fifteen times before he lets up.  Then the king says,
“I knowed it; I reckon _that 'll_ convince anybody the way _he_ feels
about it.  Here, Mary Jane, Susan, Joanner, 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 hare-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 of 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 bein' partickler friends o' the diseased.  That's why they're
invited here this evenin'; but tomorrow we want _all_ to come--everybody;
for he respected everybody, he liked everybody, and so it's fitten that
his funeral orgies sh'd be public.”

And so he went a-mooning 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_ aluz right.  Asks me
to invite everybody to come to the funeral--wants me to make 'em all
welcome.  But he needn't a worried--it was jest what I was at.”

Then he weaves along again, perfectly ca'm, and goes to dropping in his
funeral orgies again every now and then, just like he done before.  And
when he done it the third time he says:

“I say orgies, not because it's the common term, because it
ain't--obsequies bein' 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'n the Greek
_orgo_, outside, open, abroad; and the Hebrew _jeesum_, to plant, cover
up; hence in_ter._  So, you see, funeral orgies is an open er 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_!” and Abner Shackleford says:

“Why, Robinson, hain't you heard the news?  This is Harvey Wilks.”

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 Wilks's 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 lingo 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 impostor--has come here
with a lot of empty names and facts which he picked up somewheres, and
you take them for _proofs_, and are helped to fool yourselves by these
foolish friends here, who ought to know better.  Mary Jane Wilks, 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!  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 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
hare-lip done the same on the other.  Everybody clapped their hands and
stomped on the floor like a perfect storm, whilst the king held up his
head and smiled proud.  The doctor says:

“All right; I wash _my_ hands of the matter.  But I warn you all that a
time 's coming when you're going to feel sick whenever you think of this
day.” And away he went.

“All right, doctor,” says the king, kinder mocking him; “we'll try and
get 'em to send for you;” which made them all laugh, and they said it
was a prime good hit.




CHAPTER XXVI.

WELL, when they was all gone the king he asks Mary Jane how they was off
for spare rooms, and she said she had one spare room, which would do for
Uncle William, and she'd give her own room to Uncle Harvey, which was
a little bigger, and she would turn into the room with her sisters and
sleep on a cot; and up garret 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 warn'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 jimcracks around, like girls brisken up a room
with.  The king said it was all the more homely and more pleasanter for
these fixings, and so don't disturb them.  The duke's room was pretty
small, but plenty good enough, and so was my cubby.

That night they had a big supper, and all them men and women 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 set 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
chickens was--and all that kind of rot, the way women always do for to
force out compliments; and the people all knowed everything was tiptop,
and said so--said “How _do_ you get biscuits to brown so nice?” and
“Where, for the land's sake, _did_ you get these amaz'n pickles?” and
all that kind of humbug talky-talk, just the way people always does at a
supper, you know.

And when it was all done me and the hare-lip had supper in the kitchen
off of the leavings, whilst the others was helping the niggers clean up
the things.  The hare-lip she got to pumping me about England, and blest
if I didn't think the ice was getting mighty thin sometimes.  She says:

“Did you ever see the king?”

“Who?  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 pew's right over opposite ourn--on t'other side 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_ nuther.”

“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?”

“Looky here,” I says; “did you ever see any Congress-water?”

“Yes.”

“Well, did you have to go to Congress to get it?”

“Why, no.”

“Well, neither does William Fourth have to go to the sea to get a sea
bath.”

“How does he get it, then?”

“Gets it the way people down here gets Congress-water--in barrels.  There
in the palace at Sheffield they've got furnaces, and he wants his water
hot.  They can't bile that amount of water away off there at the sea.
They haven't got no conveniences for it.”

“Oh, I see, now.  You might a 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 set?”

“Why, in our pew.”

“_Whose_ pew?”

“Why, _ourn_--your Uncle Harvey's.”

“His'n?  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 'em a week.”

“Shucks, they don't _all_ of 'em preach the same day--only _one_ of 'em.”

“Well, then, what does the rest of 'em do?”

“Oh, nothing much.  Loll around, pass 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 'em better 'n we treat our
niggers?”

“_No_!  A servant ain't nobody there.  They treat them worse than dogs.”

“Don't they give 'em holidays, the way we do, Christmas and New Year's
week, and Fourth of July?”

“Oh, just listen!  A body could tell _you_ hain't ever been to England
by that.  Why, Hare-l--why, Joanna, they never see a holiday from year's
end to year's end; never go to the circus, nor theater, nor nigger
shows, nor nowheres.”

“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 done I see she
warn't satisfied.  She says:

“Honest injun, now, hain't you been telling me a lot of lies?”

“Honest injun,” says I.

“None of it at all?”

“None of it at all.  Not a lie in it,” says I.

“Lay your hand on this book and say it.”

I see it warn't nothing but a dictionary, so I laid my hand on it and
said it.  So then she looked a little better satisfied, and says:

“Well, then, I'll believe some of it; but I hope to gracious if I'll
believe the rest.”

“What is it 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 hain'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 'twas little or whether 'twas big; he's here in
our house and a stranger, and it wasn't good of you to say it.  If you
was in his place it would make you feel ashamed; and so you oughtn't to
say a thing to another person that will make _them_ feel ashamed.”

“Why, Mam, he said--”

“It don't make no difference what he _said_--that ain't the thing.  The
thing is for you to treat him _kind_, and not be saying things to make
him remember he ain't in his own country and amongst his own folks.”

I says to myself, _this_ is a girl that I'm letting that old reptile rob
her of her money!

Then Susan _she_ waltzed in; and if you'll believe me, she did give
Hare-lip hark from the tomb!

Says I to myself, and this is _another_ one that I'm letting him rob her
of her money!

Then Mary Jane she took another inning, and went in sweet and lovely
again--which was her way; but when she got done there warn't hardly
anything left o' poor Hare-lip.  So she hollered.

“All right, then,” says the other girls; “you just ask his pardon.”

She done it, too; and she done it beautiful.  She done it so beautiful
it was good to hear; and I wished I could tell her a thousand lies, so
she could do it again.

I says to myself, this is _another_ one that I'm letting him rob her of
her money.  And when she got through they all jest laid theirselves
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 thinking 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
dasn't do it. Her face would give them a hint, sure; they've got the
money, and they'd slide right out and get away with it.  If she was to
fetch in help I'd get mixed up in the business before it was done with,
I judge.  No; there ain't no good way but one.  I got to steal that
money, somehow; and I got to steal it some way that they won't suspicion
that I 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 they're
worth, so I'll find a chance time enough. I'll steal it and hide it; and
by and by, when I'm away down the river, I'll write a letter and tell
Mary Jane where it's hid.  But I 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 I dasn't light one, of course.  So I judged I'd
got to do the other thing--lay for them and eavesdrop.  About that time
I hears their footsteps coming, and was going to skip under the bed; I
reached for it, but it wasn't where I thought it would be; but I touched
the curtain 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 are up to anything private.  They sets down then, and
the king says:

“Well, what is it?  And cut it middlin' short, because it's better for
us to be down there a-whoopin' up the mournin' than up here givin' 'em a
chance to talk us over.”

“Well, this is it, Capet.  I ain't easy; I 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.  Specially, 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 a 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 o' the property?  March off like
a passel of fools and leave eight or nine thous'n' dollars' worth o'
property layin' around jest sufferin' to be scooped in?--and all good,
salable stuff, too.”

The duke he grumbled; said the bag of gold was enough, and he didn't
want to go no deeper--didn't want to rob a lot of orphans of _everything_
they had.

“Why, how you talk!” says the king.  “We sha'n't rob 'em of nothing at
all but jest this money.  The people that _buys_ the property is the
suff'rers; because as soon 's it's found out 'at 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 yer orphans 'll git their house back agin,
and that's enough for _them_; they're young and spry, and k'n easy
earn a livin'.  _they_ ain't a-goin to suffer.  Why, jest think--there's
thous'n's and thous'n's that ain't nigh so well off.  Bless you, _they_
ain't got noth'n' to complain of.”

Well, the king he talked him blind; so at last he give in, and said all
right, but said he believed it was blamed foolishness to stay, and that
doctor hanging over them.  But the king says:

“Cuss the doctor!  What do we k'yer for _him_?  Hain't we got all the
fools in town on our side?  And ain't that a big enough majority in any
town?”

So they got ready to go down stairs again.  The duke says:

“I don't think we put that money in a good place.”

That cheered me up.  I'd begun to think I warn't going to get a hint of
no kind to help me.  The king says:

“Why?”

“Because Mary Jane 'll 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 'em away; and do you reckon a nigger can run across money and
not borrow some of it?”

“Your head's level agin, 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 a 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 warn't in no danger of getting stole now.

But I knowed better.  I had it out of there before they was half-way
down stairs.  I groped along up to my cubby, and hid it there till I
could get a chance to do better.  I judged I better hide it outside
of the house somewheres, because if they missed it they would give the
house a good ransacking:  I knowed that very well.  Then I turned in,
with my clothes all on; but I couldn't a gone to sleep if I'd a wanted
to, I was in such a sweat to get through with the business.  By and by I
heard the king and the duke come up; so I rolled off my pallet and laid
with my chin at the top of my ladder, and waited to see if anything was
going to happen.  But nothing did.

So I held on till all the late sounds had quit and the early ones hadn't
begun yet; and then I slipped down the ladder.




CHAPTER XXVII.

I crept to their doors and listened; they was snoring.  So I tiptoed
along, and got down stairs all right.  There warn't a sound anywheres.
 I peeped through a crack of the dining-room door, and see the men that
was watching the corpse all sound asleep on their chairs.  The door
was open into the 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 warn'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, and then I run back across the room and in behind the door.

The person coming was Mary Jane.  She went to the coffin, very soft, and
kneeled down and looked in; then she put up her handkerchief, and I see
she begun to cry, though I couldn't hear her, and her back was to me.  I
slid out, and as I passed the dining-room I thought I'd make sure them
watchers hadn't seen me; so I looked through the crack, and everything
was all right.  They hadn't stirred.

I slipped up to bed, feeling ruther blue, on accounts of the thing
playing out that way after I had took so much trouble and run so much
resk about it.  Says I, if it could stay where it is, all right; because
when we get down the river a hundred mile or two I could write back to
Mary Jane, and she could dig him up again and get it; but that ain't the
thing that's going to happen; the thing that's going to happen is, the
money '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 smouch it from him. Of course I _wanted_ to slide
down and get it out of there, but I dasn'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 down stairs in the morning the parlor was shut up, and the
watchers was gone.  There warn'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 in rows, and borrowed more from the neighbors till
the hall and the parlor and the dining-room was full.  I see the coffin
lid was the way it was before, but I dasn't go to look in under it, with
folks around.

Then the people begun to flock in, and the beats and the girls took
seats in the front row at the head of the coffin, and for a half an hour
the people filed around slow, in single rank, and looked down at the
dead man's face a minute, and some dropped in a tear, and it 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 warn't no other sound but the scraping of the feet on
the floor and blowing noses--because people always blows them more at a
funeral than they do at other places except church.

When the place was packed full the undertaker he slid around in his
black gloves with his softy soothering ways, putting on the last
touches, and getting people and things all ship-shape and comfortable,
and making no more sound than a cat.  He never spoke; he moved people
around, he squeezed in late ones, he opened up passageways, and done
it with nods, and signs with his hands.  Then he took his place over
against the wall. He was the softest, glidingest, stealthiest man I ever
see; and there warn't no more smile to him than there is to a ham.

They had borrowed a melodeum--a sick one; and when everything was ready
a young woman set down and worked it, and it was pretty skreeky 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 Hobson
opened up, slow and solemn, and begun to talk; and straight off the most
outrageous row busted out in the cellar a body ever heard; it was only
one dog, but he made a most powerful racket, and he kept it up right
along; the parson he had to stand there, over the coffin, and wait--you
couldn't hear yourself think.  It was right down awkward, and nobody
didn't seem to know what to do.  But pretty soon they see that
long-legged undertaker make a sign to the preacher as much as to say,
“Don't you worry--just depend on me.”  Then he stooped down and begun
to glide along the wall, just his shoulders showing over the people's
heads.  So he glided along, and the powwow and racket getting more and
more outrageous all the time; and at last, when he had gone around two
sides of the room, he disappears down cellar.  Then in about two seconds
we heard a whack, and the dog he finished up with a most amazing howl or
two, and then everything was dead still, and the parson begun his solemn
talk where he left off.  In a minute or two here comes this undertaker's
back and shoulders gliding along the wall again; and so he glided and
glided around three sides of the room, and then rose up, and shaded his
mouth with his hands, and stretched his neck out towards the preacher,
over the people's heads, and says, in a kind of a coarse whisper, “_He
had a rat_!”  Then he drooped down and glided along the wall again to
his place.  You could see it was a great satisfaction to the people,
because naturally they wanted to know.  A little thing like that don't
cost nothing, and it's just the little things that makes a man to be
looked up to and liked.  There warn't no more popular man 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 begun to sneak up on the
coffin with his screw-driver.  I was in a sweat then, and watched him
pretty keen. But he never meddled at all; just slid the lid along as
soft as mush, and screwed it down tight and fast.  So there I was!  I
didn't know whether the money was in there or not.  So, says I, s'pose
somebody has hogged that bag on the sly?--now how do I know whether
to write to Mary Jane or not? S'pose 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've worsened it
a hundred times, and I wish to goodness I'd just let it alone, dad fetch
the whole business!

They buried him, and we come back home, and I went to watching faces
again--I couldn't help it, and I couldn't rest easy.  But nothing come of
it; the faces didn't tell me nothing.

The king he visited around in the evening, and sweetened everybody up,
and made himself ever so friendly; and he 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 bill the house and the niggers and all
the property for auction straight off--sale two days after the funeral;
but anybody could buy private beforehand if they wanted to.

So the next day after the funeral, along about noon-time, the girls' joy
got the first jolt.  A couple of nigger traders come along, and the king
sold them the niggers reasonable, for three-day drafts as they called
it, and away they went, the two sons up the river to Memphis, and their
mother down the river to Orleans.  I thought them poor girls and them
niggers would break their hearts for grief; they cried around each
other, and took on so it most made me down sick to see it.  The girls
said they hadn't ever dreamed of seeing the family separated or sold
away from the town.  I can't ever get it out of my memory, the sight of
them poor miserable girls and niggers hanging around each other's necks
and crying; and I reckon I couldn't a stood it all, but would a 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
flatfooted and said it was scandalous to separate the mother and the
children that way.  It injured the frauds some; but the old fool he
bulled right along, spite of all the duke could say or do, and I 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?”

“No, your majesty”--which was the way I always called him when nobody but
our gang warn't around.

“Was you in there yisterday er last night?”

“No, your majesty.”

“Honor bright, now--no lies.”

“Honor bright, your majesty, I'm telling you the truth.  I hain't been
a-near your room since Miss Mary Jane took you and the duke and showed
it to you.”

The duke says:

“Have you seen anybody else go in there?”

“No, your grace, not as I remember, I believe.”

“Stop and think.”

I studied awhile and see my chance; then 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_.  Then the duke says:

“What, all of them?”

“No--leastways, not all at once--that is, I don't think I ever see them
all come _out_ at once but just one time.”

“Hello!  When was that?”

“It was the day we had the funeral.  In the morning.  It warn'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.  And they didn't act anyway much, as fur as I
see. They tiptoed away; so I seen, easy enough, that they'd shoved in
there to do up your majesty's room, or something, s'posing you was up;
and found you _warn'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 a-thinking and
scratching their heads a minute, and the duke he bust into a kind of a
little raspy chuckle, and says:

“It does beat all how neat the niggers played their hand.  They let on
to be _sorry_ they was going out of this region!  And I believed 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 'em.  If I had capital and a theater, I wouldn't want a
better lay-out than that--and here we've gone and sold 'em 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, _that's_ all right then, thank goodness.”

Says I, kind of timid-like:

“Is something gone wrong?”

The king whirls on me and rips out:

“None o' your business!  You keep your head shet, and mind y'r own
affairs--if you got any.  Long as you're in this town don't you forgit
_that_--you hear?”  Then he says to the duke, “We got to jest swaller it
and say noth'n':  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 a good business--yes.”

The king snarls around on him and says:

“I was trying to do for the best in sellin' 'em out so quick.  If the
profits has turned out to be none, lackin' considable, and none to
carry, is it my fault any more'n it's yourn?”

“Well, _they'd_ be in this house yet and we _wouldn't_ if I could a got
my advice listened to.”

The king sassed back as much as was safe for him, and then swapped
around and lit into _me_ again.  He give 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 a _knowed_ something was up.  And then
waltzed in and cussed _himself_ awhile, 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 a-jawing; 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.




CHAPTER XXVIII.

BY and by it was getting-up time.  So I come down the ladder and started
for down-stairs; but as I come to the girls' 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 a-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 warn'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 set 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 resks,
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 blest if it
don't look to me like the truth is better and actuly _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 a-going to chance it; I'll up and tell the
truth this time, though it does seem most like setting down on a kag of
powder and touching it off just to see where you'll go to. Then I says:

“Miss Mary Jane, is there any place out of town a little ways where you
could go and stay three or four days?”

“Yes; Mr. 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 druther 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 set down again, and says:

“Don't you holler.  Just set still and take it like a man.  I got to
tell the truth, and you want to brace up, Miss Mary, because it's a
bad kind, and going to be hard to take, but there ain't no help for
it.  These uncles of yourn ain't no uncles at all; they're a couple of
frauds--regular dead-beats.  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 a-blazing higher and higher
all the time, and told her every blame thing, from where we first struck
that young fool going up to the steamboat, clear through to where she
flung herself on to the king's breast at the front door and he kissed
her sixteen or seventeen times--and then up she jumps, with her face
afire like sunset, and says:

“The brute!  Come, don't waste a minute--not a _second_--we'll have them
tarred and feathered, and flung in the river!”

Says I:

“Cert'nly.  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 got to travel with them a while longer, whether I want to or not--I
druther not tell you why; and if you was to blow on them this town would
get me out of their claws, and I'd be all right; but there'd be another
person that you don't know about who'd be in big trouble.  Well, we
got to save _him_, hain'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 in 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's so long, nuther.  How fur is it?”

“A little short of four miles--right out in the country, back here.”

“Well, that 'll answer.  Now you go along out there, and lay low
till nine or half-past to-night, and then get them to fetch you home
again--tell them you've thought of 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 around, and get
these beats jailed.”

“Good,” she says, “I'll do it.”

“And if it just happens so that I don't get away, but get took up along
with them, you must up and say I told you the whole thing beforehand,
and you must stand by me all you can.”

“Stand by you! indeed I will.  They sha'n't touch a hair of your head!”
 she says, and I see her nostrils spread and her eyes snap when she said
it, too.

“If I get away I sha'n'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.  Gimme a pencil and a piece of paper.  There--'Royal
Nonesuch, 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 Nonesuch,
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 a whole day after the auction
on accounts of the short notice, and they ain't going out of this till
they get that money; and the way we've 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 warn't no sale, and the niggers will be
back before long.  Why, they can't collect the money for the _niggers_
yet--they're in the worst kind of a fix, 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
of 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-face 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 it yet a while.  They
might suspicion something if all of you was to go.  I don't want you to
see them, nor your sisters, nor nobody in this town; if a neighbor was
to ask how is your uncles this 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 for 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 sha'n'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 smooths 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 hain'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 done the best I could; I did honest.  I
come nigh getting caught, and I had to shove it into the first place I
come to, and run--and it warn't a good place.”

“Oh, stop blaming yourself--it's too bad to do it, and I won't allow
it--you couldn't help it; it wasn't your fault.  Where did you hide it?”

I didn't want to 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 ruther not _tell_ you where I put it, Miss Mary Jane, if you don't
mind letting me off; but I'll write it for you on a piece of paper, and
you can read it along the road to Mr. Lothrop's, if you want to.  Do you
reckon that 'll do?”

“Oh, yes.”

So I wrote:  “I put it in the coffin.  It was in there when you was
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 them 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 sha'n'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 done it, just the same--she was just that
kind.  She had the grit to pray for Judus if she took the notion--there
warn't no back-down to her, I judge.  You may say what you want to, but
in my opinion she had more sand in her than any girl I ever see; in
my opinion she was just full of sand.  It sounds like flattery, but it
ain't no flattery.  And when it comes to beauty--and goodness, too--she
lays over them all.  I hain't ever seen her since that time that I see
her go out of that door; no, I hain'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 a thought it would do any good
for me to pray for _her_, blamed if I wouldn't a 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 hare-lip, I says:

“What's the name of them people over on t'other side of the river that
you all goes to see sometimes?”

They says:

“There's several; but it's the Proctors, mainly.”

“That's the name,” I says; “I most forgot it.  Well, Miss Mary Jane she
told me to tell you she's gone over there in a dreadful hurry--one of
them's sick.”

“Which one?”

“I don't know; leastways, I kinder forget; but I thinks it's--”

“Sakes alive, I hope it ain't _Hanner_?”

“I'm sorry to say it,” I says, “but Hanner's the very one.”

“My goodness, and she 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 whooping-cough, and erysiplas, and consumption, and
yaller janders, and brain-fever, and I don't know what all.”

“My land!  And they call it the _mumps_?”

“That's what Miss Mary Jane said.”

“Well, what in the nation do they call it the _mumps_ for?”

“Why, because it _is_ the mumps.  That's what it starts with.”

“Well, ther' 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 numskull
up and say, 'Why, he stumped his _toe_.'  Would ther' be any sense
in that? _No_.  And ther' ain't no sense in _this_, nuther.  Is it
ketching?”

“Is it _ketching_?  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, nuther, you
come to get it hitched on good.”

“Well, it's awful, I think,” says the hare-lip.  “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.  Hain't your uncles
obleegd 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 fur, 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 pluribus-unum 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--”

“Shucks, and stay fooling around here when we could all be having good
times in England whilst we was waiting to find out whether Mary Jane's
got it or not?  Why, you talk like a muggins.”

“Well, anyway, maybe you'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?  Ther' ain't no way but just to not
tell anybody at _all_.”

“Well, maybe you're right--yes, I judge you _are_ right.”

“But I reckon we ought to tell Uncle Harvey she's gone out a while,
anyway, so he won't be uneasy about her?”

“Yes, Miss Mary Jane she wanted you to do that.  She says, 'Tell them to
give Uncle Harvey and William my love and a kiss, and say I've run over
the river to see Mr.'--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, a 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 ruther 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 Proctors, but only about the Apthorps--which 'll 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 ruther
Mary Jane was off working for the auction than around in reach of
Doctor Robinson.  I felt very good; I judged I had done it pretty neat--I
reckoned Tom Sawyer couldn't a done it no neater himself.  Of course he
would a 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 towards the end
of the afternoon, and it strung along, and strung along, and the old man
he was on hand and looking his level pisonest, up there longside 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 generly.

But by and by the thing dragged through, and everything was
sold--everything but a little old trifling lot in the graveyard.  So
they'd got to work that off--I never see such a girafft 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 a-whooping
and yelling and laughing and carrying on, and singing out:

“_Here's_ your opposition line! here's your two sets o' heirs to old
Peter Wilks--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 souls,
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 sorrowful on them new-comers like it give him the stomach-ache in
his very heart to think there could be such frauds and rascals in the
world.  Oh, he done it admirable.  Lots of the principal people
gethered around 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 gent's words, nor I can't imitate
him; but he turned around to the crowd, and says, about like this:

“This is a surprise to me which I wasn't looking for; and I'll
acknowledge, candid and frank, I ain't very well fixed to meet it and
answer it; for my brother and me has had misfortunes; he's broke his
arm, and our baggage got put off at a town above here last night in the
night by a mistake.  I am Peter Wilks' 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't 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
blethers 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 gentleman said, and was listening to the
king now. And when the king got done this husky up and says:

“Say, looky here; if you are Harvey Wilks, when'd you come to this
town?”

“The day before the funeral, friend,” says the king.

“But what time o' day?”

“In the evenin'--'bout an hour er two before sundown.”

“_How'd_ you come?”

“I come down on the Susan Powell from Cincinnati.”

“Well, then, how'd you come to be up at the Pint in the _mornin_'--in a
canoe?”

“I warn't up at the Pint in the mornin'.”

“It's a lie.”

Several of them 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 mornin'.  I live up there, don't I?  Well, I was up there, and
he was up there.  I see him there.  He come in a canoe, along with Tim
Collins and a boy.”

The doctor he up and says:

“Would you know the boy again if you was to see him, Hines?”

“I reckon I would, but I don't know.  Why, yonder he is, now.  I know
him perfectly easy.”

It was me he pointed at.  The doctor says:

“Neighbors, I don't know whether the new couple is frauds or not; but if
_these_ two ain't frauds, I am an idiot, that's all.  I think it's our
duty to see that they don't get away from here till we've looked into
this thing. Come along, Hines; come along, the rest of you.  We'll take
these fellows to the tavern and affront them with t'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
Wilks 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 outstart.  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
o' this misable business; but, alas, the money ain't there; you k'n 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 and hid it
inside o' the straw tick o' my bed, not wishin' to bank it for the few
days we'd be here, and considerin' the bed a safe place, we not bein'
used to niggers, and suppos'n' 'em honest, like servants in England.
 The niggers stole it the very next mornin' after I had went down
stairs; and when I sold 'em I hadn't missed the money yit, so they got
clean away with it.  My servant here k'n tell you 'bout 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 had waked up
my master and was trying to get away before he made trouble with them.
 That was all they asked me.  Then the doctor whirls on me and says:

“Are _you_ English, too?”

I says yes; and him and some others laughed, and 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 ever seemed to think about it--and so they kept it up, and
kept it up; and it _was_ the worst mixed-up thing you ever see.  They
made the king tell his yarn, and they made the old gentleman tell his'n;
and anybody but a lot of prejudiced chuckleheads would a _seen_ that the
old gentleman was spinning truth and t'other one lies.  And by and by
they had me up to tell what I knowed.  The king he give me a left-handed
look out of the corner of his eye, and so I knowed enough to talk on the
right side.  I begun to tell about Sheffield, and how we lived there,
and all about the English Wilkses, and so on; but I didn't get pretty
fur till the doctor begun to laugh; and Levi Bell, the lawyer, says:

“Set 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, Levi Bell--” The king broke in and
reached out his hand, and says:

“Why, is this my poor dead brother's old friend that he's wrote so often
about?”

The lawyer and him shook hands, and the lawyer smiled and looked
pleased, and they talked right along awhile, and then got to one side
and talked low; and at last the lawyer speaks up and says:

“That 'll fix it.  I'll take the order and send it, along with your
brother's, and then they'll know it's all right.”

So they got some paper and a pen, and the king he set down and twisted
his head to one side, and chawed 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 couldn't read it.  The lawyer looked
powerful astonished, and says:

“Well, it beats _me_”--and snaked a lot of old letters out of his pocket,
and examined them, and then examined the old man's writing, and then
_them_ again; and then says:  “These old letters is from Harvey Wilks;
and here's _these_ two handwritings, and anybody can see they didn't
write them” (the king and the duke looked sold and foolish, I tell
you, to see how the lawyer had took them in), “and here's _this_ old
gentleman's hand writing, and anybody can tell, easy enough, _he_ didn't
write them--fact is, the scratches he makes ain't properly _writing_ at
all.  Now, here's some letters from--”

The new old gentleman says:

“If you please, let me explain.  Nobody can read my hand but my brother
there--so he copies for me.  It's _his_ hand you've got there, not mine.”

“_Well_!” says the lawyer, “this _is_ 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 com--”

“He _can't_ write with his left hand,” says the old gentleman.  “If he
could use his right hand, you would see that he wrote his own letters
and mine too.  Look at both, please--they're by the same hand.”

The lawyer done it, and says:

“I believe it'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 the track of a solution, but it's gone to grass,
partly.  But anyway, one thing is proved--_these_ two ain't either of 'em
Wilkses”--and he wagged his head towards the king and the duke.

Well, what do you think?  That muleheaded old fool wouldn't give in
_then_! Indeed he wouldn't.  Said it warn't no fair test.  Said his
brother William was the cussedest 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 actuly 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 br--helped to lay out the late Peter Wilks for burying?”

“Yes,” says somebody, “me and Ab Turner done it.  We're both here.”

Then the old man turns towards 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
squshed 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_ sqush 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 body 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 set there, and pretty soon he begun to smile, and says:

“Mf!  It's a _very_ tough question, _ain't_ it!  _yes_, sir, I k'n
tell you what's tattooed on his breast.  It's jest a small, thin, blue
arrow--that's what it is; and if you don't look clost, you can't see it.
 _now_ what do you say--hey?”

Well, I never see anything like that old blister for clean out-and-out
cheek.

The new old gentleman turns brisk towards Ab Turner and his pard, and
his eye lights 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
Wilks' breast?”

Both of them spoke up and says:

“We didn't see no such mark.”

“Good!” says the old gentleman.  “Now, what you _did_ see on his breast
was a small dim P, and a B (which is an initial he dropped when he was
young), and a W, with dashes between them, so:  P--B--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 _bilin_' of 'm 's frauds!  Le's duck 'em! le's drown 'em!
le's ride 'em on a rail!” and everybody was whooping at once, and there
was a rattling powwow.  But the lawyer he jumps on the table and yells,
and says:

“Gentlemen--gentle_men!_  Hear me just a word--just a _single_ word--if you
_please_!  There's one way yet--let's go and dig up the corpse and look.”

That took them.

“Hooray!” they all shouted, and was starting right off; but the lawyer
and the doctor sung out:

“Hold on, hold on!  Collar all these four men and the boy, and fetch
_them_ along, too!”

“We'll do it!” they all shouted; “and if we don't find them marks we'll
lynch the whole gang!”

I _was_ scared, now, I tell you.  But there warn't no getting away, you
know. They gripped us all, and marched us right along, straight for the
graveyard, which was a mile and a half down the river, and the whole
town at our heels, for we made noise enough, and it was only nine in the
evening.

As we went by our house I wished I hadn't sent Mary Jane out of town;
because now if I could tip her the wink she'd light out and save me, and
blow on our dead-beats.

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 wind to shiver amongst
the leaves. This was the most awful trouble and most dangersome I ever
was in; and I was kinder stunned; everything was going so different from
what I had allowed for; stead 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 betwixt me and sudden death but just them tattoo-marks.  If they
didn't find them--

I couldn't bear to think about it; and yet, somehow, I couldn't think
about nothing else.  It got darker and darker, and it was a beautiful
time to give the crowd the slip; but that big husky had me by the
wrist--Hines--and a body might as well try to give Goliar the slip.  He
dragged me right along, he was so excited, and I had to run to keep up.

When they got there they swarmed into the graveyard and washed over it
like an overflow.  And when they got to the grave they found they had
about a hundred times as many shovels as they wanted, but nobody hadn't
thought to fetch a lantern.  But they sailed 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 them 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
scrouge 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 clean forgot 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 shinned for the road in the dark there ain't nobody can tell.

I had the road all to myself, and I fairly flew--leastways, I had it all
to myself except the solid dark, and the now-and-then glares, and the
buzzing of the rain, and the thrashing of the wind, and the splitting of
the thunder; and sure as you are born I did clip it along!

When I struck the town I see there warn't nobody out in the storm, so
I never hunted for no back streets, but humped it straight through the
main one; and when I begun to get towards our house I 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; and 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
towhead, I begun to look sharp for a boat to borrow, and the first
time the lightning showed me one that wasn't chained I snatched it and
shoved. It was a canoe, and warn't fastened with nothing but a rope.
 The towhead 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 a just laid down to blow and gasp
if I could afforded it.  But I didn't.  As I sprung aboard I sung out:

“Out with you, Jim, and set her loose!  Glory be to goodness, we're shut
of them!”

Jim lit out, and was 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 drownded A-rab all in one, and it most scared the livers and
lights out of me.  But Jim fished me out, and was going to hug me and
bless me, and so on, he was so glad I was back and we 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 a-laying 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.




CHAPTER XXX.

WHEN they got aboard the king went for me, and shook me by the collar,
and says:

“Tryin' to give us the slip, was ye, you pup!  Tired of our company,
hey?”

I says:

“No, your majesty, we warn't--_please_ don't, your majesty!”

“Quick, then, and tell us what _was_ your idea, or I'll shake the
insides out o' you!”

“Honest, I'll tell you everything just as it happened, your majesty.
 The man that had a-holt 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, 'Heel it now, or they'll hang ye, sure!' and I lit
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 drownd me.  But the duke says:

“Leggo the boy, you old idiot!  Would _you_ a done any different?  Did
you inquire around for _him_ when you got loose?  I don't remember it.”

So the king let go of me, and begun to cuss that town and everybody in
it. But the duke says:

“You better a blame' sight give _yourself_ a good cussing, for you're
the one that's entitled to it most.  You hain't done a thing from the
start that had any sense in it, except coming out so cool and cheeky
with that imaginary blue-arrow mark.  That _was_ bright--it was right
down bully; and it was the thing that saved us.  For if it hadn't been
for that they'd a jailed us till them Englishmen's baggage come--and
then--the penitentiary, you bet! But that trick took 'em to the
graveyard, and the gold done us a still bigger kindness; for if the
excited fools hadn't let go all holts and made that rush to get a
look we'd a slept in our cravats to-night--cravats warranted to _wear_,
too--longer than _we'd_ need 'em.”

They was still a minute--thinking; then the king says, kind of
absent-minded like:

“Mf!  And we reckoned the _niggers_ stole it!”

That made me squirm!

“Yes,” says the duke, kinder slow and deliberate and sarcastic, “_we_
did.”

After about a half a minute the king drawls out:

“Leastways, I did.”

The duke says, the same way:

“On the contrary, I did.”

The king kind of ruffles up, and says:

“Looky here, Bilgewater, what'r you referrin' to?”

The duke says, pretty brisk:

“When it comes to that, maybe you'll let me ask, what was _you_
referring to?”

“Shucks!” says the king, very sarcastic; “but I don't know--maybe you was
asleep, and didn't know what you was about.”

The duke bristles up now, and says:

“Oh, let _up_ on this cussed nonsense; do you take me for a 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 y'r hands off!--leggo my throat!--I take it all back!”

The duke says:

“Well, you just own up, first, that you _did_ hide that money there,
intending to give me the slip one of these days, and come back and dig
it up, and have it all to yourself.”

“Wait jest a minute, duke--answer me this one question, honest and fair;
if you didn't put the money there, say it, and I'll b'lieve you, and
take back everything I said.”

“You old scoundrel, I didn't, and you know I didn't.  There, now!”

“Well, then, I b'lieve you.  But answer me only jest this one more--now
_don't_ git mad; didn't you have it in your mind to hook the money and
hide it?”

The duke never said nothing for a little bit; then he says:

“Well, I don't care if I _did_, I didn't _do_ it, anyway.  But you not
only had it in mind to do it, but you _done_ it.”

“I wisht I never die if I done it, duke, and that's honest.  I won't say
I warn't goin' to do it, because I _was_; but you--I mean somebody--got in
ahead o' me.”

“It's a lie!  You done it, and you got to _say_ you done it, or--”

The king began to gurgle, and then he gasps out:

“'Nough!--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 set
there and blubber like a baby--it's fitten for you, after the way
you've acted. I never see such an old ostrich for wanting to gobble
everything--and I a-trusting you all the time, like you was my own
father.  You ought to been ashamed of yourself to stand by and hear it
saddled on to a lot of poor niggers, and you never say a word for 'em.
 It makes me feel ridiculous to think I was soft enough to _believe_
that rubbage.  Cuss you, I can see now why you was so anxious to make
up the deffisit--you wanted to get what money I'd got out of the Nonesuch
and one thing or another, and scoop it _all_!”

The king says, timid, and still a-snuffling:

“Why, duke, it was you that said make up the deffisit; it warn'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.  They've got all their own money back,
and all of _ourn_ but a shekel or two _besides_.  G'long to bed, and
don't you deffersit _me_ no more deffersits, long 's _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-snoring in each other's arms.  They
both got powerful mellow, but I noticed the king didn't get mellow
enough to forget to remember to not deny about hiding the money-bag
again.  That made me feel easy and satisfied.  Of course when they got
to snoring we had a long gabble, and I told Jim everything.




CHAPTER XXXI.

WE dasn't stop again at any town for days and days; kept right along
down the river.  We was down south in the warm weather now, and a mighty
long ways from home.  We begun to come to trees with Spanish moss on
them, hanging down from the limbs like long, gray beards.  It was the
first I ever see it growing, and it made the woods look solemn and
dismal.  So now the frauds reckoned they was out of danger, and they
begun to work the villages again.

First they done a lecture on temperance; but they didn't make enough
for them both to get drunk on.  Then in another village they started
a dancing-school; but they didn't know no more how to dance than a
kangaroo does; so the first prance they made the general public jumped
in and pranced them out of town.  Another time they tried to go at
yellocution; but they didn't yellocute long till the audience got up and
give them a solid good cussing, and made them skip out.  They tackled
missionarying, and mesmerizing, and doctoring, and telling fortunes, and
a little of everything; but they couldn't seem to have no luck.  So at
last they got just about dead broke, and laid around the raft as she
floated along, thinking and thinking, and never saying nothing, by the
half a day at a time, and dreadful blue and desperate.

And at last they took a change and begun to lay their heads together in
the wigwam and talk low and confidential two or three hours at a time.
Jim and me got uneasy.  We didn't like the look of it.  We judged they
was studying up some kind of worse deviltry than ever.  We turned it
over and over, and at last we made up our minds they was going to break
into somebody's house or store, or was going into the counterfeit-money
business, or something. So then we was pretty scared, and made up an
agreement that we wouldn't have nothing in the world to do with such
actions, and if we ever got the least show we would give them the cold
shake and clear out and leave them behind. Well, early one morning we
hid the raft in a good, safe place about two mile below a little bit of
a shabby village named Pikesville, and the king he went ashore and told
us all to stay hid whilst he went up to town and smelt around to see
if anybody had got any wind of the Royal Nonesuch there yet. (“House to
rob, you _mean_,” says I to myself; “and when you get through robbing it
you'll come back here and wonder what has become of me and Jim and the
raft--and you'll have to take it out in wondering.”) And he said if he
warn't back by midday the duke and me would know it was all right, and
we was to come along.

So we stayed where we was.  The duke he fretted and sweated around, and
was in a mighty sour way.  He scolded us for everything, and we couldn't
seem to do nothing right; he found fault with every little thing.
Something was a-brewing, sure.  I was good and glad when midday come
and no king; we could have a change, anyway--and maybe a chance for _the_
change on top of it.  So me and the duke went up to the village, and
hunted around there for the king, and by and by we found him in the
back room of a little low doggery, very tight, and a lot of loafers
bullyragging him for sport, and he a-cussing and a-threatening with all
his might, and so tight he couldn't walk, and couldn't do nothing to
them.  The duke he begun to abuse him for an old fool, and the king
begun to sass back, and the minute they was fairly at it I lit out and
shook the reefs out of my hind legs, and spun down the river road like
a deer, for I see our chance; and I made up my mind that it would be a
long day before they ever see me and Jim again.  I got down there all
out of breath but loaded up with joy, and sung out:

“Set her loose, Jim! we're all right now!”

But there warn't no answer, and nobody come out of the wigwam.  Jim was
gone!  I set up a shout--and then another--and then another one; and run
this way and that in the woods, whooping and screeching; but it warn't
no use--old Jim was gone.  Then I set down and cried; I couldn't help
it. But I couldn't set still long.  Pretty soon I went out on the road,
trying to think what I better do, and I run across a boy walking, and
asked him if he'd seen a strange nigger dressed so and so, and he says:

“Yes.”

“Whereabouts?” says I.

“Down to Silas Phelps' place, two mile below here.  He's a runaway
nigger, and they've got him.  Was you looking for him?”

“You bet I ain't!  I run across him in the woods about an hour or two
ago, and he said if I hollered he'd cut my livers out--and told me to lay
down and stay where I was; and I done it.  Been there ever since; afeard
to come out.”

“Well,” he says, “you needn't be afeard no more, becuz they've got him.
He run off f'm down South, som'ers.”

“It's a good job they got him.”

“Well, I _reckon_!  There's two hunderd dollars reward on him.  It's
like picking up money out'n the road.”

“Yes, it is--and I could a had it if I'd been big enough; I see him
_first_. Who nailed him?”

“It was an old fellow--a stranger--and he sold out his chance in him for
forty dollars, becuz he's got to go up the river and can't wait.  Think
o' that, now!  You bet _I'd_ wait, if it was seven year.”

“That's me, every time,” says I.  “But maybe his chance ain't worth
no more than that, if he'll sell it so cheap.  Maybe there's something
ain't straight about it.”

“But it _is_, though--straight as a string.  I see the handbill myself.
 It tells all about him, to a dot--paints him like a picture, and tells
the plantation he's frum, below Newr_leans_.  No-sirree-_bob_, they
ain't no trouble 'bout _that_ speculation, you bet you.  Say, gimme a
chaw tobacker, won't ye?”

I didn't have none, so he left.  I went to the raft, and set down in the
wigwam to think.  But I couldn't come to nothing.  I thought till I wore
my head sore, but I couldn't see no way out of the trouble.  After all
this long journey, and after all we'd done for them scoundrels, here it
was all come to nothing, everything all busted up and ruined, because
they could have the heart to serve Jim such a trick as that, and make
him a slave again all his life, and amongst strangers, too, for forty
dirty dollars.

Once I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for Jim to
be a slave at home where his family was, as long as he'd _got_ to be a
slave, and so I'd better write a letter to Tom Sawyer and tell him to
tell Miss Watson where he was.  But I soon give up that notion for two
things: she'd be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness
for leaving her, and so she'd sell him straight down the river again;
and if she didn't, everybody naturally despises an ungrateful nigger,
and they'd make Jim feel it all the time, and so he'd feel ornery and
disgraced. And then think of _me_!  It would get all around that Huck
Finn helped a nigger to get his freedom; and if I was ever to see
anybody from that town again I'd be ready to get down and lick his boots
for shame.  That's just the way:  a person does a low-down thing, and
then he don't want to take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he
can hide it, it ain't no disgrace.  That was my fix exactly. The more I
studied about this the more my conscience went to grinding me, and the
more wicked and low-down and ornery I got to feeling. And at last, when
it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of Providence
slapping me in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being
watched all the time from up there in heaven, whilst I was stealing a
poor old woman's nigger that hadn't ever done me no harm, and now was
showing me there's One that's always on the lookout, and ain't a-going
to allow no such miserable doings to go only just so fur and no further,
I most dropped in my tracks I was so scared.  Well, I tried the best I
could to kinder soften it up somehow for myself by saying I was brung
up wicked, and so I warn't so much to blame; but something inside of me
kept saying, “There was the Sunday-school, you could a gone to it; and
if you'd a done it they'd a learnt you there that people that acts as
I'd been acting about that nigger goes to everlasting fire.”

It made me shiver.  And I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I
couldn't try to quit being the kind of a boy I was and be better.  So
I kneeled down.  But the words wouldn't come.  Why wouldn't they?  It
warn't no use to try and hide it from Him.  Nor from _me_, neither.  I
knowed very well why they wouldn't come.  It was because my heart warn't
right; it was because I warn't square; it was because I was playing
double.  I was letting _on_ to give up sin, but away inside of me I was
holding on to the biggest one of all.  I was trying to make my mouth
_say_ I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write
to that nigger's owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I
knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it.  You can't pray a lie--I found
that out.

So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn't know what to
do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I'll go and write the letter--and
then see if I can pray.  Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as
light as a feather right straight off, and my troubles all gone.  So I
got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down
and wrote:

Miss Watson, your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below
Pikesville, and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the
reward if you send.

_Huck Finn._

I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever
felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now.  But I didn't do it
straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking--thinking
how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost
and going to hell.  And went on thinking.  And got to thinking over our
trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time:  in the day
and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we
a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing.  But somehow I
couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the
other kind.  I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, 'stead of
calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when
I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp,
up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call
me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how
good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling
the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was
the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the _only_ one he's
got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.

It was a close place.  I took it up, and held it in my hand.  I was
a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and
I knowed it.  I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then
says to myself:

“All right, then, I'll _go_ to hell”--and tore it up.

It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said.  And I let
them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming.  I shoved the
whole thing out of my head, and said I would take up wickedness again,
which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn't.  And
for a starter I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again;
and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as
long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog.

Then I set to thinking over how to get at it, and turned over some
considerable many ways in my mind; and at last fixed up a plan that
suited me.  So then I took the bearings of a woody island that was down
the river a piece, and as soon as it was fairly dark I crept out with my
raft and went for it, and hid it there, and then turned in.  I slept the
night through, and got up before it was light, and had my breakfast,
and put on my store clothes, and tied up some others and one thing or
another in a bundle, and took the canoe and cleared for shore.  I landed
below where I judged was Phelps's place, and hid my bundle in the woods,
and then filled up the canoe with water, and loaded rocks into her and
sunk her where I could find her again when I wanted her, about a quarter
of a mile below a little steam sawmill that was on the bank.

Then I struck up the road, and when I passed the mill I see a sign on
it, “Phelps's Sawmill,” and when I come to the farm-houses, two or
three hundred yards further along, I kept my eyes peeled, but didn't
see nobody around, though it was good daylight now.  But I didn't mind,
because I didn't want to see nobody just yet--I only wanted to get the
lay of the land. According to my plan, I was going to turn up there from
the village, not from below.  So I just took a look, and shoved along,
straight for town. Well, the very first man I see when I got there was
the duke.  He was sticking up a bill for the Royal Nonesuch--three-night
performance--like that other time.  They had the cheek, them frauds!  I
was right on him before I could shirk.  He looked astonished, and says:

“Hel-_lo_!  Where'd _you_ come from?”  Then he says, kind of glad and
eager, “Where's the raft?--got her in a good place?”

I says:

“Why, that's just what I was going to ask your grace.”

Then he didn't look so joyful, and says:

“What was your idea for asking _me_?” he says.

“Well,” I says, “when I see the king in that doggery yesterday I says
to myself, we can't get him home for hours, till he's soberer; so I went
a-loafing around town to put in the time and wait.  A man up and offered
me ten cents to help him pull a skiff over the river and back to fetch
a sheep, and so I went along; but when we was dragging him to the boat,
and the man left me a-holt of the rope and went behind him to shove him
along, he was too strong for me and jerked loose and run, and we after
him.  We didn't have no dog, and so we had to chase him all over the
country till we tired him out.  We never got him till dark; then we
fetched him over, and I started down for the raft.  When I got there and
see it was gone, I says to myself, 'They've got into trouble and had to
leave; and they've took my nigger, which is the only nigger I've got in
the world, and now I'm in a strange country, and ain't got no property
no more, nor nothing, and no way to make my living;' so I set down and
cried.  I slept in the woods all night.  But what _did_ become of the
raft, then?--and Jim--poor Jim!”

“Blamed if I know--that is, what's become of the raft.  That old fool had
made a trade and got forty dollars, and when we found him in the doggery
the loafers had matched half-dollars with him and got every cent but
what he'd spent for whisky; and when I got him home late last night and
found the raft gone, we said, 'That little rascal has stole our raft and
shook us, and run off down the river.'”

“I wouldn't shake my _nigger_, would I?--the only nigger I had in the
world, and the only property.”

“We never thought of that.  Fact is, I reckon we'd come to consider him
_our_ nigger; yes, we did consider him so--goodness knows we had trouble
enough for him.  So when we see the raft was gone and we flat broke,
there warn't anything for it but to try the Royal Nonesuch another
shake. And I've pegged along ever since, dry as a powder-horn.  Where's
that ten cents? Give it here.”

I had considerable money, so I give him ten cents, but begged him to
spend it for something to eat, and give me some, because it was all the
money I had, and I hadn't had nothing to eat since yesterday.  He never
said nothing.  The next minute he whirls on me and says:

“Do you reckon that nigger would blow on us?  We'd skin him if he done
that!”

“How can he blow?  Hain't he run off?”

“No!  That old fool sold him, and never divided with me, and the money's
gone.”

“_Sold_ him?”  I says, and begun to cry; “why, he was _my_ nigger, and
that was my money.  Where is he?--I want my nigger.”

“Well, you can't _get_ your nigger, that's all--so dry up your
blubbering. Looky here--do you think _you'd_ venture to blow on us?
 Blamed if I think I'd trust you.  Why, if you _was_ to blow on us--”

He stopped, but I never see the duke look so ugly out of his eyes
before. I went on a-whimpering, and says:

“I don't want to blow on nobody; and I ain't got no time to blow, nohow.
I got to turn out and find my nigger.”

He looked kinder bothered, and stood there with his bills fluttering on
his arm, thinking, and wrinkling up his forehead.  At last he says:

“I'll tell you something.  We got to be here three days.  If you'll
promise you won't blow, and won't let the nigger blow, I'll tell you
where to find him.”

So I promised, and he says:

“A farmer by the name of Silas Ph--” and then he stopped.  You see, he
started to tell me the truth; but when he stopped that way, and begun to
study and think again, I reckoned he was changing his mind.  And so he
was. He wouldn't trust me; he wanted to make sure of having me out of
the way the whole three days.  So pretty soon he says:

“The man that bought him is named Abram Foster--Abram G. Foster--and he
lives forty mile back here in the country, on the road to Lafayette.”

“All right,” I says, “I can walk it in three days.  And I'll start this
very afternoon.”

“No you wont, you'll start _now_; and don't you lose any time about it,
neither, nor do any gabbling by the way.  Just keep a tight tongue in
your head and move right along, and then you won't get into trouble with
_us_, d'ye hear?”

That was the order I wanted, and that was the one I played for.  I
wanted to be left free to work my plans.

“So clear out,” he says; “and you can tell Mr. Foster whatever you want
to. Maybe you can get him to believe that Jim _is_ your nigger--some
idiots don't require documents--leastways I've heard there's such down
South here.  And when you tell him the handbill and the reward's bogus,
maybe he'll believe you when you explain to him what the idea was for
getting 'em out.  Go 'long now, and tell him anything you want to; but
mind you don't work your jaw any _between_ here and there.”

So I left, and struck for the back country.  I didn't look around, but I
kinder felt like he was watching me.  But I knowed I could tire him out
at that.  I went straight out in the country as much as a mile before
I stopped; then I doubled back through the woods towards Phelps'.  I
reckoned I better start in on my plan straight off without fooling
around, because I wanted to stop Jim's mouth till these fellows could
get away.  I didn't want no trouble with their kind.  I'd seen all I
wanted to of them, and wanted to get entirely shut of them.




CHAPTER XXXII.

WHEN I got there it was all still and Sunday-like, and hot and sunshiny;
the hands was gone to the fields; and there was them kind of faint
dronings of bugs and flies in the air that makes it seem so lonesome and
like everybody's dead and gone; and if a breeze fans along and quivers
the leaves it makes you feel mournful, because you feel like it's
spirits whispering--spirits that's been dead ever so many years--and you
always think they're talking about _you_.  As a general thing it makes a
body wish _he_ was dead, too, and done with it all.

Phelps' was one of these little one-horse cotton plantations, and they
all look alike.  A rail fence round a two-acre yard; a stile made out
of logs sawed off and up-ended in steps, like barrels of a different
length, to climb over the fence with, and for the women to stand on when
they are going to jump on to a horse; some sickly grass-patches in the
big yard, but mostly it was bare and smooth, like an old hat with the
nap rubbed off; big double log-house for the white folks--hewed logs,
with the chinks stopped up with mud or mortar, and these mud-stripes
been whitewashed some time or another; round-log kitchen, with a big
broad, open but roofed passage joining it to the house; log smoke-house
back of the kitchen; three little log nigger-cabins in a row t'other
side the smoke-house; one little hut all by itself away down against
the back fence, and some outbuildings down a piece the other side;
ash-hopper and big kettle to bile soap in by the little hut; bench by
the kitchen door, with bucket of water and a gourd; hound asleep there
in the sun; more hounds asleep round about; about three shade trees away
off in a corner; some currant bushes and gooseberry bushes in one place
by the fence; outside of the fence a garden and a watermelon patch; then
the cotton fields begins, and after the fields the woods.

I went around and clumb over the back stile by the ash-hopper, and
started for the kitchen.  When I got a little ways I heard the dim hum
of a spinning-wheel wailing along up and sinking along down again;
and then I knowed for certain I wished I was dead--for that _is_ the
lonesomest sound in the whole world.

I went right along, not fixing up any particular plan, but just trusting
to Providence to put the right words in my mouth when the time come; for
I'd noticed that Providence always did put the right words in my mouth
if I left it alone.

When I got half-way, first one hound and then another got up and went
for me, and of course I stopped and faced them, and kept still.  And
such another powwow as they made!  In a quarter of a minute I was a kind
of a hub of a wheel, as you may say--spokes made out of dogs--circle of
fifteen of them packed together around me, with their necks and noses
stretched up towards me, a-barking and howling; and more a-coming; you
could see them sailing over fences and around corners from everywheres.

A nigger woman come tearing out of the kitchen with a rolling-pin in her
hand, singing out, “Begone _you_ Tige! you Spot! begone sah!” and she
fetched first one and then another of them a clip and sent them howling,
and then the rest followed; and the next second half of them come back,
wagging their tails around me, and making friends with me.  There ain't
no harm in a hound, nohow.

And behind the woman comes a little nigger girl and two little nigger
boys without anything on but tow-linen shirts, and they hung on to their
mother's gown, and peeped out from behind her at me, bashful, the way
they always do.  And here comes the white woman running from the house,
about forty-five or fifty year old, bareheaded, and her spinning-stick
in her hand; and behind her comes her little white children, acting the
same way the little niggers was doing.  She was smiling all over so she
could hardly stand--and says:

“It's _you_, at last!--_ain't_ it?”

I out with a “Yes'm” before I thought.

She grabbed me and hugged me tight; and then gripped me by both hands
and shook and shook; and the tears come in her eyes, and run down over;
and she couldn't seem to hug and shake enough, and kept saying, “You
don't look as much like your mother as I reckoned you would; but law
sakes, I don't care for that, I'm so glad to see you!  Dear, dear, it
does seem like I could eat you up!  Children, it's your cousin Tom!--tell
him howdy.”

But they ducked their heads, and put their fingers in their mouths, and
hid behind her.  So she run on:

“Lize, hurry up and get him a hot breakfast right away--or did you get
your breakfast on the boat?”

I said I had got it on the boat.  So then she started for the house,
leading me by the hand, and the children tagging after.  When we got
there she set me down in a split-bottomed chair, and set herself down on
a little low stool in front of me, holding both of my hands, and says:

“Now I can have a _good_ look at you; and, laws-a-me, I've been hungry
for it a many and a many a time, all these long years, and it's come
at last! We been expecting you a couple of days and more.  What kep'
you?--boat get aground?”

“Yes'm--she--”

“Don't say yes'm--say Aunt Sally.  Where'd she get aground?”

I didn't rightly know what to say, because I didn't know whether the
boat would be coming up the river or down.  But I go a good deal on
instinct; and my instinct said she would be coming up--from down towards
Orleans. That didn't help me much, though; for I didn't know the names
of bars down that way.  I see I'd got to invent a bar, or forget the
name of the one we got aground on--or--Now I struck an idea, and fetched
it out:

“It warn't the grounding--that didn't keep us back but a little.  We
blowed out a cylinder-head.”

“Good gracious! anybody hurt?”

“No'm.  Killed a nigger.”

“Well, it's lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt.  Two years ago
last Christmas your uncle Silas was coming up from Newrleans on the old
Lally Rook, and she blowed out a cylinder-head and crippled a man.  And
I think he died afterwards.  He was a Baptist.  Your uncle Silas knowed
a family in Baton Rouge that knowed his people very well.  Yes, I
remember now, he _did_ die.  Mortification set in, and they had to
amputate him. But it didn't save him.  Yes, it was mortification--that
was it.  He turned blue all over, and died in the hope of a glorious
resurrection. They say he was a sight to look at.  Your uncle's been up
to the town every day to fetch you. And he's gone again, not more'n an
hour ago; he'll be back any minute now. You must a met him on the road,
didn't you?--oldish man, with a--”

“No, I didn't see nobody, Aunt Sally.  The boat landed just at daylight,
and I left my baggage on the wharf-boat and went looking around the town
and out a piece in the country, to put in the time and not get here too
soon; and so I come down the back way.”

“Who'd you give the baggage to?”

“Nobody.”

“Why, child, it 'll be stole!”

“Not where I hid it I reckon it won't,” I says.

“How'd you get your breakfast so early on the boat?”

It was kinder thin ice, but I says:

“The captain see me standing around, and told me I better have something
to eat before I went ashore; so he took me in the texas to the officers'
lunch, and give me all I wanted.”

I was getting so uneasy I couldn't listen good.  I had my mind on the
children all the time; I wanted to get them out to one side and pump
them a little, and find out who I was.  But I couldn't get no show, Mrs.
Phelps kept it up and run on so.  Pretty soon she made the cold chills
streak all down my back, because she says:

“But here we're a-running on this way, and you hain't told me a word
about Sis, nor any of them.  Now I'll rest my works a little, and you
start up yourn; just tell me _everything_--tell me all about 'm all every
one of 'm; and how they are, and what they're doing, and what they told
you to tell me; and every last thing you can think of.”

Well, I see I was up a stump--and up it good.  Providence had stood by
me this fur all right, but I was hard and tight aground now.  I see it
warn't a bit of use to try to go ahead--I'd got to throw up my hand.  So
I says to myself, here's another place where I got to resk the truth.
 I opened my mouth to begin; but she grabbed me and hustled me in behind
the bed, and says:

“Here he comes!  Stick your head down lower--there, that'll do; you can't
be seen now.  Don't you let on you're here.  I'll play a joke on him.
Children, don't you say a word.”

I see I was in a fix now.  But it warn't no use to worry; there warn't
nothing to do but just hold still, and try and be ready to stand from
under when the lightning struck.

I had just one little glimpse of the old gentleman when he come in; then
the bed hid him.  Mrs. Phelps she jumps for him, and says:

“Has he come?”

“No,” says her husband.

“Good-_ness_ gracious!” she says, “what in the warld can have become of
him?”

“I can't imagine,” says the old gentleman; “and I must say it makes me
dreadful uneasy.”

“Uneasy!” she says; “I'm ready to go distracted!  He _must_ a come; and
you've missed him along the road.  I _know_ it's so--something tells me
so.”

“Why, Sally, I _couldn't_ miss him along the road--_you_ know that.”

“But oh, dear, dear, what _will_ Sis say!  He must a come!  You must a
missed him.  He--”

“Oh, don't distress me any more'n I'm already distressed.  I don't know
what in the world to make of it.  I'm at my wit's end, and I don't mind
acknowledging 't I'm right down scared.  But there's no hope that he's
come; for he _couldn't_ come and me miss him.  Sally, it's terrible--just
terrible--something's happened to the boat, sure!”

“Why, Silas!  Look yonder!--up the road!--ain't that somebody coming?”

He sprung to the window at the head of the bed, and that give Mrs.
Phelps the chance she wanted.  She stooped down quick at the foot of the
bed and give me a pull, and out I come; and when he turned back from the
window there she stood, a-beaming and a-smiling like a house afire, and
I standing pretty meek and sweaty alongside.  The old gentleman stared,
and says:

“Why, who's that?”

“Who do you reckon 't is?”

“I hain't no idea.  Who _is_ it?”

“It's _Tom Sawyer!_”

By jings, I most slumped through the floor!  But there warn't no time to
swap knives; the old man grabbed me by the hand and shook, and kept on
shaking; and all the time how the woman did dance around and laugh and
cry; and then how they both did fire off questions about Sid, and Mary,
and the rest of the tribe.

But if they was joyful, it warn't nothing to what I was; for it was like
being born again, I was so glad to find out who I was.  Well, they froze
to me for two hours; and at last, when my chin was so tired it couldn't
hardly go any more, I had told them more about my family--I mean the
Sawyer family--than ever happened to any six Sawyer families.  And I
explained all about how we blowed out a cylinder-head at the mouth of
White River, and it took us three days to fix it.  Which was all right,
and worked first-rate; because _they_ didn't know but what it would take
three days to fix it.  If I'd a called it a bolthead it would a done
just as well.

Now I was feeling pretty comfortable all down one side, and pretty
uncomfortable all up the other.  Being Tom Sawyer was easy and
comfortable, and it stayed easy and comfortable till by and by I hear a
steamboat coughing along down the river.  Then I says to myself, s'pose
Tom Sawyer comes down on that boat?  And s'pose he steps in here any
minute, and sings out my name before I can throw him a wink to keep
quiet?

Well, I couldn't _have_ it that way; it wouldn't do at all.  I must go
up the road and waylay him.  So I told the folks I reckoned I would go
up to the town and fetch down my baggage.  The old gentleman was for
going along with me, but I said no, I could drive the horse myself, and
I druther he wouldn't take no trouble about me.




CHAPTER XXXIII.

SO I started for town in the wagon, and when I was half-way I see a
wagon coming, and sure enough it was Tom Sawyer, and I stopped and
waited till he come along.  I says “Hold on!” and it stopped alongside,
and his mouth opened up like a trunk, and stayed so; and he swallowed
two or three times like a person that's got a dry throat, and then says:

“I hain't ever done you no harm.  You know that.  So, then, what you
want to come back and ha'nt _me_ for?”

I says:

“I hain't come back--I hain't been _gone_.”

When he heard my voice it righted him up some, but he warn't quite
satisfied yet.  He says:

“Don't you play nothing on me, because I wouldn't on you.  Honest injun
now, you ain't a ghost?”

“Honest injun, I ain't,” I says.

“Well--I--I--well, that ought to settle it, of course; but I can't somehow
seem to understand it no way.  Looky here, warn't you ever murdered _at
all?_”

“No.  I warn't ever murdered at all--I played it on them.  You come in
here and feel of me if you don't believe me.”

So he done it; and it satisfied him; and he was that glad to see me
again he didn't know what to do.  And he wanted to know all about it
right off, because it was a grand adventure, and mysterious, and so it
hit him where he lived.  But I said, leave it alone till by and by; and
told his driver to wait, and we drove off a little piece, and I told
him the kind of a fix I was in, and what did he reckon we better do?  He
said, let him alone a minute, and don't disturb him.  So he thought and
thought, and pretty soon he says:

“It's all right; I've got it.  Take my trunk in your wagon, and let on
it's your'n; and you turn back and fool along slow, so as to get to the
house about the time you ought to; and I'll go towards town a piece, and
take a fresh start, and get there a quarter or a half an hour after you;
and you needn't let on to know me at first.”

I says:

“All right; but wait a minute.  There's one more thing--a thing that
_nobody_ don't know but me.  And that is, there's a nigger here that
I'm a-trying to steal out of slavery, and his name is _Jim_--old Miss
Watson's Jim.”

He says:

“What!  Why, Jim is--”

He stopped and went to studying.  I says:

“I know what you'll say.  You'll say it's dirty, low-down business; but
what if it is?  I'm low down; and I'm a-going to steal him, and I want
you keep mum and not let on.  Will you?”

His eye lit up, and he says:

“I'll _help_ you steal him!”

Well, I let go all holts then, like I was shot.  It was the most
astonishing speech I ever heard--and I'm bound to say Tom Sawyer fell
considerable in my estimation.  Only I couldn't believe it.  Tom Sawyer
a _nigger-stealer!_

“Oh, shucks!”  I says; “you're joking.”

“I ain't joking, either.”

“Well, then,” I says, “joking or no joking, if you hear anything said
about a runaway nigger, don't forget to remember that _you_ don't know
nothing about him, and I don't know nothing about him.”

Then we took the trunk and put it in my wagon, and he drove off his
way and I drove mine.  But of course I forgot all about driving slow on
accounts of being glad and full of thinking; so I got home a heap too
quick for that length of a trip.  The old gentleman was at the door, and
he says:

“Why, this is wonderful!  Whoever would a thought it was in that mare
to do it?  I wish we'd a timed her.  And she hain't sweated a hair--not
a hair. It's wonderful.  Why, I wouldn't take a hundred dollars for that
horse now--I wouldn't, honest; and yet I'd a sold her for fifteen before,
and thought 'twas all she was worth.”

That's all he said.  He was the innocentest, best old soul I ever see.
But it warn't surprising; because he warn't only just a farmer, he was
a preacher, too, and had a little one-horse log church down back of the
plantation, which he built it himself at his own expense, for a church
and schoolhouse, and never charged nothing for his preaching, and it was
worth it, too.  There was plenty other farmer-preachers like that, and
done the same way, down South.

In about half an hour Tom's wagon drove up to the front stile, and Aunt
Sally she see it through the window, because it was only about fifty
yards, and says:

“Why, there's somebody come!  I wonder who 'tis?  Why, I do believe it's
a stranger.  Jimmy” (that's one of the children) “run and tell Lize to
put on another plate for dinner.”

Everybody made a rush for the front door, because, of course, a stranger
don't come _every_ year, and so he lays over the yaller-fever, for
interest, when he does come.  Tom was over the stile and starting for
the house; the wagon was spinning up the road for the village, and we
was all bunched in the front door.  Tom had his store clothes on, and an
audience--and that was always nuts for Tom Sawyer.  In them circumstances
it warn't no trouble to him to throw in an amount of style that was
suitable.  He warn't a boy to meeky along up that yard like a sheep; no,
he come ca'm and important, like the ram.  When he got a-front of us he
lifts his hat ever so gracious and dainty, like it was the lid of a box
that had butterflies asleep in it and he didn't want to disturb them,
and says:

“Mr. Archibald Nichols, I presume?”

“No, my boy,” says the old gentleman, “I'm sorry to say 't your driver
has deceived you; Nichols's place is down a matter of three mile more.
Come in, come in.”

Tom he took a look back over his shoulder, and says, “Too late--he's out
of sight.”

“Yes, he's gone, my son, and you must come in and eat your dinner with
us; and then we'll hitch up and take you down to Nichols's.”

“Oh, I _can't_ make you so much trouble; I couldn't think of it.  I'll
walk--I don't mind the distance.”

“But we won't _let_ you walk--it wouldn't be Southern hospitality to do
it. Come right in.”

“Oh, _do_,” says Aunt Sally; “it ain't a bit of trouble to us, not a
bit in the world.  You must stay.  It's a long, dusty three mile, and
we can't let you walk.  And, besides, I've already told 'em to put on
another plate when I see you coming; so you mustn't disappoint us.  Come
right in and make yourself at home.”

So Tom he thanked them very hearty and handsome, and let himself be
persuaded, and come in; and when he was in he said he was a stranger
from Hicksville, Ohio, and his name was William Thompson--and he made
another bow.

Well, he run on, and on, and on, making up stuff about Hicksville and
everybody in it he could invent, and I getting a little nervious, and
wondering how this was going to help me out of my scrape; and at last,
still talking along, he reached over and kissed Aunt Sally right on the
mouth, and then settled back again in his chair comfortable, and was
going on talking; but she jumped up and wiped it off with the back of
her hand, and says:

“You owdacious puppy!”

He looked kind of hurt, and says:

“I'm surprised at you, m'am.”

“You're s'rp--Why, what do you reckon I am?  I've a good notion to take
and--Say, what do you mean by kissing me?”

He looked kind of humble, and says:

“I didn't mean nothing, m'am.  I didn't mean no harm.  I--I--thought you'd
like it.”

“Why, you born fool!”  She took up the spinning stick, and it looked
like it was all she could do to keep from giving him a crack with it.
 “What made you think I'd like it?”

“Well, I don't know.  Only, they--they--told me you would.”

“_They_ told you I would.  Whoever told you's _another_ lunatic.  I
never heard the beat of it.  Who's _they_?”

“Why, everybody.  They all said so, m'am.”

It was all she could do to hold in; and her eyes snapped, and her
fingers worked like she wanted to scratch him; and she says:

“Who's 'everybody'?  Out with their names, or ther'll be an idiot
short.”

He got up and looked distressed, and fumbled his hat, and says:

“I'm sorry, and I warn't expecting it.  They told me to.  They all told
me to.  They all said, kiss her; and said she'd like it.  They all said
it--every one of them.  But I'm sorry, m'am, and I won't do it no more--I
won't, honest.”

“You won't, won't you?  Well, I sh'd _reckon_ you won't!”

“No'm, I'm honest about it; I won't ever do it again--till you ask me.”

“Till I _ask_ you!  Well, I never see the beat of it in my born days!
 I lay you'll be the Methusalem-numskull of creation before ever I ask
you--or the likes of you.”

“Well,” he says, “it does surprise me so.  I can't make it out, somehow.
They said you would, and I thought you would.  But--” He stopped and
looked around slow, like he wished he could run across a friendly eye
somewheres, and fetched up on the old gentleman's, and says, “Didn't
_you_ think she'd like me to kiss her, sir?”

“Why, no; I--I--well, no, I b'lieve I didn't.”

Then he looks on around the same way to me, and says:

“Tom, didn't _you_ think Aunt Sally 'd open out her arms and say, 'Sid
Sawyer--'”

“My land!” she says, breaking in and jumping for him, “you impudent
young rascal, to fool a body so--” and was going to hug him, but he
fended her off, and says:

“No, not till you've asked me first.”

So she didn't lose no time, but asked him; and hugged him and kissed
him over and over again, and then turned him over to the old man, and he
took what was left.  And after they got a little quiet again she says:

“Why, dear me, I never see such a surprise.  We warn't looking for _you_
at all, but only Tom.  Sis never wrote to me about anybody coming but
him.”

“It's because it warn't _intended_ for any of us to come but Tom,” he
says; “but I begged and begged, and at the last minute she let me
come, too; so, coming down the river, me and Tom thought it would be a
first-rate surprise for him to come here to the house first, and for me
to by and by tag along and drop in, and let on to be a stranger.  But it
was a mistake, Aunt Sally.  This ain't no healthy place for a stranger
to come.”

“No--not impudent whelps, Sid.  You ought to had your jaws boxed; I
hain't been so put out since I don't know when.  But I don't care, I
don't mind the terms--I'd be willing to stand a thousand such jokes to
have you here. Well, to think of that performance!  I don't deny it, I
was most putrified with astonishment when you give me that smack.”

We had dinner out in that broad open passage betwixt the house and
the kitchen; and there was things enough on that table for seven
families--and all hot, too; none of your flabby, tough meat that's laid
in a cupboard in a damp cellar all night and tastes like a hunk of
old cold cannibal in the morning.  Uncle Silas he asked a pretty long
blessing over it, but it was worth it; and it didn't cool it a bit,
neither, the way I've seen them kind of interruptions do lots of times.
 There was a considerable good deal of talk all the afternoon, and me
and Tom was on the lookout all the time; but it warn't no use, they
didn't happen to say nothing about any runaway nigger, and we was afraid
to try to work up to it.  But at supper, at night, one of the little
boys says:

“Pa, mayn't Tom and Sid and me go to the show?”

“No,” says the old man, “I reckon there ain't going to be any; and you
couldn't go if there was; because the runaway nigger told Burton and
me all about that scandalous show, and Burton said he would tell the
people; so I reckon they've drove the owdacious loafers out of town
before this time.”

So there it was!--but I couldn't help it.  Tom and me was to sleep in the
same room and bed; so, being tired, we bid good-night and went up to
bed right after supper, and clumb out of the window and down the
lightning-rod, and shoved for the town; for I didn't believe anybody was
going to give the king and the duke a hint, and so if I didn't hurry up
and give them one they'd get into trouble sure.

On the road Tom he told me all about how it was reckoned I was murdered,
and how pap disappeared pretty soon, and didn't come back no more, and
what a stir there was when Jim run away; and I told Tom all about our
Royal Nonesuch rapscallions, and as much of the raft voyage as I had
time to; and as we struck into the town and up through the the middle of
it--it was as much as half-after eight, then--here comes a raging rush of
people with torches, and an awful whooping and yelling, and banging tin
pans and blowing horns; and we jumped to one side to let them go by;
and as they went by I see they had the king and the duke astraddle of a
rail--that is, I knowed it _was_ the king and the duke, though they was
all over tar and feathers, and didn't look like nothing in the
world that was human--just looked like a couple of monstrous big
soldier-plumes.  Well, it made me sick to see it; and I was sorry for
them poor pitiful rascals, it seemed like I couldn't ever feel any
hardness against them any more in the world.  It was a dreadful thing to
see.  Human beings _can_ be awful cruel to one another.

We see we was too late--couldn't do no good.  We asked some stragglers
about it, and they said everybody went to the show looking very
innocent; and laid low and kept dark till the poor old king was in the
middle of his cavortings on the stage; then somebody give a signal, and
the house rose up and went for them.

So we poked along back home, and I warn't feeling so brash as I was
before, but kind of ornery, and humble, and to blame, somehow--though
I hadn't done nothing.  But that's always the way; it don't make no
difference whether you do right or wrong, a person's conscience ain't
got no sense, and just goes for him anyway.  If I had a yaller dog that
didn't know no more than a person's conscience does I would pison him.
It takes up more room than all the rest of a person's insides, and yet
ain't no good, nohow.  Tom Sawyer he says the same.




CHAPTER XXXIV.

WE stopped talking, and got to thinking.  By and by Tom says:

“Looky here, Huck, what fools we are to not think of it before!  I bet I
know where Jim is.”

“No!  Where?”

“In that hut down by the ash-hopper.  Why, looky here.  When we was at
dinner, didn't you see a nigger man go in there with some vittles?”

“Yes.”

“What did you think the vittles was for?”

“For a dog.”

“So 'd I. Well, it wasn't for a dog.”

“Why?”

“Because part of it was watermelon.”

“So it was--I noticed it.  Well, it does beat all that I never thought
about a dog not eating watermelon.  It shows how a body can see and
don't see at the same time.”

“Well, the nigger unlocked the padlock when he went in, and he locked it
again when he came out.  He fetched uncle a key about the time we got up
from table--same key, I bet.  Watermelon shows man, lock shows prisoner;
and it ain't likely there's two prisoners on such a little plantation,
and where the people's all so kind and good.  Jim's the prisoner.  All
right--I'm glad we found it out detective fashion; I wouldn't give shucks
for any other way.  Now you work your mind, and study out a plan to
steal Jim, and I will study out one, too; and we'll take the one we like
the best.”

What a head for just a boy to have!  If I had Tom Sawyer's head I
wouldn't trade it off to be a duke, nor mate of a steamboat, nor clown
in a circus, nor nothing I can think of.  I went to thinking out a plan,
but only just to be doing something; I knowed very well where the right
plan was going to come from.  Pretty soon Tom says:

“Ready?”

“Yes,” I says.

“All right--bring it out.”

“My plan is this,” I says.  “We can easy find out if it's Jim in there.
Then get up my canoe to-morrow night, and fetch my raft over from the
island.  Then the first dark night that comes steal the key out of the
old man's britches after he goes to bed, and shove off down the river
on the raft with Jim, hiding daytimes and running nights, the way me and
Jim used to do before.  Wouldn't that plan work?”

“_Work_?  Why, cert'nly it would work, like rats a-fighting.  But it's
too blame' simple; there ain't nothing _to_ it.  What's the good of a
plan that ain't no more trouble than that?  It's as mild as goose-milk.
 Why, Huck, it wouldn't make no more talk than breaking into a soap
factory.”

I never said nothing, because I warn't expecting nothing different; but
I knowed mighty well that whenever he got _his_ plan ready it wouldn't
have none of them objections to it.

And it didn't.  He told me what it was, and I see in a minute it was
worth fifteen of mine for style, and would make Jim just as free a man
as mine would, and maybe get us all killed besides.  So I was satisfied,
and said we would waltz in on it.  I needn't tell what it was here,
because I knowed it wouldn't stay the way, it was.  I knowed he would be
changing it around every which way as we went along, and heaving in new
bullinesses wherever he got a chance.  And that is what he done.

Well, one thing was dead sure, and that was that Tom Sawyer was in
earnest, and was actuly going to help steal that nigger out of slavery.
That was the thing that was too many for me.  Here was a boy that was
respectable and well brung up; and had a character to lose; and folks at
home that had characters; and he was bright and not leather-headed; and
knowing and not ignorant; and not mean, but kind; and yet here he was,
without any more pride, or rightness, or feeling, than to stoop to
this business, and make himself a shame, and his family a shame,
before everybody.  I _couldn't_ understand it no way at all.  It was
outrageous, and I knowed I ought to just up and tell him so; and so be
his true friend, and let him quit the thing right where he was and save
himself. And I _did_ start to tell him; but he shut me up, and says:

“Don't you reckon I know what I'm about?  Don't I generly know what I'm
about?”

“Yes.”

“Didn't I _say_ I was going to help steal the nigger?”

“Yes.”

“_Well_, then.”

That's all he said, and that's all I said.  It warn't no use to say any
more; because when he said he'd do a thing, he always done it.  But I
couldn't make out how he was willing to go into this thing; so I just
let it go, and never bothered no more about it.  If he was bound to have
it so, I couldn't help it.

When we got home the house was all dark and still; so we went on down to
the hut by the ash-hopper for to examine it.  We went through the yard
so as to see what the hounds would do.  They knowed us, and didn't make
no more noise than country dogs is always doing when anything comes by
in the night.  When we got to the cabin we took a look at the front and
the two sides; and on the side I warn't acquainted with--which was the
north side--we found a square window-hole, up tolerable high, with just
one stout board nailed across it.  I says:

“Here's the ticket.  This hole's big enough for Jim to get through if we
wrench off the board.”

Tom says:

“It's as simple as tit-tat-toe, three-in-a-row, and as easy as
playing hooky.  I should _hope_ we can find a way that's a little more
complicated than _that_, Huck Finn.”

“Well, then,” I says, “how 'll it do to saw him out, the way I done
before I was murdered that time?”

“That's more _like_,” he says.  “It's real mysterious, and troublesome,
and good,” he says; “but I bet we can find a way that's twice as long.
 There ain't no hurry; le's keep on looking around.”

Betwixt the hut and the fence, on the back side, was a lean-to that
joined the hut at the eaves, and was made out of plank.  It was as long
as the hut, but narrow--only about six foot wide.  The door to it was at
the south end, and was padlocked.  Tom he went to the soap-kettle and
searched around, and fetched back the iron thing they lift the lid with;
so he took it and prized out one of the staples.  The chain fell down,
and we opened the door and went in, and shut it, and struck a match,
and see the shed was only built against a cabin and hadn't no connection
with it; and there warn't no floor to the shed, nor nothing in it but
some old rusty played-out hoes and spades and picks and a crippled plow.
 The match went out, and so did we, and shoved in the staple again, and
the door was locked as good as ever. Tom was joyful.  He says;

“Now we're all right.  We'll _dig_ him out.  It 'll take about a week!”

Then we started for the house, and I went in the back door--you only have
to pull a buckskin latch-string, they don't fasten the doors--but that
warn't romantical enough for Tom Sawyer; no way would do him but he must
climb up the lightning-rod.  But after he got up half way about three
times, and missed fire and fell every time, and the last time most
busted his brains out, he thought he'd got to give it up; but after he
was rested he allowed he would give her one more turn for luck, and this
time he made the trip.

In the morning we was up at break of day, and down to the nigger cabins
to pet the dogs and make friends with the nigger that fed Jim--if it
_was_ Jim that was being fed.  The niggers was just getting through
breakfast and starting for the fields; and Jim's nigger was piling up
a tin pan with bread and meat and things; and whilst the others was
leaving, the key come from the house.

This nigger had a good-natured, chuckle-headed face, and his wool was
all tied up in little bunches with thread.  That was to keep witches
off.  He said the witches was pestering him awful these nights, and
making him see all kinds of strange things, and hear all kinds of
strange words and noises, and he didn't believe he was ever witched so
long before in his life.  He got so worked up, and got to running on so
about his troubles, he forgot all about what he'd been a-going to do.
 So Tom says:

“What's the vittles for?  Going to feed the dogs?”

The nigger kind of smiled around gradually over his face, like when you
heave a brickbat in a mud-puddle, and he says:

“Yes, Mars Sid, A dog.  Cur'us dog, too.  Does you want to go en look at
'im?”

“Yes.”

I hunched Tom, and whispers:

“You going, right here in the daybreak?  _that_ warn't the plan.”

“No, it warn't; but it's the plan _now_.”

So, drat him, we went along, but I didn't like it much.  When we got in
we couldn't hardly see anything, it was so dark; but Jim was there, sure
enough, and could see us; and he sings out:

“Why, _Huck_!  En good _lan_'! ain' dat Misto Tom?”

I just knowed how it would be; I just expected it.  I didn't know
nothing to do; and if I had I couldn't a done it, because that nigger
busted in and says:

“Why, de gracious sakes! do he know you genlmen?”

We could see pretty well now.  Tom he looked at the nigger, steady and
kind of wondering, and says:

“Does _who_ know us?”

“Why, dis-yer runaway nigger.”

“I don't reckon he does; but what put that into your head?”

“What _put_ it dar?  Didn' he jis' dis minute sing out like he knowed
you?”

Tom says, in a puzzled-up kind of way:

“Well, that's mighty curious.  _Who_ sung out? _when_ did he sing out?
 _what_ did he sing out?” And turns to me, perfectly ca'm, and says,
“Did _you_ hear anybody sing out?”

Of course there warn't nothing to be said but the one thing; so I says:

“No; I ain't heard nobody say nothing.”

Then he turns to Jim, and looks him over like he never see him before,
and says:

“Did you sing out?”

“No, sah,” says Jim; “I hain't said nothing, sah.”

“Not a word?”

“No, sah, I hain't said a word.”

“Did you ever see us before?”

“No, sah; not as I knows on.”

So Tom turns to the nigger, which was looking wild and distressed, and
says, kind of severe:

“What do you reckon's the matter with you, anyway?  What made you think
somebody sung out?”

“Oh, it's de dad-blame' witches, sah, en I wisht I was dead, I do.
 Dey's awluz at it, sah, en dey do mos' kill me, dey sk'yers me so.
 Please to don't tell nobody 'bout it sah, er ole Mars Silas he'll scole
me; 'kase he say dey _ain't_ no witches.  I jis' wish to goodness he was
heah now--_den_ what would he say!  I jis' bet he couldn' fine no way to
git aroun' it _dis_ time.  But it's awluz jis' so; people dat's _sot_,
stays sot; dey won't look into noth'n'en fine it out f'r deyselves, en
when _you_ fine it out en tell um 'bout it, dey doan' b'lieve you.”

Tom give him a dime, and said we wouldn't tell nobody; and told him to
buy some more thread to tie up his wool with; and then looks at Jim, and
says:

“I wonder if Uncle Silas is going to hang this nigger.  If I was to
catch a nigger that was ungrateful enough to run away, I wouldn't give
him up, I'd hang him.”  And whilst the nigger stepped to the door to
look at the dime and bite it to see if it was good, he whispers to Jim
and says:

“Don't ever let on to know us.  And if you hear any digging going on
nights, it's us; we're going to set you free.”

Jim only had time to grab us by the hand and squeeze it; then the nigger
come back, and we said we'd come again some time if the nigger wanted
us to; and he said he would, more particular if it was dark, because the
witches went for him mostly in the dark, and it was good to have folks
around then.




CHAPTER XXXV.

IT would be most an hour yet till breakfast, so we left and struck down
into the woods; because Tom said we got to have _some_ light to see how
to dig by, and a lantern makes too much, and might get us into trouble;
what we must have was a lot of them rotten chunks that's called
fox-fire, and just makes a soft kind of a glow when you lay them in a
dark place.  We fetched an armful and hid it in the weeds, and set down
to rest, and Tom says, kind of dissatisfied:

“Blame it, this whole thing is just as easy and awkward as it can be.
And so it makes it so rotten difficult to get up a difficult plan.
 There ain't no watchman to be drugged--now there _ought_ to be a
watchman.  There ain't even a dog to give a sleeping-mixture to.  And
there's Jim chained by one leg, with a ten-foot chain, to the leg of his
bed:  why, all you got to do is to lift up the bedstead and slip off
the chain.  And Uncle Silas he trusts everybody; sends the key to the
punkin-headed nigger, and don't send nobody to watch the nigger.  Jim
could a got out of that window-hole before this, only there wouldn't be
no use trying to travel with a ten-foot chain on his leg.  Why, drat it,
Huck, it's the stupidest arrangement I ever see. You got to invent _all_
the difficulties.  Well, we can't help it; we got to do the best we can
with the materials we've got. Anyhow, there's one thing--there's more
honor in getting him out through a lot of difficulties and dangers,
where there warn't one of them furnished to you by the people who it was
their duty to furnish them, and you had to contrive them all out of your
own head.  Now look at just that one thing of the lantern.  When you
come down to the cold facts, we simply got to _let on_ that a lantern's
resky.  Why, we could work with a torchlight procession if we wanted to,
I believe.  Now, whilst I think of it, we got to hunt up something to
make a saw out of the first chance we get.”

“What do we want of a saw?”

“What do we _want_ of it?  Hain't we got to saw the leg of Jim's bed
off, so as to get the chain loose?”

“Why, you just said a body could lift up the bedstead and slip the chain
off.”

“Well, if that ain't just like you, Huck Finn.  You _can_ get up the
infant-schooliest ways of going at a thing.  Why, hain't you ever read
any books at all?--Baron Trenck, nor Casanova, nor Benvenuto Chelleeny,
nor Henri IV., nor none of them heroes?  Who ever heard of getting a
prisoner loose in such an old-maidy way as that?  No; the way all the
best authorities does is to saw the bed-leg in two, and leave it just
so, and swallow the sawdust, so it can't be found, and put some dirt and
grease around the sawed place so the very keenest seneskal can't see
no sign of it's being sawed, and thinks the bed-leg is perfectly sound.
Then, the night you're ready, fetch the leg a kick, down she goes; slip
off your chain, and there you are.  Nothing to do but hitch your
rope ladder to the battlements, shin down it, break your leg in the
moat--because a rope ladder is nineteen foot too short, you know--and
there's your horses and your trusty vassles, and they scoop you up and
fling you across a saddle, and away you go to your native Langudoc, or
Navarre, or wherever it is. It's gaudy, Huck.  I wish there was a moat
to this cabin. If we get time, the night of the escape, we'll dig one.”

I says:

“What do we want of a moat when we're going to snake him out from under
the cabin?”

But he never heard me.  He had forgot me and everything else.  He had
his chin in his hand, thinking.  Pretty soon he sighs and shakes his
head; then sighs again, and says:

“No, it wouldn't do--there ain't necessity enough for it.”

“For what?”  I says.

“Why, to saw Jim's leg off,” he says.

“Good land!”  I says; “why, there ain't _no_ necessity for it.  And what
would you want to saw his leg off for, anyway?”

“Well, some of the best authorities has done it.  They couldn't get the
chain off, so they just cut their hand off and shoved.  And a leg would
be better still.  But we got to let that go.  There ain't necessity
enough in this case; and, besides, Jim's a nigger, and wouldn't
understand the reasons for it, and how it's the custom in Europe; so
we'll let it go.  But there's one thing--he can have a rope ladder; we
can tear up our sheets and make him a rope ladder easy enough.  And we
can send it to him in a pie; it's mostly done that way.  And I've et
worse pies.”

“Why, Tom Sawyer, how you talk,” I says; “Jim ain't got no use for a
rope ladder.”

“He _has_ got use for it.  How _you_ talk, you better say; you don't
know nothing about it.  He's _got_ to have a rope ladder; they all do.”

“What in the nation can he _do_ with it?”

“_Do_ with it?  He can hide it in his bed, can't he?”  That's what they
all do; and _he's_ got to, too.  Huck, you don't ever seem to want to do
anything that's regular; you want to be starting something fresh all the
time. S'pose he _don't_ do nothing with it? ain't it there in his bed,
for a clew, after he's gone? and don't you reckon they'll want clews?
 Of course they will.  And you wouldn't leave them any?  That would be a
_pretty_ howdy-do, _wouldn't_ it!  I never heard of such a thing.”

“Well,” I says, “if it's in the regulations, and he's got to have
it, all right, let him have it; because I don't wish to go back on no
regulations; but there's one thing, Tom Sawyer--if we go to tearing up
our sheets to make Jim a rope ladder, we're going to get into trouble
with Aunt Sally, just as sure as you're born.  Now, the way I look at
it, a hickry-bark ladder don't cost nothing, and don't waste nothing,
and is just as good to load up a pie with, and hide in a straw tick,
as any rag ladder you can start; and as for Jim, he ain't had no
experience, and so he don't care what kind of a--”

“Oh, shucks, Huck Finn, if I was as ignorant as you I'd keep
still--that's what I'D do.  Who ever heard of a state prisoner escaping
by a hickry-bark ladder?  Why, it's perfectly ridiculous.”

“Well, all right, Tom, fix it your own way; but if you'll take my
advice, you'll let me borrow a sheet off of the clothesline.”

He said that would do.  And that gave him another idea, and he says:

“Borrow a shirt, too.”

“What do we want of a shirt, Tom?”

“Want it for Jim to keep a journal on.”

“Journal your granny--_Jim_ can't write.”

“S'pose he _can't_ write--he can make marks on the shirt, can't he, if
we make him a pen out of an old pewter spoon or a piece of an old iron
barrel-hoop?”

“Why, Tom, we can pull a feather out of a goose and make him a better
one; and quicker, too.”

“_Prisoners_ don't have geese running around the donjon-keep to pull
pens out of, you muggins.  They _always_ make their pens out of the
hardest, toughest, troublesomest piece of old brass candlestick or
something like that they can get their hands on; and it takes them weeks
and weeks and months and months to file it out, too, because they've got
to do it by rubbing it on the wall.  _They_ wouldn't use a goose-quill
if they had it. It ain't regular.”

“Well, then, what'll we make him the ink out of?”

“Many makes it out of iron-rust and tears; but that's the common sort
and women; the best authorities uses their own blood.  Jim can do that;
and when he wants to send any little common ordinary mysterious message
to let the world know where he's captivated, he can write it on the
bottom of a tin plate with a fork and throw it out of the window.  The
Iron Mask always done that, and it's a blame' good way, too.”

“Jim ain't got no tin plates.  They feed him in a pan.”

“That ain't nothing; we can get him some.”

“Can't nobody _read_ his plates.”

“That ain't got anything to _do_ with it, Huck Finn.  All _he's_ got to
do is to write on the plate and throw it out.  You don't _have_ to be
able to read it. Why, half the time you can't read anything a prisoner
writes on a tin plate, or anywhere else.”

“Well, then, what's the sense in wasting the plates?”

“Why, blame it all, it ain't the _prisoner's_ plates.”

“But it's _somebody's_ plates, ain't it?”

“Well, spos'n it is?  What does the _prisoner_ care whose--”

He broke off there, because we heard the breakfast-horn blowing.  So we
cleared out for the house.

Along during the morning I borrowed a sheet and a white shirt off of the
clothes-line; and I found an old sack and put them in it, and we went
down and got the fox-fire, and put that in too.  I called it borrowing,
because that was what pap always called it; but Tom said it warn't
borrowing, it was stealing.  He said we was representing prisoners; and
prisoners don't care how they get a thing so they get it, and nobody
don't blame them for it, either.  It ain't no crime in a prisoner to
steal the thing he needs to get away with, Tom said; it's his right; and
so, as long as we was representing a prisoner, we had a perfect right to
steal anything on this place we had the least use for to get ourselves
out of prison with.  He said if we warn't prisoners it would be a very
different thing, and nobody but a mean, ornery person would steal when
he warn't a prisoner.  So we allowed we would steal everything there was
that come handy.  And yet he made a mighty fuss, one day, after that,
when I stole a watermelon out of the nigger-patch and eat it; and he
made me go and give the niggers a dime without telling them what it
was for. Tom said that what he meant was, we could steal anything we
_needed_. Well, I says, I needed the watermelon.  But he said I didn't
need it to get out of prison with; there's where the difference was.
 He said if I'd a wanted it to hide a knife in, and smuggle it to Jim
to kill the seneskal with, it would a been all right.  So I let it go at
that, though I couldn't see no advantage in my representing a prisoner
if I got to set down and chaw over a lot of gold-leaf distinctions like
that every time I see a chance to hog a watermelon.

Well, as I was saying, we waited that morning till everybody was settled
down to business, and nobody in sight around the yard; then Tom he
carried the sack into the lean-to whilst I stood off a piece to keep
watch.  By and by he come out, and we went and set down on the woodpile
to talk.  He says:

“Everything's all right now except tools; and that's easy fixed.”

“Tools?”  I says.

“Yes.”

“Tools for what?”

“Why, to dig with.  We ain't a-going to _gnaw_ him out, are we?”

“Ain't them old crippled picks and things in there good enough to dig a
nigger out with?”  I says.

He turns on me, looking pitying enough to make a body cry, and says:

“Huck Finn, did you _ever_ hear of a prisoner having picks and shovels,
and all the modern conveniences in his wardrobe to dig himself out with?
 Now I want to ask you--if you got any reasonableness in you at all--what
kind of a show would _that_ give him to be a hero?  Why, they might as
well lend him the key and done with it.  Picks and shovels--why, they
wouldn't furnish 'em to a king.”

“Well, then,” I says, “if we don't want the picks and shovels, what do
we want?”

“A couple of case-knives.”

“To dig the foundations out from under that cabin with?”

“Yes.”

“Confound it, it's foolish, Tom.”

“It don't make no difference how foolish it is, it's the _right_ way--and
it's the regular way.  And there ain't no _other_ way, that ever I heard
of, and I've read all the books that gives any information about these
things. They always dig out with a case-knife--and not through dirt, mind
you; generly it's through solid rock.  And it takes them weeks and weeks
and weeks, and for ever and ever.  Why, look at one of them prisoners in
the bottom dungeon of the Castle Deef, in the harbor of Marseilles, that
dug himself out that way; how long was _he_ at it, you reckon?”

“I don't know.”

“Well, guess.”

“I don't know.  A month and a half.”

“_Thirty-seven year_--and he come out in China.  _That's_ the kind.  I
wish the bottom of _this_ fortress was solid rock.”

“_Jim_ don't know nobody in China.”

“What's _that_ got to do with it?  Neither did that other fellow.  But
you're always a-wandering off on a side issue.  Why can't you stick to
the main point?”

“All right--I don't care where he comes out, so he _comes_ out; and Jim
don't, either, I reckon.  But there's one thing, anyway--Jim's too old to
be dug out with a case-knife.  He won't last.”

“Yes he will _last_, too.  You don't reckon it's going to take
thirty-seven years to dig out through a _dirt_ foundation, do you?”

“How long will it take, Tom?”

“Well, we can't resk being as long as we ought to, because it mayn't
take very long for Uncle Silas to hear from down there by New Orleans.
 He'll hear Jim ain't from there.  Then his next move will be to
advertise Jim, or something like that.  So we can't resk being as long
digging him out as we ought to.  By rights I reckon we ought to be
a couple of years; but we can't.  Things being so uncertain, what I
recommend is this:  that we really dig right in, as quick as we can;
and after that, we can _let on_, to ourselves, that we was at it
thirty-seven years.  Then we can snatch him out and rush him away the
first time there's an alarm.  Yes, I reckon that 'll be the best way.”

“Now, there's _sense_ in that,” I says.  “Letting on don't cost nothing;
letting on ain't no trouble; and if it's any object, I don't mind
letting on we was at it a hundred and fifty year.  It wouldn't strain
me none, after I got my hand in.  So I'll mosey along now, and smouch a
couple of case-knives.”

“Smouch three,” he says; “we want one to make a saw out of.”

“Tom, if it ain't unregular and irreligious to sejest it,” I says,
“there's an old rusty saw-blade around yonder sticking under the
weather-boarding behind the smoke-house.”

He looked kind of weary and discouraged-like, and says:

“It ain't no use to try to learn you nothing, Huck.  Run along and
smouch the knives--three of them.”  So I done it.




CHAPTER XXXVI.

AS soon as we reckoned everybody was asleep that night we went down the
lightning-rod, and shut ourselves up in the lean-to, and got out our
pile of fox-fire, and went to work.  We cleared everything out of the
way, about four or five foot along the middle of the bottom log.  Tom
said he was right behind Jim's bed now, and we'd dig in under it, and
when we got through there couldn't nobody in the cabin ever know there
was any hole there, because Jim's counter-pin hung down most to the
ground, and you'd have to raise it up and look under to see the hole.
 So we dug and dug with the case-knives till most midnight; and then
we was dog-tired, and our hands was blistered, and yet you couldn't see
we'd done anything hardly.  At last I says:

“This ain't no thirty-seven year job; this is a thirty-eight year job,
Tom Sawyer.”

He never said nothing.  But he sighed, and pretty soon he stopped
digging, and then for a good little while I knowed that he was thinking.
Then he says:

“It ain't no use, Huck, it ain't a-going to work.  If we was prisoners
it would, because then we'd have as many years as we wanted, and no
hurry; and we wouldn't get but a few minutes to dig, every day, while
they was changing watches, and so our hands wouldn't get blistered, and
we could keep it up right along, year in and year out, and do it right,
and the way it ought to be done.  But _we_ can't fool along; we got to
rush; we ain't got no time to spare.  If we was to put in another
night this way we'd have to knock off for a week to let our hands get
well--couldn't touch a case-knife with them sooner.”

“Well, then, what we going to do, Tom?”

“I'll tell you.  It ain't right, and it ain't moral, and I wouldn't like
it to get out; but there ain't only just the one way:  we got to dig him
out with the picks, and _let on_ it's case-knives.”

“_Now_ you're _talking_!”  I says; “your head gets leveler and leveler
all the time, Tom Sawyer,” I says.  “Picks is the thing, moral or no
moral; and as for me, I don't care shucks for the morality of it, nohow.
 When I start in to steal a nigger, or a watermelon, or a Sunday-school
book, I ain't no ways particular how it's done so it's done.  What I
want is my nigger; or what I want is my watermelon; or what I want is my
Sunday-school book; and if a pick's the handiest thing, that's the thing
I'm a-going to dig that nigger or that watermelon or that Sunday-school
book out with; and I don't give a dead rat what the authorities thinks
about it nuther.”

“Well,” he says, “there's excuse for picks and letting-on in a case like
this; if it warn't so, I wouldn't approve of it, nor I wouldn't stand by
and see the rules broke--because right is right, and wrong is wrong,
and a body ain't got no business doing wrong when he ain't ignorant and
knows better.  It might answer for _you_ to dig Jim out with a pick,
_without_ any letting on, because you don't know no better; but it
wouldn't for me, because I do know better.  Gimme a case-knife.”

He had his own by him, but I handed him mine.  He flung it down, and
says:

“Gimme a _case-knife_.”

I didn't know just what to do--but then I thought.  I scratched around
amongst the old tools, and got a pickaxe and give it to him, and he took
it and went to work, and never said a word.

He was always just that particular.  Full of principle.

So then I got a shovel, and then we picked and shoveled, turn about,
and made the fur fly.  We stuck to it about a half an hour, which was as
long as we could stand up; but we had a good deal of a hole to show for
it. When I got up stairs I looked out at the window and see Tom doing
his level best with the lightning-rod, but he couldn't come it, his
hands was so sore.  At last he says:

“It ain't no use, it can't be done.  What you reckon I better do?  Can't
you think of no way?”

“Yes,” I says, “but I reckon it ain't regular.  Come up the stairs, and
let on it's a lightning-rod.”

So he done it.

Next day Tom stole a pewter spoon and a brass candlestick in the house,
for to make some pens for Jim out of, and six tallow candles; and I
hung around the nigger cabins and laid for a chance, and stole three tin
plates.  Tom says it wasn't enough; but I said nobody wouldn't ever see
the plates that Jim throwed out, because they'd fall in the dog-fennel
and jimpson weeds under the window-hole--then we could tote them back and
he could use them over again.  So Tom was satisfied.  Then he says:

“Now, the thing to study out is, how to get the things to Jim.”

“Take them in through the hole,” I says, “when we get it done.”

He only just looked scornful, and said something about nobody ever heard
of such an idiotic idea, and then he went to studying.  By and by he
said he had ciphered out two or three ways, but there warn't no need to
decide on any of them yet.  Said we'd got to post Jim first.

That night we went down the lightning-rod a little after ten, and took
one of the candles along, and listened under the window-hole, and heard
Jim snoring; so we pitched it in, and it didn't wake him.  Then we
whirled in with the pick and shovel, and in about two hours and a half
the job was done.  We crept in under Jim's bed and into the cabin, and
pawed around and found the candle and lit it, and stood over Jim awhile,
and found him looking hearty and healthy, and then we woke him up gentle
and gradual.  He was so glad to see us he most cried; and called us
honey, and all the pet names he could think of; and was for having us
hunt up a cold-chisel to cut the chain off of his leg with right away,
and clearing out without losing any time.  But Tom he showed him how
unregular it would be, and set down and told him all about our plans,
and how we could alter them in a minute any time there was an alarm; and
not to be the least afraid, because we would see he got away, _sure_.
 So Jim he said it was all right, and we set there and talked over old
times awhile, and then Tom asked a lot of questions, and when Jim told
him Uncle Silas come in every day or two to pray with him, and Aunt
Sally come in to see if he was comfortable and had plenty to eat, and
both of them was kind as they could be, Tom says:

“_Now_ I know how to fix it.  We'll send you some things by them.”

I said, “Don't do nothing of the kind; it's one of the most jackass
ideas I ever struck;” but he never paid no attention to me; went right
on.  It was his way when he'd got his plans set.

So he told Jim how we'd have to smuggle in the rope-ladder pie and other
large things by Nat, the nigger that fed him, and he must be on the
lookout, and not be surprised, and not let Nat see him open them; and
we would put small things in uncle's coat-pockets and he must steal them
out; and we would tie things to aunt's apron-strings or put them in her
apron-pocket, if we got a chance; and told him what they would be and
what they was for.  And told him how to keep a journal on the shirt with
his blood, and all that. He told him everything.  Jim he couldn't see
no sense in the most of it, but he allowed we was white folks and knowed
better than him; so he was satisfied, and said he would do it all just
as Tom said.

Jim had plenty corn-cob pipes and tobacco; so we had a right down good
sociable time; then we crawled out through the hole, and so home to
bed, with hands that looked like they'd been chawed.  Tom was in high
spirits. He said it was the best fun he ever had in his life, and the
most intellectural; and said if he only could see his way to it we would
keep it up all the rest of our lives and leave Jim to our children to
get out; for he believed Jim would come to like it better and better the
more he got used to it.  He said that in that way it could be strung out
to as much as eighty year, and would be the best time on record.  And he
said it would make us all celebrated that had a hand in it.

In the morning we went out to the woodpile and chopped up the brass
candlestick into handy sizes, and Tom put them and the pewter spoon in
his pocket.  Then we went to the nigger cabins, and while I got Nat's
notice off, Tom shoved a piece of candlestick into the middle of a
corn-pone that was in Jim's pan, and we went along with Nat to see how
it would work, and it just worked noble; when Jim bit into it it most
mashed all his teeth out; and there warn't ever anything could a worked
better. Tom said so himself. Jim he never let on but what it was only
just a piece of rock or something like that that's always getting into
bread, you know; but after that he never bit into nothing but what he
jabbed his fork into it in three or four places first.

And whilst we was a-standing there in the dimmish light, here comes a
couple of the hounds bulging in from under Jim's bed; and they kept on
piling in till there was eleven of them, and there warn't hardly room
in there to get your breath.  By jings, we forgot to fasten that lean-to
door!  The nigger Nat he only just hollered “Witches” once, and keeled
over on to the floor amongst the dogs, and begun to groan like he was
dying.  Tom jerked the door open and flung out a slab of Jim's meat,
and the dogs went for it, and in two seconds he was out himself and back
again and shut the door, and I knowed he'd fixed the other door too.
Then he went to work on the nigger, coaxing him and petting him, and
asking him if he'd been imagining he saw something again.  He raised up,
and blinked his eyes around, and says:

“Mars Sid, you'll say I's a fool, but if I didn't b'lieve I see most a
million dogs, er devils, er some'n, I wisht I may die right heah in dese
tracks.  I did, mos' sholy.  Mars Sid, I _felt_ um--I _felt_ um, sah; dey
was all over me.  Dad fetch it, I jis' wisht I could git my han's on one
er dem witches jis' wunst--on'y jis' wunst--it's all I'd ast.  But mos'ly
I wisht dey'd lemme 'lone, I does.”

Tom says:

“Well, I tell you what I think.  What makes them come here just at this
runaway nigger's breakfast-time?  It's because they're hungry; that's
the reason.  You make them a witch pie; that's the thing for _you_ to
do.”

“But my lan', Mars Sid, how's I gwyne to make 'm a witch pie?  I doan'
know how to make it.  I hain't ever hearn er sich a thing b'fo'.”

“Well, then, I'll have to make it myself.”

“Will you do it, honey?--will you?  I'll wusshup de groun' und' yo' foot,
I will!”

“All right, I'll do it, seeing it's you, and you've been good to us and
showed us the runaway nigger.  But you got to be mighty careful.  When
we come around, you turn your back; and then whatever we've put in the
pan, don't you let on you see it at all.  And don't you look when Jim
unloads the pan--something might happen, I don't know what.  And above
all, don't you _handle_ the witch-things.”

“_Hannel 'M_, Mars Sid?  What _is_ you a-talkin' 'bout?  I wouldn'
lay de weight er my finger on um, not f'r ten hund'd thous'n billion
dollars, I wouldn't.”




CHAPTER XXXVII.

THAT was all fixed.  So then we went away and went to the rubbage-pile
in the back yard, where they keep the old boots, and rags, and pieces
of bottles, and wore-out tin things, and all such truck, and scratched
around and found an old tin washpan, and stopped up the holes as well as
we could, to bake the pie in, and took it down cellar and stole it full
of flour and started for breakfast, and found a couple of shingle-nails
that Tom said would be handy for a prisoner to scrabble his name and
sorrows on the dungeon walls with, and dropped one of them in Aunt
Sally's apron-pocket which was hanging on a chair, and t'other we stuck
in the band of Uncle Silas's hat, which was on the bureau, because we
heard the children say their pa and ma was going to the runaway nigger's
house this morning, and then went to breakfast, and Tom dropped the
pewter spoon in Uncle Silas's coat-pocket, and Aunt Sally wasn't come
yet, so we had to wait a little while.

And when she come she was hot and red and cross, and couldn't hardly
wait for the blessing; and then she went to sluicing out coffee with one
hand and cracking the handiest child's head with her thimble with the
other, and says:

“I've hunted high and I've hunted low, and it does beat all what _has_
become of your other shirt.”

My heart fell down amongst my lungs and livers and things, and a hard
piece of corn-crust started down my throat after it and got met on the
road with a cough, and was shot across the table, and took one of the
children in the eye and curled him up like a fishing-worm, and let a cry
out of him the size of a warwhoop, and Tom he turned kinder blue around
the gills, and it all amounted to a considerable state of things for
about a quarter of a minute or as much as that, and I would a sold out
for half price if there was a bidder.  But after that we was all right
again--it was the sudden surprise of it that knocked us so kind of cold.
Uncle Silas he says:

“It's most uncommon curious, I can't understand it.  I know perfectly
well I took it _off_, because--”

“Because you hain't got but one _on_.  Just _listen_ at the man!  I know
you took it off, and know it by a better way than your wool-gethering
memory, too, because it was on the clo's-line yesterday--I see it there
myself. But it's gone, that's the long and the short of it, and you'll
just have to change to a red flann'l one till I can get time to make a
new one. And it 'll be the third I've made in two years.  It just keeps
a body on the jump to keep you in shirts; and whatever you do manage to
_do_ with 'm all is more'n I can make out.  A body 'd think you _would_
learn to take some sort of care of 'em at your time of life.”

“I know it, Sally, and I do try all I can.  But it oughtn't to be
altogether my fault, because, you know, I don't see them nor have
nothing to do with them except when they're on me; and I don't believe
I've ever lost one of them _off_ of me.”

“Well, it ain't _your_ fault if you haven't, Silas; you'd a done it
if you could, I reckon.  And the shirt ain't all that's gone, nuther.
 Ther's a spoon gone; and _that_ ain't all.  There was ten, and now
ther's only nine. The calf got the shirt, I reckon, but the calf never
took the spoon, _that's_ certain.”

“Why, what else is gone, Sally?”

“Ther's six _candles_ gone--that's what.  The rats could a got the
candles, and I reckon they did; I wonder they don't walk off with the
whole place, the way you're always going to stop their holes and don't
do it; and if they warn't fools they'd sleep in your hair, Silas--_you'd_
never find it out; but you can't lay the _spoon_ on the rats, and that I
know.”

“Well, Sally, I'm in fault, and I acknowledge it; I've been remiss; but
I won't let to-morrow go by without stopping up them holes.”

“Oh, I wouldn't hurry; next year 'll do.  Matilda Angelina Araminta
_Phelps!_”

Whack comes the thimble, and the child snatches her claws out of the
sugar-bowl without fooling around any.  Just then the nigger woman steps
on to the passage, and says:

“Missus, dey's a sheet gone.”

“A _sheet_ gone!  Well, for the land's sake!”

“I'll stop up them holes to-day,” says Uncle Silas, looking sorrowful.

“Oh, _do_ shet up!--s'pose the rats took the _sheet_?  _where's_ it gone,
Lize?”

“Clah to goodness I hain't no notion, Miss' Sally.  She wuz on de
clo'sline yistiddy, but she done gone:  she ain' dah no mo' now.”

“I reckon the world _is_ coming to an end.  I _never_ see the beat of it
in all my born days.  A shirt, and a sheet, and a spoon, and six can--”

“Missus,” comes a young yaller wench, “dey's a brass cannelstick
miss'n.”

“Cler out from here, you hussy, er I'll take a skillet to ye!”

Well, she was just a-biling.  I begun to lay for a chance; I reckoned
I would sneak out and go for the woods till the weather moderated.  She
kept a-raging right along, running her insurrection all by herself, and
everybody else mighty meek and quiet; and at last Uncle Silas, looking
kind of foolish, fishes up that spoon out of his pocket.  She stopped,
with her mouth open and her hands up; and as for me, I wished I was in
Jeruslem or somewheres. But not long, because she says:

“It's _just_ as I expected.  So you had it in your pocket all the time;
and like as not you've got the other things there, too.  How'd it get
there?”

“I reely don't know, Sally,” he says, kind of apologizing, “or you know
I would tell.  I was a-studying over my text in Acts Seventeen before
breakfast, and I reckon I put it in there, not noticing, meaning to put
my Testament in, and it must be so, because my Testament ain't in; but
I'll go and see; and if the Testament is where I had it, I'll know I
didn't put it in, and that will show that I laid the Testament down and
took up the spoon, and--”

“Oh, for the land's sake!  Give a body a rest!  Go 'long now, the whole
kit and biling of ye; and don't come nigh me again till I've got back my
peace of mind.”

I'D a heard her if she'd a said it to herself, let alone speaking it
out; and I'd a got up and obeyed her if I'd a been dead.  As we was
passing through the setting-room the old man he took up his hat, and the
shingle-nail fell out on the floor, and he just merely picked it up and
laid it on the mantel-shelf, and never said nothing, and went out.  Tom
see him do it, and remembered about the spoon, and says:

“Well, it ain't no use to send things by _him_ no more, he ain't
reliable.” Then he says:  “But he done us a good turn with the spoon,
anyway, without knowing it, and so we'll go and do him one without _him_
knowing it--stop up his rat-holes.”

There was a noble good lot of them down cellar, and it took us a whole
hour, but we done the job tight and good and shipshape.  Then we heard
steps on the stairs, and blowed out our light and hid; and here comes
the old man, with a candle in one hand and a bundle of stuff in t'other,
looking as absent-minded as year before last.  He went a mooning around,
first to one rat-hole and then another, till he'd been to them all.
 Then he stood about five minutes, picking tallow-drip off of his candle
and thinking.  Then he turns off slow and dreamy towards the stairs,
saying:

“Well, for the life of me I can't remember when I done it.  I could
show her now that I warn't to blame on account of the rats.  But never
mind--let it go.  I reckon it wouldn't do no good.”

And so he went on a-mumbling up stairs, and then we left.  He was a
mighty nice old man.  And always is.

Tom was a good deal bothered about what to do for a spoon, but he said
we'd got to have it; so he took a think.  When he had ciphered it out
he told me how we was to do; then we went and waited around the
spoon-basket till we see Aunt Sally coming, and then Tom went to
counting the spoons and laying them out to one side, and I slid one of
them up my sleeve, and Tom says:

“Why, Aunt Sally, there ain't but nine spoons _yet_.”

She says:

“Go 'long to your play, and don't bother me.  I know better, I counted
'm myself.”

“Well, I've counted them twice, Aunty, and I can't make but nine.”

She looked out of all patience, but of course she come to count--anybody
would.

“I declare to gracious ther' _ain't_ but nine!” she says.  “Why, what in
the world--plague _take_ the things, I'll count 'm again.”

So I slipped back the one I had, and when she got done counting, she
says:

“Hang the troublesome rubbage, ther's _ten_ now!” and she looked huffy
and bothered both.  But Tom says:

“Why, Aunty, I don't think there's ten.”

“You numskull, didn't you see me _count 'm?_”

“I know, but--”

“Well, I'll count 'm _again_.”

So I smouched one, and they come out nine, same as the other time.
 Well, she _was_ in a tearing way--just a-trembling all over, she was so
mad.  But she counted and counted till she got that addled she'd start
to count in the basket for a spoon sometimes; and so, three times they
come out right, and three times they come out wrong.  Then she grabbed
up the basket and slammed it across the house and knocked the cat
galley-west; and she said cle'r out and let her have some peace, and if
we come bothering around her again betwixt that and dinner she'd skin
us.  So we had the odd spoon, and dropped it in her apron-pocket whilst
she was a-giving us our sailing orders, and Jim got it all right, along
with her shingle nail, before noon.  We was very well satisfied with
this business, and Tom allowed it was worth twice the trouble it took,
because he said _now_ she couldn't ever count them spoons twice alike
again to save her life; and wouldn't believe she'd counted them right if
she _did_; and said that after she'd about counted her head off for the
next three days he judged she'd give it up and offer to kill anybody
that wanted her to ever count them any more.

So we put the sheet back on the line that night, and stole one out of
her closet; and kept on putting it back and stealing it again for a
couple of days till she didn't know how many sheets she had any more,
and she didn't _care_, and warn't a-going to bullyrag the rest of her
soul out about it, and wouldn't count them again not to save her life;
she druther die first.

So we was all right now, as to the shirt and the sheet and the spoon
and the candles, by the help of the calf and the rats and the mixed-up
counting; and as to the candlestick, it warn't no consequence, it would
blow over by and by.

But that pie was a job; we had no end of trouble with that pie.  We
fixed it up away down in the woods, and cooked it there; and we got it
done at last, and very satisfactory, too; but not all in one day; and we
had to use up three wash-pans full of flour before we got through, and
we got burnt pretty much all over, in places, and eyes put out with
the smoke; because, you see, we didn't want nothing but a crust, and we
couldn't prop it up right, and she would always cave in.  But of course
we thought of the right way at last--which was to cook the ladder, too,
in the pie.  So then we laid in with Jim the second night, and tore
up the sheet all in little strings and twisted them together, and long
before daylight we had a lovely rope that you could a hung a person
with.  We let on it took nine months to make it.

And in the forenoon we took it down to the woods, but it wouldn't go
into the pie.  Being made of a whole sheet, that way, there was rope
enough for forty pies if we'd a wanted them, and plenty left over
for soup, or sausage, or anything you choose.  We could a had a whole
dinner.

But we didn't need it.  All we needed was just enough for the pie, and
so we throwed the rest away.  We didn't cook none of the pies in the
wash-pan--afraid the solder would melt; but Uncle Silas he had a noble
brass warming-pan which he thought considerable of, because it belonged
to one of his ancesters with a long wooden handle that come over from
England with William the Conqueror in the Mayflower or one of them early
ships and was hid away up garret with a lot of other old pots and things
that was valuable, not on account of being any account, because they
warn't, but on account of them being relicts, you know, and we snaked
her out, private, and took her down there, but she failed on the first
pies, because we didn't know how, but she come up smiling on the last
one.  We took and lined her with dough, and set her in the coals, and
loaded her up with rag rope, and put on a dough roof, and shut down the
lid, and put hot embers on top, and stood off five foot, with the long
handle, cool and comfortable, and in fifteen minutes she turned out a
pie that was a satisfaction to look at. But the person that et it would
want to fetch a couple of kags of toothpicks along, for if that rope
ladder wouldn't cramp him down to business I don't know nothing what I'm
talking about, and lay him in enough stomach-ache to last him till next
time, too.

Nat didn't look when we put the witch pie in Jim's pan; and we put the
three tin plates in the bottom of the pan under the vittles; and so Jim
got everything all right, and as soon as he was by himself he busted
into the pie and hid the rope ladder inside of his straw tick,
and scratched some marks on a tin plate and throwed it out of the
window-hole.




CHAPTER XXXVIII.

MAKING them pens was a distressid tough job, and so was the saw; and Jim
allowed the inscription was going to be the toughest of all.  That's the
one which the prisoner has to scrabble on the wall.  But he had to have
it; Tom said he'd _got_ to; there warn't no case of a state prisoner not
scrabbling his inscription to leave behind, and his coat of arms.

“Look at Lady Jane Grey,” he says; “look at Gilford Dudley; look at old
Northumberland!  Why, Huck, s'pose it _is_ considerble trouble?--what
you going to do?--how you going to get around it?  Jim's _got_ to do his
inscription and coat of arms.  They all do.”

Jim says:

“Why, Mars Tom, I hain't got no coat o' arm; I hain't got nuffn but dish
yer ole shirt, en you knows I got to keep de journal on dat.”

“Oh, you don't understand, Jim; a coat of arms is very different.”

“Well,” I says, “Jim's right, anyway, when he says he ain't got no coat
of arms, because he hain't.”

“I reckon I knowed that,” Tom says, “but you bet he'll have one before
he goes out of this--because he's going out _right_, and there ain't
going to be no flaws in his record.”

So whilst me and Jim filed away at the pens on a brickbat apiece, Jim
a-making his'n out of the brass and I making mine out of the spoon,
Tom set to work to think out the coat of arms.  By and by he said he'd
struck so many good ones he didn't hardly know which to take, but there
was one which he reckoned he'd decide on.  He says:

“On the scutcheon we'll have a bend _or_ in the dexter base, a saltire
_murrey_ in the fess, with a dog, couchant, for common charge, and under
his foot a chain embattled, for slavery, with a chevron _vert_ in a
chief engrailed, and three invected lines on a field _azure_, with the
nombril points rampant on a dancette indented; crest, a runaway nigger,
_sable_, with his bundle over his shoulder on a bar sinister; and a
couple of gules for supporters, which is you and me; motto, _Maggiore
Fretta, Minore Otto._  Got it out of a book--means the more haste the
less speed.”

“Geewhillikins,” I says, “but what does the rest of it mean?”

“We ain't got no time to bother over that,” he says; “we got to dig in
like all git-out.”

“Well, anyway,” I says, “what's _some_ of it?  What's a fess?”

“A fess--a fess is--_you_ don't need to know what a fess is.  I'll show
him how to make it when he gets to it.”

“Shucks, Tom,” I says, “I think you might tell a person.  What's a bar
sinister?”

“Oh, I don't know.  But he's got to have it.  All the nobility does.”

That was just his way.  If it didn't suit him to explain a thing to you,
he wouldn't do it.  You might pump at him a week, it wouldn't make no
difference.

He'd got all that coat of arms business fixed, so now he started in to
finish up the rest of that part of the work, which was to plan out a
mournful inscription--said Jim got to have one, like they all done.  He
made up a lot, and wrote them out on a paper, and read them off, so:

1.  Here a captive heart busted. 2.  Here a poor prisoner, forsook by
the world and friends, fretted his sorrowful life. 3.  Here a lonely
heart broke, and a worn spirit went to its rest, after thirty-seven
years of solitary captivity. 4.  Here, homeless and friendless, after
thirty-seven years of bitter captivity, perished a noble stranger,
natural son of Louis XIV.

Tom's voice trembled whilst he was reading them, and he most broke down.
When he got done he couldn't no way make up his mind which one for Jim
to scrabble on to the wall, they was all so good; but at last he allowed
he would let him scrabble them all on.  Jim said it would take him a
year to scrabble such a lot of truck on to the logs with a nail, and he
didn't know how to make letters, besides; but Tom said he would block
them out for him, and then he wouldn't have nothing to do but just
follow the lines.  Then pretty soon he says:

“Come to think, the logs ain't a-going to do; they don't have log walls
in a dungeon:  we got to dig the inscriptions into a rock.  We'll fetch
a rock.”

Jim said the rock was worse than the logs; he said it would take him
such a pison long time to dig them into a rock he wouldn't ever get out.
 But Tom said he would let me help him do it.  Then he took a look to
see how me and Jim was getting along with the pens.  It was most pesky
tedious hard work and slow, and didn't give my hands no show to get
well of the sores, and we didn't seem to make no headway, hardly; so Tom
says:

“I know how to fix it.  We got to have a rock for the coat of arms and
mournful inscriptions, and we can kill two birds with that same rock.
There's a gaudy big grindstone down at the mill, and we'll smouch it,
and carve the things on it, and file out the pens and the saw on it,
too.”

It warn't no slouch of an idea; and it warn't no slouch of a grindstone
nuther; but we allowed we'd tackle it.  It warn't quite midnight yet,
so we cleared out for the mill, leaving Jim at work.  We smouched the
grindstone, and set out to roll her home, but it was a most nation tough
job. Sometimes, do what we could, we couldn't keep her from falling
over, and she come mighty near mashing us every time.  Tom said she was
going to get one of us, sure, before we got through.  We got her half
way; and then we was plumb played out, and most drownded with sweat.  We
see it warn't no use; we got to go and fetch Jim. So he raised up his
bed and slid the chain off of the bed-leg, and wrapt it round and round
his neck, and we crawled out through our hole and down there, and Jim
and me laid into that grindstone and walked her along like nothing; and
Tom superintended.  He could out-superintend any boy I ever see.  He
knowed how to do everything.

Our hole was pretty big, but it warn't big enough to get the grindstone
through; but Jim he took the pick and soon made it big enough.  Then Tom
marked out them things on it with the nail, and set Jim to work on them,
with the nail for a chisel and an iron bolt from the rubbage in the
lean-to for a hammer, and told him to work till the rest of his candle
quit on him, and then he could go to bed, and hide the grindstone under
his straw tick and sleep on it.  Then we helped him fix his chain back
on the bed-leg, and was ready for bed ourselves.  But Tom thought of
something, and says:

“You got any spiders in here, Jim?”

“No, sah, thanks to goodness I hain't, Mars Tom.”

“All right, we'll get you some.”

“But bless you, honey, I doan' _want_ none.  I's afeard un um.  I jis'
's soon have rattlesnakes aroun'.”

Tom thought a minute or two, and says:

“It's a good idea.  And I reckon it's been done.  It _must_ a been done;
it stands to reason.  Yes, it's a prime good idea.  Where could you keep
it?”

“Keep what, Mars Tom?”

“Why, a rattlesnake.”

“De goodness gracious alive, Mars Tom!  Why, if dey was a rattlesnake to
come in heah I'd take en bust right out thoo dat log wall, I would, wid
my head.”

“Why, Jim, you wouldn't be afraid of it after a little.  You could tame
it.”

“_Tame_ it!”

“Yes--easy enough.  Every animal is grateful for kindness and petting,
and they wouldn't _think_ of hurting a person that pets them.  Any book
will tell you that.  You try--that's all I ask; just try for two or three
days. Why, you can get him so, in a little while, that he'll love you;
and sleep with you; and won't stay away from you a minute; and will let
you wrap him round your neck and put his head in your mouth.”

“_Please_, Mars Tom--_doan_' talk so!  I can't _stan_' it!  He'd _let_
me shove his head in my mouf--fer a favor, hain't it?  I lay he'd wait a
pow'ful long time 'fo' I _ast_ him.  En mo' en dat, I doan' _want_ him
to sleep wid me.”

“Jim, don't act so foolish.  A prisoner's _got_ to have some kind of a
dumb pet, and if a rattlesnake hain't ever been tried, why, there's more
glory to be gained in your being the first to ever try it than any other
way you could ever think of to save your life.”

“Why, Mars Tom, I doan' _want_ no sich glory.  Snake take 'n bite
Jim's chin off, den _whah_ is de glory?  No, sah, I doan' want no sich
doin's.”

“Blame it, can't you _try_?  I only _want_ you to try--you needn't keep
it up if it don't work.”

“But de trouble all _done_ ef de snake bite me while I's a tryin' him.
Mars Tom, I's willin' to tackle mos' anything 'at ain't onreasonable,
but ef you en Huck fetches a rattlesnake in heah for me to tame, I's
gwyne to _leave_, dat's _shore_.”

“Well, then, let it go, let it go, if you're so bull-headed about it.
 We can get you some garter-snakes, and you can tie some buttons on
their tails, and let on they're rattlesnakes, and I reckon that 'll have
to do.”

“I k'n stan' _dem_, Mars Tom, but blame' 'f I couldn' get along widout
um, I tell you dat.  I never knowed b'fo' 't was so much bother and
trouble to be a prisoner.”

“Well, it _always_ is when it's done right.  You got any rats around
here?”

“No, sah, I hain't seed none.”

“Well, we'll get you some rats.”

“Why, Mars Tom, I doan' _want_ no rats.  Dey's de dadblamedest creturs
to 'sturb a body, en rustle roun' over 'im, en bite his feet, when he's
tryin' to sleep, I ever see.  No, sah, gimme g'yarter-snakes, 'f I's
got to have 'm, but doan' gimme no rats; I hain' got no use f'r um,
skasely.”

“But, Jim, you _got_ to have 'em--they all do.  So don't make no more
fuss about it.  Prisoners ain't ever without rats.  There ain't no
instance of it.  And they train them, and pet them, and learn them
tricks, and they get to be as sociable as flies.  But you got to play
music to them.  You got anything to play music on?”

“I ain' got nuffn but a coase comb en a piece o' paper, en a juice-harp;
but I reck'n dey wouldn' take no stock in a juice-harp.”

“Yes they would _they_ don't care what kind of music 'tis.  A
jews-harp's plenty good enough for a rat.  All animals like music--in a
prison they dote on it.  Specially, painful music; and you can't get no
other kind out of a jews-harp.  It always interests them; they come out
to see what's the matter with you.  Yes, you're all right; you're fixed
very well.  You want to set on your bed nights before you go to sleep,
and early in the mornings, and play your jews-harp; play 'The Last Link
is Broken'--that's the thing that 'll scoop a rat quicker 'n anything
else; and when you've played about two minutes you'll see all the rats,
and the snakes, and spiders, and things begin to feel worried about you,
and come.  And they'll just fairly swarm over you, and have a noble good
time.”

“Yes, _dey_ will, I reck'n, Mars Tom, but what kine er time is _Jim_
havin'? Blest if I kin see de pint.  But I'll do it ef I got to.  I
reck'n I better keep de animals satisfied, en not have no trouble in de
house.”

Tom waited to think it over, and see if there wasn't nothing else; and
pretty soon he says:

“Oh, there's one thing I forgot.  Could you raise a flower here, do you
reckon?”

“I doan know but maybe I could, Mars Tom; but it's tolable dark in heah,
en I ain' got no use f'r no flower, nohow, en she'd be a pow'ful sight
o' trouble.”

“Well, you try it, anyway.  Some other prisoners has done it.”

“One er dem big cat-tail-lookin' mullen-stalks would grow in heah, Mars
Tom, I reck'n, but she wouldn't be wuth half de trouble she'd coss.”

“Don't you believe it.  We'll fetch you a little one and you plant it in
the corner over there, and raise it.  And don't call it mullen, call it
Pitchiola--that's its right name when it's in a prison.  And you want to
water it with your tears.”

“Why, I got plenty spring water, Mars Tom.”

“You don't _want_ spring water; you want to water it with your tears.
 It's the way they always do.”

“Why, Mars Tom, I lay I kin raise one er dem mullen-stalks twyste wid
spring water whiles another man's a _start'n_ one wid tears.”

“That ain't the idea.  You _got_ to do it with tears.”

“She'll die on my han's, Mars Tom, she sholy will; kase I doan' skasely
ever cry.”

So Tom was stumped.  But he studied it over, and then said Jim would
have to worry along the best he could with an onion.  He promised
he would go to the nigger cabins and drop one, private, in Jim's
coffee-pot, in the morning. Jim said he would “jis' 's soon have
tobacker in his coffee;” and found so much fault with it, and with the
work and bother of raising the mullen, and jews-harping the rats, and
petting and flattering up the snakes and spiders and things, on top of
all the other work he had to do on pens, and inscriptions, and journals,
and things, which made it more trouble and worry and responsibility to
be a prisoner than anything he ever undertook, that Tom most lost all
patience with him; and said he was just loadened down with more gaudier
chances than a prisoner ever had in the world to make a name for
himself, and yet he didn't know enough to appreciate them, and they was
just about wasted on him.  So Jim he was sorry, and said he wouldn't
behave so no more, and then me and Tom shoved for bed.




CHAPTER XXXIX.

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 kind 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 Elexander Phelps found
it there, and opened the door of it to see if the rats would come out,
and they did; and Aunt Sally she come in, and when we got back she was
a-standing on top of the bed raising Cain, and the rats was doing what
they could to keep off the dull times for her.  So she took and dusted
us both with the hickry, and we was as much as two hours catching
another fifteen or sixteen, drat that meddlesome cub, and they warn't
the likeliest, nuther, because the first haul was the pick of the flock.
 I never see a likelier lot of rats than what that first haul was.

We got a splendid stock of sorted spiders, and bugs, and frogs, and
caterpillars, and one thing or another; and we like 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 done it.  Then we
got allycumpain 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 warn'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 was still on the premises somewheres.  So
we judged we could get some of them again.  No, there warn't no real
scarcity of snakes about the house for a considerable spell.  You'd see
them dripping from the rafters and places every now and then; and they
generly 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 warn'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.  I
never see such a woman.  And you could hear her whoop to Jericho.  You
couldn't get her to take a-holt 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 you would think the house was afire.  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 warn't over it yet; she warn't
near over it; when she was setting 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 warn'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 amount 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 warn't no room in bed for him, skasely; 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 t'other 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 et 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 warn'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 give me
the cold shivers, and I see we hadn't no time to lose. So Tom said, now
for the nonnamous 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 Tooleries, a servant-girl done it.  It's a very good
way, and so is the nonnamous 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 their
lookout.”

“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 mullet-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 'll 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.”

“Shucks!” he says, and looked disgusted.  So I says:

“But I ain't going to make no complaint.  Any way that suits you suits
me. What 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
prob'bly hain't got any but that one.”

“I know; but you don't want it but fifteen minutes, to carry the
nonnamous 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. Hain't you got no principle at all?”

“All right, I ain't saying nothing; I'm 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, f'rinstance.  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 nonnamous letter, and I smouched the yaller wench's
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 drawed in blood, of a skull and
crossbones 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 a
been worse scared if the place had a been full of ghosts laying for them
behind everything and under the beds and shivering through the air.  If
a door banged, Aunt Sally she jumped and said “ouch!” if anything fell,
she jumped and said “ouch!” if you happened to touch her, when she
warn't noticing, she done the same; she couldn't face noway 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 around she'd whirl back again, and say it
again; and she was afraid to go to bed, but she dasn'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 around; 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 desprate gang of
cutthroats from over in the Indian Territory going to steal your runaway
nigger to-night, 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 religgion and wish to quit it and lead an honest life again, and
will betray the helish 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 stead of that I will _baa_ like a sheep soon as
they get in and not blow at all; then whilst they are getting his
chains loose, you slip there and lock them in, and can kill them at your
leasure.  Don't do anything but just the way I am telling you, if you do
they will suspicion something and raise whoop-jamboreehoo. I do not wish
any reward but to know I have done the right thing. _Unknown Friend._




CHAPTER XL.

WE was feeling pretty good after breakfast, and took my canoe and went
over the river a-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 they
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 up stairs 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 the lunch, but says:

“Where's the butter?”

“I laid out a hunk of it,” I says, “on a piece of a 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 right 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 _baa_ 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 up stairs
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?”

“Yes'm.”

“What you been doing down there?”

“Noth'n.”

“_Noth'n!_”

“No'm.”

“Well, then, what possessed you to go down there this time of night?”

“I don't know 'm.”

“You don't _know_?  Don't answer me that way. Tom, I want to know what
you been _doing_ down there.”

“I hain't been doing a single thing, Aunt Sally, I hope to gracious if I
have.”

I reckoned she'd let me go now, and as a generl thing she would; but I
s'pose there was so many strange things going on she was just in a sweat
about every little thing that warn't yard-stick straight; so she says,
very decided:

“You just march into that setting-room and stay there till I come.  You
been up to something you no 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 setting around, some of them talking a little, in a low voice,
and all of them fidgety and uneasy, but trying to look like they warn't;
but I knowed they was, because they was always taking off their hats,
and putting them on, and scratching their heads, and changing their
seats, and fumbling with their buttons.  I warn'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 desperadoes, and saying it warn't but a few minutes to
midnight; and others was trying to get them to hold on and wait for the
sheep-signal; and here was Aunty pegging away at the questions, and
me a-shaking 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 for going and getting in the cabin
_first_ and right _now_, and catching them when they come,” I most
dropped; and a streak of butter come a-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 shore 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 luck's 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, whyd'nt you _tell_ me that was what you'd been down there for, I
wouldn't a cared.  Now cler out to bed, and don't lemme see no more of
you till morning!”

I was up stairs 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 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 the pad-lock, 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 'em in the
dark and kill 'em when they come; and the rest scatter around a piece,
and listen if you can hear 'em 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 set his ear to the crack and listened, and
listened, and listened, and the steps a-scraping around 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 Injun 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:

“Who's that?  Answer, or I'll shoot!”

But we didn't answer; we just unfurled our heels and shoved.  Then there
was a rush, and a _Bang, Bang, Bang!_ and the bullets fairly whizzed
around us! We heard them sing out:

“Here they are!  They've broke for the river!  After 'em, 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 path to 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 powwow enough for a million; but they was our dogs; so we
stopped in our tracks till they catched up; and when they see it warn'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 up-steam 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 obleeged 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.”

“En a mighty good job it wuz, too, Huck.  It 'uz planned beautiful, en
it 'uz done beautiful; en dey ain't _nobody_ kin git up a plan dat's mo'
mixed-up en splendid den what dat one wuz.”

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 the duke's shirts for to bandage him, but
he says:

“Gimme 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 done it elegant!--'deed we did.  I wish _we'd_ a
had the handling of Louis XVI., there wouldn't a been no 'Son of Saint
Louis, ascend 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, den, dis is de way it look to me, Huck.  Ef it wuz _him_ dat 'uz
bein' sot free, en one er de boys wuz to git shot, would he say, 'Go on
en save me, nemmine 'bout a doctor f'r to save dis one?'  Is dat like
Mars Tom Sawyer?  Would he say dat?  You _bet_ he wouldn't!  _well_,
den, is _Jim_ gywne to say it?  No, sah--I doan' budge a step out'n dis
place 'dout a _doctor_, not if it's forty year!”

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 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 you're bound to go, I'll tell you the way to do when you
get to the village.  Shut the door and blindfold the 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 everywheres 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 you 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 XLI.

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 a 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.

“Who is your folks?” he says.

“The Phelpses, down yonder.”

“Oh,” he says.  And after a minute, he says:

“How'd you say he got shot?”

“He had a dream,” I says, “and it shot him.”

“Singular dream,” he says.

So he lit up his lantern, and got his saddle-bags, and we started.  But
when he sees 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 around 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, spos'n he can't fix
that leg just in three shakes of a sheep's tail, as the saying is?
spos'n 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 warn'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 rammed my head into Uncle Silas's
stomach! He says:

“Why, _Tom!_  Where you been all this time, you rascal?”

“I hain't been nowheres,” I says, “only just hunting for the runaway
nigger--me and Sid.”

“Why, where ever 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
suspicioned, he warn't there; so the old man he got a letter out of the
office, and we waited awhile 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 around--but we would ride.  I couldn't get him to let me stay
and wait for Sid; and he said there warn'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 hern that
don't amount to shucks, and said she'd serve Sid the same when he come.

And the place was plum full of farmers and farmers' wives, to dinner;
and such another clack a body never heard.  Old Mrs. Hotchkiss was the
worst; her tongue was a-going all the time.  She says:

“Well, Sister Phelps, I've ransacked that-air cabin over, an' I b'lieve
the nigger was crazy.  I says to Sister Damrell--didn't I, Sister
Damrell?--s'I, he's crazy, s'I--them's the very words I said.  You all
hearn me: he's crazy, s'I; everything shows it, s'I.  Look at that-air
grindstone, s'I; want to tell _me_'t any cretur 't's in his right mind
's a goin' to scrabble all them crazy things onto a grindstone, s'I?
 Here sich 'n' sich a person busted his heart; 'n' here so 'n' so
pegged along for thirty-seven year, 'n' all that--natcherl son o' Louis
somebody, 'n' sich everlast'n rubbage.  He's plumb crazy, s'I; it's what
I says in the fust place, it's what I says in the middle, 'n' it's what
I says last 'n' all the time--the nigger's crazy--crazy 's Nebokoodneezer,
s'I.”

“An' look at that-air ladder made out'n rags, Sister Hotchkiss,” says
old Mrs. Damrell; “what in the name o' goodness _could_ he ever want
of--”

“The very words I was a-sayin' no longer ago th'n this minute to Sister
Utterback, 'n' she'll tell you so herself.  Sh-she, look at that-air rag
ladder, sh-she; 'n' s'I, yes, _look_ at it, s'I--what _could_ he a-wanted
of it, s'I.  Sh-she, Sister Hotchkiss, sh-she--”

“But how in the nation'd they ever _git_ that grindstone _in_ there,
_anyway_? 'n' who dug that-air _hole_? 'n' who--”

“My very _words_, Brer Penrod!  I was a-sayin'--pass that-air sasser o'
m'lasses, won't ye?--I was a-sayin' to Sister Dunlap, jist this minute,
how _did_ they git that grindstone in there, s'I.  Without _help_, mind
you--'thout _help_!  _that's_ wher 'tis.  Don't tell _me_, s'I; there
_wuz_ help, s'I; 'n' ther' wuz a _plenty_ help, too, s'I; ther's ben a
_dozen_ a-helpin' that nigger, 'n' I lay I'd skin every last nigger on
this place but _I'd_ find out who done it, s'I; 'n' moreover, s'I--”

“A _dozen_ says you!--_forty_ couldn't a done every thing that's been
done. Look at them case-knife saws and things, how tedious they've been
made; look at that bed-leg sawed off with 'm, a week's work for six men;
look at that nigger made out'n straw on the bed; and look at--”

“You may _well_ say it, Brer Hightower!  It's jist as I was a-sayin'
to Brer Phelps, his own self.  S'e, what do _you_ think of it, Sister
Hotchkiss, s'e? Think o' what, Brer Phelps, s'I?  Think o' that bed-leg
sawed off that a way, s'e?  _think_ of it, s'I?  I lay it never sawed
_itself_ off, s'I--somebody _sawed_ it, s'I; that's my opinion, take it
or leave it, it mayn't be no 'count, s'I, but sich as 't is, it's my
opinion, s'I, 'n' if any body k'n start a better one, s'I, let him _do_
it, s'I, that's all.  I says to Sister Dunlap, s'I--”

“Why, dog my cats, they must a ben a house-full o' niggers in there
every night for four weeks to a done all that work, Sister Phelps.  Look
at that shirt--every last inch of it kivered over with secret African
writ'n done with blood!  Must a ben a raft uv 'm at it right along, all
the time, amost.  Why, I'd give two dollars to have it read to me; 'n'
as for the niggers that wrote it, I 'low I'd take 'n' lash 'm t'll--”

“People to _help_ him, Brother Marples!  Well, I reckon you'd _think_
so if you'd a been in this house for a while back.  Why, they've stole
everything they could lay their hands on--and we a-watching all the time,
mind you. They stole that shirt right off o' the line! and as for that
sheet they made the rag ladder out of, ther' 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
a-telling you, and not a one of us could catch hide nor hair 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 actuly 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, _sperits_ couldn't a done better and
been no smarter. And I reckon they must a _been_ sperits--because, _you_
know our dogs, and ther' ain't no better; well, them dogs never even got
on the _track_ of 'm once!  You explain _that_ to me if you can!--_any_
of you!”

“Well, it does beat--”

“Laws alive, I never--”

“So help me, I wouldn't a be--”

“_House_-thieves as well as--”

“Goodnessgracioussakes, I'd a ben afeard to live in sich a--”

“'Fraid to _live_!--why, I was that scared I dasn't hardly 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 hope to gracious if I warn't
afraid they'd steal some o' 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 up stairs in that lonesome room, and I declare to goodness
I was that uneasy 't I crep' up there and locked 'em 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 o' wild things,
and by and by you think to yourself, spos'n I was a boy, and was away up
there, and the door ain't locked, and you--” She stopped, looking kind
of wondering, and then she turned her head around slow, and when her eye
lit on me--I got up and took a walk.

Says 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 dasn't go fur, or she'd a sent 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 harum-scarum 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, stead 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 jumps up, and says:

“Why, lawsamercy, it's most night, and Sid not come yet!  What _has_
become of that boy?”

I see my chance; so I skips up and says:

“I'll run right up to town and get him,” I says.

“No you won't,” she says.  “You'll stay right wher' you are; _one's_
enough to be lost at a time.  If he ain't here to supper, your uncle 'll
go.”

Well, he warn'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 warn'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 set down on 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 a got lost, or hurt, or maybe
drownded, and might be laying at this minute somewheres suffering or
dead, and she not by him to help him, and so the 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 a 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 XLII.

THE old man was uptown again before breakfast, but couldn't get no
track of Tom; and both of them set 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 a 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.  But
before she could break it open she dropped it and run--for she see
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 warn'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
them down a little, because the people that's always the most anxious
for to hang a nigger that hain'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 considerble, though, and give him a cuff or two side 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 no 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 warn'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 generl 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 obleeged 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 warn'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 a-nigh him any more, and said if I chalked 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 out crawls this nigger from somewheres and says
he'll help, and he 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 patients with the chills, and
of course I'd of liked to run up to town and see them, but I dasn'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
plumb until daylight this morning; and I never see a nigger that was a
better nuss or faithfuller, 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 liked 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 a done at home--better, maybe, because it was so quiet; but there I
_was_, with both of 'm on my hands, and there I had to stick till about
dawn this morning; then some men in 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
row nor said a word from the start.  He ain't no bad nigger, gentlemen;
that's what I think about him.”

Somebody says:

“Well, it sounds very good, doctor, I'm obleeged to say.”

Then 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 him no more.

Then they come 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 warn'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 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 they said Aunt
Sally was gone to get a nap.  So I slips 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 set 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
set 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 peacefuller all the
time, and ten to one he'd wake up in his right mind.

So we set 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 Aunty?”

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 we 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 _done_ it.
 And we done it elegant, too.”  He'd got a start, and she never checked
him up, just set and stared and stared, and let him clip along, and
I see it warn't no use for _me_ to put in.  “Why, Aunty, 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,
and nonnamous 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 a 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 the 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 warn'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, Aunty!”

“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've as good a notion as ever I had in my life to take it out
o' you this very minute.  To think, here I've been, night after night,
a--_you_ just get well once, you young scamp, and I lay I'll tan the Old
Harry out o' both o' ye!”

But Tom, he _was_ so proud and joyful, he just _couldn't_ hold in,
and his tongue just _went_ it--she a-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'd you reckon?”

Tom looks at me very grave, and says:

“Tom, didn't you just tell me he was all right?  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 hain'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 cretur
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 knowed 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 waded neck-deep in blood
to--goodness alive, _Aunt Polly!_”

If she warn'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 y'r head away--I would if I was you, Tom.”

“Oh, deary me!” says Aunt Sally; “_Is_ he changed so?  Why, that ain't
_Tom_, it's Sid; Tom's--Tom's--why, where is Tom?  He was here a minute
ago.”

“You mean where's Huck _Finn_--that's what you mean!  I reckon I hain'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.

Aunt 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 ruputation, because the
oldest man in the world couldn't a 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 'tain't no need to change”--that when Aunt Sally took
me for Tom Sawyer I had to stand it--there warn'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.  So now I got to go and trapse all
the way down the river, eleven hundred mile, and find out what that
creetur's 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 'em, Sis.”

Aunt Polly she turns around slow and severe, and says:

“You, Tom!”

“Well--_what_?” he says, kind of pettish.

“Don't you what _me_, you impudent thing--hand out them letters.”

“What letters?”

“_Them_ letters.  I be bound, if I have to take a-holt of you I'll--”

“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 hain't looked into them, I
hain't touched them.  But I knowed they'd make trouble, and I thought if
you warn'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 s'pose he--”

“No, it come yesterday; I hain'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 as safe to not to.  So I never said nothing.




CHAPTER THE LAST

THE first time I catched 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 had 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:

“Dah, now, Huck, what I tell you?--what I tell you up dah on Jackson
islan'?  I _tole_ you I got a hairy breas', en what's de sign un it; en
I _tole_ you I ben rich wunst, en gwineter to be rich _agin_; en it's
come true; en heah she is!  _dah_, now! doan' talk to _me_--signs is
_signs_, mine I tell you; en I knowed jis' 's well 'at I 'uz gwineter be
rich agin as I's a-stannin' heah dis minute!”

And then Tom he talked along and talked along, and says, le's all three
slide out of here one of these nights and get an outfit, and go for
howling adventures amongst the Injuns, 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 pap's been back before now, and got
it all away from Judge Thatcher and drunk it up.

“No, he hain't,” Tom says; “it's all there yet--six thousand dollars
and more; and your pap hain't ever been back since.  Hadn't when I come
away, anyhow.”

Jim says, kind of solemn:

“He ain't a-comin' back no mo', Huck.”

I says:

“Why, Jim?”

“Nemmine why, Huck--but he ain't comin' back no mo.”

But I kept at him; so at last he says:

“Doan' you 'member de house dat was float'n down de river, en dey wuz a
man in dah, kivered up, en I went in en unkivered him and didn' let you
come in?  Well, den, you kin git yo' money when you wants it, kase dat
wuz him.”

Tom's most well now, and got his bullet around 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 knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn't a tackled it,
and ain't a-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 sivilize me, and I can't stand it.  I been there before.

A DOG'S TALE

by Mark Twain




CHAPTER I

My father was a St. Bernard, my mother was a collie, but I am a
Presbyterian.  This is what my mother told me, I do not know these nice
distinctions myself.  To me they are only fine large words meaning
nothing.  My mother had a fondness for such; she liked to say them, and
see other dogs look surprised and envious, as wondering how she got so
much education.  But, indeed, it was not real education; it was only
show: she got the words by listening in the dining-room and drawing-room
when there was company, and by going with the children to Sunday-school
and listening there; and whenever she heard a large word she said it over
to herself many times, and so was able to keep it until there was a
dogmatic gathering in the neighborhood, then she would get it off, and
surprise and distress them all, from pocket-pup to mastiff, which
rewarded her for all her trouble.  If there was a stranger he was nearly
sure to be suspicious, and when he got his breath again he would ask her
what it meant.  And she always told him.  He was never expecting this but
thought he would catch her; so when she told him, he was the one that
looked ashamed, whereas he had thought it was going to be she.  The
others were always waiting for this, and glad of it and proud of her, for
they knew what was going to happen, because they had had experience.
When she told the meaning of a big word they were all so taken up with
admiration that it never occurred to any dog to doubt if it was the right
one; and that was natural, because, for one thing, she answered up so
promptly that it seemed like a dictionary speaking, and for another
thing, where could they find out whether it was right or not? for she was
the only cultivated dog there was.  By and by, when I was older, she
brought home the word Unintellectual, one time, and worked it pretty hard
all the week at different gatherings, making much unhappiness and
despondency; and it was at this time that I noticed that during that week
she was asked for the meaning at eight different assemblages, and flashed
out a fresh definition every time, which showed me that she had more
presence of mind than culture, though I said nothing, of course.  She had
one word which she always kept on hand, and ready, like a life-preserver,
a kind of emergency word to strap on when she was likely to get washed
overboard in a sudden way--that was the word Synonymous.  When she
happened to fetch out a long word which had had its day weeks before and
its prepared meanings gone to her dump-pile, if there was a stranger
there of course it knocked him groggy for a couple of minutes, then he
would come to, and by that time she would be away down wind on another
tack, and not expecting anything; so when he'd hail and ask her to cash
in, I (the only dog on the inside of her game) could see her canvas
flicker a moment--but only just a moment--then it would belly out taut
and full, and she would say, as calm as a summer's day, “It's synonymous
with supererogation,” or some godless long reptile of a word like that,
and go placidly about and skim away on the next tack, perfectly
comfortable, you know, and leave that stranger looking profane and
embarrassed, and the initiated slatting the floor with their tails in
unison and their faces transfigured with a holy joy.

And it was the same with phrases.  She would drag home a whole phrase, if
it had a grand sound, and play it six nights and two matinees, and
explain it a new way every time--which she had to, for all she cared for
was the phrase; she wasn't interested in what it meant, and knew those
dogs hadn't wit enough to catch her, anyway.  Yes, she was a daisy!  She
got so she wasn't afraid of anything, she had such confidence in the
ignorance of those creatures.  She even brought anecdotes that she had
heard the family and the dinner-guests laugh and shout over; and as a
rule she got the nub of one chestnut hitched onto another chestnut,
where, of course, it didn't fit and hadn't any point; and when she
delivered the nub she fell over and rolled on the floor and laughed and
barked in the most insane way, while I could see that she was wondering
to herself why it didn't seem as funny as it did when she first heard it.
But no harm was done; the others rolled and barked too, privately ashamed
of themselves for not seeing the point, and never suspecting that the
fault was not with them and there wasn't any to see.

You can see by these things that she was of a rather vain and frivolous
character; still, she had virtues, and enough to make up, I think.  She
had a kind heart and gentle ways, and never harbored resentments for
injuries done her, but put them easily out of her mind and forgot them;
and she taught her children her kindly way, and from her we learned also
to be brave and prompt in time of danger, and not to run away, but face
the peril that threatened friend or stranger, and help him the best we
could without stopping to think what the cost might be to us.  And she
taught us not by words only, but by example, and that is the best way and
the surest and the most lasting.  Why, the brave things she did, the
splendid things! she was just a soldier; and so modest about it--well,
you couldn't help admiring her, and you couldn't help imitating her; not
even a King Charles spaniel could remain entirely despicable in her
society.  So, as you see, there was more to her than her education.




CHAPTER II

When I was well grown, at last, I was sold and taken away, and I never
saw her again.  She was broken-hearted, and so was I, and we cried; but
she comforted me as well as she could, and said we were sent into this
world for a wise and good purpose, and must do our duties without
repining, take our life as we might find it, live it for the best good of
others, and never mind about the results; they were not our affair.  She
said men who did like this would have a noble and beautiful reward by and
by in another world, and although we animals would not go there, to do
well and right without reward would give to our brief lives a worthiness
and dignity which in itself would be a reward.  She had gathered these
things from time to time when she had gone to the Sunday-school with the
children, and had laid them up in her memory more carefully than she had
done with those other words and phrases; and she had studied them deeply,
for her good and ours.  One may see by this that she had a wise and
thoughtful head, for all there was so much lightness and vanity in it.

So we said our farewells, and looked our last upon each other through our
tears; and the last thing she said--keeping it for the last to make me
remember it the better, I think--was, “In memory of me, when there is a
time of danger to another do not think of yourself, think of your mother,
and do as she would do.”

Do you think I could forget that?  No.




CHAPTER III

It was such a charming home!--my new one; a fine great house, with
pictures, and delicate decorations, and rich furniture, and no gloom
anywhere, but all the wilderness of dainty colors lit up with flooding
sunshine; and the spacious grounds around it, and the great garden--oh,
greensward, and noble trees, and flowers, no end!  And I was the same as
a member of the family; and they loved me, and petted me, and did not
give me a new name, but called me by my old one that was dear to me
because my mother had given it me--Aileen Mavourneen.  She got it out of
a song; and the Grays knew that song, and said it was a beautiful name.

Mrs. Gray was thirty, and so sweet and so lovely, you cannot imagine it;
and Sadie was ten, and just like her mother, just a darling slender
little copy of her, with auburn tails down her back, and short frocks;
and the baby was a year old, and plump and dimpled, and fond of me, and
never could get enough of hauling on my tail, and hugging me, and
laughing out its innocent happiness; and Mr. Gray was thirty-eight, and
tall and slender and handsome, a little bald in front, alert, quick in
his movements, business-like, prompt, decided, unsentimental, and with
that kind of trim-chiseled face that just seems to glint and sparkle with
frosty intellectuality!  He was a renowned scientist.  I do not know what
the word means, but my mother would know how to use it and get effects.
She would know how to depress a rat-terrier with it and make a lap-dog
look sorry he came.  But that is not the best one; the best one was
Laboratory.  My mother could organize a Trust on that one that would skin
the tax-collars off the whole herd.  The laboratory was not a book, or a
picture, or a place to wash your hands in, as the college president's dog
said--no, that is the lavatory; the laboratory is quite different, and is
filled with jars, and bottles, and electrics, and wires, and strange
machines; and every week other scientists came there and sat in the
place, and used the machines, and discussed, and made what they called
experiments and discoveries; and often I came, too, and stood around and
listened, and tried to learn, for the sake of my mother, and in loving
memory of her, although it was a pain to me, as realizing what she was
losing out of her life and I gaining nothing at all; for try as I might,
I was never able to make anything out of it at all.

Other times I lay on the floor in the mistress's work-room and slept, she
gently using me for a foot-stool, knowing it pleased me, for it was a
caress; other times I spent an hour in the nursery, and got well tousled
and made happy; other times I watched by the crib there, when the baby
was asleep and the nurse out for a few minutes on the baby's affairs;
other times I romped and raced through the grounds and the garden with
Sadie till we were tired out, then slumbered on the grass in the shade of
a tree while she read her book; other times I went visiting among the
neighbor dogs--for there were some most pleasant ones not far away, and
one very handsome and courteous and graceful one, a curly-haired Irish
setter by the name of Robin Adair, who was a Presbyterian like me, and
belonged to the Scotch minister.

The servants in our house were all kind to me and were fond of me, and
so, as you see, mine was a pleasant life.  There could not be a happier
dog that I was, nor a gratefuller one.  I will say this for myself, for
it is only the truth:  I tried in all ways to do well and right, and
honor my mother's memory and her teachings, and earn the happiness that
had come to me, as best I could.

By and by came my little puppy, and then my cup was full, my happiness
was perfect.  It was the dearest little waddling thing, and so smooth and
soft and velvety, and had such cunning little awkward paws, and such
affectionate eyes, and such a sweet and innocent face; and it made me so
proud to see how the children and their mother adored it, and fondled it,
and exclaimed over every little wonderful thing it did.  It did seem to
me that life was just too lovely to--

Then came the winter.  One day I was standing a watch in the nursery.
That is to say, I was asleep on the bed.  The baby was asleep in the
crib, which was alongside the bed, on the side next the fireplace.  It
was the kind of crib that has a lofty tent over it made of gauzy stuff
that you can see through.  The nurse was out, and we two sleepers were
alone.  A spark from the wood-fire was shot out, and it lit on the slope
of the tent.  I suppose a quiet interval followed, then a scream from the
baby awoke me, and there was that tent flaming up toward the ceiling!
Before I could think, I sprang to the floor in my fright, and in a second
was half-way to the door; but in the next half-second my mother's
farewell was sounding in my ears, and I was back on the bed again.
I reached my head through the flames and dragged the baby out by the
waist-band, and tugged it along, and we fell to the floor together in a
cloud of smoke; I snatched a new hold, and dragged the screaming little
creature along and out at the door and around the bend of the hall, and
was still tugging away, all excited and happy and proud, when the
master's voice shouted:

“Begone you cursed beast!” and I jumped to save myself; but he was
furiously quick, and chased me up, striking furiously at me with his
cane, I dodging this way and that, in terror, and at last a strong blow
fell upon my left foreleg, which made me shriek and fall, for the moment,
helpless; the cane went up for another blow, but never descended, for the
nurse's voice rang wildly out, “The nursery's on fire!” and the master
rushed away in that direction, and my other bones were saved.

The pain was cruel, but, no matter, I must not lose any time; he might
come back at any moment; so I limped on three legs to the other end of
the hall, where there was a dark little stairway leading up into a garret
where old boxes and such things were kept, as I had heard say, and where
people seldom went.  I managed to climb up there, then I searched my way
through the dark among the piles of things, and hid in the secretest
place I could find.  It was foolish to be afraid there, yet still I was;
so afraid that I held in and hardly even whimpered, though it would have
been such a comfort to whimper, because that eases the pain, you know.
But I could lick my leg, and that did some good.

For half an hour there was a commotion downstairs, and shoutings, and
rushing footsteps, and then there was quiet again.  Quiet for some
minutes, and that was grateful to my spirit, for then my fears began to
go down; and fears are worse than pains--oh, much worse.  Then came a
sound that froze me.  They were calling me--calling me by name--hunting
for me!

It was muffled by distance, but that could not take the terror out of it,
and it was the most dreadful sound to me that I had ever heard.  It went
all about, everywhere, down there:  along the halls, through all the
rooms, in both stories, and in the basement and the cellar; then outside,
and farther and farther away--then back, and all about the house again,
and I thought it would never, never stop.  But at last it did, hours and
hours after the vague twilight of the garret had long ago been blotted
out by black darkness.

Then in that blessed stillness my terrors fell little by little away, and
I was at peace and slept.  It was a good rest I had, but I woke before
the twilight had come again.  I was feeling fairly comfortable, and I
could think out a plan now.  I made a very good one; which was, to creep
down, all the way down the back stairs, and hide behind the cellar door,
and slip out and escape when the iceman came at dawn, while he was inside
filling the refrigerator; then I would hide all day, and start on my
journey when night came; my journey to--well, anywhere where they would
not know me and betray me to the master.  I was feeling almost cheerful
now; then suddenly I thought:  Why, what would life be without my puppy!

That was despair.  There was no plan for me; I saw that; I must stay where
I was; stay, and wait, and take what might come--it was not my affair;
that was what life is--my mother had said it.  Then--well, then the
calling began again!  All my sorrows came back.  I said to myself, the
master will never forgive.  I did not know what I had done to make him so
bitter and so unforgiving, yet I judged it was something a dog could not
understand, but which was clear to a man and dreadful.

They called and called--days and nights, it seemed to me.  So long that
the hunger and thirst near drove me mad, and I recognized that I was
getting very weak.  When you are this way you sleep a great deal, and I
did.  Once I woke in an awful fright--it seemed to me that the calling
was right there in the garret!  And so it was:  it was Sadie's voice, and
she was crying; my name was falling from her lips all broken, poor thing,
and I could not believe my ears for the joy of it when I heard her say:

“Come back to us--oh, come back to us, and forgive--it is all so sad
without our--”

I broke in with SUCH a grateful little yelp, and the next moment Sadie
was plunging and stumbling through the darkness and the lumber and
shouting for the family to hear, “She's found, she's found!”

 The days that followed--well, they were wonderful.  The mother and Sadie
and the servants--why, they just seemed to worship me.  They couldn't
seem to make me a bed that was fine enough; and as for food, they
couldn't be satisfied with anything but game and delicacies that were out
of season; and every day the friends and neighbors flocked in to hear
about my heroism--that was the name they called it by, and it means
agriculture.  I remember my mother pulling it on a kennel once, and
explaining it in that way, but didn't say what agriculture was, except
that it was synonymous with intramural incandescence; and a dozen times a
day Mrs. Gray and Sadie would tell the tale to new-comers, and say I
risked my life to say the baby's, and both of us had burns to prove it,
and then the company would pass me around and pet me and exclaim about
me, and you could see the pride in the eyes of Sadie and her mother; and
when the people wanted to know what made me limp, they looked ashamed and
changed the subject, and sometimes when people hunted them this way and
that way with questions about it, it looked to me as if they were going
to cry.

And this was not all the glory; no, the master's friends came, a whole
twenty of the most distinguished people, and had me in the laboratory,
and discussed me as if I was a kind of discovery; and some of them said
it was wonderful in a dumb beast, the finest exhibition of instinct they
could call to mind; but the master said, with vehemence, “It's far above
instinct; it's REASON, and many a man, privileged to be saved and go with
you and me to a better world by right of its possession, has less of it
that this poor silly quadruped that's foreordained to perish;” and then
he laughed, and said:  “Why, look at me--I'm a sarcasm! bless you, with
all my grand intelligence, the only thing I inferred was that the dog had
gone mad and was destroying the child, whereas but for the beast's
intelligence--it's REASON, I tell you!--the child would have perished!”

They disputed and disputed, and I was the very center of subject of it
all, and I wished my mother could know that this grand honor had come to
me; it would have made her proud.

Then they discussed optics, as they called it, and whether a certain
injury to the brain would produce blindness or not, but they could not
agree about it, and said they must test it by experiment by and by; and
next they discussed plants, and that interested me, because in the summer
Sadie and I had planted seeds--I helped her dig the holes, you know--and
after days and days a little shrub or a flower came up there, and it was
a wonder how that could happen; but it did, and I wished I could talk--I
would have told those people about it and shown then how much I knew, and
been all alive with the subject; but I didn't care for the optics; it was
dull, and when they came back to it again it bored me, and I went to
sleep.

Pretty soon it was spring, and sunny and pleasant and lovely, and the
sweet mother and the children patted me and the puppy good-by, and went
away on a journey and a visit to their kin, and the master wasn't any
company for us, but we played together and had good times, and the
servants were kind and friendly, so we got along quite happily and
counted the days and waited for the family.

And one day those men came again, and said, now for the test, and they
took the puppy to the laboratory, and I limped three-leggedly along, too,
feeling proud, for any attention shown to the puppy was a pleasure to me,
of course.  They discussed and experimented, and then suddenly the puppy
shrieked, and they set him on the floor, and he went staggering around,
with his head all bloody, and the master clapped his hands and shouted:

“There, I've won--confess it!  He's as blind as a bat!”

And they all said:

“It's so--you've proved your theory, and suffering humanity owes you a
great debt from henceforth,” and they crowded around him, and wrung his
hand cordially and thankfully, and praised him.

But I hardly saw or heard these things, for I ran at once to my little
darling, and snuggled close to it where it lay, and licked the blood, and
it put its head against mine, whimpering softly, and I knew in my heart
it was a comfort to it in its pain and trouble to feel its mother's
touch, though it could not see me.  Then it dropped down, presently, and
its little velvet nose rested upon the floor, and it was still, and did
not move any more.

Soon the master stopped discussing a moment, and rang in the footman, and
said, “Bury it in the far corner of the garden,” and then went on with
the discussion, and I trotted after the footman, very happy and grateful,
for I knew the puppy was out of its pain now, because it was asleep.  We
went far down the garden to the farthest end, where the children and the
nurse and the puppy and I used to play in the summer in the shade of a
great elm, and there the footman dug a hole, and I saw he was going to
plant the puppy, and I was glad, because it would grow and come up a fine
handsome dog, like Robin Adair, and be a beautiful surprise for the
family when they came home; so I tried to help him dig, but my lame leg
was no good, being stiff, you know, and you have to have two, or it is no
use.  When the footman had finished and covered little Robin up, he
patted my head, and there were tears in his eyes, and he said:  “Poor
little doggie, you saved HIS child!”

I have watched two whole weeks, and he doesn't come up!  This last week a
fright has been stealing upon me.  I think there is something terrible
about this.  I do not know what it is, but the fear makes me sick, and I
cannot eat, though the servants bring me the best of food; and they pet
me so, and even come in the night, and cry, and say, “Poor doggie--do
give it up and come home; don't break our hearts!” and all this terrifies
me the more, and makes me sure something has happened.  And I am so weak;
since yesterday I cannot stand on my feet anymore.  And within this hour
the servants, looking toward the sun where it was sinking out of sight
and the night chill coming on, said things I could not understand, but
they carried something cold to my heart.

“Those poor creatures!  They do not suspect.  They will come home in the
morning, and eagerly ask for the little doggie that did the brave deed,
and who of us will be strong enough to say the truth to them:  'The
humble little friend is gone where go the beasts that perish.'”



CHAPTER I. The birth of the Prince and the Pauper.

In the ancient city of London, on a certain autumn day in the second
quarter of the sixteenth century, a boy was born to a poor family of the
name of Canty, who did not want him.  On the same day another English
child was born to a rich family of the name of Tudor, who did want him.
All England wanted him too.  England had so longed for him, and hoped
for him, and prayed God for him, that, now that he was really come, the
people went nearly mad for joy.  Mere acquaintances hugged and kissed
each other and cried. Everybody took a holiday, and high and low, rich
and poor, feasted and danced and sang, and got very mellow; and they
kept this up for days and nights together.  By day, London was a sight
to see, with gay banners waving from every balcony and housetop, and
splendid pageants marching along.  By night, it was again a sight
to see, with its great bonfires at every corner, and its troops of
revellers making merry around them.  There was no talk in all England
but of the new baby, Edward Tudor, Prince of Wales, who lay lapped in
silks and satins, unconscious of all this fuss, and not knowing that
great lords and ladies were tending him and watching over him--and not
caring, either.  But there was no talk about the other baby, Tom Canty,
lapped in his poor rags, except among the family of paupers whom he had
just come to trouble with his presence.




CHAPTER II. Tom’s early life.

Let us skip a number of years.

London was fifteen hundred years old, and was a great town--for that
day. It had a hundred thousand inhabitants--some think double as many.
 The streets were very narrow, and crooked, and dirty, especially in the
part where Tom Canty lived, which was not far from London Bridge.  The
houses were of wood, with the second story projecting over the first,
and the third sticking its elbows out beyond the second.  The higher
the houses grew, the broader they grew.  They were skeletons of strong
criss-cross beams, with solid material between, coated with plaster.
 The beams were painted red or blue or black, according to the owner’s
taste, and this gave the houses a very picturesque look.  The windows
were small, glazed with little diamond-shaped panes, and they opened
outward, on hinges, like doors.

The house which Tom’s father lived in was up a foul little pocket called
Offal Court, out of Pudding Lane.  It was small, decayed, and rickety,
but it was packed full of wretchedly poor families. Canty’s tribe
occupied a room on the third floor.  The mother and father had a sort of
bedstead in the corner; but Tom, his grandmother, and his two sisters,
Bet and Nan, were not restricted--they had all the floor to themselves,
and might sleep where they chose.  There were the remains of a blanket
or two, and some bundles of ancient and dirty straw, but these could not
rightly be called beds, for they were not organised; they were kicked
into a general pile, mornings, and selections made from the mass at
night, for service.

Bet and Nan were fifteen years old--twins.  They were good-hearted
girls, unclean, clothed in rags, and profoundly ignorant.  Their mother
was like them.  But the father and the grandmother were a couple of
fiends.  They got drunk whenever they could; then they fought each other
or anybody else who came in the way; they cursed and swore always, drunk
or sober; John Canty was a thief, and his mother a beggar.  They made
beggars of the children, but failed to make thieves of them.  Among,
but not of, the dreadful rabble that inhabited the house, was a good old
priest whom the King had turned out of house and home with a pension of
a few farthings, and he used to get the children aside and teach them
right ways secretly. Father Andrew also taught Tom a little Latin, and
how to read and write; and would have done the same with the girls,
but they were afraid of the jeers of their friends, who could not have
endured such a queer accomplishment in them.

All Offal Court was just such another hive as Canty’s house.
Drunkenness, riot and brawling were the order, there, every night and
nearly all night long.  Broken heads were as common as hunger in that
place.  Yet little Tom was not unhappy.  He had a hard time of it, but
did not know it.  It was the sort of time that all the Offal Court boys
had, therefore he supposed it was the correct and comfortable thing.
 When he came home empty-handed at night, he knew his father would
curse him and thrash him first, and that when he was done the awful
grandmother would do it all over again and improve on it; and that away
in the night his starving mother would slip to him stealthily with any
miserable scrap or crust she had been able to save for him by going
hungry herself, notwithstanding she was often caught in that sort of
treason and soundly beaten for it by her husband.

No, Tom’s life went along well enough, especially in summer.  He only
begged just enough to save himself, for the laws against mendicancy were
stringent, and the penalties heavy; so he put in a good deal of his time
listening to good Father Andrew’s charming old tales and legends
about giants and fairies, dwarfs and genii, and enchanted castles, and
gorgeous kings and princes.  His head grew to be full of these wonderful
things, and many a night as he lay in the dark on his scant and
offensive straw, tired, hungry, and smarting from a thrashing, he
unleashed his imagination and soon forgot his aches and pains in
delicious picturings to himself of the charmed life of a petted prince
in a regal palace.  One desire came in time to haunt him day and night:
 it was to see a real prince, with his own eyes.  He spoke of it once to
some of his Offal Court comrades; but they jeered him and scoffed him so
unmercifully that he was glad to keep his dream to himself after that.

He often read the priest’s old books and got him to explain and enlarge
upon them.  His dreamings and readings worked certain changes in him,
by-and-by.  His dream-people were so fine that he grew to lament his
shabby clothing and his dirt, and to wish to be clean and better clad.
 He went on playing in the mud just the same, and enjoying it, too; but,
instead of splashing around in the Thames solely for the fun of it,
he began to find an added value in it because of the washings and
cleansings it afforded.

Tom could always find something going on around the Maypole in
Cheapside, and at the fairs; and now and then he and the rest of London
had a chance to see a military parade when some famous unfortunate was
carried prisoner to the Tower, by land or boat. One summer’s day he saw
poor Anne Askew and three men burned at the stake in Smithfield, and
heard an ex-Bishop preach a sermon to them which did not interest him.
Yes, Tom’s life was varied and pleasant enough, on the whole.

By-and-by Tom’s reading and dreaming about princely life wrought such a
strong effect upon him that he began to _act_ the prince, unconsciously.
His speech and manners became curiously ceremonious and courtly, to the
vast admiration and amusement of his intimates.  But Tom’s influence
among these young people began to grow now, day by day; and in time he
came to be looked up to, by them, with a sort of wondering awe, as a
superior being.  He seemed to know so much! and he could do and say such
marvellous things! and withal, he was so deep and wise!  Tom’s remarks,
and Tom’s performances, were reported by the boys to their elders; and
these, also, presently began to discuss Tom Canty, and to regard him
as a most gifted and extraordinary creature.  Full-grown people brought
their perplexities to Tom for solution, and were often astonished at the
wit and wisdom of his decisions.  In fact he was become a hero to all
who knew him except his own family--these, only, saw nothing in him.

Privately, after a while, Tom organised a royal court!  He was the
prince; his special comrades were guards, chamberlains, equerries, lords
and ladies in waiting, and the royal family.  Daily the mock prince was
received with elaborate ceremonials borrowed by Tom from his romantic
readings; daily the great affairs of the mimic kingdom were discussed
in the royal council, and daily his mimic highness issued decrees to his
imaginary armies, navies, and viceroyalties.

After which, he would go forth in his rags and beg a few farthings, eat
his poor crust, take his customary cuffs and abuse, and then stretch
himself upon his handful of foul straw, and resume his empty grandeurs
in his dreams.

And still his desire to look just once upon a real prince, in the flesh,
grew upon him, day by day, and week by week, until at last it absorbed
all other desires, and became the one passion of his life.

One January day, on his usual begging tour, he tramped despondently up
and down the region round about Mincing Lane and Little East Cheap, hour
after hour, bare-footed and cold, looking in at cook-shop windows and
longing for the dreadful pork-pies and other deadly inventions displayed
there--for to him these were dainties fit for the angels; that is,
judging by the smell, they were--for it had never been his good luck to
own and eat one. There was a cold drizzle of rain; the atmosphere was
murky; it was a melancholy day.  At night Tom reached home so wet and
tired and hungry that it was not possible for his father and grandmother
to observe his forlorn condition and not be moved--after their fashion;
wherefore they gave him a brisk cuffing at once and sent him to bed.
 For a long time his pain and hunger, and the swearing and fighting
going on in the building, kept him awake; but at last his thoughts
drifted away to far, romantic lands, and he fell asleep in the company
of jewelled and gilded princelings who live in vast palaces, and had
servants salaaming before them or flying to execute their orders.  And
then, as usual, he dreamed that _he_ was a princeling himself.

All night long the glories of his royal estate shone upon him; he moved
among great lords and ladies, in a blaze of light, breathing perfumes,
drinking in delicious music, and answering the reverent obeisances of
the glittering throng as it parted to make way for him, with here a
smile, and there a nod of his princely head.

And when he awoke in the morning and looked upon the wretchedness
about him, his dream had had its usual effect--it had intensified the
sordidness of his surroundings a thousandfold.  Then came bitterness,
and heart-break, and tears.




CHAPTER III. Tom’s meeting with the Prince.

Tom got up hungry, and sauntered hungry away, but with his thoughts busy
with the shadowy splendours of his night’s dreams. He wandered here
and there in the city, hardly noticing where he was going, or what
was happening around him.  People jostled him, and some gave him rough
speech; but it was all lost on the musing boy.  By-and-by he found
himself at Temple Bar, the farthest from home he had ever travelled in
that direction.  He stopped and considered a moment, then fell into his
imaginings again, and passed on outside the walls of London.  The Strand
had ceased to be a country-road then, and regarded itself as a street,
but by a strained construction; for, though there was a tolerably
compact row of houses on one side of it, there were only some scattered
great buildings on the other, these being palaces of rich nobles, with
ample and beautiful grounds stretching to the river--grounds that are
now closely packed with grim acres of brick and stone.

Tom discovered Charing Village presently, and rested himself at the
beautiful cross built there by a bereaved king of earlier days; then
idled down a quiet, lovely road, past the great cardinal’s
stately palace, toward a far more mighty and majestic palace
beyond--Westminster. Tom stared in glad wonder at the vast pile of
masonry, the wide-spreading wings, the frowning bastions and turrets,
the huge stone gateway, with its gilded bars and its magnificent array
of colossal granite lions, and other the signs and symbols of English
royalty.  Was the desire of his soul to be satisfied at last?  Here,
indeed, was a king’s palace.  Might he not hope to see a prince now--a
prince of flesh and blood, if Heaven were willing?

At each side of the gilded gate stood a living statue--that is to say,
an erect and stately and motionless man-at-arms, clad from head to heel
in shining steel armour.  At a respectful distance were many country
folk, and people from the city, waiting for any chance glimpse of
royalty that might offer.  Splendid carriages, with splendid people
in them and splendid servants outside, were arriving and departing by
several other noble gateways that pierced the royal enclosure.

Poor little Tom, in his rags, approached, and was moving slowly and
timidly past the sentinels, with a beating heart and a rising hope, when
all at once he caught sight through the golden bars of a spectacle that
almost made him shout for joy.  Within was a comely boy, tanned and
brown with sturdy outdoor sports and exercises, whose clothing was all
of lovely silks and satins, shining with jewels; at his hip a little
jewelled sword and dagger; dainty buskins on his feet, with red heels;
and on his head a jaunty crimson cap, with drooping plumes fastened
with a great sparkling gem.  Several gorgeous gentlemen stood near--his
servants, without a doubt.  Oh! he was a prince--a prince, a living
prince, a real prince--without the shadow of a question; and the prayer
of the pauper-boy’s heart was answered at last.

Tom’s breath came quick and short with excitement, and his eyes grew big
with wonder and delight.  Everything gave way in his mind instantly
to one desire:  that was to get close to the prince, and have a good,
devouring look at him.  Before he knew what he was about, he had his
face against the gate-bars.  The next instant one of the soldiers
snatched him rudely away, and sent him spinning among the gaping crowd
of country gawks and London idlers.  The soldier said,--

“Mind thy manners, thou young beggar!”

The crowd jeered and laughed; but the young prince sprang to the gate
with his face flushed, and his eyes flashing with indignation, and cried
out,--

“How dar’st thou use a poor lad like that?  How dar’st thou use the King
my father’s meanest subject so?  Open the gates, and let him in!”

You should have seen that fickle crowd snatch off their hats then.
You should have heard them cheer, and shout, “Long live the Prince of
Wales!”

The soldiers presented arms with their halberds, opened the gates,
and presented again as the little Prince of Poverty passed in, in his
fluttering rags, to join hands with the Prince of Limitless Plenty.

Edward Tudor said--

“Thou lookest tired and hungry:  thou’st been treated ill.  Come with
me.”

Half a dozen attendants sprang forward to--I don’t know what; interfere,
no doubt.  But they were waved aside with a right royal gesture, and
they stopped stock still where they were, like so many statues.  Edward
took Tom to a rich apartment in the palace, which he called his cabinet.
 By his command a repast was brought such as Tom had never encountered
before except in books.  The prince, with princely delicacy and
breeding, sent away the servants, so that his humble guest might not be
embarrassed by their critical presence; then he sat near by, and asked
questions while Tom ate.

“What is thy name, lad?”

“Tom Canty, an’ it please thee, sir.”

“‘Tis an odd one.  Where dost live?”

“In the city, please thee, sir.  Offal Court, out of Pudding Lane.”

“Offal Court!  Truly ’tis another odd one.  Hast parents?”

“Parents have I, sir, and a grand-dam likewise that is but indifferently
precious to me, God forgive me if it be offence to say it--also twin
sisters, Nan and Bet.”

“Then is thy grand-dam not over kind to thee, I take it?”

“Neither to any other is she, so please your worship.  She hath a wicked
heart, and worketh evil all her days.”

“Doth she mistreat thee?”

“There be times that she stayeth her hand, being asleep or overcome with
drink; but when she hath her judgment clear again, she maketh it up to
me with goodly beatings.”

A fierce look came into the little prince’s eyes, and he cried out--

“What!  Beatings?”

“Oh, indeed, yes, please you, sir.”

“_Beatings_!--and thou so frail and little.  Hark ye:  before the night
come, she shall hie her to the Tower.  The King my father”--

“In sooth, you forget, sir, her low degree.  The Tower is for the great
alone.”

“True, indeed.  I had not thought of that.  I will consider of her
punishment.  Is thy father kind to thee?”

“Not more than Gammer Canty, sir.”

“Fathers be alike, mayhap.  Mine hath not a doll’s temper.  He smiteth
with a heavy hand, yet spareth me:  he spareth me not always with his
tongue, though, sooth to say.  How doth thy mother use thee?”

“She is good, sir, and giveth me neither sorrow nor pain of any sort.
And Nan and Bet are like to her in this.”

“How old be these?”

“Fifteen, an’ it please you, sir.”

“The Lady Elizabeth, my sister, is fourteen, and the Lady Jane Grey,
my cousin, is of mine own age, and comely and gracious withal; but
my sister the Lady Mary, with her gloomy mien and--Look you:  do thy
sisters forbid their servants to smile, lest the sin destroy their
souls?”

“They?  Oh, dost think, sir, that _they_ have servants?”

The little prince contemplated the little pauper gravely a moment, then
said--

“And prithee, why not?  Who helpeth them undress at night?  Who attireth
them when they rise?”

“None, sir.  Would’st have them take off their garment, and sleep
without--like the beasts?”

“Their garment!  Have they but one?”

“Ah, good your worship, what would they do with more?  Truly they have
not two bodies each.”

“It is a quaint and marvellous thought!  Thy pardon, I had not meant
to laugh.  But thy good Nan and thy Bet shall have raiment and lackeys
enow, and that soon, too:  my cofferer shall look to it.  No, thank me
not; ’tis nothing.  Thou speakest well; thou hast an easy grace in it.
 Art learned?”

“I know not if I am or not, sir.  The good priest that is called Father
Andrew taught me, of his kindness, from his books.”

“Know’st thou the Latin?”

“But scantly, sir, I doubt.”

“Learn it, lad:  ’tis hard only at first.  The Greek is harder; but
neither these nor any tongues else, I think, are hard to the Lady
Elizabeth and my cousin.  Thou should’st hear those damsels at it!  But
tell me of thy Offal Court.  Hast thou a pleasant life there?”

“In truth, yes, so please you, sir, save when one is hungry. There
be Punch-and-Judy shows, and monkeys--oh such antic creatures! and so
bravely dressed!--and there be plays wherein they that play do shout
and fight till all are slain, and ’tis so fine to see, and costeth but
a farthing--albeit ’tis main hard to get the farthing, please your
worship.”

“Tell me more.”

“We lads of Offal Court do strive against each other with the cudgel,
like to the fashion of the ‘prentices, sometimes.”

The prince’s eyes flashed.  Said he--

“Marry, that would not I mislike.  Tell me more.”

“We strive in races, sir, to see who of us shall be fleetest.”

“That would I like also.  Speak on.”

“In summer, sir, we wade and swim in the canals and in the river, and
each doth duck his neighbour, and splatter him with water, and dive and
shout and tumble and--”

“‘Twould be worth my father’s kingdom but to enjoy it once! Prithee go
on.”

“We dance and sing about the Maypole in Cheapside; we play in the sand,
each covering his neighbour up; and times we make mud pastry--oh
the lovely mud, it hath not its like for delightfulness in all the
world!--we do fairly wallow in the mud, sir, saving your worship’s
presence.”

“Oh, prithee, say no more, ’tis glorious!  If that I could but clothe me
in raiment like to thine, and strip my feet, and revel in the mud once,
just once, with none to rebuke me or forbid, meseemeth I could forego
the crown!”

“And if that I could clothe me once, sweet sir, as thou art clad--just
once--”

“Oho, would’st like it?  Then so shall it be.  Doff thy rags, and don
these splendours, lad!  It is a brief happiness, but will be not less
keen for that.  We will have it while we may, and change again before
any come to molest.”

A few minutes later the little Prince of Wales was garlanded with Tom’s
fluttering odds and ends, and the little Prince of Pauperdom was tricked
out in the gaudy plumage of royalty.  The two went and stood side by
side before a great mirror, and lo, a miracle: there did not seem to
have been any change made!  They stared at each other, then at the
glass, then at each other again.  At last the puzzled princeling said--

“What dost thou make of this?”

“Ah, good your worship, require me not to answer.  It is not meet that
one of my degree should utter the thing.”

“Then will _I_ utter it.  Thou hast the same hair, the same eyes, the
same voice and manner, the same form and stature, the same face and
countenance that I bear.  Fared we forth naked, there is none could
say which was you, and which the Prince of Wales.  And, now that I
am clothed as thou wert clothed, it seemeth I should be able the more
nearly to feel as thou didst when the brute soldier--Hark ye, is not
this a bruise upon your hand?”

“Yes; but it is a slight thing, and your worship knoweth that the poor
man-at-arms--”

“Peace!  It was a shameful thing and a cruel!” cried the little prince,
stamping his bare foot.  “If the King--Stir not a step till I come
again! It is a command!”

In a moment he had snatched up and put away an article of national
importance that lay upon a table, and was out at the door and flying
through the palace grounds in his bannered rags, with a hot face and
glowing eyes.  As soon as he reached the great gate, he seized the bars,
and tried to shake them, shouting--

“Open!  Unbar the gates!”

The soldier that had maltreated Tom obeyed promptly; and as the prince
burst through the portal, half-smothered with royal wrath, the soldier
fetched him a sounding box on the ear that sent him whirling to the
roadway, and said--

“Take that, thou beggar’s spawn, for what thou got’st me from his
Highness!”

The crowd roared with laughter.  The prince picked himself out of the
mud, and made fiercely at the sentry, shouting--

“I am the Prince of Wales, my person is sacred; and thou shalt hang for
laying thy hand upon me!”

The soldier brought his halberd to a present-arms and said mockingly--

“I salute your gracious Highness.”  Then angrily--“Be off, thou crazy
rubbish!”

Here the jeering crowd closed round the poor little prince, and hustled
him far down the road, hooting him, and shouting--

“Way for his Royal Highness!  Way for the Prince of Wales!”




CHAPTER IV. The Prince’s troubles begin.

After hours of persistent pursuit and persecution, the little prince was
at last deserted by the rabble and left to himself.  As long as he had
been able to rage against the mob, and threaten it royally, and
royally utter commands that were good stuff to laugh at, he was very
entertaining; but when weariness finally forced him to be silent, he was
no longer of use to his tormentors, and they sought amusement elsewhere.
He looked about him, now, but could not recognise the locality.  He
was within the city of London--that was all he knew.  He moved on,
aimlessly, and in a little while the houses thinned, and the passers-by
were infrequent.  He bathed his bleeding feet in the brook which flowed
then where Farringdon Street now is; rested a few moments, then passed
on, and presently came upon a great space with only a few scattered
houses in it, and a prodigious church.  He recognised this church.
 Scaffoldings were about, everywhere, and swarms of workmen; for it was
undergoing elaborate repairs.  The prince took heart at once--he felt
that his troubles were at an end, now.  He said to himself, “It is the
ancient Grey Friars’ Church, which the king my father hath taken from
the monks and given for a home for ever for poor and forsaken children,
and new-named it Christ’s Church.  Right gladly will they serve the son
of him who hath done so generously by them--and the more that that son
is himself as poor and as forlorn as any that be sheltered here this
day, or ever shall be.”

He was soon in the midst of a crowd of boys who were running, jumping,
playing at ball and leap-frog, and otherwise disporting themselves, and
right noisily, too.  They were all dressed alike, and in the fashion
which in that day prevailed among serving-men and ‘prentices{1}--that
is to say, each had on the crown of his head a flat black cap about the
size of a saucer, which was not useful as a covering, it being of such
scanty dimensions, neither was it ornamental; from beneath it the hair
fell, unparted, to the middle of the forehead, and was cropped straight
around; a clerical band at the neck; a blue gown that fitted closely
and hung as low as the knees or lower; full sleeves; a broad red belt;
bright yellow stockings, gartered above the knees; low shoes with large
metal buckles. It was a sufficiently ugly costume.

The boys stopped their play and flocked about the prince, who said with
native dignity--

“Good lads, say to your master that Edward Prince of Wales desireth
speech with him.”

A great shout went up at this, and one rude fellow said--

“Marry, art thou his grace’s messenger, beggar?”

The prince’s face flushed with anger, and his ready hand flew to his
hip, but there was nothing there.  There was a storm of laughter, and
one boy said--

“Didst mark that?  He fancied he had a sword--belike he is the prince
himself.”

This sally brought more laughter.  Poor Edward drew himself up proudly
and said--

“I am the prince; and it ill beseemeth you that feed upon the king my
father’s bounty to use me so.”

This was vastly enjoyed, as the laughter testified.  The youth who had
first spoken, shouted to his comrades--

“Ho, swine, slaves, pensioners of his grace’s princely father, where be
your manners?  Down on your marrow bones, all of ye, and do reverence to
his kingly port and royal rags!”

With boisterous mirth they dropped upon their knees in a body and did
mock homage to their prey.  The prince spurned the nearest boy with his
foot, and said fiercely--

“Take thou that, till the morrow come and I build thee a gibbet!”

Ah, but this was not a joke--this was going beyond fun.  The laughter
ceased on the instant, and fury took its place.  A dozen shouted--

“Hale him forth!  To the horse-pond, to the horse-pond!  Where be the
dogs?  Ho, there, Lion! ho, Fangs!”

Then followed such a thing as England had never seen before--the sacred
person of the heir to the throne rudely buffeted by plebeian hands, and
set upon and torn by dogs.

As night drew to a close that day, the prince found himself far down in
the close-built portion of the city.  His body was bruised, his hands
were bleeding, and his rags were all besmirched with mud.  He wandered
on and on, and grew more and more bewildered, and so tired and faint
he could hardly drag one foot after the other.  He had ceased to ask
questions of anyone, since they brought him only insult instead of
information.  He kept muttering to himself, “Offal Court--that is the
name; if I can but find it before my strength is wholly spent and I
drop, then am I saved--for his people will take me to the palace and
prove that I am none of theirs, but the true prince, and I shall have
mine own again.”  And now and then his mind reverted to his treatment
by those rude Christ’s Hospital boys, and he said, “When I am king, they
shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books;
for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved, and the
heart.  I will keep this diligently in my remembrance, that this day’s
lesson be not lost upon me, and my people suffer thereby; for learning
softeneth the heart and breedeth gentleness and charity.” {1}

The lights began to twinkle, it came on to rain, the wind rose, and a
raw and gusty night set in.  The houseless prince, the homeless heir to
the throne of England, still moved on, drifting deeper into the maze
of squalid alleys where the swarming hives of poverty and misery were
massed together.

Suddenly a great drunken ruffian collared him and said--

“Out to this time of night again, and hast not brought a farthing home,
I warrant me!  If it be so, an’ I do not break all the bones in thy lean
body, then am I not John Canty, but some other.”

The prince twisted himself loose, unconsciously brushed his profaned
shoulder, and eagerly said--

“Oh, art _his_ father, truly?  Sweet heaven grant it be so--then wilt
thou fetch him away and restore me!”

“_His_ father?  I know not what thou mean’st; I but know I am _thy_
father, as thou shalt soon have cause to--”

“Oh, jest not, palter not, delay not!--I am worn, I am wounded, I can
bear no more.  Take me to the king my father, and he will make thee rich
beyond thy wildest dreams.  Believe me, man, believe me!--I speak no
lie, but only the truth!--put forth thy hand and save me!  I am indeed
the Prince of Wales!”

The man stared down, stupefied, upon the lad, then shook his head and
muttered--

“Gone stark mad as any Tom o’ Bedlam!”--then collared him once more,
and said with a coarse laugh and an oath, “But mad or no mad, I and thy
Gammer Canty will soon find where the soft places in thy bones lie, or
I’m no true man!”

With this he dragged the frantic and struggling prince away, and
disappeared up a front court followed by a delighted and noisy swarm of
human vermin.




CHAPTER V. Tom as a Patrician.

Tom Canty, left alone in the prince’s cabinet, made good use of his
opportunity.  He turned himself this way and that before the great
mirror, admiring his finery; then walked away, imitating the prince’s
high-bred carriage, and still observing results in the glass.  Next he
drew the beautiful sword, and bowed, kissing the blade, and laying it
across his breast, as he had seen a noble knight do, by way of salute to
the lieutenant of the Tower, five or six weeks before, when delivering
the great lords of Norfolk and Surrey into his hands for captivity.  Tom
played with the jewelled dagger that hung upon his thigh; he examined
the costly and exquisite ornaments of the room; he tried each of the
sumptuous chairs, and thought how proud he would be if the Offal Court
herd could only peep in and see him in his grandeur.  He wondered if
they would believe the marvellous tale he should tell when he got home,
or if they would shake their heads, and say his overtaxed imagination
had at last upset his reason.

At the end of half an hour it suddenly occurred to him that the prince
was gone a long time; then right away he began to feel lonely; very
soon he fell to listening and longing, and ceased to toy with the
pretty things about him; he grew uneasy, then restless, then distressed.
Suppose some one should come, and catch him in the prince’s clothes, and
the prince not there to explain.  Might they not hang him at once,
and inquire into his case afterward?  He had heard that the great
were prompt about small matters.  His fear rose higher and higher; and
trembling he softly opened the door to the antechamber, resolved to
fly and seek the prince, and, through him, protection and release.  Six
gorgeous gentlemen-servants and two young pages of high degree, clothed
like butterflies, sprang to their feet and bowed low before him.  He
stepped quickly back and shut the door.  He said--

“Oh, they mock at me!  They will go and tell.  Oh! why came I here to
cast away my life?”

He walked up and down the floor, filled with nameless fears, listening,
starting at every trifling sound.  Presently the door swung open, and a
silken page said--

“The Lady Jane Grey.”

The door closed and a sweet young girl, richly clad, bounded toward him.
But she stopped suddenly, and said in a distressed voice--

“Oh, what aileth thee, my lord?”

Tom’s breath was nearly failing him; but he made shift to stammer out--

“Ah, be merciful, thou!  In sooth I am no lord, but only poor Tom Canty
of Offal Court in the city.  Prithee let me see the prince, and he will
of his grace restore to me my rags, and let me hence unhurt.  Oh, be
thou merciful, and save me!”

By this time the boy was on his knees, and supplicating with his eyes
and uplifted hands as well as with his tongue.  The young girl seemed
horror-stricken.  She cried out--

“O my lord, on thy knees?--and to _me_!”

Then she fled away in fright; and Tom, smitten with despair, sank down,
murmuring--

“There is no help, there is no hope.  Now will they come and take me.”

Whilst he lay there benumbed with terror, dreadful tidings were speeding
through the palace.  The whisper--for it was whispered always--flew from
menial to menial, from lord to lady, down all the long corridors, from
story to story, from saloon to saloon, “The prince hath gone mad, the
prince hath gone mad!”  Soon every saloon, every marble hall, had its
groups of glittering lords and ladies, and other groups of dazzling
lesser folk, talking earnestly together in whispers, and every face
had in it dismay. Presently a splendid official came marching by these
groups, making solemn proclamation--

“IN THE NAME OF THE KING!

Let none list to this false and foolish matter, upon pain of death, nor
discuss the same, nor carry it abroad.  In the name of the King!”

The whisperings ceased as suddenly as if the whisperers had been
stricken dumb.

Soon there was a general buzz along the corridors, of “The prince! See,
the prince comes!”

Poor Tom came slowly walking past the low-bowing groups, trying to
bow in return, and meekly gazing upon his strange surroundings with
bewildered and pathetic eyes.  Great nobles walked upon each side of
him, making him lean upon them, and so steady his steps. Behind him
followed the court-physicians and some servants.

Presently Tom found himself in a noble apartment of the palace and heard
the door close behind him.  Around him stood those who had come with
him. Before him, at a little distance, reclined a very large and very
fat man, with a wide, pulpy face, and a stern expression.  His large
head was very grey; and his whiskers, which he wore only around his
face, like a frame, were grey also.  His clothing was of rich stuff,
but old, and slightly frayed in places.  One of his swollen legs had a
pillow under it, and was wrapped in bandages.  There was silence now;
and there was no head there but was bent in reverence, except this
man’s.  This stern-countenanced invalid was the dread Henry VIII.  He
said--and his face grew gentle as he began to speak--

“How now, my lord Edward, my prince?  Hast been minded to cozen me, the
good King thy father, who loveth thee, and kindly useth thee, with a
sorry jest?”

Poor Tom was listening, as well as his dazed faculties would let him,
to the beginning of this speech; but when the words ‘me, the good King’
fell upon his ear, his face blanched, and he dropped as instantly upon
his knees as if a shot had brought him there. Lifting up his hands, he
exclaimed--

“Thou the _King_?  Then am I undone indeed!”

This speech seemed to stun the King.  His eyes wandered from face to
face aimlessly, then rested, bewildered, upon the boy before him.  Then
he said in a tone of deep disappointment--

“Alack, I had believed the rumour disproportioned to the truth; but I
fear me ’tis not so.”  He breathed a heavy sigh, and said in a gentle
voice, “Come to thy father, child:  thou art not well.”

Tom was assisted to his feet, and approached the Majesty of England,
humble and trembling.  The King took the frightened face between his
hands, and gazed earnestly and lovingly into it awhile, as if seeking
some grateful sign of returning reason there, then pressed the curly
head against his breast, and patted it tenderly.  Presently he said--

“Dost not know thy father, child?  Break not mine old heart; say thou
know’st me.  Thou _dost_ know me, dost thou not?”

“Yea:  thou art my dread lord the King, whom God preserve!”

“True, true--that is well--be comforted, tremble not so; there is none
here would hurt thee; there is none here but loves thee. Thou art better
now; thy ill dream passeth--is’t not so?  Thou wilt not miscall thyself
again, as they say thou didst a little while agone?”

“I pray thee of thy grace believe me, I did but speak the truth, most
dread lord; for I am the meanest among thy subjects, being a pauper
born, and ’tis by a sore mischance and accident I am here, albeit I was
therein nothing blameful.  I am but young to die, and thou canst save me
with one little word.  Oh speak it, sir!”

“Die?  Talk not so, sweet prince--peace, peace, to thy troubled
heart--thou shalt not die!”

Tom dropped upon his knees with a glad cry--

“God requite thy mercy, O my King, and save thee long to bless thy
land!” Then springing up, he turned a joyful face toward the two lords
in waiting, and exclaimed, “Thou heard’st it!  I am not to die:  the
King hath said it!”  There was no movement, save that all bowed with
grave respect; but no one spoke.  He hesitated, a little confused, then
turned timidly toward the King, saying, “I may go now?”

“Go?  Surely, if thou desirest.  But why not tarry yet a little? Whither
would’st go?”

Tom dropped his eyes, and answered humbly--

“Peradventure I mistook; but I did think me free, and so was I moved
to seek again the kennel where I was born and bred to misery, yet which
harboureth my mother and my sisters, and so is home to me; whereas these
pomps and splendours whereunto I am not used--oh, please you, sir, to
let me go!”

The King was silent and thoughtful a while, and his face betrayed a
growing distress and uneasiness.  Presently he said, with something of
hope in his voice--

“Perchance he is but mad upon this one strain, and hath his wits
unmarred as toucheth other matter.  God send it may be so!  We will make
trial.”

Then he asked Tom a question in Latin, and Tom answered him lamely in
the same tongue.  The lords and doctors manifested their gratification
also. The King said--

“‘Twas not according to his schooling and ability, but showeth that his
mind is but diseased, not stricken fatally.  How say you, sir?”

The physician addressed bowed low, and replied--

“It jumpeth with my own conviction, sire, that thou hast divined
aright.”

The King looked pleased with this encouragement, coming as it did from
so excellent authority, and continued with good heart--

“Now mark ye all:  we will try him further.”

He put a question to Tom in French.  Tom stood silent a moment,
embarrassed by having so many eyes centred upon him, then said
diffidently--

“I have no knowledge of this tongue, so please your majesty.”

The King fell back upon his couch.  The attendants flew to his
assistance; but he put them aside, and said--

“Trouble me not--it is nothing but a scurvy faintness.  Raise me! There,
‘tis sufficient.  Come hither, child; there, rest thy poor troubled head
upon thy father’s heart, and be at peace.  Thou’lt soon be well:  ’tis
but a passing fantasy.  Fear thou not; thou’lt soon be well.”  Then
he turned toward the company:  his gentle manner changed, and baleful
lightnings began to play from his eyes.  He said--

“List ye all!  This my son is mad; but it is not permanent.  Over-study
hath done this, and somewhat too much of confinement.  Away with his
books and teachers! see ye to it.  Pleasure him with sports, beguile him
in wholesome ways, so that his health come again.”  He raised himself
higher still, and went on with energy, “He is mad; but he is my son,
and England’s heir; and, mad or sane, still shall he reign!  And hear ye
further, and proclaim it: whoso speaketh of this his distemper worketh
against the peace and order of these realms, and shall to the gallows!
. . . Give me to drink--I burn:  this sorrow sappeth my strength. . . .
There, take away the cup. . . . Support me.  There, that is well.  Mad,
is he?  Were he a thousand times mad, yet is he Prince of Wales, and I
the King will confirm it.  This very morrow shall he be installed in his
princely dignity in due and ancient form.  Take instant order for it, my
lord Hertford.”

One of the nobles knelt at the royal couch, and said--

“The King’s majesty knoweth that the Hereditary Great Marshal of England
lieth attainted in the Tower.  It were not meet that one attainted--”

“Peace!  Insult not mine ears with his hated name.  Is this man to
live for ever?  Am I to be baulked of my will?  Is the prince to tarry
uninstalled, because, forsooth, the realm lacketh an Earl Marshal
free of treasonable taint to invest him with his honours? No, by the
splendour of God!  Warn my Parliament to bring me Norfolk’s doom before
the sun rise again, else shall they answer for it grievously!” {1}

Lord Hertford said--

“The King’s will is law;” and, rising, returned to his former place.

Gradually the wrath faded out of the old King’s face, and he said--

“Kiss me, my prince.  There . . . what fearest thou?  Am I not thy
loving father?”

“Thou art good to me that am unworthy, O mighty and gracious lord: that
in truth I know.  But--but--it grieveth me to think of him that is to
die, and--”

“Ah, ’tis like thee, ’tis like thee!  I know thy heart is still the
same, even though thy mind hath suffered hurt, for thou wert ever of a
gentle spirit.  But this duke standeth between thee and thine honours:
 I will have another in his stead that shall bring no taint to his great
office. Comfort thee, my prince:  trouble not thy poor head with this
matter.”

“But is it not I that speed him hence, my liege?  How long might he not
live, but for me?”

“Take no thought of him, my prince:  he is not worthy.  Kiss me once
again, and go to thy trifles and amusements; for my malady distresseth
me.  I am aweary, and would rest.  Go with thine uncle Hertford and thy
people, and come again when my body is refreshed.”

Tom, heavy-hearted, was conducted from the presence, for this last
sentence was a death-blow to the hope he had cherished that now he would
be set free.  Once more he heard the buzz of low voices exclaiming, “The
prince, the prince comes!”

His spirits sank lower and lower as he moved between the glittering
files of bowing courtiers; for he recognised that he was indeed a
captive now, and might remain for ever shut up in this gilded cage, a
forlorn and friendless prince, except God in his mercy take pity on him
and set him free.

And, turn where he would, he seemed to see floating in the air the
severed head and the remembered face of the great Duke of Norfolk, the
eyes fixed on him reproachfully.

His old dreams had been so pleasant; but this reality was so dreary!




CHAPTER VI. Tom receives instructions.

Tom was conducted to the principal apartment of a noble suite, and made
to sit down--a thing which he was loth to do, since there were elderly
men and men of high degree about him.  He begged them to be seated
also, but they only bowed their thanks or murmured them, and remained
standing. He would have insisted, but his ‘uncle’ the Earl of Hertford
whispered in his ear--

“Prithee, insist not, my lord; it is not meet that they sit in thy
presence.”

The Lord St. John was announced, and after making obeisance to Tom, he
said--

“I come upon the King’s errand, concerning a matter which requireth
privacy.  Will it please your royal highness to dismiss all that attend
you here, save my lord the Earl of Hertford?”

Observing that Tom did not seem to know how to proceed, Hertford
whispered him to make a sign with his hand, and not trouble himself to
speak unless he chose.  When the waiting gentlemen had retired, Lord St.
John said--

“His majesty commandeth, that for due and weighty reasons of state, the
prince’s grace shall hide his infirmity in all ways that be within his
power, till it be passed and he be as he was before.  To wit, that he
shall deny to none that he is the true prince, and heir to England’s
greatness; that he shall uphold his princely dignity, and shall receive,
without word or sign of protest, that reverence and observance which
unto it do appertain of right and ancient usage; that he shall cease to
speak to any of that lowly birth and life his malady hath conjured
out of the unwholesome imaginings of o’er-wrought fancy; that he shall
strive with diligence to bring unto his memory again those faces which
he was wont to know--and where he faileth he shall hold his peace,
neither betraying by semblance of surprise or other sign that he hath
forgot; that upon occasions of state, whensoever any matter shall
perplex him as to the thing he should do or the utterance he should
make, he shall show nought of unrest to the curious that look on, but
take advice in that matter of the Lord Hertford, or my humble self,
which are commanded of the King to be upon this service and close at
call, till this commandment be dissolved. Thus saith the King’s majesty,
who sendeth greeting to your royal highness, and prayeth that God will
of His mercy quickly heal you and have you now and ever in His holy
keeping.”

The Lord St. John made reverence and stood aside.  Tom replied
resignedly--

“The King hath said it.  None may palter with the King’s command, or fit
it to his ease, where it doth chafe, with deft evasions. The King shall
be obeyed.”

Lord Hertford said--

“Touching the King’s majesty’s ordainment concerning books and such like
serious matters, it may peradventure please your highness to ease your
time with lightsome entertainment, lest you go wearied to the banquet
and suffer harm thereby.”

Tom’s face showed inquiring surprise; and a blush followed when he saw
Lord St. John’s eyes bent sorrowfully upon him.  His lordship said--

“Thy memory still wrongeth thee, and thou hast shown surprise--but
suffer it not to trouble thee, for ’tis a matter that will not bide,
but depart with thy mending malady.  My Lord of Hertford speaketh of
the city’s banquet which the King’s majesty did promise, some two months
flown, your highness should attend.  Thou recallest it now?”

“It grieves me to confess it had indeed escaped me,” said Tom, in a
hesitating voice; and blushed again.

At this moment the Lady Elizabeth and the Lady Jane Grey were announced.
The two lords exchanged significant glances, and Hertford stepped
quickly toward the door.  As the young girls passed him, he said in a
low voice--

“I pray ye, ladies, seem not to observe his humours, nor show surprise
when his memory doth lapse--it will grieve you to note how it doth stick
at every trifle.”

Meantime Lord St. John was saying in Tom’s ear--

“Please you, sir, keep diligently in mind his majesty’s desire. Remember
all thou canst--_seem_ to remember all else.  Let them not perceive that
thou art much changed from thy wont, for thou knowest how tenderly thy
old play-fellows bear thee in their hearts and how ’twould grieve them.
Art willing, sir, that I remain?--and thine uncle?”

Tom signified assent with a gesture and a murmured word, for he was
already learning, and in his simple heart was resolved to acquit himself
as best he might, according to the King’s command.

In spite of every precaution, the conversation among the young people
became a little embarrassing at times.  More than once, in truth,
Tom was near to breaking down and confessing himself unequal to his
tremendous part; but the tact of the Princess Elizabeth saved him, or a
word from one or the other of the vigilant lords, thrown in apparently
by chance, had the same happy effect.  Once the little Lady Jane turned
to Tom and dismayed him with this question,--

“Hast paid thy duty to the Queen’s majesty to-day, my lord?”

Tom hesitated, looked distressed, and was about to stammer out something
at hazard, when Lord St. John took the word and answered for him
with the easy grace of a courtier accustomed to encounter delicate
difficulties and to be ready for them--

“He hath indeed, madam, and she did greatly hearten him, as touching his
majesty’s condition; is it not so, your highness?”

Tom mumbled something that stood for assent, but felt that he was
getting upon dangerous ground.  Somewhat later it was mentioned that
Tom was to study no more at present, whereupon her little ladyship
exclaimed--

“‘Tis a pity, ’tis a pity!  Thou wert proceeding bravely.  But bide thy
time in patience:  it will not be for long.  Thou’lt yet be graced
with learning like thy father, and make thy tongue master of as many
languages as his, good my prince.”

“My father!” cried Tom, off his guard for the moment.  “I trow he cannot
speak his own so that any but the swine that kennel in the styes may
tell his meaning; and as for learning of any sort soever--”

He looked up and encountered a solemn warning in my Lord St. John’s
eyes.

He stopped, blushed, then continued low and sadly: “Ah, my malady
persecuteth me again, and my mind wandereth.  I meant the King’s grace
no irreverence.”

“We know it, sir,” said the Princess Elizabeth, taking her ‘brother’s’
hand between her two palms, respectfully but caressingly; “trouble not
thyself as to that.  The fault is none of thine, but thy distemper’s.”

“Thou’rt a gentle comforter, sweet lady,” said Tom, gratefully, “and my
heart moveth me to thank thee for’t, an’ I may be so bold.”

Once the giddy little Lady Jane fired a simple Greek phrase at Tom.
 The Princess Elizabeth’s quick eye saw by the serene blankness of the
target’s front that the shaft was overshot; so she tranquilly delivered
a return volley of sounding Greek on Tom’s behalf, and then straightway
changed the talk to other matters.

Time wore on pleasantly, and likewise smoothly, on the whole. Snags and
sandbars grew less and less frequent, and Tom grew more and more at
his ease, seeing that all were so lovingly bent upon helping him and
overlooking his mistakes.  When it came out that the little ladies were
to accompany him to the Lord Mayor’s banquet in the evening, his heart
gave a bound of relief and delight, for he felt that he should not be
friendless, now, among that multitude of strangers; whereas, an
hour earlier, the idea of their going with him would have been an
insupportable terror to him.

Tom’s guardian angels, the two lords, had had less comfort in the
interview than the other parties to it.  They felt much as if they were
piloting a great ship through a dangerous channel; they were on the
alert constantly, and found their office no child’s play. Wherefore,
at last, when the ladies’ visit was drawing to a close and the Lord
Guilford Dudley was announced, they not only felt that their charge had
been sufficiently taxed for the present, but also that they themselves
were not in the best condition to take their ship back and make their
anxious voyage all over again.  So they respectfully advised Tom to
excuse himself, which he was very glad to do, although a slight shade
of disappointment might have been observed upon my Lady Jane’s face when
she heard the splendid stripling denied admittance.

There was a pause now, a sort of waiting silence which Tom could not
understand.  He glanced at Lord Hertford, who gave him a sign--but he
failed to understand that also.  The ready Elizabeth came to the rescue
with her usual easy grace.  She made reverence and said--

“Have we leave of the prince’s grace my brother to go?”

Tom said--

“Indeed your ladyships can have whatsoever of me they will, for the
asking; yet would I rather give them any other thing that in my poor
power lieth, than leave to take the light and blessing of their presence
hence.  Give ye good den, and God be with ye!” Then he smiled inwardly
at the thought, “‘Tis not for nought I have dwelt but among princes in
my reading, and taught my tongue some slight trick of their broidered
and gracious speech withal!”

When the illustrious maidens were gone, Tom turned wearily to his
keepers and said--

“May it please your lordships to grant me leave to go into some corner
and rest me?”

Lord Hertford said--

“So please your highness, it is for you to command, it is for us to
obey. That thou should’st rest is indeed a needful thing, since thou
must journey to the city presently.”

He touched a bell, and a page appeared, who was ordered to desire the
presence of Sir William Herbert.  This gentleman came straightway, and
conducted Tom to an inner apartment.  Tom’s first movement there was
to reach for a cup of water; but a silk-and-velvet servitor seized it,
dropped upon one knee, and offered it to him on a golden salver.

Next the tired captive sat down and was going to take off his buskins,
timidly asking leave with his eye, but another silk-and-velvet
discomforter went down upon his knees and took the office from him.  He
made two or three further efforts to help himself, but being promptly
forestalled each time, he finally gave up, with a sigh of resignation
and a murmured “Beshrew me, but I marvel they do not require to breathe
for me also!”  Slippered, and wrapped in a sumptuous robe, he laid
himself down at last to rest, but not to sleep, for his head was too
full of thoughts and the room too full of people.  He could not dismiss
the former, so they stayed; he did not know enough to dismiss the
latter, so they stayed also, to his vast regret--and theirs.

Tom’s departure had left his two noble guardians alone.  They mused a
while, with much head-shaking and walking the floor, then Lord St. John
said--

“Plainly, what dost thou think?”

“Plainly, then, this.  The King is near his end; my nephew is mad--mad
will mount the throne, and mad remain.  God protect England, since she
will need it!”

“Verily it promiseth so, indeed.  But . . . have you no misgivings as to
. . . as to . . .”

The speaker hesitated, and finally stopped.  He evidently felt that he
was upon delicate ground.  Lord Hertford stopped before him, looked into
his face with a clear, frank eye, and said--

“Speak on--there is none to hear but me.  Misgivings as to what?”

“I am full loth to word the thing that is in my mind, and thou so near
to him in blood, my lord.  But craving pardon if I do offend, seemeth it
not strange that madness could so change his port and manner?--not but
that his port and speech are princely still, but that they _differ_,
in one unweighty trifle or another, from what his custom was aforetime.
 Seemeth it not strange that madness should filch from his memory his
father’s very lineaments; the customs and observances that are his due
from such as be about him; and, leaving him his Latin, strip him of his
Greek and French?  My lord, be not offended, but ease my mind of its
disquiet and receive my grateful thanks.  It haunteth me, his saying he
was not the prince, and so--”

“Peace, my lord, thou utterest treason!  Hast forgot the King’s command?
Remember I am party to thy crime if I but listen.”

St. John paled, and hastened to say--

“I was in fault, I do confess it.  Betray me not, grant me this grace
out of thy courtesy, and I will neither think nor speak of this thing
more. Deal not hardly with me, sir, else am I ruined.”

“I am content, my lord.  So thou offend not again, here or in the
ears of others, it shall be as though thou hadst not spoken.  But thou
need’st not have misgivings.  He is my sister’s son; are not his voice,
his face, his form, familiar to me from his cradle? Madness can do all
the odd conflicting things thou seest in him, and more.  Dost not recall
how that the old Baron Marley, being mad, forgot the favour of his
own countenance that he had known for sixty years, and held it was
another’s; nay, even claimed he was the son of Mary Magdalene, and that
his head was made of Spanish glass; and, sooth to say, he suffered none
to touch it, lest by mischance some heedless hand might shiver it?  Give
thy misgivings easement, good my lord.  This is the very prince--I know
him well--and soon will be thy king; it may advantage thee to bear this
in mind, and more dwell upon it than the other.”

After some further talk, in which the Lord St. John covered up his
mistake as well as he could by repeated protests that his faith was
thoroughly grounded now, and could not be assailed by doubts again, the
Lord Hertford relieved his fellow-keeper, and sat down to keep watch and
ward alone.  He was soon deep in meditation, and evidently the longer he
thought, the more he was bothered.  By-and-by he began to pace the floor
and mutter.

“Tush, he _must_ be the prince!  Will any be in all the land maintain
there can be two, not of one blood and birth, so marvellously twinned?
 And even were it so, ’twere yet a stranger miracle that chance should
cast the one into the other’s place. Nay, ’tis folly, folly, folly!”

Presently he said--

“Now were he impostor and called himself prince, look you _that_ would
be natural; that would be reasonable.  But lived ever an impostor yet,
who, being called prince by the king, prince by the court, prince by
all, _denied_ his dignity and pleaded against his exaltation?  _No_!  By
the soul of St. Swithin, no!  This is the true prince, gone mad!”




CHAPTER VII. Tom’s first royal dinner.

Somewhat after one in the afternoon, Tom resignedly underwent the ordeal
of being dressed for dinner.  He found himself as finely clothed as
before, but everything different, everything changed, from his ruff to
his stockings.  He was presently conducted with much state to a spacious
and ornate apartment, where a table was already set for one.  Its
furniture was all of massy gold, and beautified with designs which
well-nigh made it priceless, since they were the work of Benvenuto.  The
room was half-filled with noble servitors.  A chaplain said grace, and
Tom was about to fall to, for hunger had long been constitutional with
him, but was interrupted by my lord the Earl of Berkeley, who fastened a
napkin about his neck; for the great post of Diaperers to the Prince
of Wales was hereditary in this nobleman’s family.  Tom’s cupbearer was
present, and forestalled all his attempts to help himself to wine.  The
Taster to his highness the Prince of Wales was there also, prepared to
taste any suspicious dish upon requirement, and run the risk of being
poisoned.  He was only an ornamental appendage at this time, and was
seldom called upon to exercise his function; but there had been times,
not many generations past, when the office of taster had its perils,
and was not a grandeur to be desired.  Why they did not use a dog or a
plumber seems strange; but all the ways of royalty are strange.  My
Lord d’Arcy, First Groom of the Chamber, was there, to do goodness knows
what; but there he was--let that suffice.  The Lord Chief Butler was
there, and stood behind Tom’s chair, overseeing the solemnities, under
command of the Lord Great Steward and the Lord Head Cook, who stood
near.  Tom had three hundred and eighty-four servants beside these;
but they were not all in that room, of course, nor the quarter of them;
neither was Tom aware yet that they existed.

All those that were present had been well drilled within the hour to
remember that the prince was temporarily out of his head, and to be
careful to show no surprise at his vagaries.  These ‘vagaries’ were
soon on exhibition before them; but they only moved their compassion and
their sorrow, not their mirth.  It was a heavy affliction to them to see
the beloved prince so stricken.

Poor Tom ate with his fingers mainly; but no one smiled at it, or even
seemed to observe it.  He inspected his napkin curiously, and with deep
interest, for it was of a very dainty and beautiful fabric, then said
with simplicity--

“Prithee, take it away, lest in mine unheedfulness it be soiled.”

The Hereditary Diaperer took it away with reverent manner, and without
word or protest of any sort.

Tom examined the turnips and the lettuce with interest, and asked what
they were, and if they were to be eaten; for it was only recently that
men had begun to raise these things in England in place of importing
them as luxuries from Holland. {1}  His question was answered with grave
respect, and no surprise manifested.  When he had finished his dessert,
he filled his pockets with nuts; but nobody appeared to be aware of it,
or disturbed by it.  But the next moment he was himself disturbed by
it, and showed discomposure; for this was the only service he had been
permitted to do with his own hands during the meal, and he did not doubt
that he had done a most improper and unprincely thing.  At that moment
the muscles of his nose began to twitch, and the end of that organ to
lift and wrinkle.  This continued, and Tom began to evince a growing
distress.  He looked appealingly, first at one and then another of the
lords about him, and tears came into his eyes.  They sprang forward with
dismay in their faces, and begged to know his trouble.  Tom said with
genuine anguish--

“I crave your indulgence:  my nose itcheth cruelly.  What is the custom
and usage in this emergence?  Prithee, speed, for ’tis but a little time
that I can bear it.”

None smiled; but all were sore perplexed, and looked one to the other
in deep tribulation for counsel.  But behold, here was a dead wall, and
nothing in English history to tell how to get over it.  The Master of
Ceremonies was not present:  there was no one who felt safe to venture
upon this uncharted sea, or risk the attempt to solve this solemn
problem.  Alas! there was no Hereditary Scratcher.  Meantime the tears
had overflowed their banks, and begun to trickle down Tom’s cheeks.  His
twitching nose was pleading more urgently than ever for relief.  At last
nature broke down the barriers of etiquette:  Tom lifted up an inward
prayer for pardon if he was doing wrong, and brought relief to the
burdened hearts of his court by scratching his nose himself.

His meal being ended, a lord came and held before him a broad, shallow,
golden dish with fragrant rosewater in it, to cleanse his mouth and
fingers with; and my lord the Hereditary Diaperer stood by with a napkin
for his use.  Tom gazed at the dish a puzzled moment or two, then raised
it to his lips, and gravely took a draught.  Then he returned it to the
waiting lord, and said--

“Nay, it likes me not, my lord:  it hath a pretty flavour, but it
wanteth strength.”

This new eccentricity of the prince’s ruined mind made all the hearts
about him ache; but the sad sight moved none to merriment.

Tom’s next unconscious blunder was to get up and leave the table
just when the chaplain had taken his stand behind his chair, and with
uplifted hands, and closed, uplifted eyes, was in the act of beginning
the blessing.  Still nobody seemed to perceive that the prince had done
a thing unusual.

By his own request our small friend was now conducted to his private
cabinet, and left there alone to his own devices.  Hanging upon hooks in
the oaken wainscoting were the several pieces of a suit of shining steel
armour, covered all over with beautiful designs exquisitely inlaid
in gold.  This martial panoply belonged to the true prince--a recent
present from Madam Parr the Queen. Tom put on the greaves, the
gauntlets, the plumed helmet, and such other pieces as he could don
without assistance, and for a while was minded to call for help and
complete the matter, but bethought him of the nuts he had brought away
from dinner, and the joy it would be to eat them with no crowd to eye
him, and no Grand Hereditaries to pester him with undesired services;
so he restored the pretty things to their several places, and soon was
cracking nuts, and feeling almost naturally happy for the first time
since God for his sins had made him a prince.  When the nuts were all
gone, he stumbled upon some inviting books in a closet, among them one
about the etiquette of the English court.  This was a prize. He lay down
upon a sumptuous divan, and proceeded to instruct himself with honest
zeal.  Let us leave him there for the present.




CHAPTER VIII. The Question of the Seal.

About five o’clock Henry VIII. awoke out of an unrefreshing nap, and
muttered to himself, “Troublous dreams, troublous dreams! Mine end is
now at hand:  so say these warnings, and my failing pulses do confirm
it.” Presently a wicked light flamed up in his eye, and he muttered,
“Yet will not I die till _He_ go before.”

His attendants perceiving that he was awake, one of them asked his
pleasure concerning the Lord Chancellor, who was waiting without.

“Admit him, admit him!” exclaimed the King eagerly.

The Lord Chancellor entered, and knelt by the King’s couch, saying--

“I have given order, and, according to the King’s command, the peers of
the realm, in their robes, do now stand at the bar of the House, where,
having confirmed the Duke of Norfolk’s doom, they humbly wait his
majesty’s further pleasure in the matter.”

The King’s face lit up with a fierce joy.  Said he--

“Lift me up!  In mine own person will I go before my Parliament, and
with mine own hand will I seal the warrant that rids me of--”

His voice failed; an ashen pallor swept the flush from his cheeks; and
the attendants eased him back upon his pillows, and hurriedly assisted
him with restoratives.  Presently he said sorrowfully--

“Alack, how have I longed for this sweet hour! and lo, too late it
cometh, and I am robbed of this so coveted chance.  But speed ye, speed
ye! let others do this happy office sith ’tis denied to me. I put my
Great Seal in commission:  choose thou the lords that shall compose it,
and get ye to your work.  Speed ye, man!  Before the sun shall rise and
set again, bring me his head that I may see it.”

“According to the King’s command, so shall it be.  Will’t please your
majesty to order that the Seal be now restored to me, so that I may
forth upon the business?”

“The Seal?  Who keepeth the Seal but thou?”

“Please your majesty, you did take it from me two days since, saying it
should no more do its office till your own royal hand should use it upon
the Duke of Norfolk’s warrant.”

“Why, so in sooth I did:  I do remember. . . . What did I with it?...
I am very feeble. . . . So oft these days doth my memory play the
traitor with me. . . . ’tis strange, strange--”

The King dropped into inarticulate mumblings, shaking his grey head
weakly from time to time, and gropingly trying to recollect what he
had done with the Seal.  At last my Lord Hertford ventured to kneel and
offer information--

“Sire, if that I may be so bold, here be several that do remember with
me how that you gave the Great Seal into the hands of his highness the
Prince of Wales to keep against the day that--”

“True, most true!” interrupted the King.  “Fetch it!  Go:  time flieth!”

Lord Hertford flew to Tom, but returned to the King before very long,
troubled and empty-handed.  He delivered himself to this effect--

“It grieveth me, my lord the King, to bear so heavy and unwelcome
tidings; but it is the will of God that the prince’s affliction abideth
still, and he cannot recall to mind that he received the Seal.  So came
I quickly to report, thinking it were waste of precious time, and
little worth withal, that any should attempt to search the long array of
chambers and saloons that belong unto his royal high--”

A groan from the King interrupted the lord at this point.  After a
little while his majesty said, with a deep sadness in his tone--

“Trouble him no more, poor child.  The hand of God lieth heavy upon him,
and my heart goeth out in loving compassion for him, and sorrow that I
may not bear his burden on mine old trouble-weighted shoulders, and so
bring him peace.”

He closed his eyes, fell to mumbling, and presently was silent. After
a time he opened his eyes again, and gazed vacantly around until his
glance rested upon the kneeling Lord Chancellor. Instantly his face
flushed with wrath--

“What, thou here yet!  By the glory of God, an’ thou gettest not about
that traitor’s business, thy mitre shall have holiday the morrow for
lack of a head to grace withal!”

The trembling Chancellor answered--

“Good your Majesty, I cry you mercy!  I but waited for the Seal.”

“Man, hast lost thy wits?  The small Seal which aforetime I was wont
to take with me abroad lieth in my treasury.  And, since the Great Seal
hath flown away, shall not it suffice?  Hast lost thy wits?  Begone!
 And hark ye--come no more till thou do bring his head.”

The poor Chancellor was not long in removing himself from this dangerous
vicinity; nor did the commission waste time in giving the royal assent
to the work of the slavish Parliament, and appointing the morrow for the
beheading of the premier peer of England, the luckless Duke of Norfolk.




CHAPTER IX. The river pageant.

At nine in the evening the whole vast river-front of the palace was
blazing with light.  The river itself, as far as the eye could reach
citywards, was so thickly covered with watermen’s boats and with
pleasure-barges, all fringed with coloured lanterns, and gently agitated
by the waves, that it resembled a glowing and limitless garden of
flowers stirred to soft motion by summer winds.  The grand terrace of
stone steps leading down to the water, spacious enough to mass the army
of a German principality upon, was a picture to see, with its ranks
of royal halberdiers in polished armour, and its troops of brilliantly
costumed servitors flitting up and down, and to and fro, in the hurry of
preparation.

Presently a command was given, and immediately all living creatures
vanished from the steps.  Now the air was heavy with the hush of
suspense and expectancy.  As far as one’s vision could carry, he might
see the myriads of people in the boats rise up, and shade their eyes
from the glare of lanterns and torches, and gaze toward the palace.

A file of forty or fifty state barges drew up to the steps.  They were
richly gilt, and their lofty prows and sterns were elaborately carved.
Some of them were decorated with banners and streamers; some with
cloth-of-gold and arras embroidered with coats-of-arms; others with
silken flags that had numberless little silver bells fastened to them,
which shook out tiny showers of joyous music whenever the breezes
fluttered them; others of yet higher pretensions, since they belonged to
nobles in the prince’s immediate service, had their sides picturesquely
fenced with shields gorgeously emblazoned with armorial bearings.  Each
state barge was towed by a tender.  Besides the rowers, these tenders
carried each a number of men-at-arms in glossy helmet and breastplate,
and a company of musicians.

The advance-guard of the expected procession now appeared in the great
gateway, a troop of halberdiers.  ‘They were dressed in striped hose of
black and tawny, velvet caps graced at the sides with silver roses, and
doublets of murrey and blue cloth, embroidered on the front and back
with the three feathers, the prince’s blazon, woven in gold.  Their
halberd staves were covered with crimson velvet, fastened with gilt
nails, and ornamented with gold tassels.  Filing off on the right and
left, they formed two long lines, extending from the gateway of the
palace to the water’s edge.  A thick rayed cloth or carpet was
then unfolded, and laid down between them by attendants in the
gold-and-crimson liveries of the prince.  This done, a flourish of
trumpets resounded from within.  A lively prelude arose from the
musicians on the water; and two ushers with white wands marched with a
slow and stately pace from the portal.  They were followed by an officer
bearing the civic mace, after whom came another carrying the city’s
sword; then several sergeants of the city guard, in their full
accoutrements, and with badges on their sleeves; then the Garter
King-at-arms, in his tabard; then several Knights of the Bath, each with
a white lace on his sleeve; then their esquires; then the judges, in
their robes of scarlet and coifs; then the Lord High Chancellor of
England, in a robe of scarlet, open before, and purfled with minever;
then a deputation of aldermen, in their scarlet cloaks; and then the
heads of the different civic companies, in their robes of state. Now
came twelve French gentlemen, in splendid habiliments, consisting of
pourpoints of white damask barred with gold, short mantles of
crimson velvet lined with violet taffeta, and carnation coloured
hauts-de-chausses, and took their way down the steps.  They were of the
suite of the French ambassador, and were followed by twelve cavaliers of
the suite of the Spanish ambassador, clothed in black velvet, unrelieved
by any ornament.  Following these came several great English nobles with
their attendants.’

There was a flourish of trumpets within; and the Prince’s uncle, the
future great Duke of Somerset, emerged from the gateway, arrayed in a
‘doublet of black cloth-of-gold, and a cloak of crimson satin flowered
with gold, and ribanded with nets of silver.’  He turned, doffed
his plumed cap, bent his body in a low reverence, and began to step
backward, bowing at each step.  A prolonged trumpet-blast followed, and
a proclamation, “Way for the high and mighty the Lord Edward, Prince of
Wales!”  High aloft on the palace walls a long line of red tongues of
flame leapt forth with a thunder-crash; the massed world on the river
burst into a mighty roar of welcome; and Tom Canty, the cause and hero
of it all, stepped into view and slightly bowed his princely head.

He was ‘magnificently habited in a doublet of white satin, with a
front-piece of purple cloth-of-tissue, powdered with diamonds, and edged
with ermine.  Over this he wore a mantle of white cloth-of-gold, pounced
with the triple-feathered crest, lined with blue satin, set with pearls
and precious stones, and fastened with a clasp of brilliants.  About his
neck hung the order of the Garter, and several princely foreign orders;’
and wherever light fell upon him jewels responded with a blinding flash.
 O Tom Canty, born in a hovel, bred in the gutters of London, familiar
with rags and dirt and misery, what a spectacle is this!




CHAPTER X. The Prince in the toils.

We left John Canty dragging the rightful prince into Offal Court, with
a noisy and delighted mob at his heels.  There was but one person in it
who offered a pleading word for the captive, and he was not heeded; he
was hardly even heard, so great was the turmoil.  The Prince continued
to struggle for freedom, and to rage against the treatment he was
suffering, until John Canty lost what little patience was left in him,
and raised his oaken cudgel in a sudden fury over the Prince’s head.
 The single pleader for the lad sprang to stop the man’s arm, and the
blow descended upon his own wrist.  Canty roared out--

“Thou’lt meddle, wilt thou?  Then have thy reward.”

His cudgel crashed down upon the meddler’s head:  there was a groan, a
dim form sank to the ground among the feet of the crowd, and the next
moment it lay there in the dark alone.  The mob pressed on, their
enjoyment nothing disturbed by this episode.

Presently the Prince found himself in John Canty’s abode, with the door
closed against the outsiders.  By the vague light of a tallow candle
which was thrust into a bottle, he made out the main features of the
loathsome den, and also the occupants of it.  Two frowsy girls and
a middle-aged woman cowered against the wall in one corner, with the
aspect of animals habituated to harsh usage, and expecting and dreading
it now. From another corner stole a withered hag with streaming grey
hair and malignant eyes.  John Canty said to this one--

“Tarry!  There’s fine mummeries here.  Mar them not till thou’st enjoyed
them:  then let thy hand be heavy as thou wilt.  Stand forth, lad.  Now
say thy foolery again, an thou’st not forgot it. Name thy name.  Who art
thou?”

The insulted blood mounted to the little prince’s cheek once more, and
he lifted a steady and indignant gaze to the man’s face and said--

“‘Tis but ill-breeding in such as thou to command me to speak.  I tell
thee now, as I told thee before, I am Edward, Prince of Wales, and none
other.”

The stunning surprise of this reply nailed the hag’s feet to the floor
where she stood, and almost took her breath.  She stared at the Prince
in stupid amazement, which so amused her ruffianly son, that he burst
into a roar of laughter.  But the effect upon Tom Canty’s mother and
sisters was different.  Their dread of bodily injury gave way at once to
distress of a different sort.  They ran forward with woe and dismay in
their faces, exclaiming--

“Oh, poor Tom, poor lad!”

The mother fell on her knees before the Prince, put her hands upon his
shoulders, and gazed yearningly into his face through her rising tears.
Then she said--

“Oh, my poor boy!  Thy foolish reading hath wrought its woeful work at
last, and ta’en thy wit away.  Ah! why did’st thou cleave to it when I
so warned thee ‘gainst it?  Thou’st broke thy mother’s heart.”

The Prince looked into her face, and said gently--

“Thy son is well, and hath not lost his wits, good dame.  Comfort thee:
let me to the palace where he is, and straightway will the King my
father restore him to thee.”

“The King thy father!  Oh, my child! unsay these words that be freighted
with death for thee, and ruin for all that be near to thee.  Shake of
this gruesome dream.  Call back thy poor wandering memory.  Look upon
me. Am not I thy mother that bore thee, and loveth thee?”

The Prince shook his head and reluctantly said--

“God knoweth I am loth to grieve thy heart; but truly have I never
looked upon thy face before.”

The woman sank back to a sitting posture on the floor, and, covering her
eyes with her hands, gave way to heart-broken sobs and wailings.

“Let the show go on!” shouted Canty.  “What, Nan!--what, Bet! mannerless
wenches! will ye stand in the Prince’s presence?  Upon your knees, ye
pauper scum, and do him reverence!”

He followed this with another horse-laugh.  The girls began to plead
timidly for their brother; and Nan said--

“An thou wilt but let him to bed, father, rest and sleep will heal his
madness:  prithee, do.”

“Do, father,” said Bet; “he is more worn than is his wont.  To-morrow
will he be himself again, and will beg with diligence, and come not
empty home again.”

This remark sobered the father’s joviality, and brought his mind to
business.  He turned angrily upon the Prince, and said--

“The morrow must we pay two pennies to him that owns this hole; two
pennies, mark ye--all this money for a half-year’s rent, else out of
this we go.  Show what thou’st gathered with thy lazy begging.”

The Prince said--

“Offend me not with thy sordid matters.  I tell thee again I am the
King’s son.”

A sounding blow upon the Prince’s shoulder from Canty’s broad palm
sent him staggering into goodwife Canty’s arms, who clasped him to her
breast, and sheltered him from a pelting rain of cuffs and slaps by
interposing her own person.  The frightened girls retreated to their
corner; but the grandmother stepped eagerly forward to assist her son.
 The Prince sprang away from Mrs. Canty, exclaiming--

“Thou shalt not suffer for me, madam.  Let these swine do their will
upon me alone.”

This speech infuriated the swine to such a degree that they set about
their work without waste of time.  Between them they belaboured the boy
right soundly, and then gave the girls and their mother a beating for
showing sympathy for the victim.

“Now,” said Canty, “to bed, all of ye.  The entertainment has tired me.”

The light was put out, and the family retired.  As soon as the snorings
of the head of the house and his mother showed that they were asleep,
the young girls crept to where the Prince lay, and covered him tenderly
from the cold with straw and rags; and their mother crept to him also,
and stroked his hair, and cried over him, whispering broken words of
comfort and compassion in his ear the while.  She had saved a morsel for
him to eat, also; but the boy’s pains had swept away all appetite--at
least for black and tasteless crusts.  He was touched by her brave and
costly defence of him, and by her commiseration; and he thanked her in
very noble and princely words, and begged her to go to her sleep and try
to forget her sorrows.  And he added that the King his father would not
let her loyal kindness and devotion go unrewarded.  This return to his
‘madness’ broke her heart anew, and she strained him to her breast again
and again, and then went back, drowned in tears, to her bed.

As she lay thinking and mourning, the suggestion began to creep into
her mind that there was an undefinable something about this boy that was
lacking in Tom Canty, mad or sane.  She could not describe it, she could
not tell just what it was, and yet her sharp mother-instinct seemed to
detect it and perceive it.  What if the boy were really not her son,
after all?  Oh, absurd!  She almost smiled at the idea, spite of her
griefs and troubles.  No matter, she found that it was an idea that
would not ‘down,’ but persisted in haunting her.  It pursued her, it
harassed her, it clung to her, and refused to be put away or ignored.
 At last she perceived that there was not going to be any peace for her
until she should devise a test that should prove, clearly and without
question, whether this lad was her son or not, and so banish these
wearing and worrying doubts.  Ah, yes, this was plainly the right way
out of the difficulty; therefore she set her wits to work at once to
contrive that test.  But it was an easier thing to propose than to
accomplish.  She turned over in her mind one promising test after
another, but was obliged to relinquish them all--none of them were
absolutely sure, absolutely perfect; and an imperfect one could not
satisfy her.  Evidently she was racking her head in vain--it seemed
manifest that she must give the matter up.  While this depressing
thought was passing through her mind, her ear caught the regular
breathing of the boy, and she knew he had fallen asleep.  And while she
listened, the measured breathing was broken by a soft, startled
cry, such as one utters in a troubled dream.  This chance occurrence
furnished her instantly with a plan worth all her laboured tests
combined.  She at once set herself feverishly, but noiselessly, to work
to relight her candle, muttering to herself, “Had I but seen him _then_,
I should have known!  Since that day, when he was little, that the
powder burst in his face, he hath never been startled of a sudden out of
his dreams or out of his thinkings, but he hath cast his hand before his
eyes, even as he did that day; and not as others would do it, with the
palm inward, but always with the palm turned outward--I have seen it a
hundred times, and it hath never varied nor ever failed.  Yes, I shall
soon know, now!”

By this time she had crept to the slumbering boy’s side, with the
candle, shaded, in her hand.  She bent heedfully and warily over him,
scarcely breathing in her suppressed excitement, and suddenly flashed
the light in his face and struck the floor by his ear with her knuckles.
 The sleeper’s eyes sprang wide open, and he cast a startled stare about
him--but he made no special movement with his hands.

The poor woman was smitten almost helpless with surprise and grief;
but she contrived to hide her emotions, and to soothe the boy to sleep
again; then she crept apart and communed miserably with herself upon
the disastrous result of her experiment.  She tried to believe that her
Tom’s madness had banished this habitual gesture of his; but she could
not do it.  “No,” she said, “his _hands_ are not mad; they could not
unlearn so old a habit in so brief a time.  Oh, this is a heavy day for
me!”

Still, hope was as stubborn now as doubt had been before; she could not
bring herself to accept the verdict of the test; she must try the thing
again--the failure must have been only an accident; so she startled the
boy out of his sleep a second and a third time, at intervals--with the
same result which had marked the first test; then she dragged herself to
bed, and fell sorrowfully asleep, saying, “But I cannot give him up--oh
no, I cannot, I cannot--he _must_ be my boy!”

The poor mother’s interruptions having ceased, and the Prince’s pains
having gradually lost their power to disturb him, utter weariness at
last sealed his eyes in a profound and restful sleep. Hour after hour
slipped away, and still he slept like the dead. Thus four or five hours
passed. Then his stupor began to lighten. Presently, while half asleep
and half awake, he murmured--

“Sir William!”

After a moment--

“Ho, Sir William Herbert!  Hie thee hither, and list to the strangest
dream that ever . . . Sir William! dost hear?  Man, I did think me
changed to a pauper, and . . . Ho there!  Guards! Sir William!  What!
is there no groom of the chamber in waiting? Alack! it shall go hard
with--”

“What aileth thee?” asked a whisper near him.  “Who art thou calling?”

“Sir William Herbert.  Who art thou?”

“I?  Who should I be, but thy sister Nan?  Oh, Tom, I had forgot!
Thou’rt mad yet--poor lad, thou’rt mad yet:  would I had never woke to
know it again!  But prithee master thy tongue, lest we be all beaten
till we die!”

The startled Prince sprang partly up, but a sharp reminder from his
stiffened bruises brought him to himself, and he sank back among his
foul straw with a moan and the ejaculation--

“Alas! it was no dream, then!”

In a moment all the heavy sorrow and misery which sleep had banished
were upon him again, and he realised that he was no longer a petted
prince in a palace, with the adoring eyes of a nation upon him, but
a pauper, an outcast, clothed in rags, prisoner in a den fit only for
beasts, and consorting with beggars and thieves.

In the midst of his grief he began to be conscious of hilarious noises
and shoutings, apparently but a block or two away.  The next moment
there were several sharp raps at the door; John Canty ceased from
snoring and said--

“Who knocketh?  What wilt thou?”

A voice answered--

“Know’st thou who it was thou laid thy cudgel on?”

“No.  Neither know I, nor care.”

“Belike thou’lt change thy note eftsoons.  An thou would save thy neck,
nothing but flight may stead thee.  The man is this moment delivering up
the ghost.  ’Tis the priest, Father Andrew!”

“God-a-mercy!” exclaimed Canty.  He roused his family, and hoarsely
commanded, “Up with ye all and fly--or bide where ye are and perish!”

Scarcely five minutes later the Canty household were in the street and
flying for their lives.  John Canty held the Prince by the wrist, and
hurried him along the dark way, giving him this caution in a low voice--

“Mind thy tongue, thou mad fool, and speak not our name.  I will choose
me a new name, speedily, to throw the law’s dogs off the scent.  Mind
thy tongue, I tell thee!”

He growled these words to the rest of the family--

“If it so chance that we be separated, let each make for London Bridge;
whoso findeth himself as far as the last linen-draper’s shop on the
bridge, let him tarry there till the others be come, then will we flee
into Southwark together.”

At this moment the party burst suddenly out of darkness into light;
and not only into light, but into the midst of a multitude of singing,
dancing, and shouting people, massed together on the river frontage.
There was a line of bonfires stretching as far as one could see, up
and down the Thames; London Bridge was illuminated; Southwark Bridge
likewise; the entire river was aglow with the flash and sheen of
coloured lights; and constant explosions of fireworks filled the skies
with an intricate commingling of shooting splendours and a thick rain
of dazzling sparks that almost turned night into day; everywhere were
crowds of revellers; all London seemed to be at large.

John Canty delivered himself of a furious curse and commanded a retreat;
but it was too late.  He and his tribe were swallowed up in that
swarming hive of humanity, and hopelessly separated from each other in
an instant. We are not considering that the Prince was one of his tribe;
Canty still kept his grip upon him.  The Prince’s heart was beating high
with hopes of escape, now.  A burly waterman, considerably exalted with
liquor, found himself rudely shoved by Canty in his efforts to plough
through the crowd; he laid his great hand on Canty’s shoulder and said--

“Nay, whither so fast, friend?  Dost canker thy soul with sordid
business when all that be leal men and true make holiday?”

“Mine affairs are mine own, they concern thee not,” answered Canty,
roughly; “take away thy hand and let me pass.”

“Sith that is thy humour, thou’lt _not_ pass, till thou’st drunk to the
Prince of Wales, I tell thee that,” said the waterman, barring the way
resolutely.

“Give me the cup, then, and make speed, make speed!”

Other revellers were interested by this time.  They cried out--

“The loving-cup, the loving-cup! make the sour knave drink the
loving-cup, else will we feed him to the fishes.”

So a huge loving-cup was brought; the waterman, grasping it by one of
its handles, and with the other hand bearing up the end of an imaginary
napkin, presented it in due and ancient form to Canty, who had to grasp
the opposite handle with one of his hands and take off the lid with the
other, according to ancient custom. This left the Prince hand-free for
a second, of course.  He wasted no time, but dived among the forest of
legs about him and disappeared.  In another moment he could not have
been harder to find, under that tossing sea of life, if its billows had
been the Atlantic’s and he a lost sixpence.

He very soon realised this fact, and straightway busied himself about
his own affairs without further thought of John Canty.  He quickly
realised another thing, too.  To wit, that a spurious Prince of Wales
was being feasted by the city in his stead.  He easily concluded that
the pauper lad, Tom Canty, had deliberately taken advantage of his
stupendous opportunity and become a usurper.

Therefore there was but one course to pursue--find his way to the
Guildhall, make himself known, and denounce the impostor.  He also made
up his mind that Tom should be allowed a reasonable time for spiritual
preparation, and then be hanged, drawn and quartered, according to the
law and usage of the day in cases of high treason.




CHAPTER XI. At Guildhall.

The royal barge, attended by its gorgeous fleet, took its stately way
down the Thames through the wilderness of illuminated boats. The air was
laden with music; the river banks were beruffled with joy-flames; the
distant city lay in a soft luminous glow from its countless invisible
bonfires; above it rose many a slender spire into the sky, incrusted
with sparkling lights, wherefore in their remoteness they seemed like
jewelled lances thrust aloft; as the fleet swept along, it was greeted
from the banks with a continuous hoarse roar of cheers and the ceaseless
flash and boom of artillery.

To Tom Canty, half buried in his silken cushions, these sounds and this
spectacle were a wonder unspeakably sublime and astonishing. To his
little friends at his side, the Princess Elizabeth and the Lady Jane
Grey, they were nothing.

Arrived at the Dowgate, the fleet was towed up the limpid Walbrook
(whose channel has now been for two centuries buried out of sight under
acres of buildings) to Bucklersbury, past houses and under bridges
populous with merry-makers and brilliantly lighted, and at last came to
a halt in a basin where now is Barge Yard, in the centre of the ancient
city of London.  Tom disembarked, and he and his gallant procession
crossed Cheapside and made a short march through the Old Jewry and
Basinghall Street to the Guildhall.

Tom and his little ladies were received with due ceremony by the Lord
Mayor and the Fathers of the City, in their gold chains and scarlet
robes of state, and conducted to a rich canopy of state at the head of
the great hall, preceded by heralds making proclamation, and by the Mace
and the City Sword.  The lords and ladies who were to attend upon Tom
and his two small friends took their places behind their chairs.

At a lower table the Court grandees and other guests of noble degree
were seated, with the magnates of the city; the commoners took places at
a multitude of tables on the main floor of the hall.  From their lofty
vantage-ground the giants Gog and Magog, the ancient guardians of the
city, contemplated the spectacle below them with eyes grown familiar
to it in forgotten generations.  There was a bugle-blast and a
proclamation, and a fat butler appeared in a high perch in the leftward
wall, followed by his servitors bearing with impressive solemnity a
royal baron of beef, smoking hot and ready for the knife.

After grace, Tom (being instructed) rose--and the whole house with
him--and drank from a portly golden loving-cup with the Princess
Elizabeth; from her it passed to the Lady Jane, and then traversed the
general assemblage.  So the banquet began.

By midnight the revelry was at its height.  Now came one of those
picturesque spectacles so admired in that old day.  A description of it
is still extant in the quaint wording of a chronicler who witnessed it:

‘Space being made, presently entered a baron and an earl appareled after
the Turkish fashion in long robes of bawdkin powdered with gold; hats on
their heads of crimson velvet, with great rolls of gold, girded with two
swords, called scimitars, hanging by great bawdricks of gold.  Next came
yet another baron and another earl, in two long gowns of yellow satin,
traversed with white satin, and in every bend of white was a bend of
crimson satin, after the fashion of Russia, with furred hats of gray on
their heads; either of them having an hatchet in their hands, and boots
with pykes’ (points a foot long), ’turned up.  And after them came
a knight, then the Lord High Admiral, and with him five nobles, in
doublets of crimson velvet, voyded low on the back and before to the
cannell-bone, laced on the breasts with chains of silver; and over
that, short cloaks of crimson satin, and on their heads hats after
the dancers’ fashion, with pheasants’ feathers in them.  These were
appareled after the fashion of Prussia.  The torchbearers, which were
about an hundred, were appareled in crimson satin and green, like Moors,
their faces black. Next came in a mommarye. Then the minstrels, which
were disguised, danced; and the lords and ladies did wildly dance also,
that it was a pleasure to behold.’

And while Tom, in his high seat, was gazing upon this ‘wild’ dancing,
lost in admiration of the dazzling commingling of kaleidoscopic colours
which the whirling turmoil of gaudy figures below him presented, the
ragged but real little Prince of Wales was proclaiming his rights and
his wrongs, denouncing the impostor, and clamouring for admission at
the gates of Guildhall! The crowd enjoyed this episode prodigiously,
and pressed forward and craned their necks to see the small rioter.
Presently they began to taunt him and mock at him, purposely to goad him
into a higher and still more entertaining fury.  Tears of mortification
sprang to his eyes, but he stood his ground and defied the mob right
royally.  Other taunts followed, added mockings stung him, and he
exclaimed--

“I tell ye again, you pack of unmannerly curs, I am the Prince of Wales!
And all forlorn and friendless as I be, with none to give me word of
grace or help me in my need, yet will not I be driven from my ground,
but will maintain it!”

“Though thou be prince or no prince, ’tis all one, thou be’st a gallant
lad, and not friendless neither!  Here stand I by thy side to prove
it; and mind I tell thee thou might’st have a worser friend than Miles
Hendon and yet not tire thy legs with seeking. Rest thy small jaw, my
child; I talk the language of these base kennel-rats like to a very
native.”

The speaker was a sort of Don Caesar de Bazan in dress, aspect, and
bearing.  He was tall, trim-built, muscular.  His doublet and trunks
were of rich material, but faded and threadbare, and their gold-lace
adornments were sadly tarnished; his ruff was rumpled and damaged;
the plume in his slouched hat was broken and had a bedraggled and
disreputable look; at his side he wore a long rapier in a rusty iron
sheath; his swaggering carriage marked him at once as a ruffler of
the camp.  The speech of this fantastic figure was received with an
explosion of jeers and laughter.  Some cried, “‘Tis another prince in
disguise!” “‘Ware thy tongue, friend:  belike he is dangerous!”
  “Marry, he looketh it--mark his eye!”  “Pluck the lad from him--to the
horse-pond wi’ the cub!”

Instantly a hand was laid upon the Prince, under the impulse of this
happy thought; as instantly the stranger’s long sword was out and the
meddler went to the earth under a sounding thump with the flat of it.
The next moment a score of voices shouted, “Kill the dog!  Kill him!
Kill him!” and the mob closed in on the warrior, who backed himself
against a wall and began to lay about him with his long weapon like a
madman.  His victims sprawled this way and that, but the mob-tide poured
over their prostrate forms and dashed itself against the champion with
undiminished fury.

His moments seemed numbered, his destruction certain, when suddenly a
trumpet-blast sounded, a voice shouted, “Way for the King’s messenger!”
 and a troop of horsemen came charging down upon the mob, who fled out of
harm’s reach as fast as their legs could carry them. The bold stranger
caught up the Prince in his arms, and was soon far away from danger and
the multitude.

Return we within the Guildhall.  Suddenly, high above the jubilant roar
and thunder of the revel, broke the clear peal of a bugle-note.  There
was instant silence--a deep hush; then a single voice rose--that of the
messenger from the palace--and began to pipe forth a proclamation, the
whole multitude standing listening.

The closing words, solemnly pronounced, were--

“The King is dead!”

The great assemblage bent their heads upon their breasts with one
accord; remained so, in profound silence, a few moments; then all sank
upon their knees in a body, stretched out their hands toward Tom, and a
mighty shout burst forth that seemed to shake the building--

“Long live the King!”

Poor Tom’s dazed eyes wandered abroad over this stupefying spectacle,
and finally rested dreamily upon the kneeling princesses beside him, a
moment, then upon the Earl of Hertford. A sudden purpose dawned in his
face.  He said, in a low tone, at Lord Hertford’s ear--

“Answer me truly, on thy faith and honour!  Uttered I here a command,
the which none but a king might hold privilege and prerogative to utter,
would such commandment be obeyed, and none rise up to say me nay?”

“None, my liege, in all these realms.  In thy person bides the majesty
of England.  Thou art the king--thy word is law.”

Tom responded, in a strong, earnest voice, and with great animation--

“Then shall the king’s law be law of mercy, from this day, and never
more be law of blood!  Up from thy knees and away!  To the Tower, and
say the King decrees the Duke of Norfolk shall not die!”

The words were caught up and carried eagerly from lip to lip far and
wide over the hall, and as Hertford hurried from the presence, another
prodigious shout burst forth--

“The reign of blood is ended!  Long live Edward, King of England!”




CHAPTER XII. The Prince and his Deliverer.

As soon as Miles Hendon and the little prince were clear of the mob,
they struck down through back lanes and alleys toward the river.  Their
way was unobstructed until they approached London Bridge; then they
ploughed into the multitude again, Hendon keeping a fast grip upon
the Prince’s--no, the King’s--wrist.  The tremendous news was already
abroad, and the boy learned it from a thousand voices at once--“The King
is dead!”  The tidings struck a chill to the heart of the poor little
waif, and sent a shudder through his frame.  He realised the greatness
of his loss, and was filled with a bitter grief; for the grim tyrant who
had been such a terror to others had always been gentle with him.  The
tears sprang to his eyes and blurred all objects.  For an instant
he felt himself the most forlorn, outcast, and forsaken of God’s
creatures--then another cry shook the night with its far-reaching
thunders:  “Long live King Edward the Sixth!” and this made his eyes
kindle, and thrilled him with pride to his fingers’ ends. “Ah,” he
thought, “how grand and strange it seems--_I am King_!”

Our friends threaded their way slowly through the throngs upon the
bridge.  This structure, which had stood for six hundred years, and
had been a noisy and populous thoroughfare all that time, was a curious
affair, for a closely packed rank of stores and shops, with family
quarters overhead, stretched along both sides of it, from one bank of
the river to the other.  The Bridge was a sort of town to itself; it
had its inn, its beer-houses, its bakeries, its haberdasheries, its food
markets, its manufacturing industries, and even its church.  It
looked upon the two neighbours which it linked together--London
and Southwark--as being well enough as suburbs, but not otherwise
particularly important.  It was a close corporation, so to speak; it was
a narrow town, of a single street a fifth of a mile long, its
population was but a village population and everybody in it knew all
his fellow-townsmen intimately, and had known their fathers and mothers
before them--and all their little family affairs into the bargain.  It
had its aristocracy, of course--its fine old families of butchers, and
bakers, and what-not, who had occupied the same old premises for five
or six hundred years, and knew the great history of the Bridge from
beginning to end, and all its strange legends; and who always talked
bridgy talk, and thought bridgy thoughts, and lied in a long, level,
direct, substantial bridgy way.  It was just the sort of population to
be narrow and ignorant and self-conceited. Children were born on the
Bridge, were reared there, grew to old age, and finally died without
ever having set a foot upon any part of the world but London Bridge
alone.  Such people would naturally imagine that the mighty and
interminable procession which moved through its street night and day,
with its confused roar of shouts and cries, its neighings and bellowing
and bleatings and its muffled thunder-tramp, was the one great thing in
this world, and themselves somehow the proprietors of it.  And so they
were, in effect--at least they could exhibit it from their windows, and
did--for a consideration--whenever a returning king or hero gave it a
fleeting splendour, for there was no place like it for affording a long,
straight, uninterrupted view of marching columns.

Men born and reared upon the Bridge found life unendurably dull and
inane elsewhere.  History tells of one of these who left the Bridge at
the age of seventy-one and retired to the country.  But he could only
fret and toss in his bed; he could not go to sleep, the deep stillness
was so painful, so awful, so oppressive.  When he was worn out with it,
at last, he fled back to his old home, a lean and haggard spectre, and
fell peacefully to rest and pleasant dreams under the lulling music of
the lashing waters and the boom and crash and thunder of London Bridge.

In the times of which we are writing, the Bridge furnished ‘object
lessons’ in English history for its children--namely, the livid and
decaying heads of renowned men impaled upon iron spikes atop of its
gateways.  But we digress.

Hendon’s lodgings were in the little inn on the Bridge.  As he neared
the door with his small friend, a rough voice said--

“So, thou’rt come at last!  Thou’lt not escape again, I warrant thee;
and if pounding thy bones to a pudding can teach thee somewhat, thou’lt
not keep us waiting another time, mayhap,”--and John Canty put out his
hand to seize the boy.

Miles Hendon stepped in the way and said--

“Not too fast, friend.  Thou art needlessly rough, methinks.  What is
the lad to thee?”

“If it be any business of thine to make and meddle in others’ affairs,
he is my son.”

“‘Tis a lie!” cried the little King, hotly.

“Boldly said, and I believe thee, whether thy small headpiece be sound
or cracked, my boy.  But whether this scurvy ruffian be thy father
or no, ’tis all one, he shall not have thee to beat thee and abuse,
according to his threat, so thou prefer to bide with me.”

“I do, I do--I know him not, I loathe him, and will die before I will go
with him.”

“Then ’tis settled, and there is nought more to say.”

“We will see, as to that!” exclaimed John Canty, striding past Hendon to
get at the boy; “by force shall he--”

“If thou do but touch him, thou animated offal, I will spit thee like a
goose!” said Hendon, barring the way and laying his hand upon his sword
hilt.  Canty drew back.  “Now mark ye,” continued Hendon, “I took this
lad under my protection when a mob of such as thou would have mishandled
him, mayhap killed him; dost imagine I will desert him now to a worser
fate?--for whether thou art his father or no--and sooth to say, I think
it is a lie--a decent swift death were better for such a lad than life
in such brute hands as thine.  So go thy ways, and set quick about it,
for I like not much bandying of words, being not over-patient in my
nature.”

John Canty moved off, muttering threats and curses, and was swallowed
from sight in the crowd.  Hendon ascended three flights of stairs to his
room, with his charge, after ordering a meal to be sent thither.  It
was a poor apartment, with a shabby bed and some odds and ends of old
furniture in it, and was vaguely lighted by a couple of sickly candles.
The little King dragged himself to the bed and lay down upon it, almost
exhausted with hunger and fatigue.  He had been on his feet a good
part of a day and a night (for it was now two or three o’clock in the
morning), and had eaten nothing meantime.  He murmured drowsily--

“Prithee call me when the table is spread,” and sank into a deep sleep
immediately.

A smile twinkled in Hendon’s eye, and he said to himself--

“By the mass, the little beggar takes to one’s quarters and usurps one’s
bed with as natural and easy a grace as if he owned them--with never
a by-your-leave or so-please-it-you, or anything of the sort.  In his
diseased ravings he called himself the Prince of Wales, and bravely doth
he keep up the character.  Poor little friendless rat, doubtless his
mind has been disordered with ill-usage.  Well, I will be his friend;
I have saved him, and it draweth me strongly to him; already I love the
bold-tongued little rascal.  How soldier-like he faced the smutty rabble
and flung back his high defiance!  And what a comely, sweet and gentle
face he hath, now that sleep hath conjured away its troubles and its
griefs. I will teach him; I will cure his malady; yea, I will be his
elder brother, and care for him and watch over him; and whoso would
shame him or do him hurt may order his shroud, for though I be burnt for
it he shall need it!”

He bent over the boy and contemplated him with kind and pitying
interest, tapping the young cheek tenderly and smoothing back the
tangled curls with his great brown hand.  A slight shiver passed over
the boy’s form. Hendon muttered--

“See, now, how like a man it was to let him lie here uncovered and fill
his body with deadly rheums.  Now what shall I do? ’twill wake him to
take him up and put him within the bed, and he sorely needeth sleep.”

He looked about for extra covering, but finding none, doffed his doublet
and wrapped the lad in it, saying, “I am used to nipping air and scant
apparel, ’tis little I shall mind the cold!”--then walked up and down
the room, to keep his blood in motion, soliloquising as before.

“His injured mind persuades him he is Prince of Wales; ’twill be odd to
have a Prince of Wales still with us, now that he that _was_ the prince
is prince no more, but king--for this poor mind is set upon the one
fantasy, and will not reason out that now it should cast by the prince
and call itself the king. . . If my father liveth still, after these
seven years that I have heard nought from home in my foreign dungeon, he
will welcome the poor lad and give him generous shelter for my sake; so
will my good elder brother, Arthur; my other brother, Hugh--but I will
crack his crown an _he_ interfere, the fox-hearted, ill-conditioned
animal! Yes, thither will we fare--and straightway, too.”

A servant entered with a smoking meal, disposed it upon a small deal
table, placed the chairs, and took his departure, leaving such cheap
lodgers as these to wait upon themselves.  The door slammed after him,
and the noise woke the boy, who sprang to a sitting posture, and shot
a glad glance about him; then a grieved look came into his face and he
murmured to himself, with a deep sigh, “Alack, it was but a dream, woe
is me!”  Next he noticed Miles Hendon’s doublet--glanced from that to
Hendon, comprehended the sacrifice that had been made for him, and said,
gently--

“Thou art good to me, yes, thou art very good to me.  Take it and put it
on--I shall not need it more.”

Then he got up and walked to the washstand in the corner and stood
there, waiting.  Hendon said in a cheery voice--

“We’ll have a right hearty sup and bite, now, for everything is savoury
and smoking hot, and that and thy nap together will make thee a little
man again, never fear!”

The boy made no answer, but bent a steady look, that was filled with
grave surprise, and also somewhat touched with impatience, upon the tall
knight of the sword.  Hendon was puzzled, and said--

“What’s amiss?”

“Good sir, I would wash me.”

“Oh, is that all?  Ask no permission of Miles Hendon for aught thou
cravest.  Make thyself perfectly free here, and welcome, with all that
are his belongings.”

Still the boy stood, and moved not; more, he tapped the floor once or
twice with his small impatient foot.  Hendon was wholly perplexed.  Said
he--

“Bless us, what is it?”

“Prithee pour the water, and make not so many words!”

Hendon, suppressing a horse-laugh, and saying to himself, “By all the
saints, but this is admirable!” stepped briskly forward and did the
small insolent’s bidding; then stood by, in a sort of stupefaction,
until the command, “Come--the towel!” woke him sharply up.  He took up a
towel, from under the boy’s nose, and handed it to him without comment.
 He now proceeded to comfort his own face with a wash, and while he was
at it his adopted child seated himself at the table and prepared to fall
to. Hendon despatched his ablutions with alacrity, then drew back the
other chair and was about to place himself at table, when the boy said,
indignantly--

“Forbear!  Wouldst sit in the presence of the King?”

This blow staggered Hendon to his foundations.  He muttered to himself,
“Lo, the poor thing’s madness is up with the time!  It hath changed
with the great change that is come to the realm, and now in fancy is
he _king_! Good lack, I must humour the conceit, too--there is no other
way--faith, he would order me to the Tower, else!”

And pleased with this jest, he removed the chair from the table,
took his stand behind the King, and proceeded to wait upon him in the
courtliest way he was capable of.

While the King ate, the rigour of his royal dignity relaxed a little,
and with his growing contentment came a desire to talk. He said--“I
think thou callest thyself Miles Hendon, if I heard thee aright?”

“Yes, Sire,” Miles replied; then observed to himself, “If I _must_
humour the poor lad’s madness, I must ‘Sire’ him, I must ‘Majesty’ him,
I must not go by halves, I must stick at nothing that belongeth to the
part I play, else shall I play it ill and work evil to this charitable
and kindly cause.”

The King warmed his heart with a second glass of wine, and said--“I
would know thee--tell me thy story.  Thou hast a gallant way with thee,
and a noble--art nobly born?”

“We are of the tail of the nobility, good your Majesty.  My father is
a baronet--one of the smaller lords by knight service {2}--Sir Richard
Hendon of Hendon Hall, by Monk’s Holm in Kent.”

“The name has escaped my memory.  Go on--tell me thy story.”

“‘Tis not much, your Majesty, yet perchance it may beguile a short
half-hour for want of a better.  My father, Sir Richard, is very rich,
and of a most generous nature.  My mother died whilst I was yet a
boy.  I have two brothers:  Arthur, my elder, with a soul like to
his father’s; and Hugh, younger than I, a mean spirit, covetous,
treacherous, vicious, underhanded--a reptile.  Such was he from the
cradle; such was he ten years past, when I last saw him--a ripe rascal
at nineteen, I being twenty then, and Arthur twenty-two.  There is
none other of us but the Lady Edith, my cousin--she was sixteen
then--beautiful, gentle, good, the daughter of an earl, the last of her
race, heiress of a great fortune and a lapsed title.  My father was her
guardian.  I loved her and she loved me; but she was betrothed to Arthur
from the cradle, and Sir Richard would not suffer the contract to be
broken.  Arthur loved another maid, and bade us be of good cheer and
hold fast to the hope that delay and luck together would some day give
success to our several causes.  Hugh loved the Lady Edith’s fortune,
though in truth he said it was herself he loved--but then ’twas his way,
alway, to say the one thing and mean the other.  But he lost his arts
upon the girl; he could deceive my father, but none else.  My father
loved him best of us all, and trusted and believed him; for he was the
youngest child, and others hated him--these qualities being in all
ages sufficient to win a parent’s dearest love; and he had a smooth
persuasive tongue, with an admirable gift of lying--and these be
qualities which do mightily assist a blind affection to cozen itself.
 I was wild--in troth I might go yet farther and say _very_ wild, though
‘twas a wildness of an innocent sort, since it hurt none but me, brought
shame to none, nor loss, nor had in it any taint of crime or baseness,
or what might not beseem mine honourable degree.

“Yet did my brother Hugh turn these faults to good account--he seeing
that our brother Arthur’s health was but indifferent, and hoping the
worst might work him profit were I swept out of the path--so--but ’twere
a long tale, good my liege, and little worth the telling.  Briefly,
then, this brother did deftly magnify my faults and make them
crimes; ending his base work with finding a silken ladder in mine
apartments--conveyed thither by his own means--and did convince my
father by this, and suborned evidence of servants and other lying
knaves, that I was minded to carry off my Edith and marry with her in
rank defiance of his will.

“Three years of banishment from home and England might make a soldier
and a man of me, my father said, and teach me some degree of wisdom.
 I fought out my long probation in the continental wars, tasting
sumptuously of hard knocks, privation, and adventure; but in my last
battle I was taken captive, and during the seven years that have waxed
and waned since then, a foreign dungeon hath harboured me.  Through wit
and courage I won to the free air at last, and fled hither straight; and
am but just arrived, right poor in purse and raiment, and poorer still
in knowledge of what these dull seven years have wrought at Hendon Hall,
its people and belongings.  So please you, sir, my meagre tale is told.”

“Thou hast been shamefully abused!” said the little King, with a
flashing eye.  “But I will right thee--by the cross will I!  The King
hath said it.”

Then, fired by the story of Miles’s wrongs, he loosed his tongue and
poured the history of his own recent misfortunes into the ears of his
astonished listener.  When he had finished, Miles said to himself--

“Lo, what an imagination he hath!  Verily, this is no common mind; else,
crazed or sane, it could not weave so straight and gaudy a tale as this
out of the airy nothings wherewith it hath wrought this curious romaunt.
Poor ruined little head, it shall not lack friend or shelter whilst I
bide with the living.  He shall never leave my side; he shall be my
pet, my little comrade.  And he shall be cured!--ay, made whole and
sound--then will he make himself a name--and proud shall I be to say,
‘Yes, he is mine--I took him, a homeless little ragamuffin, but I saw
what was in him, and I said his name would be heard some day--behold
him, observe him--was I right?’”

The King spoke--in a thoughtful, measured voice--

“Thou didst save me injury and shame, perchance my life, and so my
crown. Such service demandeth rich reward.  Name thy desire, and so it
be within the compass of my royal power, it is thine.”

This fantastic suggestion startled Hendon out of his reverie.  He was
about to thank the King and put the matter aside with saying he had only
done his duty and desired no reward, but a wiser thought came into his
head, and he asked leave to be silent a few moments and consider the
gracious offer--an idea which the King gravely approved, remarking that
it was best to be not too hasty with a thing of such great import.

Miles reflected during some moments, then said to himself, “Yes, that is
the thing to do--by any other means it were impossible to get at it--and
certes, this hour’s experience has taught me ’twould be most wearing and
inconvenient to continue it as it is. Yes, I will propose it; ’twas a
happy accident that I did not throw the chance away.”  Then he dropped
upon one knee and said--

“My poor service went not beyond the limit of a subject’s simple duty,
and therefore hath no merit; but since your Majesty is pleased to hold
it worthy some reward, I take heart of grace to make petition to this
effect.  Near four hundred years ago, as your grace knoweth, there being
ill blood betwixt John, King of England, and the King of France, it was
decreed that two champions should fight together in the lists, and so
settle the dispute by what is called the arbitrament of God.  These two
kings, and the Spanish king, being assembled to witness and judge the
conflict, the French champion appeared; but so redoubtable was he, that
our English knights refused to measure weapons with him.  So the matter,
which was a weighty one, was like to go against the English monarch by
default.  Now in the Tower lay the Lord de Courcy, the mightiest arm in
England, stripped of his honours and possessions, and wasting with
long captivity.  Appeal was made to him; he gave assent, and came forth
arrayed for battle; but no sooner did the Frenchman glimpse his huge
frame and hear his famous name but he fled away, and the French king’s
cause was lost.  King John restored De Courcy’s titles and possessions,
and said, ‘Name thy wish and thou shalt have it, though it cost me half
my kingdom;’ whereat De Courcy, kneeling, as I do now, made answer,
‘This, then, I ask, my liege; that I and my successors may have and
hold the privilege of remaining covered in the presence of the kings of
England, henceforth while the throne shall last.’ The boon was granted,
as your Majesty knoweth; and there hath been no time, these four hundred
years, that that line has failed of an heir; and so, even unto this day,
the head of that ancient house still weareth his hat or helm before the
King’s Majesty, without let or hindrance, and this none other may do.
{3} Invoking this precedent in aid of my prayer, I beseech the King to
grant to me but this one grace and privilege--to my more than sufficient
reward--and none other, to wit:  that I and my heirs, for ever, may
_sit_ in the presence of the Majesty of England!”

“Rise, Sir Miles Hendon, Knight,” said the King, gravely--giving the
accolade with Hendon’s sword--“rise, and seat thyself.  Thy petition is
granted.  Whilst England remains, and the crown continues, the privilege
shall not lapse.”

His Majesty walked apart, musing, and Hendon dropped into a chair at
table, observing to himself, “‘Twas a brave thought, and hath wrought
me a mighty deliverance; my legs are grievously wearied. An I had not
thought of that, I must have had to stand for weeks, till my poor lad’s
wits are cured.”  After a little, he went on, “And so I am become a
knight of the Kingdom of Dreams and Shadows! A most odd and strange
position, truly, for one so matter-of-fact as I.  I will not laugh--no,
God forbid, for this thing which is so substanceless to me is _real_ to
him.  And to me, also, in one way, it is not a falsity, for it reflects
with truth the sweet and generous spirit that is in him.”  After
a pause: “Ah, what if he should call me by my fine title before
folk!--there’d be a merry contrast betwixt my glory and my raiment!  But
no matter, let him call me what he will, so it please him; I shall be
content.”




CHAPTER XIII. The disappearance of the Prince.

A heavy drowsiness presently fell upon the two comrades.  The King
said--

“Remove these rags.”--meaning his clothing.

Hendon disapparelled the boy without dissent or remark, tucked him up in
bed, then glanced about the room, saying to himself, ruefully, “He hath
taken my bed again, as before--marry, what shall _I_ do?”  The little
King observed his perplexity, and dissipated it with a word.  He said,
sleepily--

“Thou wilt sleep athwart the door, and guard it.”  In a moment more he
was out of his troubles, in a deep slumber.

“Dear heart, he should have been born a king!” muttered Hendon,
admiringly; “he playeth the part to a marvel.”

Then he stretched himself across the door, on the floor, saying
contentedly--

“I have lodged worse for seven years; ’twould be but ill gratitude to
Him above to find fault with this.”

He dropped asleep as the dawn appeared.  Toward noon he rose, uncovered
his unconscious ward--a section at a time--and took his measure with a
string.  The King awoke, just as he had completed his work, complained
of the cold, and asked what he was doing.

“‘Tis done, now, my liege,” said Hendon; “I have a bit of business
outside, but will presently return; sleep thou again--thou needest it.
There--let me cover thy head also--thou’lt be warm the sooner.”

The King was back in dreamland before this speech was ended. Miles
slipped softly out, and slipped as softly in again, in the course of
thirty or forty minutes, with a complete second-hand suit of boy’s
clothing, of cheap material, and showing signs of wear; but tidy, and
suited to the season of the year.  He seated himself, and began to
overhaul his purchase, mumbling to himself--

“A longer purse would have got a better sort, but when one has not the
long purse one must be content with what a short one may do--

“‘There was a woman in our town, In our town did dwell--’

“He stirred, methinks--I must sing in a less thunderous key; ’tis not
good to mar his sleep, with this journey before him, and he so wearied
out, poor chap . . . This garment--‘tis well enough--a stitch here and
another one there will set it aright.  This other is better, albeit a
stitch or two will not come amiss in it, likewise . . . _These_ be very
good and sound, and will keep his small feet warm and dry--an odd new
thing to him, belike, since he has doubtless been used to foot it bare,
winters and summers the same . . . Would thread were bread, seeing one
getteth a year’s sufficiency for a farthing, and such a brave big needle
without cost, for mere love.  Now shall I have the demon’s own time to
thread it!”

And so he had.  He did as men have always done, and probably always will
do, to the end of time--held the needle still, and tried to thrust the
thread through the eye, which is the opposite of a woman’s way.  Time
and time again the thread missed the mark, going sometimes on one side
of the needle, sometimes on the other, sometimes doubling up against the
shaft; but he was patient, having been through these experiences before,
when he was soldiering.  He succeeded at last, and took up the garment
that had lain waiting, meantime, across his lap, and began his work.

“The inn is paid--the breakfast that is to come, included--and there is
wherewithal left to buy a couple of donkeys and meet our little costs
for the two or three days betwixt this and the plenty that awaits us at
Hendon Hall--

“‘She loved her hus--’

“Body o’ me!  I have driven the needle under my nail! . . . It matters
little--‘tis not a novelty--yet ’tis not a convenience, neither. . . .
We shall be merry there, little one, never doubt it! Thy troubles will
vanish there, and likewise thy sad distemper--

“‘She loved her husband dearilee, But another man--’

“These be noble large stitches!”--holding the garment up and viewing
it admiringly--“they have a grandeur and a majesty that do cause
these small stingy ones of the tailor-man to look mightily paltry and
plebeian--

“‘She loved her husband dearilee, But another man he loved she,--’

“Marry, ’tis done--a goodly piece of work, too, and wrought with
expedition.  Now will I wake him, apparel him, pour for him, feed him,
and then will we hie us to the mart by the Tabard Inn in Southwark
and--be pleased to rise, my liege!--he answereth not--what ho, my
liege!--of a truth must I profane his sacred person with a touch, sith
his slumber is deaf to speech.  What!”

He threw back the covers--the boy was gone!

He stared about him in speechless astonishment for a moment; noticed for
the first time that his ward’s ragged raiment was also missing; then he
began to rage and storm and shout for the innkeeper.  At that moment a
servant entered with the breakfast.

“Explain, thou limb of Satan, or thy time is come!” roared the man of
war, and made so savage a spring toward the waiter that this latter
could not find his tongue, for the instant, for fright and surprise.
 “Where is the boy?”

In disjointed and trembling syllables the man gave the information
desired.

“You were hardly gone from the place, your worship, when a youth came
running and said it was your worship’s will that the boy come to you
straight, at the bridge-end on the Southwark side.  I brought him
hither; and when he woke the lad and gave his message, the lad did
grumble some little for being disturbed ‘so early,’ as he called it, but
straightway trussed on his rags and went with the youth, only saying
it had been better manners that your worship came yourself, not sent a
stranger--and so--”

“And so thou’rt a fool!--a fool and easily cozened--hang all thy breed!
Yet mayhap no hurt is done.  Possibly no harm is meant the boy.  I will
go fetch him.  Make the table ready.  Stay! the coverings of the bed
were disposed as if one lay beneath them--happened that by accident?”

“I know not, good your worship.  I saw the youth meddle with them--he
that came for the boy.”

“Thousand deaths!  ‘Twas done to deceive me--‘tis plain ’twas done to
gain time.  Hark ye!  Was that youth alone?”

“All alone, your worship.”

“Art sure?”

“Sure, your worship.”

“Collect thy scattered wits--bethink thee--take time, man.”

After a moment’s thought, the servant said--

“When he came, none came with him; but now I remember me that as the two
stepped into the throng of the Bridge, a ruffian-looking man plunged out
from some near place; and just as he was joining them--”

“What _then_?--out with it!” thundered the impatient Hendon,
interrupting.

“Just then the crowd lapped them up and closed them in, and I saw no
more, being called by my master, who was in a rage because a joint that
the scrivener had ordered was forgot, though I take all the saints to
witness that to blame _me_ for that miscarriage were like holding the
unborn babe to judgment for sins com--”

“Out of my sight, idiot!  Thy prating drives me mad!  Hold! Whither art
flying?  Canst not bide still an instant?  Went they toward Southwark?”

“Even so, your worship--for, as I said before, as to that detestable
joint, the babe unborn is no whit more blameless than--”

“Art here _yet_!  And prating still!  Vanish, lest I throttle thee!” The
servitor vanished.  Hendon followed after him, passed him, and plunged
down the stairs two steps at a stride, muttering, “‘Tis that scurvy
villain that claimed he was his son.  I have lost thee, my poor little
mad master--it is a bitter thought--and I had come to love thee so!  No!
by book and bell, _not_ lost!  Not lost, for I will ransack the land
till I find thee again.  Poor child, yonder is his breakfast--and mine,
but I have no hunger now; so, let the rats have it--speed, speed! that
is the word!”  As he wormed his swift way through the noisy multitudes
upon the Bridge he several times said to himself--clinging to the
thought as if it were a particularly pleasing one--“He grumbled, but he
_went_--he went, yes, because he thought Miles Hendon asked it, sweet
lad--he would ne’er have done it for another, I know it well.”




CHAPTER XIV. ‘Le Roi est mort--vive le Roi.’

Toward daylight of the same morning, Tom Canty stirred out of a heavy
sleep and opened his eyes in the dark.  He lay silent a few moments,
trying to analyse his confused thoughts and impressions, and get some
sort of meaning out of them; then suddenly he burst out in a rapturous
but guarded voice--

“I see it all, I see it all!  Now God be thanked, I am indeed awake at
last!  Come, joy! vanish, sorrow!  Ho, Nan! Bet! kick off your straw and
hie ye hither to my side, till I do pour into your unbelieving ears the
wildest madcap dream that ever the spirits of night did conjure up to
astonish the soul of man withal! . . . Ho, Nan, I say!  Bet!”

A dim form appeared at his side, and a voice said--

“Wilt deign to deliver thy commands?”

“Commands? . . . O, woe is me, I know thy voice!  Speak thou--who am I?”

“Thou?  In sooth, yesternight wert thou the Prince of Wales; to-day art
thou my most gracious liege, Edward, King of England.”

Tom buried his head among his pillows, murmuring plaintively--

“Alack, it was no dream!  Go to thy rest, sweet sir--leave me to my
sorrows.”

Tom slept again, and after a time he had this pleasant dream.  He
thought it was summer, and he was playing, all alone, in the fair meadow
called Goodman’s Fields, when a dwarf only a foot high, with long red
whiskers and a humped back, appeared to him suddenly and said, “Dig by
that stump.”  He did so, and found twelve bright new pennies--wonderful
riches!  Yet this was not the best of it; for the dwarf said--

“I know thee.  Thou art a good lad, and a deserving; thy distresses
shall end, for the day of thy reward is come.  Dig here every seventh
day, and thou shalt find always the same treasure, twelve bright new
pennies. Tell none--keep the secret.”

Then the dwarf vanished, and Tom flew to Offal Court with his prize,
saying to himself, “Every night will I give my father a penny; he
will think I begged it, it will glad his heart, and I shall no more
be beaten. One penny every week the good priest that teacheth me shall
have; mother, Nan, and Bet the other four. We be done with hunger and
rags, now, done with fears and frets and savage usage.”

In his dream he reached his sordid home all out of breath, but with
eyes dancing with grateful enthusiasm; cast four of his pennies into his
mother’s lap and cried out--

“They are for thee!--all of them, every one!--for thee and Nan and
Bet--and honestly come by, not begged nor stolen!”

The happy and astonished mother strained him to her breast and
exclaimed--

“It waxeth late--may it please your Majesty to rise?”

Ah! that was not the answer he was expecting.  The dream had snapped
asunder--he was awake.

He opened his eyes--the richly clad First Lord of the Bedchamber was
kneeling by his couch.  The gladness of the lying dream faded away--the
poor boy recognised that he was still a captive and a king.  The room
was filled with courtiers clothed in purple mantles--the mourning
colour--and with noble servants of the monarch.  Tom sat up in bed and
gazed out from the heavy silken curtains upon this fine company.

The weighty business of dressing began, and one courtier after another
knelt and paid his court and offered to the little King his condolences
upon his heavy loss, whilst the dressing proceeded.  In the beginning, a
shirt was taken up by the Chief Equerry in Waiting, who passed it to the
First Lord of the Buckhounds, who passed it to the Second Gentleman of
the Bedchamber, who passed it to the Head Ranger of Windsor Forest,
who passed it to the Third Groom of the Stole, who passed it to the
Chancellor Royal of the Duchy of Lancaster, who passed it to the Master
of the Wardrobe, who passed it to Norroy King-at-Arms, who passed it to
the Constable of the Tower, who passed it to the Chief Steward of the
Household, who passed it to the Hereditary Grand Diaperer, who passed it
to the Lord High Admiral of England, who passed it to the Archbishop of
Canterbury, who passed it to the First Lord of the Bedchamber, who took
what was left of it and put it on Tom.  Poor little wondering chap, it
reminded him of passing buckets at a fire.

Each garment in its turn had to go through this slow and solemn process;
consequently Tom grew very weary of the ceremony; so weary that he felt
an almost gushing gratefulness when he at last saw his long silken hose
begin the journey down the line and knew that the end of the matter
was drawing near.  But he exulted too soon.  The First Lord of the
Bedchamber received the hose and was about to encase Tom’s legs in them,
when a sudden flush invaded his face and he hurriedly hustled the things
back into the hands of the Archbishop of Canterbury with an astounded
look and a whispered, “See, my lord!” pointing to a something connected
with the hose.  The Archbishop paled, then flushed, and passed the
hose to the Lord High Admiral, whispering, “See, my lord!”  The Admiral
passed the hose to the Hereditary Grand Diaperer, and had hardly breath
enough in his body to ejaculate, “See, my lord!”  The hose drifted
backward along the line, to the Chief Steward of the Household, the
Constable of the Tower, Norroy King-at-Arms, the Master of the Wardrobe,
the Chancellor Royal of the Duchy of Lancaster, the Third Groom of the
Stole, the Head Ranger of Windsor Forest, the Second Gentleman of the
Bedchamber, the First Lord of the Buckhounds,--accompanied always with
that amazed and frightened “See! see!”--till they finally reached the
hands of the Chief Equerry in Waiting, who gazed a moment, with a pallid
face, upon what had caused all this dismay, then hoarsely whispered,
“Body of my life, a tag gone from a truss-point!--to the Tower with
the Head Keeper of the King’s Hose!”--after which he leaned upon the
shoulder of the First Lord of the Buckhounds to regather his vanished
strength whilst fresh hose, without any damaged strings to them, were
brought.

But all things must have an end, and so in time Tom Canty was in a
condition to get out of bed.  The proper official poured water, the
proper official engineered the washing, the proper official stood by
with a towel, and by-and-by Tom got safely through the purifying stage
and was ready for the services of the Hairdresser-royal.  When he at
length emerged from this master’s hands, he was a gracious figure and
as pretty as a girl, in his mantle and trunks of purple satin, and
purple-plumed cap.  He now moved in state toward his breakfast-room,
through the midst of the courtly assemblage; and as he passed, these
fell back, leaving his way free, and dropped upon their knees.

After breakfast he was conducted, with regal ceremony, attended by his
great officers and his guard of fifty Gentlemen Pensioners bearing gilt
battle-axes, to the throne-room, where he proceeded to transact business
of state.  His ‘uncle,’ Lord Hertford, took his stand by the throne, to
assist the royal mind with wise counsel.

The body of illustrious men named by the late King as his executors
appeared, to ask Tom’s approval of certain acts of theirs--rather a
form, and yet not wholly a form, since there was no Protector as yet.
 The Archbishop of Canterbury made report of the decree of the Council
of Executors concerning the obsequies of his late most illustrious
Majesty, and finished by reading the signatures of the Executors, to
wit:  the Archbishop of Canterbury; the Lord Chancellor of England;
William Lord St. John; John Lord Russell; Edward Earl of Hertford; John
Viscount Lisle; Cuthbert Bishop of Durham--

Tom was not listening--an earlier clause of the document was puzzling
him.  At this point he turned and whispered to Lord Hertford--

“What day did he say the burial hath been appointed for?”

“The sixteenth of the coming month, my liege.”

“‘Tis a strange folly.  Will he keep?”

Poor chap, he was still new to the customs of royalty; he was used to
seeing the forlorn dead of Offal Court hustled out of the way with a
very different sort of expedition.  However, the Lord Hertford set his
mind at rest with a word or two.

A secretary of state presented an order of the Council appointing the
morrow at eleven for the reception of the foreign ambassadors, and
desired the King’s assent.

Tom turned an inquiring look toward Hertford, who whispered--

“Your Majesty will signify consent.  They come to testify their royal
masters’ sense of the heavy calamity which hath visited your Grace and
the realm of England.”

Tom did as he was bidden.  Another secretary began to read a preamble
concerning the expenses of the late King’s household, which had amounted
to 28,000 pounds during the preceding six months--a sum so vast that it
made Tom Canty gasp; he gasped again when the fact appeared that 20,000
pounds of this money was still owing and unpaid; {4} and once more when
it appeared that the King’s coffers were about empty, and his twelve
hundred servants much embarrassed for lack of the wages due them.  Tom
spoke out, with lively apprehension--

“We be going to the dogs, ’tis plain.  ‘Tis meet and necessary that we
take a smaller house and set the servants at large, sith they be of no
value but to make delay, and trouble one with offices that harass the
spirit and shame the soul, they misbecoming any but a doll, that hath
nor brains nor hands to help itself withal.  I remember me of a small
house that standeth over against the fish-market, by Billingsgate--”

A sharp pressure upon Tom’s arm stopped his foolish tongue and sent a
blush to his face; but no countenance there betrayed any sign that this
strange speech had been remarked or given concern.

A secretary made report that forasmuch as the late King had provided in
his will for conferring the ducal degree upon the Earl of Hertford and
raising his brother, Sir Thomas Seymour, to the peerage, and likewise
Hertford’s son to an earldom, together with similar aggrandisements to
other great servants of the Crown, the Council had resolved to hold a
sitting on the 16th of February for the delivering and confirming of
these honours, and that meantime, the late King not having granted,
in writing, estates suitable to the support of these dignities, the
Council, knowing his private wishes in that regard, had thought proper
to grant to Seymour ‘500 pound lands,’ and to Hertford’s son ‘800
pound lands, and 300 pound of the next bishop’s lands which should fall
vacant,’--his present Majesty being willing. {5}

Tom was about to blurt out something about the propriety of paying the
late King’s debts first, before squandering all this money, but a
timely touch upon his arm, from the thoughtful Hertford, saved him
this indiscretion; wherefore he gave the royal assent, without spoken
comment, but with much inward discomfort.  While he sat reflecting a
moment over the ease with which he was doing strange and glittering
miracles, a happy thought shot into his mind:  why not make his mother
Duchess of Offal Court, and give her an estate?  But a sorrowful
thought swept it instantly away: he was only a king in name, these grave
veterans and great nobles were his masters; to them his mother was only
the creature of a diseased mind; they would simply listen to his project
with unbelieving ears, then send for the doctor.

The dull work went tediously on.  Petitions were read, and
proclamations, patents, and all manner of wordy, repetitious, and
wearisome papers relating to the public business; and at last Tom sighed
pathetically and murmured to himself, “In what have I offended, that the
good God should take me away from the fields and the free air and the
sunshine, to shut me up here and make me a king and afflict me so?”
  Then his poor muddled head nodded a while and presently drooped to his
shoulder; and the business of the empire came to a standstill for want
of that august factor, the ratifying power.  Silence ensued around
the slumbering child, and the sages of the realm ceased from their
deliberations.

During the forenoon, Tom had an enjoyable hour, by permission of his
keepers, Hertford and St. John, with the Lady Elizabeth and the little
Lady Jane Grey; though the spirits of the princesses were rather subdued
by the mighty stroke that had fallen upon the royal house; and at the
end of the visit his ‘elder sister’--afterwards the ‘Bloody Mary’ of
history--chilled him with a solemn interview which had but one merit in
his eyes, its brevity.  He had a few moments to himself, and then a slim
lad of about twelve years of age was admitted to his presence, whose
clothing, except his snowy ruff and the laces about his wrists, was of
black,--doublet, hose, and all.  He bore no badge of mourning but a knot
of purple ribbon on his shoulder.  He advanced hesitatingly, with head
bowed and bare, and dropped upon one knee in front of Tom. Tom sat still
and contemplated him soberly a moment.  Then he said--

“Rise, lad.  Who art thou.  What wouldst have?”

The boy rose, and stood at graceful ease, but with an aspect of concern
in his face.  He said--

“Of a surety thou must remember me, my lord.  I am thy whipping-boy.”

“My _whipping_-boy?”

“The same, your Grace.  I am Humphrey--Humphrey Marlow.”

Tom perceived that here was someone whom his keepers ought to have
posted him about.  The situation was delicate.  What should he
do?--pretend he knew this lad, and then betray by his every utterance
that he had never heard of him before?  No, that would not do.  An idea
came to his relief: accidents like this might be likely to happen with
some frequency, now that business urgencies would often call Hertford
and St. John from his side, they being members of the Council of
Executors; therefore perhaps it would be well to strike out a plan
himself to meet the requirements of such emergencies.  Yes, that would
be a wise course--he would practise on this boy, and see what sort of
success he might achieve.  So he stroked his brow perplexedly a moment
or two, and presently said--

“Now I seem to remember thee somewhat--but my wit is clogged and dim
with suffering--”

“Alack, my poor master!” ejaculated the whipping-boy, with feeling;
adding, to himself, “In truth ’tis as they said--his mind is gone--alas,
poor soul!  But misfortune catch me, how am I forgetting!  They said one
must not seem to observe that aught is wrong with him.”

“‘Tis strange how my memory doth wanton with me these days,” said Tom.
“But mind it not--I mend apace--a little clue doth often serve to bring
me back again the things and names which had escaped me.  (And not they,
only, forsooth, but e’en such as I ne’er heard before--as this lad shall
see.)  Give thy business speech.”

“‘Tis matter of small weight, my liege, yet will I touch upon it, an’ it
please your Grace.  Two days gone by, when your Majesty faulted thrice
in your Greek--in the morning lessons,--dost remember it?”

“Y-e-s--methinks I do.  (It is not much of a lie--an’ I had meddled with
the Greek at all, I had not faulted simply thrice, but forty times.)
Yes, I do recall it, now--go on.”

“The master, being wroth with what he termed such slovenly and doltish
work, did promise that he would soundly whip me for it--and--”

“Whip _thee_!” said Tom, astonished out of his presence of mind. “Why
should he whip _thee_ for faults of mine?”

“Ah, your Grace forgetteth again.  He always scourgeth me when thou dost
fail in thy lessons.”

“True, true--I had forgot.  Thou teachest me in private--then if I fail,
he argueth that thy office was lamely done, and--”

“Oh, my liege, what words are these?  I, the humblest of thy servants,
presume to teach _thee_?”

“Then where is thy blame?  What riddle is this?  Am I in truth gone mad,
or is it thou?  Explain--speak out.”

“But, good your Majesty, there’s nought that needeth simplifying.--None
may visit the sacred person of the Prince of Wales with blows;
wherefore, when he faulteth, ’tis I that take them; and meet it is and
right, for that it is mine office and my livelihood.” {1}

Tom stared at the tranquil boy, observing to himself, “Lo, it is a
wonderful thing,--a most strange and curious trade; I marvel they have
not hired a boy to take my combings and my dressings for me--would
heaven they would!--an’ they will do this thing, I will take my lashings
in mine own person, giving God thanks for the change.” Then he said
aloud--

“And hast thou been beaten, poor friend, according to the promise?”

“No, good your Majesty, my punishment was appointed for this day, and
peradventure it may be annulled, as unbefitting the season of mourning
that is come upon us; I know not, and so have made bold to come hither
and remind your Grace about your gracious promise to intercede in my
behalf--”

“With the master?  To save thee thy whipping?”

“Ah, thou dost remember!”

“My memory mendeth, thou seest.  Set thy mind at ease--thy back shall go
unscathed--I will see to it.”

“Oh, thanks, my good lord!” cried the boy, dropping upon his knee again.
“Mayhap I have ventured far enow; and yet--”

Seeing Master Humphrey hesitate, Tom encouraged him to go on, saying he
was “in the granting mood.”

“Then will I speak it out, for it lieth near my heart.  Sith thou art
no more Prince of Wales but King, thou canst order matters as thou wilt,
with none to say thee nay; wherefore it is not in reason that thou wilt
longer vex thyself with dreary studies, but wilt burn thy books and
turn thy mind to things less irksome. Then am I ruined, and mine orphan
sisters with me!”

“Ruined?  Prithee how?”

“My back is my bread, O my gracious liege! if it go idle, I starve.  An’
thou cease from study mine office is gone thou’lt need no whipping-boy.
Do not turn me away!”

Tom was touched with this pathetic distress.  He said, with a right
royal burst of generosity--

“Discomfort thyself no further, lad.  Thine office shall be permanent in
thee and thy line for ever.”  Then he struck the boy a light blow on the
shoulder with the flat of his sword, exclaiming, “Rise, Humphrey Marlow,
Hereditary Grand Whipping-Boy to the Royal House of England!  Banish
sorrow--I will betake me to my books again, and study so ill that they
must in justice treble thy wage, so mightily shall the business of thine
office be augmented.”

The grateful Humphrey responded fervidly--

“Thanks, O most noble master, this princely lavishness doth far surpass
my most distempered dreams of fortune.  Now shall I be happy all my
days, and all the house of Marlow after me.”

Tom had wit enough to perceive that here was a lad who could be useful
to him.  He encouraged Humphrey to talk, and he was nothing loath.
 He was delighted to believe that he was helping in Tom’s ‘cure’; for
always, as soon as he had finished calling back to Tom’s diseased mind
the various particulars of his experiences and adventures in the royal
school-room and elsewhere about the palace, he noticed that Tom was then
able to ‘recall’ the circumstances quite clearly.  At the end of an
hour Tom found himself well freighted with very valuable information
concerning personages and matters pertaining to the Court; so he
resolved to draw instruction from this source daily; and to this end he
would give order to admit Humphrey to the royal closet whenever he might
come, provided the Majesty of England was not engaged with other people.
 Humphrey had hardly been dismissed when my Lord Hertford arrived with
more trouble for Tom.

He said that the Lords of the Council, fearing that some overwrought
report of the King’s damaged health might have leaked out and got
abroad, they deemed it wise and best that his Majesty should begin to
dine in public after a day or two--his wholesome complexion and vigorous
step, assisted by a carefully guarded repose of manner and ease and
grace of demeanour, would more surely quiet the general pulse--in case
any evil rumours _had_ gone about--than any other scheme that could be
devised.

Then the Earl proceeded, very delicately, to instruct Tom as to the
observances proper to the stately occasion, under the rather thin
disguise of ‘reminding’ him concerning things already known to him; but
to his vast gratification it turned out that Tom needed very little help
in this line--he had been making use of Humphrey in that direction, for
Humphrey had mentioned that within a few days he was to begin to dine
in public; having gathered it from the swift-winged gossip of the Court.
Tom kept these facts to himself, however.

Seeing the royal memory so improved, the Earl ventured to apply a
few tests to it, in an apparently casual way, to find out how far its
amendment had progressed.  The results were happy, here and there, in
spots--spots where Humphrey’s tracks remained--and on the whole my lord
was greatly pleased and encouraged.  So encouraged was he, indeed, that
he spoke up and said in a quite hopeful voice--

“Now am I persuaded that if your Majesty will but tax your memory yet
a little further, it will resolve the puzzle of the Great Seal--a loss
which was of moment yesterday, although of none to-day, since its term
of service ended with our late lord’s life. May it please your Grace to
make the trial?”

Tom was at sea--a Great Seal was something which he was totally
unacquainted with.  After a moment’s hesitation he looked up innocently
and asked--

“What was it like, my lord?”

The Earl started, almost imperceptibly, muttering to himself, “Alack,
his wits are flown again!--it was ill wisdom to lead him on to strain
them”--then he deftly turned the talk to other matters, with the purpose
of sweeping the unlucky seal out of Tom’s thoughts--a purpose which
easily succeeded.




CHAPTER XV. Tom as King.

The next day the foreign ambassadors came, with their gorgeous trains;
and Tom, throned in awful state, received them.  The splendours of the
scene delighted his eye and fired his imagination at first, but
the audience was long and dreary, and so were most of the
addresses--wherefore, what began as a pleasure grew into weariness and
home-sickness by-and-by.  Tom said the words which Hertford put into
his mouth from time to time, and tried hard to acquit himself
satisfactorily, but he was too new to such things, and too ill at ease
to accomplish more than a tolerable success.  He looked sufficiently
like a king, but he was ill able to feel like one.  He was cordially
glad when the ceremony was ended.

The larger part of his day was ‘wasted’--as he termed it, in his own
mind--in labours pertaining to his royal office.  Even the two hours
devoted to certain princely pastimes and recreations were rather a
burden to him than otherwise, they were so fettered by restrictions
and ceremonious observances.  However, he had a private hour with
his whipping-boy which he counted clear gain, since he got both
entertainment and needful information out of it.

The third day of Tom Canty’s kingship came and went much as the others
had done, but there was a lifting of his cloud in one way--he felt
less uncomfortable than at first; he was getting a little used to his
circumstances and surroundings; his chains still galled, but not all the
time; he found that the presence and homage of the great afflicted and
embarrassed him less and less sharply with every hour that drifted over
his head.

But for one single dread, he could have seen the fourth day approach
without serious distress--the dining in public; it was to begin that
day. There were greater matters in the programme--for on that day
he would have to preside at a council which would take his views and
commands concerning the policy to be pursued toward various foreign
nations scattered far and near over the great globe; on that day, too,
Hertford would be formally chosen to the grand office of Lord Protector;
other things of note were appointed for that fourth day, also; but to
Tom they were all insignificant compared with the ordeal of dining all
by himself with a multitude of curious eyes fastened upon him and a
multitude of mouths whispering comments upon his performance,--and upon
his mistakes, if he should be so unlucky as to make any.

Still, nothing could stop that fourth day, and so it came.  It found
poor Tom low-spirited and absent-minded, and this mood continued; he
could not shake it off.  The ordinary duties of the morning dragged upon
his hands, and wearied him.  Once more he felt the sense of captivity
heavy upon him.

Late in the forenoon he was in a large audience-chamber, conversing
with the Earl of Hertford and dully awaiting the striking of the hour
appointed for a visit of ceremony from a considerable number of great
officials and courtiers.

After a little while, Tom, who had wandered to a window and become
interested in the life and movement of the great highway beyond the
palace gates--and not idly interested, but longing with all his heart
to take part in person in its stir and freedom--saw the van of a hooting
and shouting mob of disorderly men, women, and children of the lowest
and poorest degree approaching from up the road.

“I would I knew what ’tis about!” he exclaimed, with all a boy’s
curiosity in such happenings.

“Thou art the King!” solemnly responded the Earl, with a reverence.
“Have I your Grace’s leave to act?”

“O blithely, yes!  O gladly, yes!” exclaimed Tom excitedly, adding to
himself with a lively sense of satisfaction, “In truth, being a king is
not all dreariness--it hath its compensations and conveniences.”

The Earl called a page, and sent him to the captain of the guard with
the order--

“Let the mob be halted, and inquiry made concerning the occasion of its
movement.  By the King’s command!”

A few seconds later a long rank of the royal guards, cased in flashing
steel, filed out at the gates and formed across the highway in front
of the multitude.  A messenger returned, to report that the crowd were
following a man, a woman, and a young girl to execution for crimes
committed against the peace and dignity of the realm.

Death--and a violent death--for these poor unfortunates!  The thought
wrung Tom’s heart-strings.  The spirit of compassion took control of
him, to the exclusion of all other considerations; he never thought of
the offended laws, or of the grief or loss which these three criminals
had inflicted upon their victims; he could think of nothing but the
scaffold and the grisly fate hanging over the heads of the condemned.
 His concern made him even forget, for the moment, that he was but the
false shadow of a king, not the substance; and before he knew it he had
blurted out the command--

“Bring them here!”

Then he blushed scarlet, and a sort of apology sprung to his lips; but
observing that his order had wrought no sort of surprise in the Earl or
the waiting page, he suppressed the words he was about to utter.  The
page, in the most matter-of-course way, made a profound obeisance
and retired backwards out of the room to deliver the command.  Tom
experienced a glow of pride and a renewed sense of the compensating
advantages of the kingly office. He said to himself, “Truly it is like
what I was used to feel when I read the old priest’s tales, and did
imagine mine own self a prince, giving law and command to all, saying
‘Do this, do that,’ whilst none durst offer let or hindrance to my
will.”

Now the doors swung open; one high-sounding title after another was
announced, the personages owning them followed, and the place was
quickly half-filled with noble folk and finery.  But Tom was hardly
conscious of the presence of these people, so wrought up was he and so
intensely absorbed in that other and more interesting matter.  He seated
himself absently in his chair of state, and turned his eyes upon the
door with manifestations of impatient expectancy; seeing which, the
company forbore to trouble him, and fell to chatting a mixture of public
business and court gossip one with another.

In a little while the measured tread of military men was heard
approaching, and the culprits entered the presence in charge of an
under-sheriff and escorted by a detail of the king’s guard.  The civil
officer knelt before Tom, then stood aside; the three doomed persons
knelt, also, and remained so; the guard took position behind Tom’s
chair.  Tom scanned the prisoners curiously. Something about the dress
or appearance of the man had stirred a vague memory in him.  “Methinks
I have seen this man ere now . . . but the when or the where fail
me.”--Such was Tom’s thought. Just then the man glanced quickly up and
quickly dropped his face again, not being able to endure the awful port
of sovereignty; but the one full glimpse of the face which Tom got was
sufficient.  He said to himself: “Now is the matter clear; this is the
stranger that plucked Giles Witt out of the Thames, and saved his life,
that windy, bitter, first day of the New Year--a brave good deed--pity
he hath been doing baser ones and got himself in this sad case . . . I
have not forgot the day, neither the hour; by reason that an hour after,
upon the stroke of eleven, I did get a hiding by the hand of Gammer
Canty which was of so goodly and admired severity that all that
went before or followed after it were but fondlings and caresses by
comparison.”

Tom now ordered that the woman and the girl be removed from the presence
for a little time; then addressed himself to the under-sheriff, saying--

“Good sir, what is this man’s offence?”

The officer knelt, and answered--

“So please your Majesty, he hath taken the life of a subject by poison.”

Tom’s compassion for the prisoner, and admiration of him as the daring
rescuer of a drowning boy, experienced a most damaging shock.

“The thing was proven upon him?” he asked.

“Most clearly, sire.”

Tom sighed, and said--

“Take him away--he hath earned his death.  ‘Tis a pity, for he was a
brave heart--na--na, I mean he hath the _look_ of it!”

The prisoner clasped his hands together with sudden energy, and wrung
them despairingly, at the same time appealing imploringly to the ‘King’
in broken and terrified phrases--

“O my lord the King, an’ thou canst pity the lost, have pity upon me!  I
am innocent--neither hath that wherewith I am charged been more than
but lamely proved--yet I speak not of that; the judgment is gone forth
against me and may not suffer alteration; yet in mine extremity I beg a
boon, for my doom is more than I can bear. A grace, a grace, my lord the
King! in thy royal compassion grant my prayer--give commandment that I
be hanged!”

Tom was amazed.  This was not the outcome he had looked for.

“Odds my life, a strange _boon_!  Was it not the fate intended thee?”

“O good my liege, not so!  It is ordered that I be _boiled alive_!”

The hideous surprise of these words almost made Tom spring from his
chair.  As soon as he could recover his wits he cried out--

“Have thy wish, poor soul! an’ thou had poisoned a hundred men thou
shouldst not suffer so miserable a death.”

The prisoner bowed his face to the ground and burst into passionate
expressions of gratitude--ending with--

“If ever thou shouldst know misfortune--which God forefend!--may thy
goodness to me this day be remembered and requited!”

Tom turned to the Earl of Hertford, and said--

“My lord, is it believable that there was warrant for this man’s
ferocious doom?”

“It is the law, your Grace--for poisoners.  In Germany coiners be boiled
to death in _oil_--not cast in of a sudden, but by a rope let down into
the oil by degrees, and slowly; first the feet, then the legs, then--”

“O prithee no more, my lord, I cannot bear it!” cried Tom, covering
his eyes with his hands to shut out the picture.  “I beseech your good
lordship that order be taken to change this law--oh, let no more poor
creatures be visited with its tortures.”

The Earl’s face showed profound gratification, for he was a man of
merciful and generous impulses--a thing not very common with his class
in that fierce age.  He said--

“These your Grace’s noble words have sealed its doom.  History will
remember it to the honour of your royal house.”

The under-sheriff was about to remove his prisoner; Tom gave him a sign
to wait; then he said--

“Good sir, I would look into this matter further.  The man has said his
deed was but lamely proved.  Tell me what thou knowest.”

“If the King’s grace please, it did appear upon the trial that this
man entered into a house in the hamlet of Islington where one lay
sick--three witnesses say it was at ten of the clock in the morning, and
two say it was some minutes later--the sick man being alone at the time,
and sleeping--and presently the man came forth again and went his
way.  The sick man died within the hour, being torn with spasms and
retchings.”

“Did any see the poison given?  Was poison found?”

“Marry, no, my liege.”

“Then how doth one know there was poison given at all?”

“Please your Majesty, the doctors testified that none die with such
symptoms but by poison.”

Weighty evidence, this, in that simple age.  Tom recognised its
formidable nature, and said--

“The doctor knoweth his trade--belike they were right.  The matter hath
an ill-look for this poor man.”

“Yet was not this all, your Majesty; there is more and worse. Many
testified that a witch, since gone from the village, none know whither,
did foretell, and speak it privately in their ears, that the sick
man _would die by poison_--and more, that a stranger would give it--a
stranger with brown hair and clothed in a worn and common garb; and
surely this prisoner doth answer woundily to the bill.  Please your
Majesty to give the circumstance that solemn weight which is its due,
seeing it was _foretold_.”

This was an argument of tremendous force in that superstitious day.  Tom
felt that the thing was settled; if evidence was worth anything, this
poor fellow’s guilt was proved.  Still he offered the prisoner a chance,
saying--

“If thou canst say aught in thy behalf, speak.”

“Nought that will avail, my King.  I am innocent, yet cannot I make
it appear.  I have no friends, else might I show that I was not in
Islington that day; so also might I show that at that hour they name I
was above a league away, seeing I was at Wapping Old Stairs; yea more,
my King, for I could show, that whilst they say I was _taking_ life, I
was _saving_ it.  A drowning boy--”

“Peace!  Sheriff, name the day the deed was done!”

“At ten in the morning, or some minutes later, the first day of the New
Year, most illustrious--”

“Let the prisoner go free--it is the King’s will!”

Another blush followed this unregal outburst, and he covered his
indecorum as well as he could by adding--

“It enrageth me that a man should be hanged upon such idle, hare-brained
evidence!”

A low buzz of admiration swept through the assemblage.  It was not
admiration of the decree that had been delivered by Tom, for the
propriety or expediency of pardoning a convicted poisoner was a thing
which few there would have felt justified in either admitting or
admiring--no, the admiration was for the intelligence and spirit which
Tom had displayed.  Some of the low-voiced remarks were to this effect--

“This is no mad king--he hath his wits sound.”

“How sanely he put his questions--how like his former natural self was
this abrupt imperious disposal of the matter!”

“God be thanked, his infirmity is spent!  This is no weakling, but a
king.  He hath borne himself like to his own father.”

The air being filled with applause, Tom’s ear necessarily caught a
little of it.  The effect which this had upon him was to put him
greatly at his ease, and also to charge his system with very gratifying
sensations.

However, his juvenile curiosity soon rose superior to these pleasant
thoughts and feelings; he was eager to know what sort of deadly mischief
the woman and the little girl could have been about; so, by his command,
the two terrified and sobbing creatures were brought before him.

“What is it that these have done?” he inquired of the sheriff.

“Please your Majesty, a black crime is charged upon them, and clearly
proven; wherefore the judges have decreed, according to the law, that
they be hanged.  They sold themselves to the devil--such is their
crime.”

Tom shuddered.  He had been taught to abhor people who did this wicked
thing.  Still, he was not going to deny himself the pleasure of feeding
his curiosity for all that; so he asked--

“Where was this done?--and when?”

“On a midnight in December, in a ruined church, your Majesty.”

Tom shuddered again.

“Who was there present?”

“Only these two, your grace--and _that other_.”

“Have these confessed?”

“Nay, not so, sire--they do deny it.”

“Then prithee, how was it known?”

“Certain witness did see them wending thither, good your Majesty; this
bred the suspicion, and dire effects have since confirmed and justified
it.  In particular, it is in evidence that through the wicked power so
obtained, they did invoke and bring about a storm that wasted all the
region round about.  Above forty witnesses have proved the storm; and
sooth one might have had a thousand, for all had reason to remember it,
sith all had suffered by it.”

“Certes this is a serious matter.”  Tom turned this dark piece of
scoundrelism over in his mind a while, then asked--

“Suffered the woman also by the storm?”

Several old heads among the assemblage nodded their recognition of
the wisdom of this question.  The sheriff, however, saw nothing
consequential in the inquiry; he answered, with simple directness--

“Indeed did she, your Majesty, and most righteously, as all aver. Her
habitation was swept away, and herself and child left shelterless.”

“Methinks the power to do herself so ill a turn was dearly bought. She
had been cheated, had she paid but a farthing for it; that she paid
her soul, and her child’s, argueth that she is mad; if she is mad she
knoweth not what she doth, therefore sinneth not.”

The elderly heads nodded recognition of Tom’s wisdom once more, and one
individual murmured, “An’ the King be mad himself, according to report,
then is it a madness of a sort that would improve the sanity of some I
wot of, if by the gentle providence of God they could but catch it.”

“What age hath the child?” asked Tom.

“Nine years, please your Majesty.”

“By the law of England may a child enter into covenant and sell itself,
my lord?” asked Tom, turning to a learned judge.

“The law doth not permit a child to make or meddle in any weighty
matter, good my liege, holding that its callow wit unfitteth it to cope
with the riper wit and evil schemings of them that are its elders.  The
_Devil_ may buy a child, if he so choose, and the child agree thereto,
but not an Englishman--in this latter case the contract would be null
and void.”

“It seemeth a rude unchristian thing, and ill contrived, that English
law denieth privileges to Englishmen to waste them on the devil!” cried
Tom, with honest heat.

This novel view of the matter excited many smiles, and was stored
away in many heads to be repeated about the Court as evidence of Tom’s
originality as well as progress toward mental health.

The elder culprit had ceased from sobbing, and was hanging upon Tom’s
words with an excited interest and a growing hope.  Tom noticed this,
and it strongly inclined his sympathies toward her in her perilous and
unfriended situation.  Presently he asked--

“How wrought they to bring the storm?”

“_By pulling off their stockings_, sire.”

This astonished Tom, and also fired his curiosity to fever heat. He
said, eagerly--

“It is wonderful!  Hath it always this dread effect?”

“Always, my liege--at least if the woman desire it, and utter the
needful words, either in her mind or with her tongue.”

Tom turned to the woman, and said with impetuous zeal--

“Exert thy power--I would see a storm!”

There was a sudden paling of cheeks in the superstitious assemblage, and
a general, though unexpressed, desire to get out of the place--all of
which was lost upon Tom, who was dead to everything but the proposed
cataclysm.  Seeing a puzzled and astonished look in the woman’s face, he
added, excitedly--

“Never fear--thou shalt be blameless.  More--thou shalt go free--none
shall touch thee.  Exert thy power.”

“Oh, my lord the King, I have it not--I have been falsely accused.”

“Thy fears stay thee.  Be of good heart, thou shalt suffer no harm.
 Make a storm--it mattereth not how small a one--I require nought great
or harmful, but indeed prefer the opposite--do this and thy life is
spared--thou shalt go out free, with thy child, bearing the King’s
pardon, and safe from hurt or malice from any in the realm.”

The woman prostrated herself, and protested, with tears, that she had
no power to do the miracle, else she would gladly win her child’s life
alone, and be content to lose her own, if by obedience to the King’s
command so precious a grace might be acquired.

Tom urged--the woman still adhered to her declarations.  Finally he
said--

“I think the woman hath said true.  An’ _my_ mother were in her place
and gifted with the devil’s functions, she had not stayed a moment to
call her storms and lay the whole land in ruins, if the saving of my
forfeit life were the price she got!  It is argument that other
mothers are made in like mould.  Thou art free, goodwife--thou and thy
child--for I do think thee innocent.  _Now_ thou’st nought to fear,
being pardoned--pull off thy stockings!--an’ thou canst make me a storm,
thou shalt be rich!”

The redeemed creature was loud in her gratitude, and proceeded to
obey, whilst Tom looked on with eager expectancy, a little marred
by apprehension; the courtiers at the same time manifesting decided
discomfort and uneasiness.  The woman stripped her own feet and her
little girl’s also, and plainly did her best to reward the King’s
generosity with an earthquake, but it was all a failure and a
disappointment.  Tom sighed, and said--

“There, good soul, trouble thyself no further, thy power is departed
out of thee.  Go thy way in peace; and if it return to thee at any time,
forget me not, but fetch me a storm.” {13}




CHAPTER XVI. The State Dinner.

The dinner hour drew near--yet strangely enough, the thought brought
but slight discomfort to Tom, and hardly any terror.  The morning’s
experiences had wonderfully built up his confidence; the poor little
ash-cat was already more wonted to his strange garret, after four
days’ habit, than a mature person could have become in a full month.  A
child’s facility in accommodating itself to circumstances was never more
strikingly illustrated.

Let us privileged ones hurry to the great banqueting-room and have a
glance at matters there whilst Tom is being made ready for the
imposing occasion.  It is a spacious apartment, with gilded pillars
and pilasters, and pictured walls and ceilings.  At the door stand tall
guards, as rigid as statues, dressed in rich and picturesque costumes,
and bearing halberds.  In a high gallery which runs all around the place
is a band of musicians and a packed company of citizens of both sexes,
in brilliant attire.  In the centre of the room, upon a raised platform,
is Tom’s table. Now let the ancient chronicler speak:

“A gentleman enters the room bearing a rod, and along with him another
bearing a tablecloth, which, after they have both kneeled three times
with the utmost veneration, he spreads upon the table, and after
kneeling again they both retire; then come two others, one with the rod
again, the other with a salt-cellar, a plate, and bread; when they have
kneeled as the others had done, and placed what was brought upon the
table, they too retire with the same ceremonies performed by the first;
at last come two nobles, richly clothed, one bearing a tasting-knife,
who, after prostrating themselves three times in the most graceful
manner, approach and rub the table with bread and salt, with as much awe
as if the King had been present.” {6}

So end the solemn preliminaries.  Now, far down the echoing corridors
we hear a bugle-blast, and the indistinct cry, “Place for the King!
 Way for the King’s most excellent majesty!”  These sounds are momently
repeated--they grow nearer and nearer--and presently, almost in our
faces, the martial note peals and the cry rings out, “Way for the King!”
  At this instant the shining pageant appears, and files in at the door,
with a measured march. Let the chronicler speak again:--

“First come Gentlemen, Barons, Earls, Knights of the Garter, all richly
dressed and bareheaded; next comes the Chancellor, between two, one of
which carries the royal sceptre, the other the Sword of State in a red
scabbard, studded with golden fleurs-de-lis, the point upwards; next
comes the King himself--whom, upon his appearing, twelve trumpets and
many drums salute with a great burst of welcome, whilst all in the
galleries rise in their places, crying ‘God save the King!’  After him
come nobles attached to his person, and on his right and left march his
guard of honour, his fifty Gentlemen Pensioners, with gilt battle-axes.”

This was all fine and pleasant.  Tom’s pulse beat high, and a glad light
was in his eye.  He bore himself right gracefully, and all the more
so because he was not thinking of how he was doing it, his mind being
charmed and occupied with the blithe sights and sounds about him--and
besides, nobody can be very ungraceful in nicely-fitting beautiful
clothes after he has grown a little used to them--especially if he is
for the moment unconscious of them. Tom remembered his instructions, and
acknowledged his greeting with a slight inclination of his plumed head,
and a courteous “I thank ye, my good people.”

He seated himself at table, without removing his cap; and did it without
the least embarrassment; for to eat with one’s cap on was the one
solitary royal custom upon which the kings and the Cantys met upon
common ground, neither party having any advantage over the other in the
matter of old familiarity with it.  The pageant broke up and grouped
itself picturesquely, and remained bareheaded.

Now to the sound of gay music the Yeomen of the Guard entered,--“the
tallest and mightiest men in England, they being carefully selected in
this regard”--but we will let the chronicler tell about it:--

“The Yeomen of the Guard entered, bareheaded, clothed in scarlet, with
golden roses upon their backs; and these went and came, bringing in each
turn a course of dishes, served in plate.  These dishes were received
by a gentleman in the same order they were brought, and placed upon
the table, while the taster gave to each guard a mouthful to eat of the
particular dish he had brought, for fear of any poison.”

Tom made a good dinner, notwithstanding he was conscious that hundreds
of eyes followed each morsel to his mouth and watched him eat it with an
interest which could not have been more intense if it had been a deadly
explosive and was expected to blow him up and scatter him all about
the place.  He was careful not to hurry, and equally careful not to do
anything whatever for himself, but wait till the proper official knelt
down and did it for him.  He got through without a mistake--flawless and
precious triumph.

When the meal was over at last and he marched away in the midst of his
bright pageant, with the happy noises in his ears of blaring bugles,
rolling drums, and thundering acclamations, he felt that if he had seen
the worst of dining in public it was an ordeal which he would be glad
to endure several times a day if by that means he could but buy himself
free from some of the more formidable requirements of his royal office.




CHAPTER XVII. Foo-foo the First.

Miles Hendon hurried along toward the Southwark end of the bridge,
keeping a sharp look-out for the persons he sought, and hoping and
expecting to overtake them presently.  He was disappointed in this,
however.  By asking questions, he was enabled to track them part of the
way through Southwark; then all traces ceased, and he was perplexed as
to how to proceed.  Still, he continued his efforts as best he
could during the rest of the day.  Nightfall found him leg-weary,
half-famished, and his desire as far from accomplishment as ever; so
he supped at the Tabard Inn and went to bed, resolved to make an early
start in the morning, and give the town an exhaustive search.  As he lay
thinking and planning, he presently began to reason thus:  The boy would
escape from the ruffian, his reputed father, if possible; would he go
back to London and seek his former haunts?  No, he would not do that,
he would avoid recapture. What, then, would he do?  Never having had a
friend in the world, or a protector, until he met Miles Hendon, he would
naturally try to find that friend again, provided the effort did not
require him to go toward London and danger.  He would strike for Hendon
Hall, that is what he would do, for he knew Hendon was homeward bound
and there he might expect to find him.  Yes, the case was plain to
Hendon--he must lose no more time in Southwark, but move at once through
Kent, toward Monk’s Holm, searching the wood and inquiring as he went.
 Let us return to the vanished little King now.

The ruffian whom the waiter at the inn on the bridge saw ‘about to join’
the youth and the King did not exactly join them, but fell in close
behind them and followed their steps.  He said nothing. His left arm was
in a sling, and he wore a large green patch over his left eye; he limped
slightly, and used an oaken staff as a support.  The youth led the King
a crooked course through Southwark, and by-and-by struck into the
high road beyond.  The King was irritated, now, and said he would stop
here--it was Hendon’s place to come to him, not his to go to Hendon.  He
would not endure such insolence; he would stop where he was.  The youth
said--

“Thou’lt tarry here, and thy friend lying wounded in the wood yonder?
 So be it, then.”

The King’s manner changed at once.  He cried out--

“Wounded?  And who hath dared to do it?  But that is apart; lead on,
lead on!  Faster, sirrah!  Art shod with lead?  Wounded, is he?  Now
though the doer of it be a duke’s son he shall rue it!”

It was some distance to the wood, but the space was speedily traversed.
The youth looked about him, discovered a bough sticking in the ground,
with a small bit of rag tied to it, then led the way into the forest,
watching for similar boughs and finding them at intervals; they were
evidently guides to the point he was aiming at.  By-and-by an open place
was reached, where were the charred remains of a farm-house, and near
them a barn which was falling to ruin and decay.  There was no sign of
life anywhere, and utter silence prevailed.  The youth entered the barn,
the King following eagerly upon his heels.  No one there! The King shot
a surprised and suspicious glance at the youth, and asked--

“Where is he?”

A mocking laugh was his answer.  The King was in a rage in a moment; he
seized a billet of wood and was in the act of charging upon the youth
when another mocking laugh fell upon his ear.  It was from the lame
ruffian who had been following at a distance. The King turned and said
angrily--

“Who art thou?  What is thy business here?”

“Leave thy foolery,” said the man, “and quiet thyself.  My disguise is
none so good that thou canst pretend thou knowest not thy father through
it.”

“Thou art not my father.  I know thee not.  I am the King.  If thou hast
hid my servant, find him for me, or thou shalt sup sorrow for what thou
hast done.”

John Canty replied, in a stern and measured voice--

“It is plain thou art mad, and I am loath to punish thee;  but if thou
provoke me, I must.  Thy prating doth no harm here, where there are
no ears that need to mind thy follies; yet it is well to practise thy
tongue to wary speech, that it may do no hurt when our quarters change.
 I have done a murder, and may not tarry at home--neither shalt thou,
seeing I need thy service.  My name is changed, for wise reasons; it is
Hobbs--John Hobbs; thine is Jack--charge thy memory accordingly.  Now,
then, speak.  Where is thy mother?  Where are thy sisters?  They came
not to the place appointed--knowest thou whither they went?”

The King answered sullenly--

“Trouble me not with these riddles.  My mother is dead; my sisters are
in the palace.”

The youth near by burst into a derisive laugh, and the King would have
assaulted him, but Canty--or Hobbs, as he now called himself--prevented
him, and said--

“Peace, Hugo, vex him not; his mind is astray, and thy ways fret him.
Sit thee down, Jack, and quiet thyself; thou shalt have a morsel to eat,
anon.”

Hobbs and Hugo fell to talking together, in low voices, and the King
removed himself as far as he could from their disagreeable company.
 He withdrew into the twilight of the farther end of the barn, where
he found the earthen floor bedded a foot deep with straw.  He lay down
here, drew straw over himself in lieu of blankets, and was soon absorbed
in thinking.  He had many griefs, but the minor ones were swept almost
into forgetfulness by the supreme one, the loss of his father.  To
the rest of the world the name of Henry VIII. brought a shiver, and
suggested an ogre whose nostrils breathed destruction and whose hand
dealt scourgings and death; but to this boy the name brought only
sensations of pleasure; the figure it invoked wore a countenance that
was all gentleness and affection.  He called to mind a long succession
of loving passages between his father and himself, and dwelt fondly upon
them, his unstinted tears attesting how deep and real was the grief that
possessed his heart. As the afternoon wasted away, the lad, wearied with
his troubles, sank gradually into a tranquil and healing slumber.

After a considerable time--he could not tell how long--his senses
struggled to a half-consciousness, and as he lay with closed eyes
vaguely wondering where he was and what had been happening, he noted a
murmurous sound, the sullen beating of rain upon the roof. A snug sense
of comfort stole over him, which was rudely broken, the next moment,
by a chorus of piping cackles and coarse laughter.  It startled him
disagreeably, and he unmuffled his head to see whence this interruption
proceeded.  A grim and unsightly picture met his eye.  A bright fire was
burning in the middle of the floor, at the other end of the barn; and
around it, and lit weirdly up by the red glare, lolled and sprawled the
motliest company of tattered gutter-scum and ruffians, of both sexes, he
had ever read or dreamed of.  There were huge stalwart men, brown
with exposure, long-haired, and clothed in fantastic rags; there were
middle-sized youths, of truculent countenance, and similarly clad; there
were blind mendicants, with patched or bandaged eyes; crippled ones,
with wooden legs and crutches; diseased ones, with running sores peeping
from ineffectual wrappings; there was a villain-looking pedlar with
his pack; a knife-grinder, a tinker, and a barber-surgeon, with the
implements of their trades; some of the females were hardly-grown girls,
some were at prime, some were old and wrinkled hags, and all were loud,
brazen, foul-mouthed; and all soiled and slatternly; there were three
sore-faced babies; there were a couple of starveling curs, with strings
about their necks, whose office was to lead the blind.

The night was come, the gang had just finished feasting, an orgy was
beginning; the can of liquor was passing from mouth to mouth. A general
cry broke forth--

“A song! a song from the Bat and Dick and Dot-and-go-One!”

One of the blind men got up, and made ready by casting aside the patches
that sheltered his excellent eyes, and the pathetic placard which
recited the cause of his calamity.  Dot-and-go-One disencumbered himself
of his timber leg and took his place, upon sound and healthy limbs,
beside his fellow-rascal; then they roared out a rollicking ditty,
and were reinforced by the whole crew, at the end of each stanza, in
a rousing chorus.  By the time the last stanza was reached, the
half-drunken enthusiasm had risen to such a pitch, that everybody joined
in and sang it clear through from the beginning, producing a volume of
villainous sound that made the rafters quake.  These were the inspiring
words:--

‘Bien Darkman’s then, Bouse Mort and Ken, The bien Coves bings awast, On
Chates to trine by Rome Coves dine For his long lib at last. Bing’d out
bien Morts and toure, and toure, Bing out of the Rome vile bine, And
toure the Cove that cloy’d your duds, Upon the Chates to trine.’

(From’The English Rogue.’ London, 1665.)

Conversation followed; not in the thieves’ dialect of the song, for that
was only used in talk when unfriendly ears might be listening.  In the
course of it, it appeared that ‘John Hobbs’ was not altogether a new
recruit, but had trained in the gang at some former time.  His later
history was called for, and when he said he had ‘accidentally’ killed a
man, considerable satisfaction was expressed; when he added that the
man was a priest, he was roundly applauded, and had to take a drink with
everybody.  Old acquaintances welcomed him joyously, and new ones were
proud to shake him by the hand.  He was asked why he had ’tarried away
so many months.’  He answered--

“London is better than the country, and safer, these late years, the
laws be so bitter and so diligently enforced.  An’ I had not had that
accident, I had stayed there.  I had resolved to stay, and never more
venture country-wards--but the accident has ended that.”

He inquired how many persons the gang numbered now.  The ‘ruffler,’ or
chief, answered--

“Five and twenty sturdy budges, bulks, files, clapperdogeons and
maunders, counting the dells and doxies and other morts. {7}  Most are
here, the rest are wandering eastward, along the winter lay. We follow
at dawn.”

“I do not see the Wen among the honest folk about me.  Where may he be?”

“Poor lad, his diet is brimstone, now, and over hot for a delicate
taste. He was killed in a brawl, somewhere about midsummer.”

“I sorrow to hear that; the Wen was a capable man, and brave.”

“That was he, truly.  Black Bess, his dell, is of us yet, but absent on
the eastward tramp; a fine lass, of nice ways and orderly conduct, none
ever seeing her drunk above four days in the seven.”

“She was ever strict--I remember it well--a goodly wench and worthy
all commendation.  Her mother was more free and less particular; a
troublesome and ugly-tempered beldame, but furnished with a wit above
the common.”

“We lost her through it.  Her gift of palmistry and other sorts of
fortune-telling begot for her at last a witch’s name and fame. The
law roasted her to death at a slow fire.  It did touch me to a sort of
tenderness to see the gallant way she met her lot--cursing and reviling
all the crowd that gaped and gazed around her, whilst the flames licked
upward toward her face and catched her thin locks and crackled about
her old gray head--cursing them! why an’ thou should’st live a thousand
years thoud’st never hear so masterful a cursing.  Alack, her art died
with her.  There be base and weakling imitations left, but no true
blasphemy.”

The Ruffler sighed; the listeners sighed in sympathy; a general
depression fell upon the company for a moment, for even hardened
outcasts like these are not wholly dead to sentiment, but are able to
feel a fleeting sense of loss and affliction at wide intervals and
under peculiarly favouring circumstances--as in cases like to this, for
instance, when genius and culture depart and leave no heir.  However, a
deep drink all round soon restored the spirits of the mourners.

“Have any others of our friends fared hardly?” asked Hobbs.

“Some--yes.  Particularly new comers--such as small husbandmen turned
shiftless and hungry upon the world because their farms were taken from
them to be changed to sheep ranges.  They begged, and were whipped at
the cart’s tail, naked from the girdle up, till the blood ran; then set
in the stocks to be pelted; they begged again, were whipped again, and
deprived of an ear; they begged a third time--poor devils, what else
could they do?--and were branded on the cheek with a red-hot iron, then
sold for slaves; they ran away, were hunted down, and hanged.  ‘Tis
a brief tale, and quickly told.  Others of us have fared less hardly.
Stand forth, Yokel, Burns, and Hodge--show your adornments!”

These stood up and stripped away some of their rags, exposing their
backs, criss-crossed with ropy old welts left by the lash; one turned
up his hair and showed the place where a left ear had once been; another
showed a brand upon his shoulder--the letter V--and a mutilated ear; the
third said--

“I am Yokel, once a farmer and prosperous, with loving wife and
kids--now am I somewhat different in estate and calling; and the wife
and kids are gone; mayhap they are in heaven, mayhap in--in the other
place--but the kindly God be thanked, they bide no more in _England_!
 My good old blameless mother strove to earn bread by nursing the sick;
one of these died, the doctors knew not how, so my mother was burnt for
a witch, whilst my babes looked on and wailed.  English law!--up,
all, with your cups!--now all together and with a cheer!--drink to the
merciful English law that delivered _her_ from the English hell!  Thank
you, mates, one and all.  I begged, from house to house--I and the
wife--bearing with us the hungry kids--but it was crime to be hungry in
England--so they stripped us and lashed us through three towns.  Drink
ye all again to the merciful English law!--for its lash drank deep of my
Mary’s blood and its blessed deliverance came quick.  She lies there, in
the potter’s field, safe from all harms.  And the kids--well, whilst
the law lashed me from town to town, they starved. Drink, lads--only
a drop--a drop to the poor kids, that never did any creature harm.
 I begged again--begged, for a crust, and got the stocks and lost an
ear--see, here bides the stump; I begged again, and here is the stump
of the other to keep me minded of it. And still I begged again, and was
sold for a slave--here on my cheek under this stain, if I washed it off,
ye might see the red S the branding-iron left there!  A _slave_!  Do
you understand that word?  An English _slave_!--that is he that stands
before ye.  I have run from my master, and when I am found--the heavy
curse of heaven fall on the law of the land that hath commanded it!--I
shall hang!” {1}

A ringing voice came through the murky air--

“Thou shalt _not_!--and this day the end of that law is come!”

All turned, and saw the fantastic figure of the little King approaching
hurriedly; as it emerged into the light and was clearly revealed, a
general explosion of inquiries broke out--

“Who is it?  _What_ is it?  Who art thou, manikin?”

The boy stood unconfused in the midst of all those surprised and
questioning eyes, and answered with princely dignity--

“I am Edward, King of England.”

A wild burst of laughter followed, partly of derision and partly of
delight in the excellence of the joke.  The King was stung.  He said
sharply--

“Ye mannerless vagrants, is this your recognition of the royal boon I
have promised?”

He said more, with angry voice and excited gesture, but it was lost in
a whirlwind of laughter and mocking exclamations.  ‘John Hobbs’ made
several attempts to make himself heard above the din, and at last
succeeded--saying--

“Mates, he is my son, a dreamer, a fool, and stark mad--mind him not--he
thinketh he _is_ the King.”

“I _am_ the King,” said Edward, turning toward him, “as thou shalt know
to thy cost, in good time.  Thou hast confessed a murder--thou shalt
swing for it.”

“_Thou’lt_ betray me?--_thou_?  An’ I get my hands upon thee--”

“Tut-tut!” said the burley Ruffler, interposing in time to save the
King, and emphasising this service by knocking Hobbs down with his fist,
“hast respect for neither Kings _nor_ Rufflers?  An’ thou insult my
presence so again, I’ll hang thee up myself.”  Then he said to his
Majesty, “Thou must make no threats against thy mates, lad; and thou
must guard thy tongue from saying evil of them elsewhere.  _Be king_, if
it please thy mad humour, but be not harmful in it.  Sink the title thou
hast uttered--‘tis treason; we be bad men in some few trifling ways, but
none among us is so base as to be traitor to his King; we be loving
and loyal hearts, in that regard.  Note if I speak truth.  Now--all
together:  ‘Long live Edward, King of England!’”

“LONG LIVE EDWARD, KING OF ENGLAND!”

The response came with such a thundergust from the motley crew that the
crazy building vibrated to the sound.  The little King’s face lighted
with pleasure for an instant, and he slightly inclined his head, and
said with grave simplicity--

“I thank you, my good people.”

This unexpected result threw the company into convulsions of merriment.
When something like quiet was presently come again, the Ruffler said,
firmly, but with an accent of good nature--

“Drop it, boy, ’tis not wise, nor well.  Humour thy fancy, if thou must,
but choose some other title.”

A tinker shrieked out a suggestion--

“Foo-foo the First, King of the Mooncalves!”

The title ’took,’ at once, every throat responded, and a roaring shout
went up, of--

“Long live Foo-foo the First, King of the Mooncalves!” followed by
hootings, cat-calls, and peals of laughter.

“Hale him forth, and crown him!”

“Robe him!”

“Sceptre him!”

“Throne him!”

These and twenty other cries broke out at once! and almost before the
poor little victim could draw a breath he was crowned with a tin basin,
robed in a tattered blanket, throned upon a barrel, and sceptred with
the tinker’s soldering-iron.  Then all flung themselves upon their
knees about him and sent up a chorus of ironical wailings, and mocking
supplications, whilst they swabbed their eyes with their soiled and
ragged sleeves and aprons--

“Be gracious to us, O sweet King!”

“Trample not upon thy beseeching worms, O noble Majesty!”

“Pity thy slaves, and comfort them with a royal kick!”

“Cheer us and warm us with thy gracious rays, O flaming sun of
sovereignty!”

“Sanctify the ground with the touch of thy foot, that we may eat the
dirt and be ennobled!”

“Deign to spit upon us, O Sire, that our children’s children may tell of
thy princely condescension, and be proud and happy for ever!”

But the humorous tinker made the ‘hit’ of the evening and carried off
the honours.  Kneeling, he pretended to kiss the King’s foot, and was
indignantly spurned; whereupon he went about begging for a rag to paste
over the place upon his face which had been touched by the foot, saying
it must be preserved from contact with the vulgar air, and that he
should make his fortune by going on the highway and exposing it to
view at the rate of a hundred shillings a sight.  He made himself so
killingly funny that he was the envy and admiration of the whole mangy
rabble.

Tears of shame and indignation stood in the little monarch’s eyes; and
the thought in his heart was, “Had I offered them a deep wrong they
could not be more cruel--yet have I proffered nought but to do them a
kindness--and it is thus they use me for it!”




CHAPTER XVIII. The Prince with the Tramps.

The troop of vagabonds turned out at early dawn, and set forward on
their march.  There was a lowering sky overhead, sloppy ground under
foot, and a winter chill in the air.  All gaiety was gone from the
company; some were sullen and silent, some were irritable and petulant,
none were gentle-humoured, all were thirsty.

The Ruffler put ‘Jack’ in Hugo’s charge, with some brief instructions,
and commanded John Canty to keep away from him and let him alone; he
also warned Hugo not to be too rough with the lad.

After a while the weather grew milder, and the clouds lifted somewhat.
The troop ceased to shiver, and their spirits began to improve.  They
grew more and more cheerful, and finally began to chaff each other and
insult passengers along the highway.  This showed that they were awaking
to an appreciation of life and its joys once more.  The dread in which
their sort was held was apparent in the fact that everybody gave them
the road, and took their ribald insolences meekly, without venturing
to talk back. They snatched linen from the hedges, occasionally in full
view of the owners, who made no protest, but only seemed grateful that
they did not take the hedges, too.

By-and-by they invaded a small farmhouse and made themselves at home
while the trembling farmer and his people swept the larder clean to
furnish a breakfast for them.  They chucked the housewife and her
daughters under the chin whilst receiving the food from their hands, and
made coarse jests about them, accompanied with insulting epithets and
bursts of horse-laughter.  They threw bones and vegetables at the farmer
and his sons, kept them dodging all the time, and applauded uproariously
when a good hit was made. They ended by buttering the head of one of
the daughters who resented some of their familiarities.  When they took
their leave they threatened to come back and burn the house over the
heads of the family if any report of their doings got to the ears of the
authorities.

About noon, after a long and weary tramp, the gang came to a halt behind
a hedge on the outskirts of a considerable village.  An hour was allowed
for rest, then the crew scattered themselves abroad to enter the village
at different points to ply their various trades--‘Jack’ was sent with
Hugo.  They wandered hither and thither for some time, Hugo watching
for opportunities to do a stroke of business, but finding none--so he
finally said--

“I see nought to steal; it is a paltry place.  Wherefore we will beg.”

“_We_, forsooth!  Follow thy trade--it befits thee.  But _I_ will not
beg.”

“Thou’lt not beg!” exclaimed Hugo, eyeing the King with surprise.
“Prithee, since when hast thou reformed?”

“What dost thou mean?”

“Mean?  Hast thou not begged the streets of London all thy life?”

“I?  Thou idiot!”

“Spare thy compliments--thy stock will last the longer.  Thy father says
thou hast begged all thy days.  Mayhap he lied. Peradventure you will
even make so bold as to _say_ he lied,” scoffed Hugo.

“Him _you_ call my father?  Yes, he lied.”

“Come, play not thy merry game of madman so far, mate; use it for thy
amusement, not thy hurt.  An’ I tell him this, he will scorch thee
finely for it.”

“Save thyself the trouble.  I will tell him.”

“I like thy spirit, I do in truth; but I do not admire thy judgment.
Bone-rackings and bastings be plenty enow in this life, without going
out of one’s way to invite them.  But a truce to these matters; _I_
believe your father.  I doubt not he can lie; I doubt not he _doth_
lie, upon occasion, for the best of us do that; but there is no occasion
here.  A wise man does not waste so good a commodity as lying for
nought.  But come; sith it is thy humour to give over begging,
wherewithal shall we busy ourselves?  With robbing kitchens?”

The King said, impatiently--

“Have done with this folly--you weary me!”

Hugo replied, with temper--

“Now harkee, mate; you will not beg, you will not rob; so be it. But I
will tell you what you _will_ do.  You will play decoy whilst _I_ beg.
Refuse, an’ you think you may venture!”

The King was about to reply contemptuously, when Hugo said,
interrupting--

“Peace!  Here comes one with a kindly face.  Now will I fall down in
a fit.  When the stranger runs to me, set you up a wail, and fall upon
your knees, seeming to weep; then cry out as all the devils of misery
were in your belly, and say, ‘Oh, sir, it is my poor afflicted brother,
and we be friendless; o’ God’s name cast through your merciful eyes one
pitiful look upon a sick, forsaken, and most miserable wretch; bestow
one little penny out of thy riches upon one smitten of God and ready
to perish!’--and mind you, keep you _on_ wailing, and abate not till we
bilk him of his penny, else shall you rue it.”

Then immediately Hugo began to moan, and groan, and roll his eyes, and
reel and totter about; and when the stranger was close at hand, down he
sprawled before him, with a shriek, and began to writhe and wallow in
the dirt, in seeming agony.

“O, dear, O dear!” cried the benevolent stranger, “O poor soul, poor
soul, how he doth suffer!  There--let me help thee up.”

“O noble sir, forbear, and God love you for a princely gentleman--but it
giveth me cruel pain to touch me when I am taken so.  My brother there
will tell your worship how I am racked with anguish when these fits be
upon me.  A penny, dear sir, a penny, to buy a little food; then leave
me to my sorrows.”

“A penny! thou shalt have three, thou hapless creature,”--and he fumbled
in his pocket with nervous haste and got them out. “There, poor lad,
take them and most welcome.  Now come hither, my boy, and help me carry
thy stricken brother to yon house, where--”

“I am not his brother,” said the King, interrupting.

“What! not his brother?”

“Oh, hear him!” groaned Hugo, then privately ground his teeth. “He
denies his own brother--and he with one foot in the grave!”

“Boy, thou art indeed hard of heart, if this is thy brother.  For
shame!--and he scarce able to move hand or foot.  If he is not thy
brother, who is he, then?”

“A beggar and a thief!  He has got your money and has picked your pocket
likewise.  An’ thou would’st do a healing miracle, lay thy staff over
his shoulders and trust Providence for the rest.”

But Hugo did not tarry for the miracle.  In a moment he was up and off
like the wind, the gentleman following after and raising the hue and cry
lustily as he went.  The King, breathing deep gratitude to Heaven for
his own release, fled in the opposite direction, and did not slacken
his pace until he was out of harm’s reach.  He took the first road that
offered, and soon put the village behind him.  He hurried along, as
briskly as he could, during several hours, keeping a nervous watch over
his shoulder for pursuit; but his fears left him at last, and a grateful
sense of security took their place.  He recognised, now, that he was
hungry, and also very tired.  So he halted at a farmhouse; but when
he was about to speak, he was cut short and driven rudely away.  His
clothes were against him.

He wandered on, wounded and indignant, and was resolved to put himself
in the way of like treatment no more.  But hunger is pride’s master; so,
as the evening drew near, he made an attempt at another farmhouse; but
here he fared worse than before; for he was called hard names and was
promised arrest as a vagrant except he moved on promptly.

The night came on, chilly and overcast; and still the footsore monarch
laboured slowly on.  He was obliged to keep moving, for every time he
sat down to rest he was soon penetrated to the bone with the cold.  All
his sensations and experiences, as he moved through the solemn gloom
and the empty vastness of the night, were new and strange to him.  At
intervals he heard voices approach, pass by, and fade into silence; and
as he saw nothing more of the bodies they belonged to than a sort of
formless drifting blur, there was something spectral and uncanny about
it all that made him shudder.  Occasionally he caught the twinkle of a
light--always far away, apparently--almost in another world; if he heard
the tinkle of a sheep’s bell, it was vague, distant, indistinct;
the muffled lowing of the herds floated to him on the night wind in
vanishing cadences, a mournful sound; now and then came the complaining
howl of a dog over viewless expanses of field and forest; all sounds
were remote; they made the little King feel that all life and activity
were far removed from him, and that he stood solitary, companionless, in
the centre of a measureless solitude.

He stumbled along, through the gruesome fascinations of this new
experience, startled occasionally by the soft rustling of the dry leaves
overhead, so like human whispers they seemed to sound; and by-and-by he
came suddenly upon the freckled light of a tin lantern near at hand.  He
stepped back into the shadows and waited.  The lantern stood by the
open door of a barn.  The King waited some time--there was no sound,
and nobody stirring.  He got so cold, standing still, and the hospitable
barn looked so enticing, that at last he resolved to risk everything and
enter. He started swiftly and stealthily, and just as he was crossing
the threshold he heard voices behind him.  He darted behind a cask,
within the barn, and stooped down.  Two farm-labourers came in, bringing
the lantern with them, and fell to work, talking meanwhile.  Whilst they
moved about with the light, the King made good use of his eyes and took
the bearings of what seemed to be a good-sized stall at the further end
of the place, purposing to grope his way to it when he should be left to
himself.  He also noted the position of a pile of horse blankets, midway
of the route, with the intent to levy upon them for the service of the
crown of England for one night.

By-and-by the men finished and went away, fastening the door behind
them and taking the lantern with them.  The shivering King made for the
blankets, with as good speed as the darkness would allow; gathered them
up, and then groped his way safely to the stall.  Of two of the blankets
he made a bed, then covered himself with the remaining two.  He was a
glad monarch, now, though the blankets were old and thin, and not quite
warm enough; and besides gave out a pungent horsey odour that was almost
suffocatingly powerful.

Although the King was hungry and chilly, he was also so tired and so
drowsy that these latter influences soon began to get the advantage
of the former, and he presently dozed off into a state of
semi-consciousness.  Then, just as he was on the point of losing himself
wholly, he distinctly felt something touch him!  He was broad awake in
a moment, and gasping for breath.  The cold horror of that mysterious
touch in the dark almost made his heart stand still.  He lay motionless,
and listened, scarcely breathing. But nothing stirred, and there was
no sound.  He continued to listen, and wait, during what seemed a long
time, but still nothing stirred, and there was no sound.  So he began
to drop into a drowse once more, at last; and all at once he felt that
mysterious touch again!  It was a grisly thing, this light touch from
this noiseless and invisible presence; it made the boy sick with ghostly
fears.  What should he do?  That was the question; but he did not know
how to answer it.  Should he leave these reasonably comfortable quarters
and fly from this inscrutable horror?  But fly whither?  He could
not get out of the barn; and the idea of scurrying blindly hither and
thither in the dark, within the captivity of the four walls, with this
phantom gliding after him, and visiting him with that soft hideous touch
upon cheek or shoulder at every turn, was intolerable.  But to stay
where he was, and endure this living death all night--was that better?
 No.  What, then, was there left to do?  Ah, there was but one course;
he knew it well--he must put out his hand and find that thing!

It was easy to think this; but it was hard to brace himself up to try
it. Three times he stretched his hand a little way out into the dark,
gingerly; and snatched it suddenly back, with a gasp--not because it
had encountered anything, but because he had felt so sure it was just
_going_ to.  But the fourth time, he groped a little further, and his
hand lightly swept against something soft and warm.  This petrified him,
nearly, with fright; his mind was in such a state that he could imagine
the thing to be nothing else than a corpse, newly dead and still warm.
He thought he would rather die than touch it again.  But he thought this
false thought because he did not know the immortal strength of
human curiosity. In no long time his hand was tremblingly groping
again--against his judgment, and without his consent--but groping
persistently on, just the same.  It encountered a bunch of long hair; he
shuddered, but followed up the hair and found what seemed to be a warm
rope; followed up the rope and found an innocent calf!--for the rope was
not a rope at all, but the calf’s tail.

The King was cordially ashamed of himself for having gotten all that
fright and misery out of so paltry a matter as a slumbering calf; but he
need not have felt so about it, for it was not the calf that frightened
him, but a dreadful non-existent something which the calf stood for; and
any other boy, in those old superstitious times, would have acted and
suffered just as he had done.

The King was not only delighted to find that the creature was only a
calf, but delighted to have the calf’s company; for he had been feeling
so lonesome and friendless that the company and comradeship of even
this humble animal were welcome.  And he had been so buffeted, so rudely
entreated by his own kind, that it was a real comfort to him to feel
that he was at last in the society of a fellow-creature that had at
least a soft heart and a gentle spirit, whatever loftier attributes
might be lacking.  So he resolved to waive rank and make friends with
the calf.

While stroking its sleek warm back--for it lay near him and within easy
reach--it occurred to him that this calf might be utilised in more ways
than one.  Whereupon he re-arranged his bed, spreading it down close to
the calf; then he cuddled himself up to the calf’s back, drew the covers
up over himself and his friend, and in a minute or two was as warm and
comfortable as he had ever been in the downy couches of the regal palace
of Westminster.

Pleasant thoughts came at once; life took on a cheerfuller seeming.  He
was free of the bonds of servitude and crime, free of the companionship
of base and brutal outlaws; he was warm; he was sheltered; in a word, he
was happy.  The night wind was rising; it swept by in fitful gusts
that made the old barn quake and rattle, then its forces died down
at intervals, and went moaning and wailing around corners and
projections--but it was all music to the King, now that he was snug and
comfortable: let it blow and rage, let it batter and bang, let it moan
and wail, he minded it not, he only enjoyed it.  He merely snuggled
the closer to his friend, in a luxury of warm contentment, and drifted
blissfully out of consciousness into a deep and dreamless sleep that
was full of serenity and peace.  The distant dogs howled, the melancholy
kine complained, and the winds went on raging, whilst furious sheets
of rain drove along the roof; but the Majesty of England slept on,
undisturbed, and the calf did the same, it being a simple creature, and
not easily troubled by storms or embarrassed by sleeping with a king.




CHAPTER XIX. The Prince with the peasants.

When the King awoke in the early morning, he found that a wet but
thoughtful rat had crept into the place during the night and made a cosy
bed for itself in his bosom.  Being disturbed now, it scampered away.
The boy smiled, and said, “Poor fool, why so fearful?  I am as forlorn
as thou.  ‘Twould be a sham in me to hurt the helpless, who am myself so
helpless.  Moreover, I owe you thanks for a good omen; for when a king
has fallen so low that the very rats do make a bed of him, it surely
meaneth that his fortunes be upon the turn, since it is plain he can no
lower go.”

He got up and stepped out of the stall, and just then he heard the sound
of children’s voices.  The barn door opened and a couple of little girls
came in.  As soon as they saw him their talking and laughing ceased, and
they stopped and stood still, gazing at him with strong curiosity; they
presently began to whisper together, then they approached nearer, and
stopped again to gaze and whisper.  By-and-by they gathered courage and
began to discuss him aloud.  One said--

“He hath a comely face.”

The other added--

“And pretty hair.”

“But is ill clothed enow.”

“And how starved he looketh.”

They came still nearer, sidling shyly around and about him, examining
him minutely from all points, as if he were some strange new kind of
animal, but warily and watchfully the while, as if they half feared he
might be a sort of animal that would bite, upon occasion.  Finally they
halted before him, holding each other’s hands for protection, and took a
good satisfying stare with their innocent eyes; then one of them plucked
up all her courage and inquired with honest directness--

“Who art thou, boy?”

“I am the King,” was the grave answer.

The children gave a little start, and their eyes spread themselves wide
open and remained so during a speechless half minute.  Then curiosity
broke the silence--

“The _King_?  What King?”

“The King of England.”

The children looked at each other--then at him--then at each other
again--wonderingly, perplexedly; then one said--

“Didst hear him, Margery?--he said he is the King.  Can that be true?”

“How can it be else but true, Prissy?  Would he say a lie?  For look
you, Prissy, an’ it were not true, it _would_ be a lie.  It surely would
be. Now think on’t.  For all things that be not true, be lies--thou
canst make nought else out of it.”

It was a good tight argument, without a leak in it anywhere; and it left
Prissy’s half-doubts not a leg to stand on.  She considered a moment,
then put the King upon his honour with the simple remark--

“If thou art truly the King, then I believe thee.”

“I am truly the King.”

This settled the matter.  His Majesty’s royalty was accepted without
further question or discussion, and the two little girls began at once
to inquire into how he came to be where he was, and how he came to be so
unroyally clad, and whither he was bound, and all about his affairs.  It
was a mighty relief to him to pour out his troubles where they would not
be scoffed at or doubted; so he told his tale with feeling, forgetting
even his hunger for the time; and it was received with the deepest and
tenderest sympathy by the gentle little maids.  But when he got down
to his latest experiences and they learned how long he had been without
food, they cut him short and hurried him away to the farmhouse to find a
breakfast for him.

The King was cheerful and happy now, and said to himself, “When I
am come to mine own again, I will always honour little children,
remembering how that these trusted me and believed in me in my time
of trouble; whilst they that were older, and thought themselves wiser,
mocked at me and held me for a liar.”

The children’s mother received the King kindly, and was full of pity;
for his forlorn condition and apparently crazed intellect touched her
womanly heart.  She was a widow, and rather poor; consequently she had
seen trouble enough to enable her to feel for the unfortunate.  She
imagined that the demented boy had wandered away from his friends or
keepers; so she tried to find out whence he had come, in order that
she might take measures to return him; but all her references to
neighbouring towns and villages, and all her inquiries in the same line
went for nothing--the boy’s face, and his answers, too, showed that the
things she was talking of were not familiar to him.  He spoke earnestly
and simply about court matters, and broke down, more than once, when
speaking of the late King ‘his father’; but whenever the conversation
changed to baser topics, he lost interest and became silent.

The woman was mightily puzzled; but she did not give up.  As she
proceeded with her cooking, she set herself to contriving devices to
surprise the boy into betraying his real secret.  She talked about
cattle--he showed no concern; then about sheep--the same result:  so
her guess that he had been a shepherd boy was an error; she talked about
mills; and about weavers, tinkers, smiths, trades and tradesmen of all
sorts; and about Bedlam, and jails, and charitable retreats:  but no
matter, she was baffled at all points.  Not altogether, either; for she
argued that she had narrowed the thing down to domestic service.  Yes,
she was sure she was on the right track, now; he must have been a house
servant.  So she led up to that.  But the result was discouraging. The
subject of sweeping appeared to weary him; fire-building failed to stir
him; scrubbing and scouring awoke no enthusiasm. The goodwife touched,
with a perishing hope, and rather as a matter of form, upon the subject
of cooking.  To her surprise, and her vast delight, the King’s face
lighted at once!  Ah, she had hunted him down at last, she thought; and
she was right proud, too, of the devious shrewdness and tact which had
accomplished it.

Her tired tongue got a chance to rest, now; for the King’s, inspired
by gnawing hunger and the fragrant smells that came from the sputtering
pots and pans, turned itself loose and delivered itself up to such an
eloquent dissertation upon certain toothsome dishes, that within three
minutes the woman said to herself, “Of a truth I was right--he hath
holpen in a kitchen!”  Then he broadened his bill of fare, and discussed
it with such appreciation and animation, that the goodwife said to
herself, “Good lack! how can he know so many dishes, and so fine ones
withal?  For these belong only upon the tables of the rich and great.
 Ah, now I see! ragged outcast as he is, he must have served in the
palace before his reason went astray; yes, he must have helped in the
very kitchen of the King himself!  I will test him.”

Full of eagerness to prove her sagacity, she told the King to mind the
cooking a moment--hinting that he might manufacture and add a dish or
two, if he chose; then she went out of the room and gave her children a
sign to follow after.  The King muttered--

“Another English king had a commission like to this, in a bygone
time--it is nothing against my dignity to undertake an office which the
great Alfred stooped to assume.  But I will try to better serve my trust
than he; for he let the cakes burn.”

The intent was good, but the performance was not answerable to it, for
this King, like the other one, soon fell into deep thinkings concerning
his vast affairs, and the same calamity resulted--the cookery got
burned. The woman returned in time to save the breakfast from entire
destruction; and she promptly brought the King out of his dreams with a
brisk and cordial tongue-lashing. Then, seeing how troubled he was
over his violated trust, she softened at once, and was all goodness and
gentleness toward him.

The boy made a hearty and satisfying meal, and was greatly refreshed and
gladdened by it.  It was a meal which was distinguished by this curious
feature, that rank was waived on both sides; yet neither recipient
of the favour was aware that it had been extended.  The goodwife had
intended to feed this young tramp with broken victuals in a corner,
like any other tramp or like a dog; but she was so remorseful for the
scolding she had given him, that she did what she could to atone for it
by allowing him to sit at the family table and eat with his betters, on
ostensible terms of equality with them; and the King, on his side, was
so remorseful for having broken his trust, after the family had been so
kind to him, that he forced himself to atone for it by humbling himself
to the family level, instead of requiring the woman and her children to
stand and wait upon him, while he occupied their table in the solitary
state due to his birth and dignity.  It does us all good to unbend
sometimes.  This good woman was made happy all the day long by the
applauses which she got out of herself for her magnanimous condescension
to a tramp; and the King was just as self-complacent over his gracious
humility toward a humble peasant woman.

When breakfast was over, the housewife told the King to wash up the
dishes.  This command was a staggerer, for a moment, and the King came
near rebelling; but then he said to himself, “Alfred the Great watched
the cakes; doubtless he would have washed the dishes too--therefore will
I essay it.”

He made a sufficiently poor job of it; and to his surprise too, for the
cleaning of wooden spoons and trenchers had seemed an easy thing to do.
It was a tedious and troublesome piece of work, but he finished it
at last.  He was becoming impatient to get away on his journey now;
however, he was not to lose this thrifty dame’s society so easily.  She
furnished him some little odds and ends of employment, which he got
through with after a fair fashion and with some credit.  Then she set
him and the little girls to paring some winter apples; but he was so
awkward at this service that she retired him from it and gave him a
butcher knife to grind.

Afterwards she kept him carding wool until he began to think he had laid
the good King Alfred about far enough in the shade for the present in
the matter of showy menial heroisms that would read picturesquely in
story-books and histories, and so he was half-minded to resign.  And
when, just after the noonday dinner, the goodwife gave him a basket
of kittens to drown, he did resign.  At least he was just going to
resign--for he felt that he must draw the line somewhere, and it
seemed to him that to draw it at kitten-drowning was about the right
thing--when there was an interruption.  The interruption was John
Canty--with a peddler’s pack on his back--and Hugo.

The King discovered these rascals approaching the front gate before they
had had a chance to see him; so he said nothing about drawing the line,
but took up his basket of kittens and stepped quietly out the back way,
without a word.  He left the creatures in an out-house, and hurried on,
into a narrow lane at the rear.




CHAPTER XX. The Prince and the hermit.

The high hedge hid him from the house, now; and so, under the impulse of
a deadly fright, he let out all his forces and sped toward a wood in the
distance.  He never looked back until he had almost gained the shelter
of the forest; then he turned and descried two figures in the distance.
That was sufficient; he did not wait to scan them critically, but
hurried on, and never abated his pace till he was far within the
twilight depths of the wood. Then he stopped; being persuaded that he
was now tolerably safe. He listened intently, but the stillness was
profound and solemn--awful, even, and depressing to the spirits.  At
wide intervals his straining ear did detect sounds, but they were so
remote, and hollow, and mysterious, that they seemed not to be real
sounds, but only the moaning and complaining ghosts of departed
ones.  So the sounds were yet more dreary than the silence which they
interrupted.

It was his purpose, in the beginning, to stay where he was the rest of
the day; but a chill soon invaded his perspiring body, and he was at
last obliged to resume movement in order to get warm. He struck straight
through the forest, hoping to pierce to a road presently, but he was
disappointed in this.  He travelled on and on; but the farther he went,
the denser the wood became, apparently.  The gloom began to thicken,
by-and-by, and the King realised that the night was coming on.  It made
him shudder to think of spending it in such an uncanny place; so he
tried to hurry faster, but he only made the less speed, for he could
not now see well enough to choose his steps judiciously; consequently he
kept tripping over roots and tangling himself in vines and briers.

And how glad he was when at last he caught the glimmer of a light! He
approached it warily, stopping often to look about him and listen.  It
came from an unglazed window-opening in a shabby little hut.  He heard
a voice, now, and felt a disposition to run and hide; but he changed his
mind at once, for this voice was praying, evidently.  He glided to the
one window of the hut, raised himself on tiptoe, and stole a glance
within.  The room was small; its floor was the natural earth, beaten
hard by use; in a corner was a bed of rushes and a ragged blanket or
two; near it was a pail, a cup, a basin, and two or three pots and pans;
there was a short bench and a three-legged stool; on the hearth the
remains of a faggot fire were smouldering; before a shrine, which was
lighted by a single candle, knelt an aged man, and on an old wooden box
at his side lay an open book and a human skull.  The man was of large,
bony frame; his hair and whiskers were very long and snowy white; he
was clothed in a robe of sheepskins which reached from his neck to his
heels.

“A holy hermit!” said the King to himself; “now am I indeed fortunate.”

The hermit rose from his knees; the King knocked.  A deep voice
responded--

“Enter!--but leave sin behind, for the ground whereon thou shalt stand
is holy!”

The King entered, and paused.  The hermit turned a pair of gleaming,
unrestful eyes upon him, and said--

“Who art thou?”

“I am the King,” came the answer, with placid simplicity.

“Welcome, King!” cried the hermit, with enthusiasm.  Then, bustling
about with feverish activity, and constantly saying, “Welcome, welcome,”
 he arranged his bench, seated the King on it, by the hearth, threw some
faggots on the fire, and finally fell to pacing the floor with a nervous
stride.

“Welcome!  Many have sought sanctuary here, but they were not worthy,
and were turned away.  But a King who casts his crown away, and despises
the vain splendours of his office, and clothes his body in rags, to
devote his life to holiness and the mortification of the flesh--he is
worthy, he is welcome!--here shall he abide all his days till death
come.”  The King hastened to interrupt and explain, but the hermit paid
no attention to him--did not even hear him, apparently, but went right
on with his talk, with a raised voice and a growing energy.  “And thou
shalt be at peace here.  None shall find out thy refuge to disquiet thee
with supplications to return to that empty and foolish life which God
hath moved thee to abandon.  Thou shalt pray here; thou shalt study the
Book; thou shalt meditate upon the follies and delusions of this world,
and upon the sublimities of the world to come; thou shalt feed upon
crusts and herbs, and scourge thy body with whips, daily, to the
purifying of thy soul. Thou shalt wear a hair shirt next thy skin;
thou shalt drink water only; and thou shalt be at peace; yes, wholly at
peace; for whoso comes to seek thee shall go his way again, baffled; he
shall not find thee, he shall not molest thee.”

The old man, still pacing back and forth, ceased to speak aloud, and
began to mutter.  The King seized this opportunity to state his case;
and he did it with an eloquence inspired by uneasiness and apprehension.
 But the hermit went on muttering, and gave no heed.  And still
muttering, he approached the King and said impressively--

“‘Sh!  I will tell you a secret!”  He bent down to impart it, but
checked himself, and assumed a listening attitude.  After a moment
or two he went on tiptoe to the window-opening, put his head out, and
peered around in the gloaming, then came tiptoeing back again, put his
face close down to the King’s, and whispered--

“I am an archangel!”

The King started violently, and said to himself, “Would God I were with
the outlaws again; for lo, now am I the prisoner of a madman!”  His
apprehensions were heightened, and they showed plainly in his face.  In
a low excited voice the hermit continued--

“I see you feel my atmosphere!  There’s awe in your face!  None may
be in this atmosphere and not be thus affected; for it is the very
atmosphere of heaven.  I go thither and return, in the twinkling of an
eye.  I was made an archangel on this very spot, it is five years ago,
by angels sent from heaven to confer that awful dignity.  Their presence
filled this place with an intolerable brightness.  And they knelt to me,
King! yes, they knelt to me! for I was greater than they.  I have walked
in the courts of heaven, and held speech with the patriarchs.  Touch
my hand--be not afraid--touch it.  There--now thou hast touched a hand
which has been clasped by Abraham and Isaac and Jacob!  For I have
walked in the golden courts; I have seen the Deity face to face!”  He
paused, to give this speech effect; then his face suddenly changed, and
he started to his feet again saying, with angry energy, “Yes, I am an
archangel; _a mere archangel!_--I that might have been pope!  It is
verily true.  I was told it from heaven in a dream, twenty years ago;
ah, yes, I was to be pope!--and I _should_ have been pope, for Heaven
had said it--but the King dissolved my religious house, and I, poor
obscure unfriended monk, was cast homeless upon the world, robbed of my
mighty destiny!” Here he began to mumble again, and beat his forehead in
futile rage, with his fist; now and then articulating a venomous curse,
and now and then a pathetic “Wherefore I am nought but an archangel--I
that should have been pope!”

So he went on, for an hour, whilst the poor little King sat and
suffered. Then all at once the old man’s frenzy departed, and he became
all gentleness.  His voice softened, he came down out of his clouds, and
fell to prattling along so simply and so humanly, that he soon won the
King’s heart completely.  The old devotee moved the boy nearer to the
fire and made him comfortable; doctored his small bruises and abrasions
with a deft and tender hand; and then set about preparing and cooking a
supper--chatting pleasantly all the time, and occasionally stroking the
lad’s cheek or patting his head, in such a gently caressing way that in
a little while all the fear and repulsion inspired by the archangel were
changed to reverence and affection for the man.

This happy state of things continued while the two ate the supper; then,
after a prayer before the shrine, the hermit put the boy to bed, in a
small adjoining room, tucking him in as snugly and lovingly as a mother
might; and so, with a parting caress, left him and sat down by the
fire, and began to poke the brands about in an absent and aimless way.
Presently he paused; then tapped his forehead several times with his
fingers, as if trying to recall some thought which had escaped from his
mind.  Apparently he was unsuccessful.  Now he started quickly up, and
entered his guest’s room, and said--

“Thou art King?”

“Yes,” was the response, drowsily uttered.

“What King?”

“Of England.”

“Of England?  Then Henry is gone!”

“Alack, it is so.  I am his son.”

A black frown settled down upon the hermit’s face, and he clenched his
bony hands with a vindictive energy.  He stood a few moments, breathing
fast and swallowing repeatedly, then said in a husky voice--

“Dost know it was he that turned us out into the world houseless and
homeless?”

There was no response.  The old man bent down and scanned the boy’s
reposeful face and listened to his placid breathing.  “He sleeps--sleeps
soundly;” and the frown vanished away and gave place to an expression of
evil satisfaction.  A smile flitted across the dreaming boy’s features.
The hermit muttered, “So--his heart is happy;” and he turned away.  He
went stealthily about the place, seeking here and there for something;
now and then halting to listen, now and then jerking his head around
and casting a quick glance toward the bed; and always muttering, always
mumbling to himself.  At last he found what he seemed to want--a rusty
old butcher knife and a whetstone.  Then he crept to his place by the
fire, sat himself down, and began to whet the knife softly on the stone,
still muttering, mumbling, ejaculating.  The winds sighed around the
lonely place, the mysterious voices of the night floated by out of the
distances.  The shining eyes of venturesome mice and rats peered out at
the old man from cracks and coverts, but he went on with his work, rapt,
absorbed, and noted none of these things.

At long intervals he drew his thumb along the edge of his knife, and
nodded his head with satisfaction.  “It grows sharper,” he said; “yes,
it grows sharper.”

He took no note of the flight of time, but worked tranquilly on,
entertaining himself with his thoughts, which broke out occasionally in
articulate speech--

“His father wrought us evil, he destroyed us--and is gone down into the
eternal fires!  Yes, down into the eternal fires!  He escaped us--but it
was God’s will, yes it was God’s will, we must not repine.  But he
hath not escaped the fires!  No, he hath not escaped the fires, the
consuming, unpitying, remorseless fires--and _they_ are everlasting!”

And so he wrought, and still wrought--mumbling, chuckling a low rasping
chuckle at times--and at times breaking again into words--

“It was his father that did it all.  I am but an archangel; but for him
I should be pope!”

The King stirred.  The hermit sprang noiselessly to the bedside, and
went down upon his knees, bending over the prostrate form with his knife
uplifted.  The boy stirred again; his eyes came open for an instant, but
there was no speculation in them, they saw nothing; the next moment his
tranquil breathing showed that his sleep was sound once more.

The hermit watched and listened, for a time, keeping his position and
scarcely breathing; then he slowly lowered his arms, and presently crept
away, saying,--

“It is long past midnight; it is not best that he should cry out, lest
by accident someone be passing.”

He glided about his hovel, gathering a rag here, a thong there, and
another one yonder; then he returned, and by careful and gentle handling
he managed to tie the King’s ankles together without waking him.  Next
he essayed to tie the wrists; he made several attempts to cross them,
but the boy always drew one hand or the other away, just as the cord was
ready to be applied; but at last, when the archangel was almost ready
to despair, the boy crossed his hands himself, and the next moment
they were bound. Now a bandage was passed under the sleeper’s chin and
brought up over his head and tied fast--and so softly, so gradually,
and so deftly were the knots drawn together and compacted, that the boy
slept peacefully through it all without stirring.




CHAPTER XXI. Hendon to the rescue.

The old man glided away, stooping, stealthy, cat-like, and brought the
low bench.  He seated himself upon it, half his body in the dim and
flickering light, and the other half in shadow; and so, with his craving
eyes bent upon the slumbering boy, he kept his patient vigil there,
heedless of the drift of time, and softly whetted his knife, and mumbled
and chuckled; and in aspect and attitude he resembled nothing so much as
a grizzly, monstrous spider, gloating over some hapless insect that lay
bound and helpless in his web.

After a long while, the old man, who was still gazing,--yet not seeing,
his mind having settled into a dreamy abstraction,--observed, on a
sudden, that the boy’s eyes were open! wide open and staring!--staring
up in frozen horror at the knife.  The smile of a gratified devil crept
over the old man’s face, and he said, without changing his attitude or
his occupation--

“Son of Henry the Eighth, hast thou prayed?”

The boy struggled helplessly in his bonds, and at the same time forced
a smothered sound through his closed jaws, which the hermit chose to
interpret as an affirmative answer to his question.

“Then pray again.  Pray the prayer for the dying!”

A shudder shook the boy’s frame, and his face blenched.  Then he
struggled again to free himself--turning and twisting himself this way
and that; tugging frantically, fiercely, desperately--but uselessly--to
burst his fetters; and all the while the old ogre smiled down upon him,
and nodded his head, and placidly whetted his knife; mumbling, from time
to time, “The moments are precious, they are few and precious--pray the
prayer for the dying!”

The boy uttered a despairing groan, and ceased from his struggles,
panting.  The tears came, then, and trickled, one after the other, down
his face; but this piteous sight wrought no softening effect upon the
savage old man.

The dawn was coming now; the hermit observed it, and spoke up sharply,
with a touch of nervous apprehension in his voice--

“I may not indulge this ecstasy longer!  The night is already gone.  It
seems but a moment--only a moment; would it had endured a year!  Seed of
the Church’s spoiler, close thy perishing eyes, an’ thou fearest to look
upon--”

The rest was lost in inarticulate mutterings.  The old man sank upon his
knees, his knife in his hand, and bent himself over the moaning boy.

Hark!  There was a sound of voices near the cabin--the knife dropped
from the hermit’s hand; he cast a sheepskin over the boy and started up,
trembling.  The sounds increased, and presently the voices became rough
and angry; then came blows, and cries for help; then a clatter of swift
footsteps, retreating.  Immediately came a succession of thundering
knocks upon the cabin door, followed by--

“Hullo-o-o!  Open!  And despatch, in the name of all the devils!”

Oh, this was the blessedest sound that had ever made music in the King’s
ears; for it was Miles Hendon’s voice!

The hermit, grinding his teeth in impotent rage, moved swiftly out of
the bedchamber, closing the door behind him; and straightway the King
heard a talk, to this effect, proceeding from the ‘chapel’:--

“Homage and greeting, reverend sir!  Where is the boy--_my_ boy?”

“What boy, friend?”

“What boy!  Lie me no lies, sir priest, play me no deceptions!--I am not
in the humour for it.  Near to this place I caught the scoundrels who I
judged did steal him from me, and I made them confess; they said he was
at large again, and they had tracked him to your door.  They showed me
his very footprints.  Now palter no more; for look you, holy sir, an’
thou produce him not--Where is the boy?”

“O good sir, peradventure you mean the ragged regal vagrant that tarried
here the night.  If such as you take an interest in such as he, know,
then, that I have sent him of an errand.  He will be back anon.”

“How soon?  How soon?  Come, waste not the time--cannot I overtake him?
How soon will he be back?”

“Thou need’st not stir; he will return quickly.”

“So be it, then.  I will try to wait.  But stop!--_you_ sent him of an
errand?--you!  Verily this is a lie--he would not go.  He would pull thy
old beard, an’ thou didst offer him such an insolence. Thou hast lied,
friend; thou hast surely lied!  He would not go for thee, nor for any
man.”

“For any _man_--no; haply not.  But I am not a man.”

“_What_!  Now o’ God’s name what art thou, then?”

“It is a secret--mark thou reveal it not.  I am an archangel!”

There was a tremendous ejaculation from Miles Hendon--not altogether
unprofane--followed by--

“This doth well and truly account for his complaisance!  Right well
I knew he would budge nor hand nor foot in the menial service of any
mortal; but, lord, even a king must obey when an archangel gives the
word o’ command!  Let me--‘sh!  What noise was that?”

All this while the little King had been yonder, alternately quaking with
terror and trembling with hope; and all the while, too, he had thrown
all the strength he could into his anguished moanings, constantly
expecting them to reach Hendon’s ear, but always realising, with
bitterness, that they failed, or at least made no impression.  So this
last remark of his servant came as comes a reviving breath from fresh
fields to the dying; and he exerted himself once more, and with all his
energy, just as the hermit was saying--

“Noise?  I heard only the wind.”

“Mayhap it was.  Yes, doubtless that was it.  I have been hearing it
faintly all the--there it is again!  It is not the wind!  What an odd
sound!  Come, we will hunt it out!”

Now the King’s joy was nearly insupportable.  His tired lungs did
their utmost--and hopefully, too--but the sealed jaws and the muffling
sheepskin sadly crippled the effort.  Then the poor fellow’s heart sank,
to hear the hermit say--

“Ah, it came from without--I think from the copse yonder.  Come, I will
lead the way.”

The King heard the two pass out, talking; heard their footsteps die
quickly away--then he was alone with a boding, brooding, awful silence.

It seemed an age till he heard the steps and voices approaching
again--and this time he heard an added sound,--the trampling of hoofs,
apparently.  Then he heard Hendon say--

“I will not wait longer.  I _cannot_ wait longer.  He has lost his way
in this thick wood.  Which direction took he?  Quick--point it out to
me.”

“He--but wait; I will go with thee.”

“Good--good!  Why, truly thou art better than thy looks.  Marry I do
not think there’s not another archangel with so right a heart as thine.
 Wilt ride?  Wilt take the wee donkey that’s for my boy, or wilt thou
fork thy holy legs over this ill-conditioned slave of a mule that I have
provided for myself?--and had been cheated in too, had he cost but the
indifferent sum of a month’s usury on a brass farthing let to a tinker
out of work.”

“No--ride thy mule, and lead thine ass; I am surer on mine own feet, and
will walk.”

“Then prithee mind the little beast for me while I take my life in my
hands and make what success I may toward mounting the big one.”

Then followed a confusion of kicks, cuffs, tramplings and plungings,
accompanied by a thunderous intermingling of volleyed curses, and
finally a bitter apostrophe to the mule, which must have broken its
spirit, for hostilities seemed to cease from that moment.

With unutterable misery the fettered little King heard the voices and
footsteps fade away and die out.  All hope forsook him, now, for the
moment, and a dull despair settled down upon his heart. “My only friend
is deceived and got rid of,” he said; “the hermit will return and--”  He
finished with a gasp; and at once fell to struggling so frantically with
his bonds again, that he shook off the smothering sheepskin.

And now he heard the door open!  The sound chilled him to the
marrow--already he seemed to feel the knife at his throat.  Horror made
him close his eyes; horror made him open them again--and before him
stood John Canty and Hugo!

He would have said “Thank God!” if his jaws had been free.

A moment or two later his limbs were at liberty, and his captors, each
gripping him by an arm, were hurrying him with all speed through the
forest.




CHAPTER XXII. A Victim of Treachery.

Once more ‘King Foo-foo the First’ was roving with the tramps and
outlaws, a butt for their coarse jests and dull-witted railleries, and
sometimes the victim of small spitefulness at the hands of Canty and
Hugo when the Ruffler’s back was turned.  None but Canty and Hugo really
disliked him.  Some of the others liked him, and all admired his pluck
and spirit.  During two or three days, Hugo, in whose ward and charge
the King was, did what he covertly could to make the boy uncomfortable;
and at night, during the customary orgies, he amused the company by
putting small indignities upon him--always as if by accident.  Twice he
stepped upon the King’s toes--accidentally--and the King, as became his
royalty, was contemptuously unconscious of it and indifferent to it; but
the third time Hugo entertained himself in that way, the King felled
him to the ground with a cudgel, to the prodigious delight of the tribe.
 Hugo, consumed with anger and shame, sprang up, seized a cudgel, and
came at his small adversary in a fury.  Instantly a ring was formed
around the gladiators, and the betting and cheering began.

But poor Hugo stood no chance whatever.  His frantic and lubberly
‘prentice-work found but a poor market for itself when pitted against
an arm which had been trained by the first masters of Europe in
single-stick, quarter-staff, and every art and trick of swordsmanship.
 The little King stood, alert but at graceful ease, and caught and
turned aside the thick rain of blows with a facility and precision which
set the motley on-lookers wild with admiration; and every now and then,
when his practised eye detected an opening, and a lightning-swift rap
upon Hugo’s head followed as a result, the storm of cheers and laughter
that swept the place was something wonderful to hear.  At the end of
fifteen minutes, Hugo, all battered, bruised, and the target for
a pitiless bombardment of ridicule, slunk from the field; and the
unscathed hero of the fight was seized and borne aloft upon the
shoulders of the joyous rabble to the place of honour beside the
Ruffler, where with vast ceremony he was crowned King of the Game-Cocks;
his meaner title being at the same time solemnly cancelled and annulled,
and a decree of banishment from the gang pronounced against any who
should thenceforth utter it.

All attempts to make the King serviceable to the troop had failed. He
had stubbornly refused to act; moreover, he was always trying to escape.
 He had been thrust into an unwatched kitchen, the first day of his
return; he not only came forth empty-handed, but tried to rouse the
housemates. He was sent out with a tinker to help him at his work;
he would not work; moreover, he threatened the tinker with his own
soldering-iron; and finally both Hugo and the tinker found their
hands full with the mere matter of keeping his from getting away.  He
delivered the thunders of his royalty upon the heads of all who hampered
his liberties or tried to force him to service.  He was sent out, in
Hugo’s charge, in company with a slatternly woman and a diseased baby,
to beg; but the result was not encouraging--he declined to plead for the
mendicants, or be a party to their cause in any way.

Thus several days went by; and the miseries of this tramping life, and
the weariness and sordidness and meanness and vulgarity of it, became
gradually and steadily so intolerable to the captive that he began at
last to feel that his release from the hermit’s knife must prove only a
temporary respite from death, at best.

But at night, in his dreams, these things were forgotten, and he was
on his throne, and master again.  This, of course, intensified the
sufferings of the awakening--so the mortifications of each succeeding
morning of the few that passed between his return to bondage and the
combat with Hugo, grew bitterer and bitterer, and harder and harder to
bear.

The morning after that combat, Hugo got up with a heart filled with
vengeful purposes against the King.  He had two plans, in particular.
One was to inflict upon the lad what would be, to his proud spirit
and ‘imagined’ royalty, a peculiar humiliation; and if he failed to
accomplish this, his other plan was to put a crime of some kind upon the
King, and then betray him into the implacable clutches of the law.

In pursuance of the first plan, he purposed to put a ‘clime’ upon the
King’s leg; rightly judging that that would mortify him to the last and
perfect degree; and as soon as the clime should operate, he meant to get
Canty’s help, and _force_ the King to expose his leg in the highway
and beg for alms.  ‘Clime’ was the cant term for a sore, artificially
created. To make a clime, the operator made a paste or poultice of
unslaked lime, soap, and the rust of old iron, and spread it upon a
piece of leather, which was then bound tightly upon the leg.  This would
presently fret off the skin, and make the flesh raw and angry-looking;
blood was then rubbed upon the limb, which, being fully dried, took on a
dark and repulsive colour.  Then a bandage of soiled rags was put on in
a cleverly careless way which would allow the hideous ulcer to be seen,
and move the compassion of the passer-by. {8}

Hugo got the help of the tinker whom the King had cowed with the
soldering-iron; they took the boy out on a tinkering tramp, and as soon
as they were out of sight of the camp they threw him down and the tinker
held him while Hugo bound the poultice tight and fast upon his leg.

The King raged and stormed, and promised to hang the two the moment the
sceptre was in his hand again; but they kept a firm grip upon him
and enjoyed his impotent struggling and jeered at his threats.  This
continued until the poultice began to bite; and in no long time its work
would have been perfected, if there had been no interruption.  But there
was; for about this time the ‘slave’ who had made the speech denouncing
England’s laws, appeared on the scene, and put an end to the enterprise,
and stripped off the poultice and bandage.

The King wanted to borrow his deliverer’s cudgel and warm the jackets
of the two rascals on the spot; but the man said no, it would bring
trouble--leave the matter till night; the whole tribe being together,
then, the outside world would not venture to interfere or interrupt.  He
marched the party back to camp and reported the affair to the Ruffler,
who listened, pondered, and then decided that the King should not be
again detailed to beg, since it was plain he was worthy of something
higher and better--wherefore, on the spot he promoted him from the
mendicant rank and appointed him to steal!

Hugo was overjoyed.  He had already tried to make the King steal, and
failed; but there would be no more trouble of that sort, now, for of
course the King would not dream of defying a distinct command delivered
directly from head-quarters.  So he planned a raid for that very
afternoon, purposing to get the King in the law’s grip in the course of
it; and to do it, too, with such ingenious strategy, that it should seem
to be accidental and unintentional; for the King of the Game-Cocks was
popular now, and the gang might not deal over-gently with an unpopular
member who played so serious a treachery upon him as the delivering him
over to the common enemy, the law.

Very well.  All in good time Hugo strolled off to a neighbouring village
with his prey; and the two drifted slowly up and down one street after
another, the one watching sharply for a sure chance to achieve his evil
purpose, and the other watching as sharply for a chance to dart away and
get free of his infamous captivity for ever.

Both threw away some tolerably fair-looking opportunities; for both,
in their secret hearts, were resolved to make absolutely sure work this
time, and neither meant to allow his fevered desires to seduce him into
any venture that had much uncertainty about it.

Hugo’s chance came first.  For at last a woman approached who carried a
fat package of some sort in a basket.  Hugo’s eyes sparkled with sinful
pleasure as he said to himself, “Breath o’ my life, an’ I can but
put _that_ upon him, ’tis good-den and God keep thee, King of the
Game-Cocks!” He waited and watched--outwardly patient, but inwardly
consuming with excitement--till the woman had passed by, and the time
was ripe; then said, in a low voice--

“Tarry here till I come again,” and darted stealthily after the prey.

The King’s heart was filled with joy--he could make his escape, now, if
Hugo’s quest only carried him far enough away.

But he was to have no such luck.  Hugo crept behind the woman, snatched
the package, and came running back, wrapping it in an old piece of
blanket which he carried on his arm.  The hue and cry was raised in a
moment, by the woman, who knew her loss by the lightening of her burden,
although she had not seen the pilfering done.  Hugo thrust the bundle
into the King’s hands without halting, saying--

“Now speed ye after me with the rest, and cry ‘Stop thief!’ but mind ye
lead them astray!”

The next moment Hugo turned a corner and darted down a crooked
alley--and in another moment or two he lounged into view again, looking
innocent and indifferent, and took up a position behind a post to watch
results.

The insulted King threw the bundle on the ground; and the blanket fell
away from it just as the woman arrived, with an augmenting crowd at her
heels; she seized the King’s wrist with one hand, snatched up her bundle
with the other, and began to pour out a tirade of abuse upon the boy
while he struggled, without success, to free himself from her grip.

Hugo had seen enough--his enemy was captured and the law would get him,
now--so he slipped away, jubilant and chuckling, and wended campwards,
framing a judicious version of the matter to give to the Ruffler’s crew
as he strode along.

The King continued to struggle in the woman’s strong grasp, and now and
then cried out in vexation--

“Unhand me, thou foolish creature; it was not I that bereaved thee of
thy paltry goods.”

The crowd closed around, threatening the King and calling him names; a
brawny blacksmith in leather apron, and sleeves rolled to his elbows,
made a reach for him, saying he would trounce him well, for a lesson;
but just then a long sword flashed in the air and fell with convincing
force upon the man’s arm, flat side down, the fantastic owner of it
remarking pleasantly, at the same time--

“Marry, good souls, let us proceed gently, not with ill blood and
uncharitable words.  This is matter for the law’s consideration,
not private and unofficial handling.  Loose thy hold from the boy,
goodwife.”

The blacksmith averaged the stalwart soldier with a glance, then went
muttering away, rubbing his arm; the woman released the boy’s wrist
reluctantly; the crowd eyed the stranger unlovingly, but prudently
closed their mouths.  The King sprang to his deliverer’s side, with
flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes, exclaiming--

“Thou hast lagged sorely, but thou comest in good season, now, Sir
Miles; carve me this rabble to rags!”




CHAPTER XXIII. The Prince a prisoner.

Hendon forced back a smile, and bent down and whispered in the King’s
ear--

“Softly, softly, my prince, wag thy tongue warily--nay, suffer it not to
wag at all.  Trust in me--all shall go well in the end.” Then he added
to himself:  “_Sir_ Miles!  Bless me, I had totally forgot I was a
knight! Lord, how marvellous a thing it is, the grip his memory doth
take upon his quaint and crazy fancies! . . . An empty and foolish title
is mine, and yet it is something to have deserved it; for I think it is
more honour to be held worthy to be a spectre-knight in his Kingdom of
Dreams and Shadows, than to be held base enough to be an earl in some of
the _real_ kingdoms of this world.”

The crowd fell apart to admit a constable, who approached and was about
to lay his hand upon the King’s shoulder, when Hendon said--

“Gently, good friend, withhold your hand--he shall go peaceably; I am
responsible for that.  Lead on, we will follow.”

The officer led, with the woman and her bundle; Miles and the King
followed after, with the crowd at their heels.  The King was inclined to
rebel; but Hendon said to him in a low voice--

“Reflect, Sire--your laws are the wholesome breath of your own royalty;
shall their source resist them, yet require the branches to respect
them? Apparently one of these laws has been broken; when the King is on
his throne again, can it ever grieve him to remember that when he was
seemingly a private person he loyally sank the king in the citizen and
submitted to its authority?”

“Thou art right; say no more; thou shalt see that whatsoever the King
of England requires a subject to suffer, under the law, he will himself
suffer while he holdeth the station of a subject.”

When the woman was called upon to testify before the justice of the
peace, she swore that the small prisoner at the bar was the person who
had committed the theft; there was none able to show the contrary, so
the King stood convicted.  The bundle was now unrolled, and when the
contents proved to be a plump little dressed pig, the judge looked
troubled, whilst Hendon turned pale, and his body was thrilled with an
electric shiver of dismay; but the King remained unmoved, protected
by his ignorance.  The judge meditated, during an ominous pause, then
turned to the woman, with the question--

“What dost thou hold this property to be worth?”

The woman courtesied and replied--

“Three shillings and eightpence, your worship--I could not abate a penny
and set forth the value honestly.”

The justice glanced around uncomfortably upon the crowd, then nodded to
the constable, and said--

“Clear the court and close the doors.”

It was done.  None remained but the two officials, the accused, the
accuser, and Miles Hendon.  This latter was rigid and colourless, and
on his forehead big drops of cold sweat gathered, broke and blended
together, and trickled down his face.  The judge turned to the woman
again, and said, in a compassionate voice--

“‘Tis a poor ignorant lad, and mayhap was driven hard by hunger, for
these be grievous times for the unfortunate; mark you, he hath not an
evil face--but when hunger driveth--Good woman! dost know that when one
steals a thing above the value of thirteenpence ha’penny the law saith
he shall _hang_ for it?”

The little King started, wide-eyed with consternation, but controlled
himself and held his peace; but not so the woman.  She sprang to her
feet, shaking with fright, and cried out--

“Oh, good lack, what have I done!  God-a-mercy, I would not hang
the poor thing for the whole world!  Ah, save me from this, your
worship--what shall I do, what _can_ I do?”

The justice maintained his judicial composure, and simply said--

“Doubtless it is allowable to revise the value, since it is not yet writ
upon the record.”

“Then in God’s name call the pig eightpence, and heaven bless the day
that freed my conscience of this awesome thing!”

Miles Hendon forgot all decorum in his delight; and surprised the King
and wounded his dignity, by throwing his arms around him and hugging
him. The woman made her grateful adieux and started away with her pig;
and when the constable opened the door for her, he followed her out into
the narrow hall.  The justice proceeded to write in his record book.
 Hendon, always alert, thought he would like to know why the officer
followed the woman out; so he slipped softly into the dusky hall and
listened.  He heard a conversation to this effect--

“It is a fat pig, and promises good eating; I will buy it of thee; here
is the eightpence.”

“Eightpence, indeed!  Thou’lt do no such thing.  It cost me three
shillings and eightpence, good honest coin of the last reign, that old
Harry that’s just dead ne’er touched or tampered with.  A fig for thy
eightpence!”

“Stands the wind in that quarter?  Thou wast under oath, and so swore
falsely when thou saidst the value was but eightpence.  Come straightway
back with me before his worship, and answer for the crime!--and then the
lad will hang.”

“There, there, dear heart, say no more, I am content.  Give me the
eightpence, and hold thy peace about the matter.”

The woman went off crying:  Hendon slipped back into the court room,
and the constable presently followed, after hiding his prize in some
convenient place.  The justice wrote a while longer, then read the King
a wise and kindly lecture, and sentenced him to a short imprisonment
in the common jail, to be followed by a public flogging.  The astounded
King opened his mouth, and was probably going to order the good judge to
be beheaded on the spot; but he caught a warning sign from Hendon, and
succeeded in closing his mouth again before he lost anything out of it.
Hendon took him by the hand, now, made reverence to the justice, and the
two departed in the wake of the constable toward the jail.  The moment
the street was reached, the inflamed monarch halted, snatched away his
hand, and exclaimed--

“Idiot, dost imagine I will enter a common jail _alive_?”

Hendon bent down and said, somewhat sharply--

“_Will_ you trust in me?  Peace! and forbear to worsen our chances with
dangerous speech.  What God wills, will happen; thou canst not hurry it,
thou canst not alter it; therefore wait, and be patient--‘twill be time
enow to rail or rejoice when what is to happen has happened.” {1}




CHAPTER XXIV. The Escape.

The short winter day was nearly ended.  The streets were deserted, save
for a few random stragglers, and these hurried straight along, with the
intent look of people who were only anxious to accomplish their errands
as quickly as possible, and then snugly house themselves from the rising
wind and the gathering twilight. They looked neither to the right nor to
the left; they paid no attention to our party, they did not even seem
to see them. Edward the Sixth wondered if the spectacle of a king on his
way to jail had ever encountered such marvellous indifference before.
By-and-by the constable arrived at a deserted market-square, and
proceeded to cross it.  When he had reached the middle of it, Hendon
laid his hand upon his arm, and said in a low voice--

“Bide a moment, good sir, there is none in hearing, and I would say a
word to thee.”

“My duty forbids it, sir; prithee hinder me not, the night comes on.”

“Stay, nevertheless, for the matter concerns thee nearly.  Turn thy back
a moment and seem not to see:  _let this poor lad escape_.”

“This to me, sir!  I arrest thee in--”

“Nay, be not too hasty.  See thou be careful and commit no foolish
error,”--then he shut his voice down to a whisper, and said in the man’s
ear--“the pig thou hast purchased for eightpence may cost thee thy neck,
man!”

The poor constable, taken by surprise, was speechless, at first, then
found his tongue and fell to blustering and threatening; but Hendon
was tranquil, and waited with patience till his breath was spent; then
said--

“I have a liking to thee, friend, and would not willingly see thee
come to harm.  Observe, I heard it all--every word.  I will prove it to
thee.” Then he repeated the conversation which the officer and the woman
had had together in the hall, word for word, and ended with--

“There--have I set it forth correctly?  Should not I be able to set it
forth correctly before the judge, if occasion required?”

The man was dumb with fear and distress, for a moment; then he rallied,
and said with forced lightness--

“‘Tis making a mighty matter, indeed, out of a jest; I but plagued the
woman for mine amusement.”

“Kept you the woman’s pig for amusement?”

The man answered sharply--

“Nought else, good sir--I tell thee ’twas but a jest.”

“I do begin to believe thee,” said Hendon, with a perplexing mixture of
mockery and half-conviction in his tone; “but tarry thou here a
moment whilst I run and ask his worship--for nathless, he being a man
experienced in law, in jests, in--”

He was moving away, still talking; the constable hesitated, fidgeted,
spat out an oath or two, then cried out--

“Hold, hold, good sir--prithee wait a little--the judge!  Why, man, he
hath no more sympathy with a jest than hath a dead corpse!--come, and we
will speak further.  Ods body!  I seem to be in evil case--and all for
an innocent and thoughtless pleasantry. I am a man of family; and my
wife and little ones--List to reason, good your worship: what wouldst
thou of me?”

“Only that thou be blind and dumb and paralytic whilst one may count a
hundred thousand--counting slowly,” said Hendon, with the expression of
a man who asks but a reasonable favour, and that a very little one.

“It is my destruction!” said the constable despairingly.  “Ah, be
reasonable, good sir; only look at this matter, on all its sides, and
see how mere a jest it is--how manifestly and how plainly it is so.  And
even if one granted it were not a jest, it is a fault so small that
e’en the grimmest penalty it could call forth would be but a rebuke and
warning from the judge’s lips.”

Hendon replied with a solemnity which chilled the air about him--

“This jest of thine hath a name, in law,--wot you what it is?”

“I knew it not!  Peradventure I have been unwise.  I never dreamed it
had a name--ah, sweet heaven, I thought it was original.”

“Yes, it hath a name.  In the law this crime is called Non compos mentis
lex talionis sic transit gloria mundi.”

“Ah, my God!”

“And the penalty is death!”

“God be merciful to me a sinner!”

“By advantage taken of one in fault, in dire peril, and at thy mercy,
thou hast seized goods worth above thirteenpence ha’penny, paying but
a trifle for the same; and this, in the eye of the law, is constructive
barratry, misprision of treason, malfeasance in office, ad hominem
expurgatis in statu quo--and the penalty is death by the halter, without
ransom, commutation, or benefit of clergy.”

“Bear me up, bear me up, sweet sir, my legs do fail me!  Be thou
merciful--spare me this doom, and I will turn my back and see nought
that shall happen.”

“Good! now thou’rt wise and reasonable.  And thou’lt restore the pig?”

“I will, I will indeed--nor ever touch another, though heaven send it
and an archangel fetch it.  Go--I am blind for thy sake--I see nothing.
 I will say thou didst break in and wrest the prisoner from my hands by
force.  It is but a crazy, ancient door--I will batter it down myself
betwixt midnight and the morning.”

“Do it, good soul, no harm will come of it; the judge hath a loving
charity for this poor lad, and will shed no tears and break no jailer’s
bones for his escape.”




CHAPTER XXV. Hendon Hall.

As soon as Hendon and the King were out of sight of the constable, his
Majesty was instructed to hurry to a certain place outside the town, and
wait there, whilst Hendon should go to the inn and settle his account.
Half an hour later the two friends were blithely jogging eastward on
Hendon’s sorry steeds.  The King was warm and comfortable, now, for
he had cast his rags and clothed himself in the second-hand suit which
Hendon had bought on London Bridge.

Hendon wished to guard against over-fatiguing the boy; he judged that
hard journeys, irregular meals, and illiberal measures of sleep would be
bad for his crazed mind; whilst rest, regularity, and moderate exercise
would be pretty sure to hasten its cure; he longed to see the stricken
intellect made well again and its diseased visions driven out of the
tormented little head; therefore he resolved to move by easy stages
toward the home whence he had so long been banished, instead of obeying
the impulse of his impatience and hurrying along night and day.

When he and the King had journeyed about ten miles, they reached a
considerable village, and halted there for the night, at a good inn.
 The former relations were resumed; Hendon stood behind the King’s
chair, while he dined, and waited upon him; undressed him when he was
ready for bed; then took the floor for his own quarters, and slept
athwart the door, rolled up in a blanket.

The next day, and the day after, they jogged lazily along talking
over the adventures they had met since their separation, and mightily
enjoying each other’s narratives.  Hendon detailed all his wide
wanderings in search of the King, and described how the archangel had
led him a fool’s journey all over the forest, and taken him back to
the hut, finally, when he found he could not get rid of him.  Then--he
said--the old man went into the bedchamber and came staggering back
looking broken-hearted, and saying he had expected to find that the boy
had returned and laid down in there to rest, but it was not so.  Hendon
had waited at the hut all day; hope of the King’s return died out, then,
and he departed upon the quest again.

“And old Sanctum Sanctorum _was_ truly sorry your highness came not
back,” said Hendon; “I saw it in his face.”

“Marry I will never doubt _that_!” said the King--and then told his own
story; after which, Hendon was sorry he had not destroyed the archangel.

During the last day of the trip, Hendon’s spirits were soaring. His
tongue ran constantly.  He talked about his old father, and his brother
Arthur, and told of many things which illustrated their high and
generous characters; he went into loving frenzies over his Edith,
and was so glad-hearted that he was even able to say some gentle and
brotherly things about Hugh.  He dwelt a deal on the coming meeting
at Hendon Hall; what a surprise it would be to everybody, and what an
outburst of thanksgiving and delight there would be.

It was a fair region, dotted with cottages and orchards, and the road
led through broad pasture lands whose receding expanses, marked with
gentle elevations and depressions, suggested the swelling and subsiding
undulations of the sea.  In the afternoon the returning prodigal made
constant deflections from his course to see if by ascending some hillock
he might not pierce the distance and catch a glimpse of his home.  At
last he was successful, and cried out excitedly--

“There is the village, my Prince, and there is the Hall close by! You
may see the towers from here; and that wood there--that is my father’s
park. Ah, _now_ thou’lt know what state and grandeur be! A house with
seventy rooms--think of that!--and seven and twenty servants!  A brave
lodging for such as we, is it not so?  Come, let us speed--my impatience
will not brook further delay.”

All possible hurry was made; still, it was after three o’clock before
the village was reached.  The travellers scampered through it, Hendon’s
tongue going all the time.  “Here is the church--covered with the same
ivy--none gone, none added.”  “Yonder is the inn, the old Red Lion,--and
yonder is the market-place.”  “Here is the Maypole, and here the
pump--nothing is altered; nothing but the people, at any rate; ten years
make a change in people; some of these I seem to know, but none know
me.”  So his chat ran on. The end of the village was soon reached; then
the travellers struck into a crooked, narrow road, walled in with tall
hedges, and hurried briskly along it for half a mile, then passed into a
vast flower garden through an imposing gateway, whose huge stone pillars
bore sculptured armorial devices.  A noble mansion was before them.

“Welcome to Hendon Hall, my King!” exclaimed Miles.  “Ah, ’tis a great
day!  My father and my brother, and the Lady Edith will be so mad with
joy that they will have eyes and tongue for none but me in the first
transports of the meeting, and so thou’lt seem but coldly welcomed--but
mind it not; ’twill soon seem otherwise; for when I say thou art my
ward, and tell them how costly is my love for thee, thou’lt see them
take thee to their breasts for Miles Hendon’s sake, and make their house
and hearts thy home for ever after!”

The next moment Hendon sprang to the ground before the great door,
helped the King down, then took him by the hand and rushed within. A few
steps brought him to a spacious apartment; he entered, seated the King
with more hurry than ceremony, then ran toward a young man who sat at a
writing-table in front of a generous fire of logs.

“Embrace me, Hugh,” he cried, “and say thou’rt glad I am come again! and
call our father, for home is not home till I shall touch his hand, and
see his face, and hear his voice once more!”

But Hugh only drew back, after betraying a momentary surprise, and bent
a grave stare upon the intruder--a stare which indicated somewhat of
offended dignity, at first, then changed, in response to some inward
thought or purpose, to an expression of marvelling curiosity, mixed with
a real or assumed compassion.  Presently he said, in a mild voice--

“Thy wits seem touched, poor stranger; doubtless thou hast suffered
privations and rude buffetings at the world’s hands; thy looks and dress
betoken it.  Whom dost thou take me to be?”

“Take thee?  Prithee for whom else than whom thou art?  I take thee to
be Hugh Hendon,” said Miles, sharply.

The other continued, in the same soft tone--

“And whom dost thou imagine thyself to be?”

“Imagination hath nought to do with it!  Dost thou pretend thou knowest
me not for thy brother Miles Hendon?”

An expression of pleased surprise flitted across Hugh’s face, and he
exclaimed--

“What! thou art not jesting? can the dead come to life?  God be praised
if it be so!  Our poor lost boy restored to our arms after all these
cruel years!  Ah, it seems too good to be true, it _is_ too good to be
true--I charge thee, have pity, do not trifle with me!  Quick--come to
the light--let me scan thee well!”

He seized Miles by the arm, dragged him to the window, and began to
devour him from head to foot with his eyes, turning him this way and
that, and stepping briskly around him and about him to prove him
from all points of view; whilst the returned prodigal, all aglow with
gladness, smiled, laughed, and kept nodding his head and saying--

“Go on, brother, go on, and fear not; thou’lt find nor limb nor feature
that cannot bide the test.  Scour and scan me to thy content, my good
old Hugh--I am indeed thy old Miles, thy same old Miles, thy lost
brother, is’t not so?  Ah, ’tis a great day--I _said_ ’twas a great day!
 Give me thy hand, give me thy cheek--lord, I am like to die of very
joy!”

He was about to throw himself upon his brother; but Hugh put up his hand
in dissent, then dropped his chin mournfully upon his breast, saying
with emotion--

“Ah, God of his mercy give me strength to bear this grievous
disappointment!”

Miles, amazed, could not speak for a moment; then he found his tongue,
and cried out--

“_What_ disappointment?  Am I not thy brother?”

Hugh shook his head sadly, and said--

“I pray heaven it may prove so, and that other eyes may find the
resemblances that are hid from mine.  Alack, I fear me the letter spoke
but too truly.”

“What letter?”

“One that came from over sea, some six or seven years ago.  It said my
brother died in battle.”

“It was a lie!  Call thy father--he will know me.”

“One may not call the dead.”

“Dead?” Miles’s voice was subdued, and his lips trembled.  “My father
dead!--oh, this is heavy news.  Half my new joy is withered now.
 Prithee let me see my brother Arthur--he will know me; he will know me
and console me.”

“He, also, is dead.”

“God be merciful to me, a stricken man!  Gone,--both gone--the worthy
taken and the worthless spared, in me!  Ah! I crave your mercy!--do not
say the Lady Edith--”

“Is dead?  No, she lives.”

“Then, God be praised, my joy is whole again!  Speed thee, brother--let
her come to me!  An’ _she_ say I am not myself--but she will not; no,
no, _she_ will know me, I were a fool to doubt it. Bring her--bring the
old servants; they, too, will know me.”

“All are gone but five--Peter, Halsey, David, Bernard, and Margaret.”

So saying, Hugh left the room.  Miles stood musing a while, then began
to walk the floor, muttering--

“The five arch-villains have survived the two-and-twenty leal and
honest--‘tis an odd thing.”

He continued walking back and forth, muttering to himself; he had
forgotten the King entirely.  By-and-by his Majesty said gravely, and
with a touch of genuine compassion, though the words themselves were
capable of being interpreted ironically--

“Mind not thy mischance, good man; there be others in the world whose
identity is denied, and whose claims are derided.  Thou hast company.”

“Ah, my King,” cried Hendon, colouring slightly, “do not thou condemn
me--wait, and thou shalt see.  I am no impostor--she will say it; you
shall hear it from the sweetest lips in England.  I an impostor?  Why, I
know this old hall, these pictures of my ancestors, and all these things
that are about us, as a child knoweth its own nursery.  Here was I born
and bred, my lord; I speak the truth; I would not deceive thee; and
should none else believe, I pray thee do not _thou_ doubt me--I could
not bear it.”

“I do not doubt thee,” said the King, with a childlike simplicity and
faith.

“I thank thee out of my heart!” exclaimed Hendon with a fervency which
showed that he was touched.  The King added, with the same gentle
simplicity--

“Dost thou doubt _me_?”

A guilty confusion seized upon Hendon, and he was grateful that the door
opened to admit Hugh, at that moment, and saved him the necessity of
replying.

A beautiful lady, richly clothed, followed Hugh, and after her came
several liveried servants.  The lady walked slowly, with her head bowed
and her eyes fixed upon the floor.  The face was unspeakably sad.  Miles
Hendon sprang forward, crying out--

“Oh, my Edith, my darling--”

But Hugh waved him back, gravely, and said to the lady--

“Look upon him.  Do you know him?”

At the sound of Miles’s voice the woman had started slightly, and her
cheeks had flushed; she was trembling now.  She stood still, during an
impressive pause of several moments; then slowly lifted up her head and
looked into Hendon’s eyes with a stony and frightened gaze; the blood
sank out of her face, drop by drop, till nothing remained but the grey
pallor of death; then she said, in a voice as dead as the face, “I know
him not!” and turned, with a moan and a stifled sob, and tottered out of
the room.

Miles Hendon sank into a chair and covered his face with his hands.
After a pause, his brother said to the servants--

“You have observed him.  Do you know him?”

They shook their heads; then the master said--

“The servants know you not, sir.  I fear there is some mistake. You have
seen that my wife knew you not.”

“Thy _wife_!”  In an instant Hugh was pinned to the wall, with an iron
grip about his throat.  “Oh, thou fox-hearted slave, I see it all!
 Thou’st writ the lying letter thyself, and my stolen bride and goods
are its fruit.  There--now get thee gone, lest I shame mine honourable
soldiership with the slaying of so pitiful a mannikin!”

Hugh, red-faced, and almost suffocated, reeled to the nearest chair, and
commanded the servants to seize and bind the murderous stranger.  They
hesitated, and one of them said--

“He is armed, Sir Hugh, and we are weaponless.”

“Armed!  What of it, and ye so many?  Upon him, I say!”

But Miles warned them to be careful what they did, and added--

“Ye know me of old--I have not changed; come on, an’ it like you.”

This reminder did not hearten the servants much; they still held back.

“Then go, ye paltry cowards, and arm yourselves and guard the doors,
whilst I send one to fetch the watch!” said Hugh.  He turned at the
threshold, and said to Miles, “You’ll find it to your advantage to
offend not with useless endeavours at escape.”

“Escape?  Spare thyself discomfort, an’ that is all that troubles thee.
For Miles Hendon is master of Hendon Hall and all its belongings.  He
will remain--doubt it not.”




CHAPTER XXVI. Disowned.

The King sat musing a few moments, then looked up and said--

“‘Tis strange--most strange.  I cannot account for it.”

“No, it is not strange, my liege.  I know him, and this conduct is but
natural.  He was a rascal from his birth.”

“Oh, I spake not of _him_, Sir Miles.”

“Not of him?  Then of what?  What is it that is strange?”

“That the King is not missed.”

“How?  Which?  I doubt I do not understand.”

“Indeed?  Doth it not strike you as being passing strange that the land
is not filled with couriers and proclamations describing my person and
making search for me?  Is it no matter for commotion and distress that
the Head of the State is gone; that I am vanished away and lost?”

“Most true, my King, I had forgot.”  Then Hendon sighed, and muttered to
himself, “Poor ruined mind--still busy with its pathetic dream.”

“But I have a plan that shall right us both--I will write a paper, in
three tongues--Latin, Greek and English--and thou shalt haste away with
it to London in the morning.  Give it to none but my uncle, the Lord
Hertford; when he shall see it, he will know and say I wrote it.  Then
he will send for me.”

“Might it not be best, my Prince, that we wait here until I prove myself
and make my rights secure to my domains?  I should be so much the better
able then to--”

The King interrupted him imperiously--

“Peace!  What are thy paltry domains, thy trivial interests, contrasted
with matters which concern the weal of a nation and the integrity of a
throne?”  Then, he added, in a gentle voice, as if he were sorry for his
severity, “Obey, and have no fear; I will right thee, I will make thee
whole--yes, more than whole.  I shall remember, and requite.”

So saying, he took the pen, and set himself to work.  Hendon
contemplated him lovingly a while, then said to himself--

“An’ it were dark, I should think it _was_ a king that spoke; there’s
no denying it, when the humour’s upon on him he doth thunder and lighten
like your true King; now where got he that trick?  See him scribble and
scratch away contentedly at his meaningless pot-hooks, fancying them to
be Latin and Greek--and except my wit shall serve me with a lucky device
for diverting him from his purpose, I shall be forced to pretend to post
away to-morrow on this wild errand he hath invented for me.”

The next moment Sir Miles’s thoughts had gone back to the recent
episode. So absorbed was he in his musings, that when the King presently
handed him the paper which he had been writing, he received it and
pocketed it without being conscious of the act. “How marvellous strange
she acted,” he muttered.  “I think she knew me--and I think she did
_not_ know me. These opinions do conflict, I perceive it plainly; I
cannot reconcile them, neither can I, by argument, dismiss either of the
two, or even persuade one to outweigh the other.  The matter standeth
simply thus: she _must_ have known my face, my figure, my voice, for how
could it be otherwise?  Yet she __said_ _she knew me not, and that is
proof perfect, for she cannot lie.  But stop--I think I begin to see.
Peradventure he hath influenced her, commanded her, compelled her to
lie.  That is the solution.  The riddle is unriddled.  She seemed dead
with fear--yes, she was under his compulsion.  I will seek her; I will
find her; now that he is away, she will speak her true mind.  She will
remember the old times when we were little playfellows together, and
this will soften her heart, and she will no more betray me, but will
confess me.  There is no treacherous blood in her--no, she was always
honest and true.  She has loved me, in those old days--this is my
security; for whom one has loved, one cannot betray.”

He stepped eagerly toward the door; at that moment it opened, and the
Lady Edith entered.  She was very pale, but she walked with a firm step,
and her carriage was full of grace and gentle dignity. Her face was as
sad as before.

Miles sprang forward, with a happy confidence, to meet her, but she
checked him with a hardly perceptible gesture, and he stopped where he
was.  She seated herself, and asked him to do likewise. Thus simply did
she take the sense of old comradeship out of him, and transform him
into a stranger and a guest.  The surprise of it, the bewildering
unexpectedness of it, made him begin to question, for a moment, if he
_was_ the person he was pretending to be, after all.  The Lady Edith
said--

“Sir, I have come to warn you.  The mad cannot be persuaded out of
their delusions, perchance; but doubtless they may be persuaded to avoid
perils.  I think this dream of yours hath the seeming of honest truth to
you, and therefore is not criminal--but do not tarry here with it; for
here it is dangerous.”  She looked steadily into Miles’s face a moment,
then added, impressively, “It is the more dangerous for that you _are_
much like what our lost lad must have grown to be if he had lived.”

“Heavens, madam, but I _am_ he!”

“I truly think you think it, sir.  I question not your honesty in that;
I but warn you, that is all.  My husband is master in this region; his
power hath hardly any limit; the people prosper or starve, as he wills.
If you resembled not the man whom you profess to be, my husband might
bid you pleasure yourself with your dream in peace; but trust me, I know
him well; I know what he will do; he will say to all that you are but a
mad impostor, and straightway all will echo him.”  She bent upon Miles
that same steady look once more, and added:  “If you _were_ Miles
Hendon, and he knew it and all the region knew it--consider what I
am saying, weigh it well--you would stand in the same peril, your
punishment would be no less sure; he would deny you and denounce you,
and none would be bold enough to give you countenance.”

“Most truly I believe it,” said Miles, bitterly.  “The power that
can command one life-long friend to betray and disown another, and be
obeyed, may well look to be obeyed in quarters where bread and life are
on the stake and no cobweb ties of loyalty and honour are concerned.”

A faint tinge appeared for a moment in the lady’s cheek, and she dropped
her eyes to the floor; but her voice betrayed no emotion when she
proceeded--

“I have warned you--I must still warn you--to go hence.  This man will
destroy you, else.  He is a tyrant who knows no pity.  I, who am
his fettered slave, know this.  Poor Miles, and Arthur, and my dear
guardian, Sir Richard, are free of him, and at rest:  better that
you were with them than that you bide here in the clutches of this
miscreant.  Your pretensions are a menace to his title and possessions;
you have assaulted him in his own house:  you are ruined if you stay.
 Go--do not hesitate. If you lack money, take this purse, I beg of you,
and bribe the servants to let you pass. Oh, be warned, poor soul, and
escape while you may.”

Miles declined the purse with a gesture, and rose up and stood before
her.

“Grant me one thing,” he said.  “Let your eyes rest upon mine, so that I
may see if they be steady.  There--now answer me.  Am I Miles Hendon?”

“No.  I know you not.”

“Swear it!”

The answer was low, but distinct--

“I swear.”

“Oh, this passes belief!”

“Fly!  Why will you waste the precious time?  Fly, and save yourself.”

At that moment the officers burst into the room, and a violent struggle
began; but Hendon was soon overpowered and dragged away. The King was
taken also, and both were bound and led to prison.




CHAPTER XXVII. In Prison.

The cells were all crowded; so the two friends were chained in a large
room where persons charged with trifling offences were commonly kept.
They had company, for there were some twenty manacled and fettered
prisoners here, of both sexes and of varying ages,--an obscene and noisy
gang.  The King chafed bitterly over the stupendous indignity thus put
upon his royalty, but Hendon was moody and taciturn.  He was pretty
thoroughly bewildered; he had come home, a jubilant prodigal, expecting
to find everybody wild with joy over his return; and instead had got the
cold shoulder and a jail.  The promise and the fulfilment differed so
widely that the effect was stunning; he could not decide whether it
was most tragic or most grotesque.  He felt much as a man might who had
danced blithely out to enjoy a rainbow, and got struck by lightning.

But gradually his confused and tormenting thoughts settled down into
some sort of order, and then his mind centred itself upon Edith.  He
turned her conduct over, and examined it in all lights, but he could not
make anything satisfactory out of it.  Did she know him--or didn’t she
know him?  It was a perplexing puzzle, and occupied him a long time; but
he ended, finally, with the conviction that she did know him, and had
repudiated him for interested reasons.  He wanted to load her name with
curses now; but this name had so long been sacred to him that he found
he could not bring his tongue to profane it.

Wrapped in prison blankets of a soiled and tattered condition, Hendon
and the King passed a troubled night.  For a bribe the jailer had
furnished liquor to some of the prisoners; singing of ribald songs,
fighting, shouting, and carousing was the natural consequence.  At last,
a while after midnight, a man attacked a woman and nearly killed her by
beating her over the head with his manacles before the jailer could
come to the rescue.  The jailer restored peace by giving the man a sound
clubbing about the head and shoulders--then the carousing ceased;
and after that, all had an opportunity to sleep who did not mind the
annoyance of the moanings and groanings of the two wounded people.

During the ensuing week, the days and nights were of a monotonous
sameness as to events; men whose faces Hendon remembered more or less
distinctly, came, by day, to gaze at the ‘impostor’ and repudiate
and insult him; and by night the carousing and brawling went on with
symmetrical regularity.  However, there was a change of incident at
last. The jailer brought in an old man, and said to him--

“The villain is in this room--cast thy old eyes about and see if thou
canst say which is he.”

Hendon glanced up, and experienced a pleasant sensation for the first
time since he had been in the jail.  He said to himself, “This is Blake
Andrews, a servant all his life in my father’s family--a good honest
soul, with a right heart in his breast. That is, formerly.  But none are
true now; all are liars.  This man will know me--and will deny me, too,
like the rest.”

The old man gazed around the room, glanced at each face in turn, and
finally said--

“I see none here but paltry knaves, scum o’ the streets.  Which is he?”

The jailer laughed.

“Here,” he said; “scan this big animal, and grant me an opinion.”

The old man approached, and looked Hendon over, long and earnestly, then
shook his head and said--

“Marry, _this_ is no Hendon--nor ever was!”

“Right!  Thy old eyes are sound yet.  An’ I were Sir Hugh, I would take
the shabby carle and--”

The jailer finished by lifting himself a-tip-toe with an imaginary
halter, at the same time making a gurgling noise in his throat
suggestive of suffocation.  The old man said, vindictively--

“Let him bless God an’ he fare no worse.  An’ _I_ had the handling o’
the villain he should roast, or I am no true man!”

The jailer laughed a pleasant hyena laugh, and said--

“Give him a piece of thy mind, old man--they all do it.  Thou’lt find it
good diversion.”

Then he sauntered toward his ante-room and disappeared.  The old man
dropped upon his knees and whispered--

“God be thanked, thou’rt come again, my master!  I believed thou wert
dead these seven years, and lo, here thou art alive!  I knew thee the
moment I saw thee; and main hard work it was to keep a stony countenance
and seem to see none here but tuppenny knaves and rubbish o’ the
streets. I am old and poor, Sir Miles; but say the word and I will go
forth and proclaim the truth though I be strangled for it.”

“No,” said Hendon; “thou shalt not.  It would ruin thee, and yet help
but little in my cause.  But I thank thee, for thou hast given me back
somewhat of my lost faith in my kind.”

The old servant became very valuable to Hendon and the King; for
he dropped in several times a day to ‘abuse’ the former, and always
smuggled in a few delicacies to help out the prison bill of fare; he
also furnished the current news.  Hendon reserved the dainties for the
King; without them his Majesty might not have survived, for he was
not able to eat the coarse and wretched food provided by the jailer.
 Andrews was obliged to confine himself to brief visits, in order to
avoid suspicion; but he managed to impart a fair degree of information
each time--information delivered in a low voice, for Hendon’s benefit,
and interlarded with insulting epithets delivered in a louder voice for
the benefit of other hearers.

So, little by little, the story of the family came out.  Arthur had
been dead six years.  This loss, with the absence of news from Hendon,
impaired the father’s health; he believed he was going to die, and he
wished to see Hugh and Edith settled in life before he passed away; but
Edith begged hard for delay, hoping for Miles’s return; then the letter
came which brought the news of Miles’s death; the shock prostrated Sir
Richard; he believed his end was very near, and he and Hugh insisted
upon the marriage; Edith begged for and obtained a month’s respite,
then another, and finally a third; the marriage then took place by
the death-bed of Sir Richard.  It had not proved a happy one.  It was
whispered about the country that shortly after the nuptials the bride
found among her husband’s papers several rough and incomplete drafts of
the fatal letter, and had accused him of precipitating the marriage--and
Sir Richard’s death, too--by a wicked forgery. Tales of cruelty to the
Lady Edith and the servants were to be heard on all hands; and since the
father’s death Sir Hugh had thrown off all soft disguises and become
a pitiless master toward all who in any way depended upon him and his
domains for bread.

There was a bit of Andrew’s gossip which the King listened to with a
lively interest--

“There is rumour that the King is mad.  But in charity forbear to say
_I_ mentioned it, for ’tis death to speak of it, they say.”

His Majesty glared at the old man and said--

“The King is _not_ mad, good man--and thou’lt find it to thy advantage
to busy thyself with matters that nearer concern thee than this
seditious prattle.”

“What doth the lad mean?” said Andrews, surprised at this brisk assault
from such an unexpected quarter.  Hendon gave him a sign, and he did not
pursue his question, but went on with his budget--

“The late King is to be buried at Windsor in a day or two--the 16th of
the month--and the new King will be crowned at Westminster the 20th.”

“Methinks they must needs find him first,” muttered his Majesty; then
added, confidently, “but they will look to that--and so also shall I.”

“In the name of--”

But the old man got no further--a warning sign from Hendon checked his
remark.  He resumed the thread of his gossip--

“Sir Hugh goeth to the coronation--and with grand hopes.  He confidently
looketh to come back a peer, for he is high in favour with the Lord
Protector.”

“What Lord Protector?” asked his Majesty.

“His Grace the Duke of Somerset.”

“What Duke of Somerset?”

“Marry, there is but one--Seymour, Earl of Hertford.”

The King asked sharply--

“Since when is _he_ a duke, and Lord Protector?”

“Since the last day of January.”

“And prithee who made him so?”

“Himself and the Great Council--with help of the King.”

His Majesty started violently.  “The _King_!” he cried.  “_What_ king,
good sir?”

“What king, indeed! (God-a-mercy, what aileth the boy?)  Sith we have
but one, ’tis not difficult to answer--his most sacred Majesty King
Edward the Sixth--whom God preserve!  Yea, and a dear and gracious
little urchin is he, too; and whether he be mad or no--and they say he
mendeth daily--his praises are on all men’s lips; and all bless him,
likewise, and offer prayers that he may be spared to reign long in
England; for he began humanely with saving the old Duke of Norfolk’s
life, and now is he bent on destroying the cruellest of the laws that
harry and oppress the people.”

This news struck his Majesty dumb with amazement, and plunged him into
so deep and dismal a reverie that he heard no more of the old man’s
gossip. He wondered if the ‘little urchin’ was the beggar-boy whom
he left dressed in his own garments in the palace.  It did not seem
possible that this could be, for surely his manners and speech would
betray him if he pretended to be the Prince of Wales--then he would be
driven out, and search made for the true prince.  Could it be that the
Court had set up some sprig of the nobility in his place?  No, for his
uncle would not allow that--he was all-powerful and could and would
crush such a movement, of course.  The boy’s musings profited him
nothing; the more he tried to unriddle the mystery the more perplexed he
became, the more his head ached, and the worse he slept.  His
impatience to get to London grew hourly, and his captivity became almost
unendurable.

Hendon’s arts all failed with the King--he could not be comforted; but a
couple of women who were chained near him succeeded better. Under their
gentle ministrations he found peace and learned a degree of patience.
 He was very grateful, and came to love them dearly and to delight in
the sweet and soothing influence of their presence.  He asked them why
they were in prison, and when they said they were Baptists, he smiled,
and inquired--

“Is that a crime to be shut up for in a prison?  Now I grieve, for I
shall lose ye--they will not keep ye long for such a little thing.”

They did not answer; and something in their faces made him uneasy. He
said, eagerly--

“You do not speak; be good to me, and tell me--there will be no other
punishment?  Prithee tell me there is no fear of that.”

They tried to change the topic, but his fears were aroused, and he
pursued it--

“Will they scourge thee?  No, no, they would not be so cruel!  Say they
would not.  Come, they _will_ not, will they?”

The women betrayed confusion and distress, but there was no avoiding an
answer, so one of them said, in a voice choked with emotion--

“Oh, thou’lt break our hearts, thou gentle spirit!--God will help us to
bear our--”

“It is a confession!” the King broke in.  “Then they _will_ scourge
thee, the stony-hearted wretches!  But oh, thou must not weep, I cannot
bear it.  Keep up thy courage--I shall come to my own in time to save
thee from this bitter thing, and I will do it!”

When the King awoke in the morning, the women were gone.

“They are saved!” he said, joyfully; then added, despondently, “but woe
is me!--for they were my comforters.”

Each of them had left a shred of ribbon pinned to his clothing, in token
of remembrance.  He said he would keep these things always; and that
soon he would seek out these dear good friends of his and take them
under his protection.

Just then the jailer came in with some subordinates, and commanded that
the prisoners be conducted to the jail-yard.  The King was overjoyed--it
would be a blessed thing to see the blue sky and breathe the fresh air
once more.  He fretted and chafed at the slowness of the officers, but
his turn came at last, and he was released from his staple and ordered
to follow the other prisoners with Hendon.

The court or quadrangle was stone-paved, and open to the sky.  The
prisoners entered it through a massive archway of masonry, and were
placed in file, standing, with their backs against the wall. A rope
was stretched in front of them, and they were also guarded by their
officers. It was a chill and lowering morning, and a light snow which
had fallen during the night whitened the great empty space and added
to the general dismalness of its aspect. Now and then a wintry wind
shivered through the place and sent the snow eddying hither and thither.

In the centre of the court stood two women, chained to posts.  A glance
showed the King that these were his good friends.  He shuddered, and
said to himself, “Alack, they are not gone free, as I had thought.  To
think that such as these should know the lash!--in England!  Ay, there’s
the shame of it--not in Heathennesse, Christian England!  They will be
scourged; and I, whom they have comforted and kindly entreated, must
look on and see the great wrong done; it is strange, so strange, that
I, the very source of power in this broad realm, am helpless to protect
them. But let these miscreants look well to themselves, for there is a
day coming when I will require of them a heavy reckoning for this work.
 For every blow they strike now, they shall feel a hundred then.”

A great gate swung open, and a crowd of citizens poured in.  They
flocked around the two women, and hid them from the King’s view. A
clergyman entered and passed through the crowd, and he also was hidden.
 The King now heard talking, back and forth, as if questions were being
asked and answered, but he could not make out what was said.  Next there
was a deal of bustle and preparation, and much passing and repassing of
officials through that part of the crowd that stood on the further side
of the women; and whilst this proceeded a deep hush gradually fell upon
the people.

Now, by command, the masses parted and fell aside, and the King saw a
spectacle that froze the marrow in his bones.  Faggots had been piled
about the two women, and a kneeling man was lighting them!

The women bowed their heads, and covered their faces with their hands;
the yellow flames began to climb upward among the snapping and crackling
faggots, and wreaths of blue smoke to stream away on the wind; the
clergyman lifted his hands and began a prayer--just then two young girls
came flying through the great gate, uttering piercing screams, and threw
themselves upon the women at the stake.  Instantly they were torn away
by the officers, and one of them was kept in a tight grip, but the other
broke loose, saying she would die with her mother; and before she could
be stopped she had flung her arms about her mother’s neck again.  She
was torn away once more, and with her gown on fire.  Two or three men
held her, and the burning portion of her gown was snatched off and
thrown flaming aside, she struggling all the while to free herself, and
saying she would be alone in the world, now; and begging to be allowed
to die with her mother.  Both the girls screamed continually, and fought
for freedom; but suddenly this tumult was drowned under a volley of
heart-piercing shrieks of mortal agony--the King glanced from the
frantic girls to the stake, then turned away and leaned his ashen face
against the wall, and looked no more.  He said, “That which I have seen,
in that one little moment, will never go out from my memory, but will
abide there; and I shall see it all the days, and dream of it all the
nights, till I die.  Would God I had been blind!”

Hendon was watching the King.  He said to himself, with satisfaction,
“His disorder mendeth; he hath changed, and groweth gentler.  If he had
followed his wont, he would have stormed at these varlets, and said he
was King, and commanded that the women be turned loose unscathed.  Soon
his delusion will pass away and be forgotten, and his poor mind will be
whole again.  God speed the day!”

That same day several prisoners were brought in to remain over night,
who were being conveyed, under guard, to various places in the kingdom,
to undergo punishment for crimes committed.  The King conversed with
these--he had made it a point, from the beginning, to instruct himself
for the kingly office by questioning prisoners whenever the opportunity
offered--and the tale of their woes wrung his heart.  One of them was
a poor half-witted woman who had stolen a yard or two of cloth from a
weaver--she was to be hanged for it.  Another was a man who had been
accused of stealing a horse; he said the proof had failed, and he had
imagined that he was safe from the halter; but no--he was hardly free
before he was arraigned for killing a deer in the King’s park; this was
proved against him, and now he was on his way to the gallows.  There was
a tradesman’s apprentice whose case particularly distressed the King;
this youth said he found a hawk, one evening, that had escaped from its
owner, and he took it home with him, imagining himself entitled to it;
but the court convicted him of stealing it, and sentenced him to death.

The King was furious over these inhumanities, and wanted Hendon to break
jail and fly with him to Westminster, so that he could mount his throne
and hold out his sceptre in mercy over these unfortunate people and
save their lives.  “Poor child,” sighed Hendon, “these woeful tales
have brought his malady upon him again; alack, but for this evil hap, he
would have been well in a little time.”

Among these prisoners was an old lawyer--a man with a strong face and a
dauntless mien.  Three years past, he had written a pamphlet against the
Lord Chancellor, accusing him of injustice, and had been punished for
it by the loss of his ears in the pillory, and degradation from the
bar, and in addition had been fined 3,000 pounds and sentenced to
imprisonment for life.  Lately he had repeated his offence; and in
consequence was now under sentence to lose _what remained of his ears_,
pay a fine of 5,000 pounds, be branded on both cheeks, and remain in
prison for life.

“These be honourable scars,” he said, and turned back his grey hair and
showed the mutilated stubs of what had once been his ears.

The King’s eye burned with passion.  He said--

“None believe in me--neither wilt thou.  But no matter--within the
compass of a month thou shalt be free; and more, the laws that have
dishonoured thee, and shamed the English name, shall be swept from the
statute books.  The world is made wrong; kings should go to school to
their own laws, at times, and so learn mercy.” {1}




CHAPTER XXVIII. The sacrifice.

Meantime Miles was growing sufficiently tired of confinement and
inaction.  But now his trial came on, to his great gratification, and
he thought he could welcome any sentence provided a further imprisonment
should not be a part of it.  But he was mistaken about that.  He was in
a fine fury when he found himself described as a ‘sturdy vagabond’ and
sentenced to sit two hours in the stocks for bearing that character
and for assaulting the master of Hendon Hall.  His pretensions as to
brothership with his prosecutor, and rightful heirship to the Hendon
honours and estates, were left contemptuously unnoticed, as being not
even worth examination.

He raged and threatened on his way to punishment, but it did no good; he
was snatched roughly along by the officers, and got an occasional cuff,
besides, for his irreverent conduct.

The King could not pierce through the rabble that swarmed behind; so
he was obliged to follow in the rear, remote from his good friend and
servant.  The King had been nearly condemned to the stocks himself for
being in such bad company, but had been let off with a lecture and a
warning, in consideration of his youth.  When the crowd at last halted,
he flitted feverishly from point to point around its outer rim, hunting
a place to get through; and at last, after a deal of difficulty and
delay, succeeded.  There sat his poor henchman in the degrading stocks,
the sport and butt of a dirty mob--he, the body servant of the King
of England!  Edward had heard the sentence pronounced, but he had not
realised the half that it meant.  His anger began to rise as the sense
of this new indignity which had been put upon him sank home; it jumped
to summer heat, the next moment, when he saw an egg sail through the air
and crush itself against Hendon’s cheek, and heard the crowd roar
its enjoyment of the episode.  He sprang across the open circle and
confronted the officer in charge, crying--

“For shame!  This is my servant--set him free!  I am the--”

“Oh, peace!” exclaimed Hendon, in a panic, “thou’lt destroy thyself.
Mind him not, officer, he is mad.”

“Give thyself no trouble as to the matter of minding him, good man, I
have small mind to mind him; but as to teaching him somewhat, to that
I am well inclined.”  He turned to a subordinate and said, “Give the
little fool a taste or two of the lash, to mend his manners.”

“Half a dozen will better serve his turn,” suggested Sir Hugh, who had
ridden up, a moment before, to take a passing glance at the proceedings.

The King was seized.  He did not even struggle, so paralysed was he
with the mere thought of the monstrous outrage that was proposed to be
inflicted upon his sacred person.  History was already defiled with
the record of the scourging of an English king with whips--it was an
intolerable reflection that he must furnish a duplicate of that shameful
page.  He was in the toils, there was no help for him; he must either
take this punishment or beg for its remission.  Hard conditions; he
would take the stripes--a king might do that, but a king could not beg.

But meantime, Miles Hendon was resolving the difficulty.  “Let the child
go,” said he; “ye heartless dogs, do ye not see how young and frail he
is?  Let him go--I will take his lashes.”

“Marry, a good thought--and thanks for it,” said Sir Hugh, his face
lighting with a sardonic satisfaction.  “Let the little beggar go, and
give this fellow a dozen in his place--an honest dozen, well laid on.”
 The King was in the act of entering a fierce protest, but Sir Hugh
silenced him with the potent remark, “Yes, speak up, do, and free thy
mind--only, mark ye, that for each word you utter he shall get six
strokes the more.”

Hendon was removed from the stocks, and his back laid bare; and whilst
the lash was applied the poor little King turned away his face and
allowed unroyal tears to channel his cheeks unchecked. “Ah, brave good
heart,” he said to himself, “this loyal deed shall never perish out of
my memory.  I will not forget it--and neither shall _they_!” he added,
with passion.  Whilst he mused, his appreciation of Hendon’s magnanimous
conduct grew to greater and still greater dimensions in his mind, and
so also did his gratefulness for it.  Presently he said to himself, “Who
saves his prince from wounds and possible death--and this he did for
me--performs high service; but it is little--it is nothing--oh, less
than nothing!--when ’tis weighed against the act of him who saves his
prince from _shame_!”

Hendon made no outcry under the scourge, but bore the heavy blows with
soldierly fortitude.  This, together with his redeeming the boy by
taking his stripes for him, compelled the respect of even that forlorn
and degraded mob that was gathered there; and its gibes and hootings
died away, and no sound remained but the sound of the falling blows.
 The stillness that pervaded the place, when Hendon found himself once
more in the stocks, was in strong contrast with the insulting clamour
which had prevailed there so little a while before.  The King came
softly to Hendon’s side, and whispered in his ear--

“Kings cannot ennoble thee, thou good, great soul, for One who is higher
than kings hath done that for thee; but a king can confirm thy nobility
to men.”  He picked up the scourge from the ground, touched Hendon’s
bleeding shoulders lightly with it, and whispered, “Edward of England
dubs thee Earl!”

Hendon was touched.  The water welled to his eyes, yet at the same time
the grisly humour of the situation and circumstances so undermined his
gravity that it was all he could do to keep some sign of his inward
mirth from showing outside.  To be suddenly hoisted, naked and gory,
from the common stocks to the Alpine altitude and splendour of
an Earldom, seemed to him the last possibility in the line of the
grotesque.  He said to himself, “Now am I finely tinselled, indeed!
 The spectre-knight of the Kingdom of Dreams and Shadows is become a
spectre-earl--a dizzy flight for a callow wing!  An’ this go on, I
shall presently be hung like a very maypole with fantastic gauds and
make-believe honours.  But I shall value them, all valueless as
they are, for the love that doth bestow them. Better these poor mock
dignities of mine, that come unasked, from a clean hand and a right
spirit, than real ones bought by servility from grudging and interested
power.”

The dreaded Sir Hugh wheeled his horse about, and as he spurred away,
the living wall divided silently to let him pass, and as silently closed
together again.  And so remained; nobody went so far as to venture
a remark in favour of the prisoner, or in compliment to him; but no
matter--the absence of abuse was a sufficient homage in itself.  A
late comer who was not posted as to the present circumstances, and who
delivered a sneer at the ‘impostor,’ and was in the act of following it
with a dead cat, was promptly knocked down and kicked out, without any
words, and then the deep quiet resumed sway once more.




CHAPTER XXIX. To London.

When Hendon’s term of service in the stocks was finished, he was
released and ordered to quit the region and come back no more. His sword
was restored to him, and also his mule and his donkey. He mounted
and rode off, followed by the King, the crowd opening with quiet
respectfulness to let them pass, and then dispersing when they were
gone.

Hendon was soon absorbed in thought.  There were questions of high
import to be answered.  What should he do?  Whither should he go?
Powerful help must be found somewhere, or he must relinquish his
inheritance and remain under the imputation of being an impostor
besides.  Where could he hope to find this powerful help?  Where,
indeed!  It was a knotty question. By-and-by a thought occurred to him
which pointed to a possibility--the slenderest of slender possibilities,
certainly, but still worth considering, for lack of any other that
promised anything at all.  He remembered what old Andrews had said about
the young King’s goodness and his generous championship of the wronged
and unfortunate.  Why not go and try to get speech of him and beg for
justice?  Ah, yes, but could so fantastic a pauper get admission to the
august presence of a monarch? Never mind--let that matter take care of
itself; it was a bridge that would not need to be crossed till he should
come to it.  He was an old campaigner, and used to inventing shifts and
expedients:  no doubt he would be able to find a way.  Yes, he would
strike for the capital. Maybe his father’s old friend Sir Humphrey
Marlow would help him--‘good old Sir Humphrey, Head Lieutenant of the
late King’s kitchen, or stables, or something’--Miles could not remember
just what or which.  Now that he had something to turn his energies to,
a distinctly defined object to accomplish, the fog of humiliation and
depression which had settled down upon his spirits lifted and blew away,
and he raised his head and looked about him.  He was surprised to see
how far he had come; the village was away behind him.  The King was
jogging along in his wake, with his head bowed; for he, too, was deep
in plans and thinkings.  A sorrowful misgiving clouded Hendon’s new-born
cheerfulness:  would the boy be willing to go again to a city where,
during all his brief life, he had never known anything but ill-usage and
pinching want?  But the question must be asked; it could not be avoided;
so Hendon reined up, and called out--

“I had forgotten to inquire whither we are bound.  Thy commands, my
liege!”

“To London!”

Hendon moved on again, mightily contented with the answer--but astounded
at it too.

The whole journey was made without an adventure of importance. But it
ended with one.  About ten o’clock on the night of the 19th of February
they stepped upon London Bridge, in the midst of a writhing, struggling
jam of howling and hurrahing people, whose beer-jolly faces stood out
strongly in the glare from manifold torches--and at that instant the
decaying head of some former duke or other grandee tumbled down between
them, striking Hendon on the elbow and then bounding off among the
hurrying confusion of feet. So evanescent and unstable are men’s works
in this world!--the late good King is but three weeks dead and three
days in his grave, and already the adornments which he took such pains
to select from prominent people for his noble bridge are falling.  A
citizen stumbled over that head, and drove his own head into the back of
somebody in front of him, who turned and knocked down the first person
that came handy, and was promptly laid out himself by that person’s
friend.  It was the right ripe time for a free fight, for the
festivities of the morrow--Coronation Day--were already beginning;
everybody was full of strong drink and patriotism; within five minutes
the free fight was occupying a good deal of ground; within ten or twelve
it covered an acre of so, and was become a riot.  By this time Hendon
and the King were hopelessly separated from each other and lost in the
rush and turmoil of the roaring masses of humanity.  And so we leave
them.




CHAPTER XXX. Tom’s progress.

Whilst the true King wandered about the land poorly clad, poorly
fed, cuffed and derided by tramps one while, herding with thieves
and murderers in a jail another, and called idiot and impostor by
all impartially, the mock King Tom Canty enjoyed quite a different
experience.

When we saw him last, royalty was just beginning to have a bright side
for him.  This bright side went on brightening more and more every
day: in a very little while it was become almost all sunshine and
delightfulness.  He lost his fears; his misgivings faded out and died;
his embarrassments departed, and gave place to an easy and confident
bearing.  He worked the whipping-boy mine to ever-increasing profit.

He ordered my Lady Elizabeth and my Lady Jane Grey into his presence
when he wanted to play or talk, and dismissed them when he was done with
them, with the air of one familiarly accustomed to such performances.
 It no longer confused him to have these lofty personages kiss his hand
at parting.

He came to enjoy being conducted to bed in state at night, and dressed
with intricate and solemn ceremony in the morning.  It came to be a
proud pleasure to march to dinner attended by a glittering procession
of officers of state and gentlemen-at-arms; insomuch, indeed, that he
doubled his guard of gentlemen-at-arms, and made them a hundred.  He
liked to hear the bugles sounding down the long corridors, and the
distant voices responding, “Way for the King!”

He even learned to enjoy sitting in throned state in council, and
seeming to be something more than the Lord Protector’s mouthpiece. He
liked to receive great ambassadors and their gorgeous trains, and listen
to the affectionate messages they brought from illustrious monarchs who
called him brother.  O happy Tom Canty, late of Offal Court!

He enjoyed his splendid clothes, and ordered more:  he found his four
hundred servants too few for his proper grandeur, and trebled them.  The
adulation of salaaming courtiers came to be sweet music to his ears.  He
remained kind and gentle, and a sturdy and determined champion of all
that were oppressed, and he made tireless war upon unjust laws:  yet
upon occasion, being offended, he could turn upon an earl, or even a
duke, and give him a look that would make him tremble.  Once, when his
royal ‘sister,’ the grimly holy Lady Mary, set herself to reason with
him against the wisdom of his course in pardoning so many people who
would otherwise be jailed, or hanged, or burned, and reminded him that
their august late father’s prisons had sometimes contained as high as
sixty thousand convicts at one time, and that during his admirable reign
he had delivered seventy-two thousand thieves and robbers over to death
by the executioner, {9} the boy was filled with generous indignation,
and commanded her to go to her closet, and beseech God to take away the
stone that was in her breast, and give her a human heart.

Did Tom Canty never feel troubled about the poor little rightful prince
who had treated him so kindly, and flown out with such hot zeal to
avenge him upon the insolent sentinel at the palace-gate? Yes; his first
royal days and nights were pretty well sprinkled with painful thoughts
about the lost prince, and with sincere longings for his return, and
happy restoration to his native rights and splendours.  But as time
wore on, and the prince did not come, Tom’s mind became more and more
occupied with his new and enchanting experiences, and by little and
little the vanished monarch faded almost out of his thoughts; and
finally, when he did intrude upon them at intervals, he was become an
unwelcome spectre, for he made Tom feel guilty and ashamed.

Tom’s poor mother and sisters travelled the same road out of his mind.
At first he pined for them, sorrowed for them, longed to see them, but
later, the thought of their coming some day in their rags and dirt, and
betraying him with their kisses, and pulling him down from his lofty
place, and dragging him back to penury and degradation and the slums,
made him shudder.  At last they ceased to trouble his thoughts almost
wholly.  And he was content, even glad:  for, whenever their mournful
and accusing faces did rise before him now, they made him feel more
despicable than the worms that crawl.

At midnight of the 19th of February, Tom Canty was sinking to sleep in
his rich bed in the palace, guarded by his loyal vassals, and surrounded
by the pomps of royalty, a happy boy; for tomorrow was the day appointed
for his solemn crowning as King of England. At that same hour, Edward,
the true king, hungry and thirsty, soiled and draggled, worn with
travel, and clothed in rags and shreds--his share of the results of the
riot--was wedged in among a crowd of people who were watching with deep
interest certain hurrying gangs of workmen who streamed in and out of
Westminster Abbey, busy as ants:  they were making the last preparation
for the royal coronation.




CHAPTER XXXI. The Recognition procession.

When Tom Canty awoke the next morning, the air was heavy with a
thunderous murmur:  all the distances were charged with it.  It was
music to him; for it meant that the English world was out in its
strength to give loyal welcome to the great day.

Presently Tom found himself once more the chief figure in a wonderful
floating pageant on the Thames; for by ancient custom the ‘recognition
procession’ through London must start from the Tower, and he was bound
thither.

When he arrived there, the sides of the venerable fortress seemed
suddenly rent in a thousand places, and from every rent leaped a
red tongue of flame and a white gush of smoke; a deafening explosion
followed, which drowned the shoutings of the multitude, and made the
ground tremble; the flame-jets, the smoke, and the explosions, were
repeated over and over again with marvellous celerity, so that in a few
moments the old Tower disappeared in the vast fog of its own smoke, all
but the very top of the tall pile called the White Tower; this, with
its banners, stood out above the dense bank of vapour as a mountain-peak
projects above a cloud-rack.

Tom Canty, splendidly arrayed, mounted a prancing war-steed, whose rich
trappings almost reached to the ground; his ‘uncle,’ the Lord Protector
Somerset, similarly mounted, took place in his rear; the King’s Guard
formed in single ranks on either side, clad in burnished armour;
after the Protector followed a seemingly interminable procession of
resplendent nobles attended by their vassals; after these came the lord
mayor and the aldermanic body, in crimson velvet robes, and with their
gold chains across their breasts; and after these the officers and
members of all the guilds of London, in rich raiment, and bearing the
showy banners of the several corporations.  Also in the procession, as a
special guard of honour through the city, was the Ancient and Honourable
Artillery Company--an organisation already three hundred years old
at that time, and the only military body in England possessing the
privilege (which it still possesses in our day) of holding itself
independent of the commands of Parliament.  It was a brilliant
spectacle, and was hailed with acclamations all along the line, as it
took its stately way through the packed multitudes of citizens. The
chronicler says, ‘The King, as he entered the city, was received by the
people with prayers, welcomings, cries, and tender words, and all signs
which argue an earnest love of subjects toward their sovereign; and the
King, by holding up his glad countenance to such as stood afar off, and
most tender language to those that stood nigh his Grace, showed himself
no less thankful to receive the people’s goodwill than they to offer it.
 To all that wished him well, he gave thanks.  To such as bade “God save
his Grace,” he said in return, “God save you all!” and added that “he
thanked them with all his heart.” Wonderfully transported were the
people with the loving answers and gestures of their King.’

In Fenchurch Street a ‘fair child, in costly apparel,’ stood on a stage
to welcome his Majesty to the city.  The last verse of his greeting was
in these words--

‘Welcome, O King! as much as hearts can think; Welcome, again, as much
as tongue can tell,--Welcome to joyous tongues, and hearts that will
not shrink: God thee preserve, we pray, and wish thee ever well.’

The people burst forth in a glad shout, repeating with one voice what
the child had said.  Tom Canty gazed abroad over the surging sea of
eager faces, and his heart swelled with exultation; and he felt that
the one thing worth living for in this world was to be a king, and a
nation’s idol.  Presently he caught sight, at a distance, of a couple
of his ragged Offal Court comrades--one of them the lord high admiral in
his late mimic court, the other the first lord of the bedchamber in the
same pretentious fiction; and his pride swelled higher than ever.  Oh,
if they could only recognise him now!  What unspeakable glory it would
be, if they could recognise him, and realise that the derided mock king
of the slums and back alleys was become a real King, with illustrious
dukes and princes for his humble menials, and the English world at his
feet!  But he had to deny himself, and choke down his desire, for such
a recognition might cost more than it would come to:  so he turned away
his head, and left the two soiled lads to go on with their shoutings and
glad adulations, unsuspicious of whom it was they were lavishing them
upon.

Every now and then rose the cry, “A largess! a largess!” and Tom
responded by scattering a handful of bright new coins abroad for the
multitude to scramble for.

The chronicler says, ‘At the upper end of Gracechurch Street, before the
sign of the Eagle, the city had erected a gorgeous arch, beneath which
was a stage, which stretched from one side of the street to the other.
This was an historical pageant, representing the King’s immediate
progenitors.  There sat Elizabeth of York in the midst of an immense
white rose, whose petals formed elaborate furbelows around her; by her
side was Henry VII., issuing out of a vast red rose, disposed in the
same manner:  the hands of the royal pair were locked together, and the
wedding-ring ostentatiously displayed.  From the red and white roses
proceeded a stem, which reached up to a second stage, occupied by Henry
VIII., issuing from a red and white rose, with the effigy of the new
King’s mother, Jane Seymour, represented by his side.  One branch sprang
from this pair, which mounted to a third stage, where sat the effigy of
Edward VI. himself, enthroned in royal majesty; and the whole pageant
was framed with wreaths of roses, red and white.’

This quaint and gaudy spectacle so wrought upon the rejoicing people,
that their acclamations utterly smothered the small voice of the child
whose business it was to explain the thing in eulogistic rhymes.  But
Tom Canty was not sorry; for this loyal uproar was sweeter music to him
than any poetry, no matter what its quality might be.  Whithersoever Tom
turned his happy young face, the people recognised the exactness of his
effigy’s likeness to himself, the flesh and blood counterpart; and new
whirlwinds of applause burst forth.

The great pageant moved on, and still on, under one triumphal arch after
another, and past a bewildering succession of spectacular and symbolical
tableaux, each of which typified and exalted some virtue, or talent, or
merit, of the little King’s.  ‘Throughout the whole of Cheapside, from
every penthouse and window, hung banners and streamers; and the richest
carpets, stuffs, and cloth-of-gold tapestried the streets--specimens
of the great wealth of the stores within; and the splendour of this
thoroughfare was equalled in the other streets, and in some even
surpassed.’

“And all these wonders and these marvels are to welcome me--me!”
 murmured Tom Canty.

The mock King’s cheeks were flushed with excitement, his eyes were
flashing, his senses swam in a delirium of pleasure.  At this point,
just as he was raising his hand to fling another rich largess, he caught
sight of a pale, astounded face, which was strained forward out of
the second rank of the crowd, its intense eyes riveted upon him.  A
sickening consternation struck through him; he recognised his
mother! and up flew his hand, palm outward, before his eyes--that old
involuntary gesture, born of a forgotten episode, and perpetuated by
habit.  In an instant more she had torn her way out of the press, and
past the guards, and was at his side.  She embraced his leg, she covered
it with kisses, she cried, “O my child, my darling!” lifting toward him
a face that was transfigured with joy and love.  The same instant an
officer of the King’s Guard snatched her away with a curse, and sent
her reeling back whence she came with a vigorous impulse from his
strong arm.  The words “I do not know you, woman!” were falling from Tom
Canty’s lips when this piteous thing occurred; but it smote him to the
heart to see her treated so; and as she turned for a last glimpse of
him, whilst the crowd was swallowing her from his sight, she seemed so
wounded, so broken-hearted, that a shame fell upon him which consumed
his pride to ashes, and withered his stolen royalty.  His grandeurs were
stricken valueless: they seemed to fall away from him like rotten rags.

The procession moved on, and still on, through ever augmenting
splendours and ever augmenting tempests of welcome; but to Tom Canty
they were as if they had not been.  He neither saw nor heard.  Royalty
had lost its grace and sweetness; its pomps were become a reproach.
 Remorse was eating his heart out.  He said, “Would God I were free of
my captivity!”

He had unconsciously dropped back into the phraseology of the first days
of his compulsory greatness.

The shining pageant still went winding like a radiant and interminable
serpent down the crooked lanes of the quaint old city, and through the
huzzaing hosts; but still the King rode with bowed head and vacant eyes,
seeing only his mother’s face and that wounded look in it.

“Largess, largess!”  The cry fell upon an unheeding ear.

“Long live Edward of England!”  It seemed as if the earth shook with the
explosion; but there was no response from the King.  He heard it only as
one hears the thunder of the surf when it is blown to the ear out of a
great distance, for it was smothered under another sound which was still
nearer, in his own breast, in his accusing conscience--a voice which
kept repeating those shameful words, “I do not know you, woman!”

The words smote upon the King’s soul as the strokes of a funeral bell
smite upon the soul of a surviving friend when they remind him of secret
treacheries suffered at his hands by him that is gone.

New glories were unfolded at every turning; new wonders, new marvels,
sprang into view; the pent clamours of waiting batteries were released;
new raptures poured from the throats of the waiting multitudes:  but the
King gave no sign, and the accusing voice that went moaning through his
comfortless breast was all the sound he heard.

By-and-by the gladness in the faces of the populace changed a little,
and became touched with a something like solicitude or anxiety:  an
abatement in the volume of the applause was observable too.  The Lord
Protector was quick to notice these things:  he was as quick to detect
the cause.  He spurred to the King’s side, bent low in his saddle,
uncovered, and said--

“My liege, it is an ill time for dreaming.  The people observe thy
downcast head, thy clouded mien, and they take it for an omen.  Be
advised:  unveil the sun of royalty, and let it shine upon these boding
vapours, and disperse them.  Lift up thy face, and smile upon the
people.”

So saying, the Duke scattered a handful of coins to right and left, then
retired to his place.  The mock King did mechanically as he had been
bidden.  His smile had no heart in it, but few eyes were near enough
or sharp enough to detect that.  The noddings of his plumed head as he
saluted his subjects were full of grace and graciousness; the largess
which he delivered from his hand was royally liberal:  so the people’s
anxiety vanished, and the acclamations burst forth again in as mighty a
volume as before.

Still once more, a little before the progress was ended, the Duke was
obliged to ride forward, and make remonstrance.  He whispered--

“O dread sovereign! shake off these fatal humours; the eyes of the world
are upon thee.”  Then he added with sharp annoyance, “Perdition catch
that crazy pauper! ’twas she that hath disturbed your Highness.”

The gorgeous figure turned a lustreless eye upon the Duke, and said in a
dead voice--

“She was my mother!”

“My God!” groaned the Protector as he reined his horse backward to his
post, “the omen was pregnant with prophecy.  He is gone mad again!”




CHAPTER XXXII. Coronation Day.

Let us go backward a few hours, and place ourselves in Westminster
Abbey, at four o’clock in the morning of this memorable Coronation Day.
 We are not without company; for although it is still night, we find
the torch-lighted galleries already filling up with people who are well
content to sit still and wait seven or eight hours till the time shall
come for them to see what they may not hope to see twice in their
lives--the coronation of a King.  Yes, London and Westminster have been
astir ever since the warning guns boomed at three o’clock, and already
crowds of untitled rich folk who have bought the privilege of trying
to find sitting-room in the galleries are flocking in at the entrances
reserved for their sort.

The hours drag along tediously enough.  All stir has ceased for some
time, for every gallery has long ago been packed.  We may sit, now, and
look and think at our leisure.  We have glimpses, here and there
and yonder, through the dim cathedral twilight, of portions of many
galleries and balconies, wedged full with other people, the other
portions of these galleries and balconies being cut off from sight by
intervening pillars and architectural projections.  We have in view
the whole of the great north transept--empty, and waiting for England’s
privileged ones.  We see also the ample area or platform, carpeted with
rich stuffs, whereon the throne stands.  The throne occupies the centre
of the platform, and is raised above it upon an elevation of four steps.
Within the seat of the throne is enclosed a rough flat rock--the stone
of Scone--which many generations of Scottish kings sat on to be crowned,
and so it in time became holy enough to answer a like purpose for
English monarchs.  Both the throne and its footstool are covered with
cloth of gold.

Stillness reigns, the torches blink dully, the time drags heavily.
But at last the lagging daylight asserts itself, the torches are
extinguished, and a mellow radiance suffuses the great spaces. All
features of the noble building are distinct now, but soft and dreamy,
for the sun is lightly veiled with clouds.

At seven o’clock the first break in the drowsy monotony occurs; for on
the stroke of this hour the first peeress enters the transept, clothed
like Solomon for splendour, and is conducted to her appointed place
by an official clad in satins and velvets, whilst a duplicate of him
gathers up the lady’s long train, follows after, and, when the lady is
seated, arranges the train across her lap for her.  He then places her
footstool according to her desire, after which he puts her coronet where
it will be convenient to her hand when the time for the simultaneous
coroneting of the nobles shall arrive.

By this time the peeresses are flowing in in a glittering stream, and
the satin-clad officials are flitting and glinting everywhere, seating
them and making them comfortable.  The scene is animated enough now.
 There is stir and life, and shifting colour everywhere.  After a time,
quiet reigns again; for the peeresses are all come and are all in their
places, a solid acre or such a matter, of human flowers, resplendent in
variegated colours, and frosted like a Milky Way with diamonds.  There
are all ages here: brown, wrinkled, white-haired dowagers who are able
to go back, and still back, down the stream of time, and recall the
crowning of Richard III. and the troublous days of that old forgotten
age; and there are handsome middle-aged dames; and lovely and gracious
young matrons; and gentle and beautiful young girls, with beaming eyes
and fresh complexions, who may possibly put on their jewelled coronets
awkwardly when the great time comes; for the matter will be new to
them, and their excitement will be a sore hindrance. Still, this may
not happen, for the hair of all these ladies has been arranged with a
special view to the swift and successful lodging of the crown in its
place when the signal comes.

We have seen that this massed array of peeresses is sown thick with
diamonds, and we also see that it is a marvellous spectacle--but now we
are about to be astonished in earnest.  About nine, the clouds suddenly
break away and a shaft of sunshine cleaves the mellow atmosphere, and
drifts slowly along the ranks of ladies; and every rank it touches
flames into a dazzling splendour of many-coloured fires, and we tingle
to our finger-tips with the electric thrill that is shot through us by
the surprise and the beauty of the spectacle!  Presently a special envoy
from some distant corner of the Orient, marching with the general body
of foreign ambassadors, crosses this bar of sunshine, and we catch our
breath, the glory that streams and flashes and palpitates about him is
so overpowering; for he is crusted from head to heel with gems, and his
slightest movement showers a dancing radiance all around him.

Let us change the tense for convenience.  The time drifted along--one
hour--two hours--two hours and a half; then the deep booming of
artillery told that the King and his grand procession had arrived at
last; so the waiting multitude rejoiced.  All knew that a further delay
must follow, for the King must be prepared and robed for the solemn
ceremony; but this delay would be pleasantly occupied by the assembling
of the peers of the realm in their stately robes.  These were conducted
ceremoniously to their seats, and their coronets placed conveniently
at hand; and meanwhile the multitude in the galleries were alive with
interest, for most of them were beholding for the first time, dukes,
earls, and barons, whose names had been historical for five hundred
years.  When all were finally seated, the spectacle from the galleries
and all coigns of vantage was complete; a gorgeous one to look upon and
to remember.

Now the robed and mitred great heads of the church, and their
attendants, filed in upon the platform and took their appointed places;
these were followed by the Lord Protector and other great officials, and
these again by a steel-clad detachment of the Guard.

There was a waiting pause; then, at a signal, a triumphant peal of music
burst forth, and Tom Canty, clothed in a long robe of cloth of gold,
appeared at a door, and stepped upon the platform.  The entire multitude
rose, and the ceremony of the Recognition ensued.

Then a noble anthem swept the Abbey with its rich waves of sound; and
thus heralded and welcomed, Tom Canty was conducted to the throne.
 The ancient ceremonies went on, with impressive solemnity, whilst the
audience gazed; and as they drew nearer and nearer to completion, Tom
Canty grew pale, and still paler, and a deep and steadily deepening woe
and despondency settled down upon his spirits and upon his remorseful
heart.

At last the final act was at hand.  The Archbishop of Canterbury lifted
up the crown of England from its cushion and held it out over the
trembling mock-King’s head.  In the same instant a rainbow-radiance
flashed along the spacious transept; for with one impulse every
individual in the great concourse of nobles lifted a coronet and poised
it over his or her head--and paused in that attitude.

A deep hush pervaded the Abbey.  At this impressive moment, a startling
apparition intruded upon the scene--an apparition observed by none in
the absorbed multitude, until it suddenly appeared, moving up the great
central aisle.  It was a boy, bareheaded, ill shod, and clothed in
coarse plebeian garments that were falling to rags.  He raised his hand
with a solemnity which ill comported with his soiled and sorry aspect,
and delivered this note of warning--

“I forbid you to set the crown of England upon that forfeited head.  I
am the King!”

In an instant several indignant hands were laid upon the boy; but in
the same instant Tom Canty, in his regal vestments, made a swift step
forward, and cried out in a ringing voice--

“Loose him and forbear!  He _is_ the King!”

A sort of panic of astonishment swept the assemblage, and they partly
rose in their places and stared in a bewildered way at one another and
at the chief figures in this scene, like persons who wondered whether
they were awake and in their senses, or asleep and dreaming.  The Lord
Protector was as amazed as the rest, but quickly recovered himself, and
exclaimed in a voice of authority--

“Mind not his Majesty, his malady is upon him again--seize the
vagabond!”

He would have been obeyed, but the mock-King stamped his foot and cried
out--

“On your peril!  Touch him not, he is the King!”

The hands were withheld; a paralysis fell upon the house; no one moved,
no one spoke; indeed, no one knew how to act or what to say, in so
strange and surprising an emergency.  While all minds were struggling to
right themselves, the boy still moved steadily forward, with high port
and confident mien; he had never halted from the beginning; and while
the tangled minds still floundered helplessly, he stepped upon the
platform, and the mock-King ran with a glad face to meet him; and fell
on his knees before him and said--

“Oh, my lord the King, let poor Tom Canty be first to swear fealty to
thee, and say, ‘Put on thy crown and enter into thine own again!’”

The Lord Protector’s eye fell sternly upon the new-comer’s face; but
straightway the sternness vanished away, and gave place to an expression
of wondering surprise.  This thing happened also to the other great
officers.  They glanced at each other, and retreated a step by a common
and unconscious impulse.  The thought in each mind was the same:  “What
a strange resemblance!”

The Lord Protector reflected a moment or two in perplexity, then he
said, with grave respectfulness--

“By your favour, sir, I desire to ask certain questions which--”

“I will answer them, my lord.”

The Duke asked him many questions about the Court, the late King, the
prince, the princesses--the boy answered them correctly and without
hesitating.  He described the rooms of state in the palace, the late
King’s apartments, and those of the Prince of Wales.

It was strange; it was wonderful; yes, it was unaccountable--so all said
that heard it.  The tide was beginning to turn, and Tom Canty’s hopes to
run high, when the Lord Protector shook his head and said--

“It is true it is most wonderful--but it is no more than our lord the
King likewise can do.”  This remark, and this reference to himself as
still the King, saddened Tom Canty, and he felt his hopes crumbling from
under him.  “These are not _proofs_,” added the Protector.

The tide was turning very fast now, very fast indeed--but in the wrong
direction; it was leaving poor Tom Canty stranded on the throne,
and sweeping the other out to sea.  The Lord Protector communed with
himself--shook his head--the thought forced itself upon him, “It is
perilous to the State and to us all, to entertain so fateful a riddle as
this; it could divide the nation and undermine the throne.”  He turned
and said--

“Sir Thomas, arrest this--No, hold!”  His face lighted, and he
confronted the ragged candidate with this question--

“Where lieth the Great Seal?  Answer me this truly, and the riddle is
unriddled; for only he that was Prince of Wales _can_ so answer! On so
trivial a thing hang a throne and a dynasty!”

It was a lucky thought, a happy thought.  That it was so considered by
the great officials was manifested by the silent applause that shot from
eye to eye around their circle in the form of bright approving glances.
Yes, none but the true prince could dissolve the stubborn mystery of the
vanished Great Seal--this forlorn little impostor had been taught his
lesson well, but here his teachings must fail, for his teacher himself
could not answer _that_ question--ah, very good, very good indeed;
now we shall be rid of this troublesome and perilous business in
short order! And so they nodded invisibly and smiled inwardly with
satisfaction, and looked to see this foolish lad stricken with a palsy
of guilty confusion. How surprised they were, then, to see nothing of
the sort happen--how they marvelled to hear him answer up promptly, in a
confident and untroubled voice, and say--

“There is nought in this riddle that is difficult.”  Then, without so
much as a by-your-leave to anybody, he turned and gave this command,
with the easy manner of one accustomed to doing such things: “My Lord
St. John, go you to my private cabinet in the palace--for none knoweth
the place better than you--and, close down to the floor, in the left
corner remotest from the door that opens from the ante-chamber, you
shall find in the wall a brazen nail-head; press upon it and a little
jewel-closet will fly open which not even you do know of--no, nor
any soul else in all the world but me and the trusty artisan that did
contrive it for me. The first thing that falleth under your eye will be
the Great Seal--fetch it hither.”

All the company wondered at this speech, and wondered still more to see
the little mendicant pick out this peer without hesitancy or apparent
fear of mistake, and call him by name with such a placidly convincing
air of having known him all his life.  The peer was almost surprised
into obeying.  He even made a movement as if to go, but quickly
recovered his tranquil attitude and confessed his blunder with a blush.
 Tom Canty turned upon him and said, sharply--

“Why dost thou hesitate?  Hast not heard the King’s command?  Go!”

The Lord St. John made a deep obeisance--and it was observed that it was
a significantly cautious and non-committal one, it not being delivered
at either of the kings, but at the neutral ground about half-way between
the two--and took his leave.

Now began a movement of the gorgeous particles of that official group
which was slow, scarcely perceptible, and yet steady and persistent--a
movement such as is observed in a kaleidoscope that is turned slowly,
whereby the components of one splendid cluster fall away and join
themselves to another--a movement which, little by little, in the
present case, dissolved the glittering crowd that stood about Tom Canty
and clustered it together again in the neighbourhood of the new-comer.
 Tom Canty stood almost alone. Now ensued a brief season of deep
suspense and waiting--during which even the few faint hearts still
remaining near Tom Canty gradually scraped together courage enough to
glide, one by one, over to the majority.  So at last Tom Canty, in his
royal robes and jewels, stood wholly alone and isolated from the world,
a conspicuous figure, occupying an eloquent vacancy.

Now the Lord St. John was seen returning.  As he advanced up
the mid-aisle the interest was so intense that the low murmur of
conversation in the great assemblage died out and was succeeded by
a profound hush, a breathless stillness, through which his footfalls
pulsed with a dull and distant sound.  Every eye was fastened upon him
as he moved along.  He reached the platform, paused a moment, then moved
toward Tom Canty with a deep obeisance, and said--

“Sire, the Seal is not there!”

A mob does not melt away from the presence of a plague-patient with more
haste than the band of pallid and terrified courtiers melted away from
the presence of the shabby little claimant of the Crown.  In a moment
he stood all alone, without friend or supporter, a target upon which
was concentrated a bitter fire of scornful and angry looks.  The Lord
Protector called out fiercely--

“Cast the beggar into the street, and scourge him through the town--the
paltry knave is worth no more consideration!”

Officers of the guard sprang forward to obey, but Tom Canty waved them
off and said--

“Back!  Whoso touches him perils his life!”

The Lord Protector was perplexed in the last degree.  He said to the
Lord St. John--

“Searched you well?--but it boots not to ask that.  It doth seem passing
strange.  Little things, trifles, slip out of one’s ken, and one does
not think it matter for surprise; but how so bulky a thing as the
Seal of England can vanish away and no man be able to get track of it
again--a massy golden disk--”

Tom Canty, with beaming eyes, sprang forward and shouted--

“Hold, that is enough!  Was it round?--and thick?--and had it letters
and devices graved upon it?--yes?  Oh, _now_ I know what this Great Seal
is that there’s been such worry and pother about. An’ ye had described
it to me, ye could have had it three weeks ago.  Right well I know where
it lies; but it was not I that put it there--first.”

“Who, then, my liege?” asked the Lord Protector.

“He that stands there--the rightful King of England.  And he shall tell
you himself where it lies--then you will believe he knew it of his own
knowledge.  Bethink thee, my King--spur thy memory--it was the last, the
very _last_ thing thou didst that day before thou didst rush forth from
the palace, clothed in my rags, to punish the soldier that insulted me.”

A silence ensued, undisturbed by a movement or a whisper, and all eyes
were fixed upon the new-comer, who stood, with bent head and corrugated
brow, groping in his memory among a thronging multitude of valueless
recollections for one single little elusive fact, which, found, would
seat him upon a throne--unfound, would leave him as he was, for good and
all--a pauper and an outcast.  Moment after moment passed--the moments
built themselves into minutes--still the boy struggled silently on, and
gave no sign.  But at last he heaved a sigh, shook his head slowly, and
said, with a trembling lip and in a despondent voice--

“I call the scene back--all of it--but the Seal hath no place in it.”
  He paused, then looked up, and said with gentle dignity, “My lords and
gentlemen, if ye will rob your rightful sovereign of his own for lack of
this evidence which he is not able to furnish, I may not stay ye, being
powerless.  But--”

“Oh, folly, oh, madness, my King!” cried Tom Canty, in a panic,
“wait!--think!  Do not give up!--the cause is not lost!  Nor _shall_ be,
neither! List to what I say--follow every word--I am going to bring that
morning back again, every hap just as it happened.  We talked--I told
you of my sisters, Nan and Bet--ah, yes, you remember that; and about
mine old grandam--and the rough games of the lads of Offal Court--yes,
you remember these things also; very well, follow me still, you shall
recall everything.  You gave me food and drink, and did with princely
courtesy send away the servants, so that my low breeding might not shame
me before them--ah, yes, this also you remember.”

As Tom checked off his details, and the other boy nodded his head in
recognition of them, the great audience and the officials stared in
puzzled wonderment; the tale sounded like true history, yet how could
this impossible conjunction between a prince and a beggar-boy have come
about?  Never was a company of people so perplexed, so interested, and
so stupefied, before.

“For a jest, my prince, we did exchange garments.  Then we stood before
a mirror; and so alike were we that both said it seemed as if there had
been no change made--yes, you remember that.  Then you noticed that the
soldier had hurt my hand--look! here it is, I cannot yet even write with
it, the fingers are so stiff.  At this your Highness sprang up, vowing
vengeance upon that soldier, and ran towards the door--you passed a
table--that thing you call the Seal lay on that table--you snatched
it up and looked eagerly about, as if for a place to hide it--your eye
caught sight of--”

“There, ’tis sufficient!--and the good God be thanked!” exclaimed the
ragged claimant, in a mighty excitement.  “Go, my good St. John--in an
arm-piece of the Milanese armour that hangs on the wall, thou’lt find
the Seal!”

“Right, my King! right!” cried Tom Canty; “_Now_ the sceptre of England
is thine own; and it were better for him that would dispute it that he
had been born dumb!  Go, my Lord St. John, give thy feet wings!”

The whole assemblage was on its feet now, and well-nigh out of its mind
with uneasiness, apprehension, and consuming excitement.  On the floor
and on the platform a deafening buzz of frantic conversation burst
forth, and for some time nobody knew anything or heard anything or was
interested in anything but what his neighbour was shouting into his ear,
or he was shouting into his neighbour’s ear.  Time--nobody knew how much
of it--swept by unheeded and unnoted.  At last a sudden hush fell upon
the house, and in the same moment St. John appeared upon the platform,
and held the Great Seal aloft in his hand.  Then such a shout went up--

“Long live the true King!”

For five minutes the air quaked with shouts and the crash of musical
instruments, and was white with a storm of waving handkerchiefs; and
through it all a ragged lad, the most conspicuous figure in England,
stood, flushed and happy and proud, in the centre of the spacious
platform, with the great vassals of the kingdom kneeling around him.

Then all rose, and Tom Canty cried out--

“Now, O my King, take these regal garments back, and give poor Tom, thy
servant, his shreds and remnants again.”

The Lord Protector spoke up--

“Let the small varlet be stripped and flung into the Tower.”

But the new King, the true King, said--

“I will not have it so.  But for him I had not got my crown again--none
shall lay a hand upon him to harm him.  And as for thee, my good uncle,
my Lord Protector, this conduct of thine is not grateful toward
this poor lad, for I hear he hath made thee a duke”--the Protector
blushed--“yet he was not a king; wherefore what is thy fine title
worth now?  To-morrow you shall sue to me, _through him_, for its
confirmation, else no duke, but a simple earl, shalt thou remain.”

Under this rebuke, his Grace the Duke of Somerset retired a little from
the front for the moment.  The King turned to Tom, and said kindly--“My
poor boy, how was it that you could remember where I hid the Seal when I
could not remember it myself?”

“Ah, my King, that was easy, since I used it divers days.”

“Used it--yet could not explain where it was?”

“I did not know it was _that_ they wanted.  They did not describe it,
your Majesty.”

“Then how used you it?”

The red blood began to steal up into Tom’s cheeks, and he dropped his
eyes and was silent.

“Speak up, good lad, and fear nothing,” said the King.  “How used you
the Great Seal of England?”

Tom stammered a moment, in a pathetic confusion, then got it out--

“To crack nuts with!”

Poor child, the avalanche of laughter that greeted this nearly swept him
off his feet.  But if a doubt remained in any mind that Tom Canty was
not the King of England and familiar with the august appurtenances of
royalty, this reply disposed of it utterly.

Meantime the sumptuous robe of state had been removed from Tom’s
shoulders to the King’s, whose rags were effectually hidden from sight
under it.  Then the coronation ceremonies were resumed; the true King
was anointed and the crown set upon his head, whilst cannon thundered
the news to the city, and all London seemed to rock with applause.




CHAPTER XXXIII. Edward as King.

Miles Hendon was picturesque enough before he got into the riot on
London Bridge--he was more so when he got out of it.  He had but little
money when he got in, none at all when he got out.  The pickpockets had
stripped him of his last farthing.

But no matter, so he found his boy.  Being a soldier, he did not go at
his task in a random way, but set to work, first of all, to arrange his
campaign.

What would the boy naturally do?  Where would he naturally go?
Well--argued Miles--he would naturally go to his former haunts, for that
is the instinct of unsound minds, when homeless and forsaken, as well
as of sound ones.  Whereabouts were his former haunts?  His rags,
taken together with the low villain who seemed to know him and who even
claimed to be his father, indicated that his home was in one or another
of the poorest and meanest districts of London.  Would the search for
him be difficult, or long?  No, it was likely to be easy and brief.  He
would not hunt for the boy, he would hunt for a crowd; in the centre of
a big crowd or a little one, sooner or later, he should find his poor
little friend, sure; and the mangy mob would be entertaining itself
with pestering and aggravating the boy, who would be proclaiming himself
King, as usual.  Then Miles Hendon would cripple some of those people,
and carry off his little ward, and comfort and cheer him with loving
words, and the two would never be separated any more.

So Miles started on his quest.  Hour after hour he tramped through back
alleys and squalid streets, seeking groups and crowds, and finding no
end of them, but never any sign of the boy.  This greatly surprised him,
but did not discourage him.  To his notion, there was nothing the matter
with his plan of campaign; the only miscalculation about it was that the
campaign was becoming a lengthy one, whereas he had expected it to be
short.

When daylight arrived, at last, he had made many a mile, and canvassed
many a crowd, but the only result was that he was tolerably tired,
rather hungry and very sleepy.  He wanted some breakfast, but there was
no way to get it.  To beg for it did not occur to him; as to pawning
his sword, he would as soon have thought of parting with his honour;
he could spare some of his clothes--yes, but one could as easily find a
customer for a disease as for such clothes.

At noon he was still tramping--among the rabble which followed after
the royal procession, now; for he argued that this regal display would
attract his little lunatic powerfully.  He followed the pageant through
all its devious windings about London, and all the way to Westminster
and the Abbey.  He drifted here and there amongst the multitudes
that were massed in the vicinity for a weary long time, baffled and
perplexed, and finally wandered off, thinking, and trying to contrive
some way to better his plan of campaign.  By-and-by, when he came to
himself out of his musings, he discovered that the town was far behind
him and that the day was growing old.  He was near the river, and in the
country; it was a region of fine rural seats--not the sort of district
to welcome clothes like his.

It was not at all cold; so he stretched himself on the ground in the lee
of a hedge to rest and think.  Drowsiness presently began to settle upon
his senses; the faint and far-off boom of cannon was wafted to his ear,
and he said to himself, “The new King is crowned,” and straightway fell
asleep.  He had not slept or rested, before, for more than thirty hours.
He did not wake again until near the middle of the next morning.

He got up, lame, stiff, and half famished, washed himself in the river,
stayed his stomach with a pint or two of water, and trudged off toward
Westminster, grumbling at himself for having wasted so much time.
 Hunger helped him to a new plan, now; he would try to get speech with
old Sir Humphrey Marlow and borrow a few marks, and--but that was enough
of a plan for the present; it would be time enough to enlarge it when
this first stage should be accomplished.

Toward eleven o’clock he approached the palace; and although a host of
showy people were about him, moving in the same direction, he was not
inconspicuous--his costume took care of that.  He watched these people’s
faces narrowly, hoping to find a charitable one whose possessor might
be willing to carry his name to the old lieutenant--as to trying to get
into the palace himself, that was simply out of the question.

Presently our whipping-boy passed him, then wheeled about and scanned
his figure well, saying to himself, “An’ that is not the very vagabond
his Majesty is in such a worry about, then am I an ass--though belike I
was that before.  He answereth the description to a rag--that God should
make two such would be to cheapen miracles by wasteful repetition.  I
would I could contrive an excuse to speak with him.”

Miles Hendon saved him the trouble; for he turned about, then, as a man
generally will when somebody mesmerises him by gazing hard at him from
behind; and observing a strong interest in the boy’s eyes, he stepped
toward him and said--

“You have just come out from the palace; do you belong there?”

“Yes, your worship.”

“Know you Sir Humphrey Marlow?”

The boy started, and said to himself, “Lord! mine old departed father!”
 Then he answered aloud, “Right well, your worship.”

“Good--is he within?”

“Yes,” said the boy; and added, to himself, “within his grave.”

“Might I crave your favour to carry my name to him, and say I beg to say
a word in his ear?”

“I will despatch the business right willingly, fair sir.”

“Then say Miles Hendon, son of Sir Richard, is here without--I shall be
greatly bounden to you, my good lad.”

The boy looked disappointed.  “The King did not name him so,” he said to
himself; “but it mattereth not, this is his twin brother, and can give
his Majesty news of t’other Sir-Odds-and-Ends, I warrant.”  So he said
to Miles, “Step in there a moment, good sir, and wait till I bring you
word.”

Hendon retired to the place indicated--it was a recess sunk in the
palace wall, with a stone bench in it--a shelter for sentinels in bad
weather. He had hardly seated himself when some halberdiers, in charge
of an officer, passed by.  The officer saw him, halted his men, and
commanded Hendon to come forth.  He obeyed, and was promptly arrested
as a suspicious character prowling within the precincts of the palace.
 Things began to look ugly.  Poor Miles was going to explain, but the
officer roughly silenced him, and ordered his men to disarm him and
search him.

“God of his mercy grant that they find somewhat,” said poor Miles; “I
have searched enow, and failed, yet is my need greater than theirs.”

Nothing was found but a document.  The officer tore it open, and Hendon
smiled when he recognised the ‘pot-hooks’ made by his lost little friend
that black day at Hendon Hall.  The officer’s face grew dark as he read
the English paragraph, and Miles blenched to the opposite colour as he
listened.

“Another new claimant of the Crown!” cried the officer.  “Verily they
breed like rabbits, to-day.  Seize the rascal, men, and see ye keep
him fast whilst I convey this precious paper within and send it to the
King.”

He hurried away, leaving the prisoner in the grip of the halberdiers.

“Now is my evil luck ended at last,” muttered Hendon, “for I shall
dangle at a rope’s end for a certainty, by reason of that bit of
writing.  And what will become of my poor lad!--ah, only the good God
knoweth.”

By-and-by he saw the officer coming again, in a great hurry; so he
plucked his courage together, purposing to meet his trouble as became a
man.  The officer ordered the men to loose the prisoner and return his
sword to him; then bowed respectfully, and said--

“Please you, sir, to follow me.”

Hendon followed, saying to himself, “An’ I were not travelling to death
and judgment, and so must needs economise in sin, I would throttle this
knave for his mock courtesy.”

The two traversed a populous court, and arrived at the grand entrance of
the palace, where the officer, with another bow, delivered Hendon into
the hands of a gorgeous official, who received him with profound respect
and led him forward through a great hall, lined on both sides with rows
of splendid flunkeys (who made reverential obeisance as the two passed
along, but fell into death-throes of silent laughter at our stately
scarecrow the moment his back was turned), and up a broad staircase,
among flocks of fine folk, and finally conducted him into a vast room,
clove a passage for him through the assembled nobility of England, then
made a bow, reminded him to take his hat off, and left him standing in
the middle of the room, a mark for all eyes, for plenty of indignant
frowns, and for a sufficiency of amused and derisive smiles.

Miles Hendon was entirely bewildered.  There sat the young King, under
a canopy of state, five steps away, with his head bent down and aside,
speaking with a sort of human bird of paradise--a duke, maybe.  Hendon
observed to himself that it was hard enough to be sentenced to death
in the full vigour of life, without having this peculiarly public
humiliation added.  He wished the King would hurry about it--some of the
gaudy people near by were becoming pretty offensive.  At this moment
the King raised his head slightly, and Hendon caught a good view of his
face. The sight nearly took his breath away!--He stood gazing at the
fair young face like one transfixed; then presently ejaculated--

“Lo, the Lord of the Kingdom of Dreams and Shadows on his throne!”

He muttered some broken sentences, still gazing and marvelling; then
turned his eyes around and about, scanning the gorgeous throng and the
splendid saloon, murmuring, “But these are _real_--verily these are
_real_--surely it is not a dream.”

He stared at the King again--and thought, “_Is_ it a dream . . . or _is_
he the veritable Sovereign of England, and not the friendless poor Tom
o’ Bedlam I took him for--who shall solve me this riddle?”

A sudden idea flashed in his eye, and he strode to the wall, gathered up
a chair, brought it back, planted it on the floor, and sat down in it!

A buzz of indignation broke out, a rough hand was laid upon him and a
voice exclaimed--

“Up, thou mannerless clown! would’st sit in the presence of the King?”

The disturbance attracted his Majesty’s attention, who stretched forth
his hand and cried out--

“Touch him not, it is his right!”

The throng fell back, stupefied.  The King went on--

“Learn ye all, ladies, lords, and gentlemen, that this is my trusty and
well-beloved servant, Miles Hendon, who interposed his good sword and
saved his prince from bodily harm and possible death--and for this he is
a knight, by the King’s voice.  Also learn, that for a higher service,
in that he saved his sovereign stripes and shame, taking these upon
himself, he is a peer of England, Earl of Kent, and shall have gold
and lands meet for the dignity.  More--the privilege which he hath just
exercised is his by royal grant; for we have ordained that the chiefs
of his line shall have and hold the right to sit in the presence of the
Majesty of England henceforth, age after age, so long as the crown shall
endure.  Molest him not.”

Two persons, who, through delay, had only arrived from the country
during this morning, and had now been in this room only five minutes,
stood listening to these words and looking at the King, then at the
scarecrow, then at the King again, in a sort of torpid bewilderment.
 These were Sir Hugh and the Lady Edith.  But the new Earl did not
see them.  He was still staring at the monarch, in a dazed way, and
muttering--

“Oh, body o’ me!  _this_ my pauper!  This my lunatic!  This is he whom
_I_ would show what grandeur was, in my house of seventy rooms and
seven-and-twenty servants!  This is he who had never known aught but
rags for raiment, kicks for comfort, and offal for diet!  This is he
whom _I_ adopted and would make respectable! Would God I had a bag to
hide my head in!”

Then his manners suddenly came back to him, and he dropped upon his
knees, with his hands between the King’s, and swore allegiance and did
homage for his lands and titles.  Then he rose and stood respectfully
aside, a mark still for all eyes--and much envy, too.

Now the King discovered Sir Hugh, and spoke out with wrathful voice and
kindling eye--

“Strip this robber of his false show and stolen estates, and put him
under lock and key till I have need of him.”

The late Sir Hugh was led away.

There was a stir at the other end of the room, now; the assemblage fell
apart, and Tom Canty, quaintly but richly clothed, marched down, between
these living walls, preceded by an usher.  He knelt before the King, who
said--

“I have learned the story of these past few weeks, and am well pleased
with thee.  Thou hast governed the realm with right royal gentleness and
mercy.  Thou hast found thy mother and thy sisters again?  Good; they
shall be cared for--and thy father shall hang, if thou desire it and the
law consent.  Know, all ye that hear my voice, that from this day, they
that abide in the shelter of Christ’s Hospital and share the King’s
bounty shall have their minds and hearts fed, as well as their baser
parts; and this boy shall dwell there, and hold the chief place in its
honourable body of governors, during life.  And for that he hath been
a king, it is meet that other than common observance shall be his due;
wherefore note this his dress of state, for by it he shall be known, and
none shall copy it; and wheresoever he shall come, it shall remind the
people that he hath been royal, in his time, and none shall deny him his
due of reverence or fail to give him salutation.  He hath the throne’s
protection, he hath the crown’s support, he shall be known and called by
the honourable title of the King’s Ward.”

The proud and happy Tom Canty rose and kissed the King’s hand, and was
conducted from the presence.  He did not waste any time, but flew to his
mother, to tell her and Nan and Bet all about it and get them to help
him enjoy the great news. {1}

Conclusion. Justice and retribution.

When the mysteries were all cleared up, it came out, by confession of
Hugh Hendon, that his wife had repudiated Miles by his command, that
day at Hendon Hall--a command assisted and supported by the perfectly
trustworthy promise that if she did not deny that he was Miles Hendon,
and stand firmly to it, he would have her life; whereupon she said,
“Take it!”--she did not value it--and she would not repudiate
Miles; then the husband said he would spare her life but have Miles
assassinated!  This was a different matter; so she gave her word and
kept it.

Hugh was not prosecuted for his threats or for stealing his brother’s
estates and title, because the wife and brother would not testify
against him--and the former would not have been allowed to do it, even
if she had wanted to.  Hugh deserted his wife and went over to the
continent, where he presently died; and by-and-by the Earl of Kent
married his relict. There were grand times and rejoicings at Hendon
village when the couple paid their first visit to the Hall.

Tom Canty’s father was never heard of again.

The King sought out the farmer who had been branded and sold as a slave,
and reclaimed him from his evil life with the Ruffler’s gang, and put
him in the way of a comfortable livelihood.

He also took that old lawyer out of prison and remitted his fine. He
provided good homes for the daughters of the two Baptist women whom he
saw burned at the stake, and roundly punished the official who laid the
undeserved stripes upon Miles Hendon’s back.

He saved from the gallows the boy who had captured the stray falcon, and
also the woman who had stolen a remnant of cloth from a weaver; but he
was too late to save the man who had been convicted of killing a deer in
the royal forest.

He showed favour to the justice who had pitied him when he was supposed
to have stolen a pig, and he had the gratification of seeing him grow in
the public esteem and become a great and honoured man.

As long as the King lived he was fond of telling the story of his
adventures, all through, from the hour that the sentinel cuffed him
away from the palace gate till the final midnight when he deftly mixed
himself into a gang of hurrying workmen and so slipped into the Abbey
and climbed up and hid himself in the Confessor’s tomb, and then slept
so long, next day, that he came within one of missing the Coronation
altogether.  He said that the frequent rehearsing of the precious lesson
kept him strong in his purpose to make its teachings yield benefits to
his people; and so, whilst his life was spared he should continue to
tell the story, and thus keep its sorrowful spectacles fresh in his
memory and the springs of pity replenished in his heart.

Miles Hendon and Tom Canty were favourites of the King, all through his
brief reign, and his sincere mourners when he died. The good Earl
of Kent had too much sense to abuse his peculiar privilege; but he
exercised it twice after the instance we have seen of it before he was
called from this world--once at the accession of Queen Mary, and once at
the accession of Queen Elizabeth.  A descendant of his exercised it
at the accession of James I.  Before this one’s son chose to use the
privilege, near a quarter of a century had elapsed, and the ‘privilege
of the Kents’ had faded out of most people’s memories; so, when the Kent
of that day appeared before Charles I. and his court and sat down in the
sovereign’s presence to assert and perpetuate the right of his house,
there was a fine stir indeed!  But the matter was soon explained, and
the right confirmed.  The last Earl of the line fell in the wars of the
Commonwealth fighting for the King, and the odd privilege ended with
him.

Tom Canty lived to be a very old man, a handsome, white-haired old
fellow, of grave and benignant aspect.  As long as he lasted he was
honoured; and he was also reverenced, for his striking and peculiar
costume kept the people reminded that ‘in his time he had been royal;’
so, wherever he appeared the crowd fell apart, making way for him, and
whispering, one to another, “Doff thy hat, it is the King’s Ward!”--and
so they saluted, and got his kindly smile in return--and they valued it,
too, for his was an honourable history.

Yes, King Edward VI. lived only a few years, poor boy, but he lived them
worthily.  More than once, when some great dignitary, some gilded vassal
of the crown, made argument against his leniency, and urged that some
law which he was bent upon amending was gentle enough for its purpose,
and wrought no suffering or oppression which any one need mightily mind,
the young King turned the mournful eloquence of his great compassionate
eyes upon him and answered--

“What dost _thou_ know of suffering and oppression?  I and my people
know, but not thou.”

The reign of Edward VI. was a singularly merciful one for those harsh
times.  Now that we are taking leave of him, let us try to keep this in
our minds, to his credit.

FOOTNOTES AND TWAIN’S NOTES

{1}  For Mark Twain’s note see below under the relevant chapter heading.

{2}  He refers to the order of baronets, or baronettes; the barones
minores, as distinct from the parliamentary barons--not, it need hardly
be said, to the baronets of later creation.

{3}  The lords of Kingsale, descendants of De Courcy, still enjoy this
curious privilege.

{4}  Hume.

{5}  Ib.

{6}  Leigh Hunt’s ‘The Town,’ p.408, quotation from an early tourist.

{7}  Canting terms for various kinds of thieves, beggars and vagabonds,
and their female companions.

{8}  From ‘The English Rogue.’  London, 1665.

{9}  Hume’s England.

{10}  See Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull’s Blue Laws, True and False, p. 11.

NOTE 1, Chapter IV. Christ’s Hospital Costume.

It is most reasonable to regard the dress as copied from the costume
of the citizens of London of that period, when long blue coats were the
common habit of apprentices and serving-men, and yellow stockings
were generally worn; the coat fits closely to the body, but has loose
sleeves, and beneath is worn a sleeveless yellow under-coat; around the
waist is a red leathern girdle; a clerical band around the neck, and
a small flat black cap, about the size of a saucer, completes the
costume.--Timbs’ Curiosities of London.

NOTE 2, Chapter IV.

It appears that Christ’s Hospital was not originally founded as a
_school_; its object was to rescue children from the streets, to
shelter, feed, clothe them.--Timbs’ Curiosities of London.

NOTE 3, Chapter V. The Duke of Norfolk’s Condemnation commanded.

The King was now approaching fast towards his end; and fearing lest
Norfolk should escape him, he sent a message to the Commons, by which
he desired them to hasten the Bill, on pretence that Norfolk enjoyed the
dignity of Earl Marshal, and it was necessary to appoint another, who
might officiate at the ensuing ceremony of installing his son Prince of
Wales.--Hume’s History of England, vol. iii. p. 307.

NOTE 4, Chapter VII.

It was not till the end of this reign (Henry VIII.) that any salads,
carrots, turnips, or other edible roots were produced in England.  The
little of these vegetables that was used was formerly imported from
Holland and Flanders.  Queen Catherine, when she wanted a salad, was
obliged to despatch a messenger thither on purpose.--Hume’s History of
England, vol. iii. p. 314.

NOTE 5, Chapter VIII. Attainder of Norfolk.

The House of Peers, without examining the prisoner, without trial or
evidence, passed a Bill of Attainder against him and sent it down to the
Commons . . . The obsequious Commons obeyed his (the King’s)
directions; and the King, having affixed the Royal assent to the Bill by
commissioners, issued orders for the execution of Norfolk on the morning
of January 29 (the next day).--Hume’s History of England, vol iii. p
306.

NOTE 6, Chapter X. The Loving-cup.

The loving-cup, and the peculiar ceremonies observed in drinking from
it, are older than English history.  It is thought that both are Danish
importations.  As far back as knowledge goes, the loving-cup has always
been drunk at English banquets.  Tradition explains the ceremonies in
this way.  In the rude ancient times it was deemed a wise precaution
to have both hands of both drinkers employed, lest while the pledger
pledged his love and fidelity to the pledgee, the pledgee take that
opportunity to slip a dirk into him!

NOTE 7, Chapter XI. The Duke of Norfolk’s narrow Escape.

Had Henry VIII. survived a few hours longer, his order for the duke’s
execution would have been carried into effect. ‘But news being
carried to the Tower that the King himself had expired that night,
the lieutenant deferred obeying the warrant; and it was not thought
advisable by the Council to begin a new reign by the death of the
greatest nobleman in the kingdom, who had been condemned by a sentence
so unjust and tyrannical.’--Hume’s History of England, vol. iii, p. 307.

NOTE 8, Chapter XIV. The Whipping-boy.

James I. and Charles II. had whipping-boys, when they were little
fellows, to take their punishment for them when they fell short in their
lessons; so I have ventured to furnish my small prince with one, for my
own purposes.

NOTES to Chapter XV.

Character of Hertford.

The young King discovered an extreme attachment to his uncle, who
was, in the main, a man of moderation and probity.--Hume’s History of
England, vol. iii, p324.

But if he (the Protector) gave offence by assuming too much state, he
deserves great praise on account of the laws passed this session,
by which the rigour of former statutes was much mitigated, and some
security given to the freedom of the constitution.  All laws were
repealed which extended the crime of treason beyond the statute of the
twenty-fifth of Edward III.; all laws enacted during the late reign
extending the crime of felony; all the former laws against Lollardy or
heresy, together with the statute of the Six Articles.  None were to be
accused for words, but within a month after they were spoken.  By
these repeals several of the most rigorous laws that ever had passed
in England were annulled; and some dawn, both of civil and religious
liberty, began to appear to the people.  A repeal also passed of that
law, the destruction of all laws, by which the King’s proclamation was
made of equal force with a statute.--Ibid. vol. iii. p. 339.

Boiling to Death.

In the reign of Henry VIII. poisoners were, by Act of Parliament,
condemned to be _boiled to death_.  This Act was repealed in the
following reign.

In Germany, even in the seventeenth century, this horrible punishment
was inflicted on coiners and counterfeiters.  Taylor, the Water Poet,
describes an execution he witnessed in Hamburg in 1616.  The judgment
pronounced against a coiner of false money was that he should ‘_be
boiled to death in oil_; not thrown into the vessel at once, but with
a pulley or rope to be hanged under the armpits, and then let down into
the oil _by degrees_; first the feet, and next the legs, and so to boil
his flesh from his bones alive.’--Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull’s Blue Laws,
True and False, p. 13.

The Famous Stocking Case.

A woman and her daughter, _nine years old_, were hanged in Huntingdon
for selling their souls to the devil, and raising a storm by pulling off
their stockings!--Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull’s Blue Laws, True and False,
p. 20.

NOTE 10, Chapter XVII. Enslaving.

So young a King and so ignorant a peasant were likely to make mistakes;
and this is an instance in point.  This peasant was suffering from this
law _by anticipation_; the King was venting his indignation against a
law which was not yet in existence; for this hideous statute was to
have birth in this little King’s _own reign_. However, we know, from the
humanity of his character, that it could never have been suggested by
him.

NOTES to Chapter XXIII. Death for Trifling Larcenies.

When Connecticut and New Haven were framing their first codes, larceny
above the value of twelve pence was a capital crime in England--as it
had been since the time of Henry I.--Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull’s Blue
Laws, True and False, p. 17.

The curious old book called The English Rogue makes the limit thirteen
pence ha’penny:  death being the portion of any who steal a thing ‘above
the value of thirteen pence ha’penny.’

NOTES to Chapter XXVII.

From many descriptions of larceny the law expressly took away the
benefit of clergy:  to steal a horse, or a _hawk_, or woollen cloth from
the weaver, was a hanging matter.  So it was to kill a deer from the
King’s forest, or to export sheep from the kingdom.--Dr. J. Hammond
Trumbull’s Blue Laws, True and False, p.13.

William Prynne, a learned barrister, was sentenced (long after Edward
VI.’s time) to lose both his ears in the pillory, to degradation from
the bar, a fine of 3,000 pounds, and imprisonment for life.  Three years
afterwards he gave new offence to Laud by publishing a pamphlet against
the hierarchy.  He was again prosecuted, and was sentenced to lose _what
remained of his ears_, to pay a fine of 5,000 pounds, to be _branded on
both his cheeks_ with the letters S. L. (for Seditious Libeller), and to
remain in prison for life.  The severity of this sentence was equalled
by the savage rigour of its execution.--Ibid. p. 12.

NOTES to Chapter XXXIII.

Christ’s Hospital, or Bluecoat School, ’the noblest institution in the
world.’

The ground on which the Priory of the Grey Friars stood was conferred
by Henry VIII. on the Corporation of London (who caused the institution
there of a home for poor boys and girls). Subsequently, Edward VI.
caused the old Priory to be properly repaired, and founded within
it that noble establishment called the Bluecoat School, or Christ’s
Hospital, for the _education_ and maintenance of orphans and the
children of indigent persons . . . Edward would not let him (Bishop
Ridley) depart till the letter was written (to the Lord Mayor), and then
charged him to deliver it himself, and signify his special request and
commandment that no time might be lost in proposing what was convenient,
and apprising him of the proceedings.  The work was zealously
undertaken, Ridley himself engaging in it; and the result was the
founding of Christ’s Hospital for the education of poor children. (The
King endowed several other charities at the same time.) “Lord God,” said
he, “I yield Thee most hearty thanks that Thou hast given me life thus
long to finish this work to the glory of Thy name!”  That innocent and
most exemplary life was drawing rapidly to its close, and in a few days
he rendered up his spirit to his Creator, praying God to defend the
realm from Papistry.--J. Heneage Jesse’s London:  its Celebrated
Characters and Places.

In the Great Hall hangs a large picture of King Edward VI. seated on his
throne, in a scarlet and ermined robe, holding the sceptre in his left
hand, and presenting with the other the Charter to the kneeling Lord
Mayor.  By his side stands the Chancellor, holding the seals, and next
to him are other officers of state.  Bishop Ridley kneels before him
with uplifted hands, as if supplicating a blessing on the event; whilst
the Aldermen, etc., with the Lord Mayor, kneel on both sides, occupying
the middle ground of the picture; and lastly, in front, are a double row
of boys on one side and girls on the other, from the master and matron
down to the boy and girl who have stepped forward from their respective
rows, and kneel with raised hands before the King.--Timbs’ Curiosities
of London, p. 98.

Christ’s Hospital, by ancient custom, possesses the privilege of
addressing the Sovereign on the occasion of his or her coming into the
City to partake of the hospitality of the Corporation of London.--Ibid.

The Dining Hall, with its lobby and organ-gallery, occupies the entire
storey, which is 187 feet long, 51 feet wide, and 47 feet high; it is
lit by nine large windows, filled with stained glass on the south side;
and is, next to Westminster Hall, the noblest room in the metropolis.
 Here the boys, now about 800 in number, dine; and here are held the
‘Suppings in Public,’ to which visitors are admitted by tickets issued
by the Treasurer and by the Governors of Christ’s Hospital.  The tables
are laid with cheese in wooden bowls, beer in wooden piggins, poured
from leathern jacks, and bread brought in large baskets.  The official
company enter; the Lord Mayor, or President, takes his seat in a state
chair made of oak from St. Catherine’s Church, by the Tower; a hymn
is sung, accompanied by the organ; a ‘Grecian,’ or head boy, reads the
prayers from the pulpit, silence being enforced by three drops of a
wooden hammer.  After prayer the supper commences, and the visitors walk
between the tables.  At its close the ’trade-boys’ take up the baskets,
bowls, jacks, piggins, and candlesticks, and pass in procession, the
bowing to the Governors being curiously formal.  This spectacle was
witnessed by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1845.

Among the more eminent Bluecoat boys are Joshua Barnes, editor
of Anacreon and Euripides; Jeremiah Markland, the eminent critic,
particularly in Greek Literature; Camden, the antiquary; Bishop
Stillingfleet; Samuel Richardson, the novelist; Thomas Mitchell, the
translator of Aristophanes; Thomas Barnes, many years editor of the
London Times; Coleridge, Charles Lamb, and Leigh Hunt.

No boy is admitted before he is seven years old, or after he is nine;
and no boy can remain in the school after he is fifteen, King’s boys and
‘Grecians’ alone excepted.  There are about 500 Governors, at the head
of whom are the Sovereign and the Prince of Wales.  The qualification
for a Governor is payment of 500 pounds.--Ibid.

GENERAL NOTE.

One hears much about the ‘hideous Blue Laws of Connecticut,’ and is
accustomed to shudder piously when they are mentioned.  There are people
in America--and even in England!--who imagine that they were a very
monument of malignity, pitilessness, and inhumanity; whereas in reality
they were about the first _sweeping departure from judicial atrocity_
which the ‘civilised’ world had seen.  This humane and kindly Blue Law
Code, of two hundred and forty years ago, stands all by itself,
with ages of bloody law on the further side of it, and a century and
three-quarters of bloody English law on _this_ side of it.

There has never been a time--under the Blue Laws or any other--when
above _fourteen_ crimes were punishable by death in Connecticut.  But in
England, within the memory of men who are still hale in body and mind,
_two hundred and twenty-three_ crimes were punishable by death! {10}
 These facts are worth knowing--and worth thinking about, too.