

                                   Mark Twain

                          The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

                                       To
                                    My Wife
                                   This Book
                                       Is
                           Affectionately Dedicated.

                                    Preface

 
Most of the adventures recorded in this book really occurred; one or two were
experiences of my own, the rest those of boys who were schoolmates of mine. Huck
Finn is drawn from life; Tom Sawyer also, but not from an individual - he is a
combination of the characteristics of three boys whom I knew, and therefore
belongs to the composite order of architecture.
    The odd superstitions touched upon were all prevalent among children and
slaves in the West at the period of this story - that is to say, thirty or forty
years ago.
    Although my book is intended mainly for the entertainment of boys and girls,
I hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that account, for part of my
plan has been to try to pleasantly remind adults of what they once were
themselves, and of how they felt and thought and talked, and what queer
enterprises they sometimes engaged in.
                                                                     The Author.
    Hartford, 1876.
 

                                   Chapter 1

»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 around, 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,1 and I'll just be obliged to make him work, to-morrow, 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 coloured 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, troublesome
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
lappels 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. Consound it! sometimes she
sews it with white and sometimes she sews it with black. I wish to geeminy 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
practice it undisturbed. 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 impressive 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 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 yet 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 gimme 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 eyeing and sidling around each other. Presently they
were shoulder to shoulder. Tom said:
    »Get away from here!«
    »Get 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 a 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 noses, 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 labour became adamantine in its firmness.
 

                                   Chapter 2

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 gwyne to axe 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 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
old 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 vigour, 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 straightened 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 side-walk.
    »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, meantime, describing stately circles, - for it was representing
a forty-foot wheel.
    »Let her go back on the labbord! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow-ch-chow-chow!« The
left hand began to describe circles.
    »Stop the stabboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Stop the labbord! 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'sh'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 afraid -«
    »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, beside the things before mentioned, twelve marbles, part of a jewsharp,
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 doorknob, 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 treadmill 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 a while over the substantial change which had taken place in
his worldly circumstances, and then wended toward head-quarters to report.
 

                                   Chapter 3

Tom presented himself before aunt Polly, who was sitting by an open window in a
pleasant rearward apartment which was bed-room, breakfast-room, dining room and
library combined. The balmy summer air, the restful quiet, the odour 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 to
see 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 whitewashed, 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 around 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 splendour 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 flavour 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 around 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 hasted 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 pantalettes. 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 worshiped 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 a while 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 around 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 went 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 well-nigh
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 brim-full 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're 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
owdacious mischief when I wasn't'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 poor hands still forever,
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 4

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 bran-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 honourable 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 colour, 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 labour 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. And 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 colours 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 equaled a red one, and could be exchanged for it;
ten red tickets equaled 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 the application to
memorize two thousand verses, even for a Doré 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 breast 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- 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's 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 new-comer 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 honour, and as soon as Mr.
Walters's 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 a-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's 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 head-quarters. 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 splendour 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 then
- 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 and looking sheepish. He blushed, now, and his
eyes fell. Mr. Walters's 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 5

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 Douglas, 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 gauntlet; 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:
 
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 favour,
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 pinch-bug, 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 neighbouring
spectators shook with a gentle inward joy, several faces went behind fans and
handkerchiefs, 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 forepaws 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 stand-still. 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
pinch-bug, but he did not think it was upright in him to carry it off.
 

                                   Chapter 6

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:
    »O 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! O don't stir so, Sid, you'll kill me.«
    »Tom, why didn't you wake me sooner? O, 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 -«
    »O, Tom, you ain't dying, are you? Don't, Tom - O, 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 down stairs and said:
    »O, aunt Polly, come! Tom's dying!«
    »Dying!«
    »Yes'm. Don't wait - come quick!«
    »Rubbage! I don't believe it!«
    But she fled up stairs, 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!«
    »O, auntie, I'm -«
    »What's the matter with you - what is the matter with you, child!«
    »O, 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:
    »O, 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'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?«
    »Cert'nly.«
    »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 knew 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 cross-roads 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 Constantinople and most everywheres. But
say - how do you cure 'em with dead cats?«
    »Why you take your cat and go and get in the graveyard '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 a-saying the Lord's Prayer back'ards.«
    »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, Huck. 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 afraid.«
    »Afeard! Tain't likely. Will you meow?«
    »Yes - and you meow back, if you get a chance. Last time, you kept' 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, Huck, 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.«
    »O, 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
pinch-bug'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 girl's 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 fool-hardy 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 cork-screw 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 As An Artist.
 
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.«
    »O, 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 I won't.«
    »You won't tell anybody at all? - Ever, as long as you live?«
    »No, I won't ever tell anybody. 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.«
    »O, 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 vise 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 7

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 lappel 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 a while 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 shan'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 a while before when the master came
tip-toeing 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.«
    »O, I should say so! I wish I had some now.«
    »Do you? I've got some. I'll let you chew it a while, 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.«
    »O, 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 shan't tell you.«
    »Shall I tell you?«
    »Ye-Yes - but some other time.«
    »No, now.«
    »No, not now - to-morrow.«
    »O, 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 the 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, never 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.
    »O, Tom! Then I ain't the first you've ever been engaged to!«
    The child began to cry. Tom said:
    »O 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 8

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 woodpecker, 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 kept 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 offence, 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 war-path 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 eye-balls
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 splendour. 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, all 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 cross-bones 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 boundless! 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 afterwards. 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 knew 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, bare-legged, with fluttering shirt. He presently halted under
a great elm, blew an answering blast, and then began to tip-toe 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 are 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 shan'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 9

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 neighbouring window
disturbed him. A cry of »S'cat! 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 knew. 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?«
    »O, Tom, they can see in the dark, same as cats. I wisht I hadn't come.«
    »O, don't be afraid. 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. O, 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 afraid. 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, 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 Indian Joe.«
    »That's so - that murderin' half-breed! I'd druther they was devils a dern
sight. What kin they be up to?«
    The whispers 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 Dr. Robinson.
    Potter and Indian 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 Indian 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 Indian Joe, approaching the doctor,
who was now standing. »Five year 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 Indian 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. Indian 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's
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, Indian 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 honour I never meant to, Joe. Tell me
how it was Joe. O, it's awful - and him so young and promising.«
    »Why you two was scuffling, and he fetched you one with the head-board 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, dead as a wedge till now.«
    »O, I didn't know what I was a-doing. I wish I may die this minute if I did.
It was all on accounts of the whisky; 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.«
    »O, 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 10

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 Dr. 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 Indian 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 Indian Joe done it. D' you reckon he
could see anything? D' you reckon he knew anything?«
    »By hokey, that's so Tom!«
    »And besides, look-a-here - maybe that whack done for him!«
    »No, 'tain't 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 Indian 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, Huck. It's the best thing. Would you just hold hands and swear
that we -«
    »O, 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 moonlight, 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:
 
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 lappel 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!«
    »O, lordy, I'm thankful!« whispered Tom. »I know his voice. It's Bull
Harbison.«2
    »O, 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.
    »O, 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:
    »O, Huck, IT'S A STRAY DOG!«
    »Quick, Tom, quick! Who does he mean?«
    »Huck, he must mean us both - we're right together.«
    »O, 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, 'longside o' what I am. O, 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. O, 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 t'other 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 Indian 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 tip-toeing 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.
    »O, 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 whipporwill come in and lit on
the bannisters 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 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 vengeful 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 11

Close upon the hour of noon the whole village was suddenly electrified with the
ghastly news. No need of the as yet undreamed-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 holiday 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 heart-break 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
Indian 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'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 honour 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 Indian Joe, and exclaimed:
    »O, Indian 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.
    Indian Joe repeated his statement, just as calmly, a few minutes afterwards 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.
    Indian 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
about 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 quickly 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 afterwards 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 marveled, 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 Indian 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 12

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 neighbours.
    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 woodshed 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 tea-spoonful 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 tea-spoon 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 into 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 tell-tale 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 numscull. What has that got to do with it?«
    »Heaps. Because if he'd a 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 -«
    »O, 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 school yard 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 school house 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 hand-springs, 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 school-house, 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 13

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 favourite 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 favourite 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, stead-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 midstream, 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, -
foretopmast-stuns'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 camp-fire.
    »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.«
    »O yes, that's so,« said Joe, »but I hadn't thought much about it, you know.
I'd a good deal ruther be a pirate, now that I've tried it.«
    »You see,« said Tom, »people don't go much on hermits, now-a-days, 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 sack-cloth and ashes on his
head, and stand out in the rain, and -«
    »What does he put sack-cloth 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 14

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 dew-drops 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 labours; 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
tumble-bug 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 cat-bird, the northern mocker, lit in
a tree over Tom's head, and trilled out her imitations of her neighbours 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 sand-bar. 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 wild-wood 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 - provision 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 makes, 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 gaily
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 home-sickness. 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 neighbourhood of the ferry boat, but the
boys could not determine what the men in them were doing. Presently a great jet
of white smoke burst from the ferry-boat'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 drowned!«
    »That's it!« said Huck; »they done that last summer, when Bill Turner got
drowned; 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 drowned, 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 sent 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 drowned - 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 unkindnesses 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 ferry boat 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 round-about
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 camp-fire. 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 school-boy treasures of almost inestimable value - among them a lump of
chalk, an India rubber ball, three fish-hooks, and one of that kind of marbles
known as a sure 'nough crystal. Then he tip-toed 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 sand-bar.
 

                                   Chapter 15

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 half-way over; the
current would permit no more wading, now, so he struck out confidently to swim
the remaining hundred yards. He swam quartering up stream, 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
ferry boat 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 down stream, 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; and 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
mischeevous. 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 yourself, 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
fire-cracker right under my nose and I knocked him sprawling. Little did I know
then, how soon - O, 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 good-night 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 good-night 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
up stream. 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 wood.
    He sat down and took a long rest, torturing himself meantime to keep awake,
and then started wearily 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 splendour,
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 16

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 neighbour, 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-coloured 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 neighbour.
    Next they got their marbles and played knucks and ring-taw 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 a 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:
    »O, 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 shan't go in. I mean to go home.«
    »O, 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 cry-baby 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. O, you're a nice pirate. Huck and me ain't cry-babies. 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 eyeing 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 war-whoop of applause and said
it was splendid! and said if he had told them that 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 gaily 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 grape-vine, 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 knew 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
away - 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; »O, hundreds of times. Once down there 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 I could see Johnny Miller tackle
it once.«
    »O, 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?«
    »O, 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 marvelously 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 lip 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 grass-blade, 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 tree-tops right over the
boys' heads. They clung together in terror, in the thick gloom that followed. A
few big rain-drops 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 thunder-blasts 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 river bank. Now the battle was at its highest. Under the ceaseless
conflagration of lightnings that flamed in the skies, everything below stood out
in clean-cut and shadowless distinctness: the bending trees, the billowy river,
white with foam, the driving spray of spume-flakes, the dim outlines of the high
bluffs on the other side, glimpsed through the drifting cloud-rack 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 thunder-peals 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 tree tops, 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 camp-fire 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 hand-breadth 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 glad-hearted 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 sand-bar 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 war-whoops, 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 supper time, 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 17

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
school-house yard, and feeling very melancholy. But she found nothing there to
comfort her. She soliloquised:
    »Oh, if I only had his 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. O, 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 the 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 18

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 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'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 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 dreamed
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 wood-box, 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?«
    »O, 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 a-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 - O, 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-prophecying - 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,
somewhere!«
    »And Mrs. Harper told about Joe scaring her with a fire-cracker, 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 soliloquised 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 gaily back and forth with flushed face
and dancing eyes, pretending to be busy chasing school-mates, 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's 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
pic-nic.«
    »O, that's jolly. Who's going to give it?«
    »My ma's going to let me have one.«
    »O, goody; I hope she'll let me come.«
    »Well she will. The pic-nic'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.«
    »O, 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.
    »O, may I come?« said Gracie 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 lip trembled and the tears came to her eyes; she hid
these signs with a forced gaiety and went on chattering, but the life had gone
out of the pic-nic, 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 school-house
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 beside. 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 school-house, again and again, to sear his
eye-balls 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, »O hang her, ain't I ever going to get rid of
her?« At last he must be attending to those things; 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!
O, 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 - pummeling
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 absent-mindedness 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,
and kept exclaiming: »O 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 school- 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 pic-nic 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 19

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.«
    »O, 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
drowned.«
    »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.«
    »O, 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, auntie, 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 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 20

There was something about aunt Polly's manner, when she kissed Tom, that swept
away his low spirits and made him light-hearted 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 to-day, 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 school-yard 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
title-page - 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 coloured 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 O, 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 leveled 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 paralysed 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 sunk 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 splendour 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 21

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's 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 sign-painter'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 sign-painter'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 fullness 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; snow-banks 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 shame-faced 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 a while 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 honour. 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 laboured
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 brain-racking 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 to-day; 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 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 every thing 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 ball-room 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, good-bye! I love thee well!
But yet for awhile 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'er-full 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 tête,
When, dear Alabama! they turn cold on thee!
 
There were very few there who knew what tête 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
re-made 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; 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 sign-painter'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 school-girl pattern and hence are much
happier than any mere imitations could be.
 

                                   Chapter 22

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
death-bed 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 practice 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 neighbourhood of it.
    A circus came. The boys played circus for three days afterwards 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 down town, 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 23

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 his 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 solitry word, so help me. What makes you ask?«
    »Well, I was afraid.«
    »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 half-breed 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'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 neighbourhood 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 little further 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 court room, 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 court room,
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 Indian 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 Court house 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 afterwards,
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 Indian 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 behaviour 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 court
room. Many men were moved, and many women's compassion testified itself in
tears. Counsel for the defence rose and said:
    »Your honour, 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 Indian 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 Indian Joe's face.
    »Were you anywhere near Horse Williams's 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.«
    Indian 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, Indian
Joe jumped with the knife and -«
    Crash! quick as lightning the half-breed sprang for a window, tore his way
through all opposers, and was gone!
 

                                   Chapter 24

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 splendour and exultation to him, but his nights were
seasons of horror. Indian 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 Indian 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 well nigh 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 Indian 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 Indian Joe was
found. One of those omniscient and awe-inspiring 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 25

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.
    »O, 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'rogliphics.«
    »Hyro - which?«
    »Hy'rogliphics - 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 gay, or a 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.«
    »O, kings have slathers of them.«
    »Well, I don't 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
neighbouring 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.«
    »O, 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 neck-tie
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, Tom. 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 a while. 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
half hour. 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 labour 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 to-night, 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 to-night.«
    »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 afraid 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, Huck. 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 somewhere else.«
    »All right, I reckon we better.«
    »What'll it be?«
    Tom considered a while; 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 afraid?«
    »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 doorstep, the chimney crumbled to
ruin, the window-sashes vacant, a corner of the roof caved in. The boys gazed a
while, 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 26

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 to-day, 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 noble 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 weed-grown, 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 up stairs. 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! ....... O, 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 knot holes
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 deef 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 Indian 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, Indian 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 Indian 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. Indian 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 hearthstones and took out a bag that jingled
pleasantly. He subtracted from it twenty or thirty dollars for himself and as
much for Indian 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 splendour of it was beyond
all imagination! Six hundred dollars was money enough to make half a dozen boys
rich! Here was treasure- 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 »O, 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 fire-place - I saw it a minute ago.«
    He ran and brought the boys' pick and shovel. Indian 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 a while in blissful silence.
    »Pard, there's thousands of dollars here,« said Indian Joe.
    »'Twas always said that Murrel's gang used around here one summer,« the
stranger observed.
    »I know it,« said Indian Joe; »and this looks like it, I should say.«
    »Now you won't need to do that job.«
    The half-breed 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.«
    Indian 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 up
stairs?«
    The boys' breath forsook them. Indian 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 Indian 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 a while; then he agreed with his friend that what daylight was
left ought to be economised in getting things ready for leaving. Shortly
afterwards 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, Indian 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!«
    »O, 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 27

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 favour 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. O, 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!«
    »O, 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 door-keys 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 Indian 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 28

That night Tom and Huck were ready for their adventure. They hung about the
neighbourhood 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 slaughterhouse 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 Indian Joe's hand!«
    »No!«
    »Yes! He was laying 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 Indian
Joe; yes, and 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 whisky! 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 Indian 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 Indian 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 Indian 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's 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. Sometimes 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, Huck, 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 29

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 Indian 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 hi-spy 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 pic-nic, 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 pic-nickers 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 pic-nics 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 widow Douglas's. She'll have ice cream! She
has it 'most every day - dead loads of it. And she'll be awful glad to have us.«
    »O, 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's 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's. 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 to-night?
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 ferry boat 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 produced, and straightway there was a
general scamper up the hill. The mouth of the cave was high up the hillside - an
opening shaped like a letter A. Its massive oaken door stood unbarred. Within
was a small chamber, chilly as an ice-house, 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 clamour 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 underneath 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 ferry-boat 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 ferry-boat'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
cross street. They went straight ahead, then, until they came to the path that
led up Cardiff Hill; this they took. They passed by the old Welchman's house,
half way 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 a while; 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 from
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's
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 - Indian 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 lapsed between the stranger's
remark and Indian 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 the 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's!«
    »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 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 Welchman'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 tip-toe, their weapons in their hands. Huck
accompanied them no further. He hid behind a great boulder 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 30

As the earliest suspicion of dawn appeared on Sunday morning, Huck came groping
up the hill and rapped gently at the old Welchman'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:
    »Do 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 acrost
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 tip-toe 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 - 'it would help a good deal. But you couldn't see
what they were like, in the dark, lad, I suppose?«
    »O, yes, I saw them down town and follered them.«
    »Splendid! Describe them - describe them, my boy!«
    »One's the old deef and dumb Spaniard that's been 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 to-morrow morning!«
    The Welchman's sons departed at once. As they were leaving the room Huck
sprang up and exclaimed:
    »Oh, please don't tell anybody 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 Welchman 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 again it - and sometimes I can't sleep much, on accounts 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 up street 'bout
midnight, a-turning it all over, and when I got to that old shackly brick store
by the Temperance Tavern, I backed up again 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 deef 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 Welchman 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 Indian Joe!«
    The Welchman 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 Indian! 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 Welchman 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
Welchman 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 bills 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 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'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 Welchman admitted several ladies and gentlemen, among them the
widow Douglas, and noticed that groups of citizens were climbing the hill - to
stare at the stile. So the news had spread.
    The Welchman 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 ever have been there but for him.«
    Of course this excited a curiosity so vast that it almost belittled the main
matter - but the Welchman 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 re-told 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:
    »Good morning, Mrs. Thatcher. Good morning Mrs. Harper. I've got a boy
that's turned up missing. I reckon my Tom staid 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 ferry-boat 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 ferry boat ordered out,
and before the horror was half an hour old, two hundred men were pouring down
high-road 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 Welchman 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
Welchman 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 &amp; 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, wild-eyed:
    »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 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
pow-wow 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 31

Now to return to Tom and Becky's share in the pic-nic. 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 web-work of names,
dates, post-office 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 encrusted with a
frost work 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 a while, 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 both 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 child
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 the 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:
    »O, Tom, never mind the bats, let's go back that way! We seem to get worse
and worse off all the time.«
    Tom stopped.
    »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!
    »O, 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 never can get out of this awful
place! O, 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 economise.
    By and by, fatigue began to assert its claims; the children tried to pay no
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 threadbare
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 pic-nic for us to dream on, Tom, the way grown-up
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 said 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, 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 afterwards 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 further
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 - Indian Joe's! Tom
was paralysed; 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 Indian
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 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 Indian 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 32

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 laboured 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 down town 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 staid 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 yes, 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, Indian Joe's in the cave!«
 

                                   Chapter 33

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 ferry-boat, 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. Indian 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.
    Indian 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
labour; useless labour, 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 labour would have been useless still, for if the beam had been wholly cut
away Indian 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 dessert spoonful 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. Indian Joe's Cup stands
first in the list of the cavern's marvels; even Aladdin's Palace cannot rival
it.
    Indian Joe was buried near the mouth of the cave; and people flocked there in
boats and wagons from the town 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 Indian 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. Indian 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 Welchman 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 whisky.
Nobody told me it was you; but I just knew it must 'a' been you, soon as I
heard 'bout that whisky business; and I knew 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 pic-nic. 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 Indian Joe to the widder's.«
    »You followed him?«
    »Yes - but you keep mum. I reckon Indian Joe's left friends behind him, and I
don't want 'em souring on me and doing me mean tricks. If it hadn't been 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 Welchmen's part of it before.
    »Well,« said Huck, presently, coming back to the main question, »whoever
nipped the whisky in No. 2, nipped the money too, I reckon - anyways it's a
goner for us, Tom.«
    »Huck, that money wasn't'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 everything 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 been 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 land-slide? 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 b'lieve 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 Indian Joe poke up his candle, Huck!«
    Huck stared at the mystic sign a while, and then said with a shaky voice -
    »Tom, less git out of here!«
    »What! and leave the treasure?«
    »Yes - leave it. Indian 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. Misgivings gathered in his mind. But
presently an idea occurred to him -
    »Lookyhere, Huck, what fools we're making of ourselves! Indian 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 rhind, and the well gnawed bones of two or
three fowls. But there was no money box. The lads searched and re-searched 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, plowing 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's 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
wood-shed, 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 Welchman's house, they stopped to
rest. Just as they were about to move on, the Welchman 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's.«
    Huck said with some apprehension - for he was long used to being falsely
accused -
    »Mr. Jones, we haven't been doing nothing.«
    The Welchman 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 been good friends to me, any ways.«
    »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's 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'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 bed chamber 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 34

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.«
    »O, 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 just 'tend to your own business. What's all this
blow-out about, anyway?«
    »It's one of the widow's parties that she's always having. This time it's
for the Welchman 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
to-night, but I overheard him tell auntie to-day 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. Oh, 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?«
    »O, 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 to-morrow 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 honour 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 brim full 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 35

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 neighbouring 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 week-day 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 afterwards 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's
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 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 git 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 wood-shed; 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 anywhers; 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 reglar 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't no comfort - I'd got to go up in the attic and rip out a
while, 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. Lookyhere,
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' been for that
money; now you just take my sheer of it along with yourn, and gimme a ten-centre
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 a-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 been 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
to-night, 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 reglar 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.
 
1 South-western for afternoon.
 
2 If Mr. Harbison had 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.
