Well, we was back home and I was at the Widow Douglas’sⒺexplanatory note up on Cardiff Hill again getting sivilised some more along of her and old Miss Watson all the winter and spring, and the Widow was hiring JimⒺexplanatory note for wages so he could buy his wife and children’s freedom some time or other, and the summer days was coming, now, and the new leaves and the wind-flowers was out, and marbles and hoops and kites was coming in, and it was already barefoot time and ever so bammy and soft and pleasant, and the damp a-stewing out of the ground and the birds a-carrying on in the woods, and everybody taking down the parlor stoves and stowing them up garret, and speckled straw hats and fish-hooks beginning to show up for sale, and the early girls out in white frocks and blue ribbons, and schoolboys getting restless and fidgetty, and anybody could see that the derned winter was over. Winter is plenty lovely enough when it is winter and the river is froze over and there’s hail and sleet and bitter cold and booming storms and all that, but spring is no good—just rainy and slushy and sloppy and dismal and ornery and uncomfortable, and ought to be stopped. Tom Sawyer he says the same.

Me and Jim and Tom was feeling good and thankful, and took [begin page 135] the dug-out and paddled over to the head of Jackson’s islandⒺexplanatory note early Saturday morning where we could be by ourselves and plan out something to do. I mean it was Tom’s idea to plan out something to do—me and Jim never planned out things to do, which wears out a person’s brains and ain’t any use anyway, and is much easier and more comfortable to set still and let them happen their own way. But Tom Sawyer said it was a lazy way and put double as much on Providence as there was any use in. Jim allowed it was sinful to talk like that, and says—

“Mars Tom, you ought not to talk so. You can’t relieve Prov’dence none, en he doan need yo’ help, nohow. En what’s mo’, Mars Tom, if you’s gwyne to try to plan out sump’n dat Prov’dence ain’ gwyne to ’prove of, den ole Jim got to pull out, too.”

Tom seen that he was making a mistake, and resking getting Jim down on his projects before there was any to get down on. So he changed around a little, and says—

“Jim, Providence appoints everything beforehand, don’t he?”

“Yessah—’deed he do—fum de beginnin’ er de worl’.”

“Very well. If I plan out a thing—thinking it’s me that’s planning it out, I mean—and it don’t go; Ⓐemendation what does that mean? Don’t it mean that it wasn’t Providence’s plan and he ain’t willing?”

“Yessah, you can ’pen’ ’pon it—dat’s jes’ what it mean, every time.”

“And if it does go, it means that it was Providence’s plan, and I just happened to hit it right, don’t it?”

“Yessah, it’s jes’ what it mean, dead sho’.”

“Well, then, it’s right for me to go ahead and keep on planning out things till I find out which is the one he wants done, ain’t it?”

“W’y, sutt’nly, Mars Tom, dat’s all right, o’ course, en ain’ no sin en no harm—”

“That is, I can suggest plans?”

“Yassah, sutt’nly, you can sejest as many as you want to, Prov’dence ain’ gwyne to mine dat, if he can look ’em over fust, but doan you do none of ’em, Mars Tom, excep’ only jes’ de right one—becase de sin is shovin’ ahead en doin’ a plan dat Prov’dence ain’t satisfied wid.”

[begin page 136] Everything was satisfactry again. You see he just fooled Jim along and made him come out at the same hole he went in at, but Jim didn’t know it. So Tom says—

“It’s all right, now, and we’ll set down here on the sand and plan out something that ’llⒶemendation just make the summer buzz, and worth being alive. I’ve been examining the authorities and sort of posting up, and there’s two or three things that look good, and would just suit, I reckon—either of them.”

“Well,” I says, “what’s the first one?”

“The first one, and the biggest, is a civil war—if we can get it up.”

“Shucks,” I says, “dern the civil war. Tom Sawyer, I might a knowed you’d get up something that’s full of danger and fuss and worry and expense and all that—it wouldn’t suit you, if it warn’t.”

“And glory,” he says, excited, “you’re forgetting the glory—forgetting the main thing.”

“Oh, cert’nly,” I says, “it’s got to have that in, you needn’t tell a person that. The first time I ketch old Jimmy GrimesⒺexplanatory note fetching home a jug that hain’t got any rot-gut in it, I’ll say the next mericle that’s going to happen is Tom Sawyer fetching home a plan that hain’t got any glory in.”

I said it very sarcastic. I just meant it to make him squirm, and it done it. He stiffened up, and was very distant, and said I was a jackass.

Jim was a studying and studying, and pretty soon he says—

“Mars Tom, what do dat word mean—civil?”

“Well, it means—it means—well, anything that’s good, and kind, and polite, and all that—Christian, as you may say.”

“Mars Tom, doan dey fight in de wars, en kill each other?”

“Of course.”

“Now den, does you call dat civil, en kind en polite, en does you call it Christian?”

“Well—you see—well, you know—don’t you understand, it’s only just a name.”

“Hi-yah! I was a layin’ for you, Mars Tom, en I got you dis time, sho’. Jist a name! Dat’s so. Civil war! Dey ain’ no sich war. De [begin page 137] idear!—people dat’s good en kind en polite en b’long to de church a-marchin’ out en slashin’ en choppin’ en cussin’ en shootin’ one another—lan’, I knowed dey warn’t no sich thing. You done ’vent it yo’ own self, Mars Tom. En you want to take en drap dat plan, same as if she was hot. Don’t you git up no civil war, Mars Tom—Prov’dence ain’ gwyne to ’low it.”

“How do you know, till it’s been tried?”

“How does I know? I knows becase Prov’dence ain’ gwyne to let dat kind o’ people fight—he ain’ never hearn o’ no sich war.”

“He has heard of it, too; it’s an old thing; there’s been a million of them.”

Jim couldn’t speak, he was so astonished. And so hurt, too. He judged it was a sin for Tom to say such a thing. But Tom told him it was so, and everybody knowed it that had read the histories. So Jim had to believe it, but he didn’t want to, and said he didn’t believe Providence would allow it any more; and then he got doubtful and troubled and ontrustful, and asked Tom to lay low and not sejest it. And he was so anxious that he couldn’t be comforted till Tom promised him he wouldn’t.

So Tom done it; but he was disappointed. And for a while he couldn’t keep from talking about it and hankering after it. It shows what a good heart he had; he had been just dead set on getting up a civil war, and had even planned out the preparations for it on the biggest scale, and yet he throwed it all aside and give it up to accommodate a nigger. Not many boys would a done such a thing as that. But that was just his style; when he liked a person there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for them. I’ve seen Tom Sawyer do a many a noble thing, but the noblest of all, I think, was the time he countermanded the civil war. That was his word—and not a half a mouthful for him, either, but I don’t fat up with such, they give me the dry gripes. He had the preparations all made, and was going to have a billion men in the field, first and last, besides munitions of war. I don’t know what that is—brass bands, I reckon; sounds like it, anyway, and I knowed Tom Sawyer well enough to know that if he got up a war and was in a hurry and overlooked some of the things, it wouldn’t be the brass bands, not by a blame [begin page 138] sight. But he give up the civil war, and it is one of the brightest things to his credit. And he could a had it easy enough if he had sejested it, anybody can see it now. And it don’t seem right and fair that Harriet Beacher Stow and all them other second-handers gets all the credit of starting that warⒺexplanatory note and you never hear Tom Sawyer mentioned in the histories ransack them how you will, and yet he was the first one that thought of it. Yes, and years and years before ever they had the idea. And it was all his own, too, and come out of his own head, and was a bigger one than theirs, and would a cost forty times as much, and if it hadn’t been for Jim he would a been in ahead and got the glory. I know, becuz I was there, and I could go this day and point out the very place on Jackson’s island, there on the sand-bar up at the head where it begins to shoal off. And where is Tom Sawyer’s monument, I would like to know? There ain’t any. And there ain’t ever going to be any. It’s just the way, in this world. One person does the thing, and the other one gets the monument.

So then I says, “What’s the next plan, Tom?”

And he said his next idea was to get up a revolution. Jim licked his chops over that, and says—

“Hit’s a pow’ful big word, Mars Tom, en soun’ mighty good. What ’sⒶemendation a revolution?”

“Well, it’s where there ain’t only nine-tenths of the people satisfied with the gov’ment, and the others is down on it and rises up full of patriotic devotion and knocks the props from under it and sets up a more different one. There’s nearly about as much glory in a revolution as there is in a civil war, and ain’t half the trouble and expense if you are on the right side, because you don’t have to have so many men. It’s the economicalest thing there is. Anybody can get up a revolution.”

“Why lookyhereⒶemendation, Tom,” I says, “how can one-tenth of the people pull down a gov’ment if the others don’t want them to? There ain’t any sense in that. It can’t be done.”

“It can’t, can’t it? Much you know about history, Huck Finn. Look at the French revolution; and look at ourn. I reckon that ’llⒶemendation show you. Just a handful started it, both times. You see, they don’t [begin page 139] know they’re going to revolute when they start in, and they don’t know they are revoluting till it’s all over. Our boys started in to get taxation by representation—it’s all they wanted—and when they got through and come to look around, they see they had knocked out the king. And besides, had more taxation and liberty and things than they knowed what to do with. Washington found out towards the last that there had been a revolution, but he didn’t know when it happened, and yet he was there all the time. The same with Cromwell, the same with the French. That’s the peculiarity of a revolution—there ain’t anybody intending to do anything when they start in. That’s one of the peculiarities; and the other one is, that the king gets left, every time.”

“Every time?”

“Of course; it’s all there is to a revolution—you knock out the gov’ment and start a fresh kind.”

“Tom Sawyer,” I says, “where are you going to get a king to knock out? There ain’t any.”

“Huck Finn, you don’t have to have any to knock out, this time—you put one in.”

He said it would take all summer, and break up school and everything, and so I was willing for us to start the revolution; but Jim says—

“Mars Tom, I’s gwyne to object. I hadn’t nothing agin kings ontel I had dat one on my han’s all las’ summer. Dat one’s enough for me. He was de beatenes’ ole cuss—now warn’t he, Huck? Warn’t he de wust lot you ever see?—awluz drunk en carryin’ on, him en de duke, en tryin’ to rob Miss Mary en de Hair-lipⒺexplanatory note—no sah, I got enough; I ain’ gwyne to have nothing more to do wid kings.”

Tom said that that warn’t no regular king, and couldn’t be took as a sample; and tried his level best to argufy Jim into some kind of reasonableness, but it warn’t any use; he was set, and when he was set once, he was set for good. He said we would have all the trouble and worry and expense, and when we got the revolution done our old king would show up and hog the whole thing. Well, it begun to sound likely, the way Jim put it, and it got me to feeling oneasy, and I reckoned we was taking too much of a resk; so I pulled out [begin page 140] and sided with Jim, and that let the stuffing out of the revolution. I was sorry to have Tom so disappointed again, and him so happy and hopeful; but ever since, when I look back on it I know I done for the best. Kings ain’t in our line; we ain’t used to them, and wouldn’t know how to keep them satisfied and quiet; and they don’t seem to do anything much for the wages, anyway, and don’t pay no rent. They have a good heart, and feel tender for the poor and for the best charities, and they leg for them, too, and pass the hat pretty frequent, I can say that for them; but now and then they don’t put anything in it themselves. They let on to economise, but that is about all. If one of them has got something on hand the other side of the river, he will go over in about nine ships; and the ferry-boat a laying there all the time. But the worst is the trouble it is to keep them still; it can’t be done. They are always in a sweat about the succession, and the minute you get that fixed to suit them they bust out in another place. And always, rain or shine, they are hogging somebody else’s land. Congress is a cuss, but we better get along with it. We always know what it will do, and that is a satisfaction. We can change it when we want to. And get a worse one, most of the time; but it is a change, anyway, and you can’t do that with a king.

So Tom he give up the revolution, and said the next best thing would be to start an insurrection. Well, me and Jim was willing to that, but when we come to look it over we couldn’t seem to think up anything to insurrect about. Tom explained what it was, but there didn’t seem to be any way to work it. He had to give in, himself, that there wasn’t anything definite about an insurrection. It wasn’t either one thing nor t’other, but only just the middle stage of a tadpole. With its tail on, it was only just a riot; tail gone, it was an insurrection; tail gone and legs out, it was a revolution. We worried over it a little, but we see we couldn’t do anything with it, so we let it go; and was sorry about it, too, and low spirited, for it was a beautiful name.

“Now then,” I says, “what’sⒶemendation the next?”

Tom said the next was the last we had in stock, but was the best one of all, in some ways, because the hide and heart of it was [begin page 141] mystery. The hide and heart of the others was glory, he said, and glory was grand and valuable; but for solid satisfaction, mystery laid over it. It warn’t worth while his telling us he was fond of mysteries, we knowed it before. There warn’t anything he wouldn’t do to be connected with a mystery. He was always that way. So I says—

“All right, what is your idea?”

“It’s a noble good one, Huck. It’s for us to get up a conspiracy.”

“Is it easy, Mars Tom? Does you reckon we can do it?”

“Yes, anybody can.”

“How does you go at it, Mars Tom? What do de word mean?”

“It means laying for somebody—private. You get together at night, in a secret place, and plan out some trouble against somebody; and you have masks on, and passwords, and all that. Georges Cadoudal got up a conspiracyⒺexplanatory note. I don’t remember what it was about, now, but anyway he done it, and we can do it, too.”

“Is it cheap, Mars Tom?”

“Cheap? Well, I should reckon! Why, it don’t cost a cent. That is, unless you do it on a big scale, like Bartholomew’s DayⒺexplanatory note.”

“What is dat, Mars Tom? What did dey do?”

“I don’t know. But it was on a big scale, anyway. It was in France. I think it was the Presbyterians cleaning out the missionaries.”

Jim was disappointed, and says, kind of irritated—

“So, den, blame de conspiracy, down she goes. We got plenty Presbyterians, but we ain’t got no missionaries.”

“Missionaries, your granny—we don’t need them.”

“We don’t, don’t we? Mars Tom, how you gwyne to run yo’ conspiracy if you ain’ got but one end to it?”

“Why, hang it, can’t we have somebody in the place of missionaries?”

“But would dat be right, Mars Tom?”

“Right? Right hasn’t got anything to do with it. The wronger a conspiracy is, the better it is. All we’ve got to do is to have somebody in the place of the missionaries, and then—”

“But Mars Tom, will dey take de place, onless you explains to [begin page 142] them how it is, en how you couldn’t help yoself becase you couldn’t git no mish—”

“Oh, shut up! You make me tired. I never see such a nigger to argue, and argue, and argue, when you don’t know anything what you are talking about. If you’ll just hold still a minute I’ll get up a conspiracy that ’llⒶemendation make Bartholomew sick—and not a missionary in it, either.”

Jim knowed it wouldn’t do for him to chip in any more for a spell, but he went on a mumbling to himself, the way a nigger does, and saying he wouldn’t give shucks for a conspiracy that was made up out of just any kinds of odds and ends that come handy and hadn’t anything lawful about it. But Tom didn’t let on to hear; and it’s the best way, to let a nigger or a child go on and grumble itself out, then it’s satisfied.

Tom bent his head down, and propped his chin in his hands, and begun to forget us and the world; and pretty soon when he got up and begun to walk the sand and bob his head and wag it, I knowed the conspiracy was beginning to bile; so I stretched out in the sun and went to sleep, for I warn’t going to be needed in that part of the business. I got an hour’s nap, and then Tom was ready, and had it all planned out.

I see in a minute that he had struck a splendid idea. It was to get the people in a sweat about the ablitionistsⒺexplanatory note. It was the very time for it. We knowed that for more than two weeks past there was whispers going around about strangers being seen in the woods over on the Illinois side, and then disappearing, and then seen again; and everybody reckoned it was ablitionists laying for a chance to run off some of our niggers to freedom. They hadn’t run off any yet, and most likely they warn’t even thinking about it and warn’t ablitionists anyway; but in them days a stranger couldn’t show himself and not start an uneasiness unless he told all about his [begin page 143] business straight off and proved it hadn’t any harm in it. So the town was considerable worried, and all you had to do was to slip up behind a man and say Ablitionist if you wanted to see him jump, and see the cold sweat come.

And they had tightened up the rules, and a nigger couldn’t be out after dark at night, pass or no pass. And all the young men was parceled out into paterollersⒺexplanatory note, and they watched the streets all night, ready to stop any stranger that come along.

Tom said it was a noble good time for a conspiracy—it was just as if it was made for it on a contract. He said all we had to do was to start it, and it would run itself. He believed if we went at it right and conscientious, and done our duty the best we could, we could have the town in a terrible state in three days. And I believed he was right, because he had a good judgment about conspiracies and those kind of things, mysteries being in his line and born to it, as you may say.

For a beginning, he said we must have a lot of randyvoozes—secret places to meet at and conspire; and he reckoned we better kind of surround the town with them, partly for style and partly so as there would always be one of them handy, no matter what part of town we might be in. So, for one he appointed our old hanted house, in the lonesome place three miles above town where Crawfish creek comes in out of Catfish hollow. And for another, mine and Jim’s little cave up in the rocks in the deep woods on Jackson’s island. And for another, the big cave on the main land three miles below town—Injun Joe’s caveⒺexplanatory note, where we found the money that the robbers had hid. And for another, the old deserted slaughterhouse on Slaughterhouse Point at the foot of town, where the creek comes in. The polecats couldn’t stand that place, it smelt like the very nation; and so me and Jim tried to get him to change, but he wouldn’t. He said it was a good strattyjick point, and besides was a good place to retreat to and hide, because dogs couldn’t follow us there, on account of our scent not being able to beat the competition, and even if the dogs could follow us the enemy couldn’t follow the dogs because they would suffocate. We seen that it was a good idea and sound, so then we give in.

[begin page 144] Me and Jim thought there ought to be more conspirators if there was going to be much work, but Tom scoffed, and said—

“Lookyhere—what busted up Guy FawkesⒺexplanatory note? And what busted up Titus OatesⒺexplanatory note?”

He looked at me very hard. But I warn’t going to give myself away. Then he looked at Jim very hard—but Jim warn’t going to, either. So then there wasn’t anything more said about it.

Tom appointed our cave on Jackson’s island for the high chief headquarters, and said common business could be done in the other randyvoozes, but the Council of State wouldn’t ever meet anywhere but there—and said it was sacred. And he said there would have to be two Councils of State to run a conspiracy as important as this one—a Council of Ten and a Council of ThreeⒺexplanatory note; black gowns for the Ten and red for the Three, and masks for all. And he said all of us would be the Council of Ten, and he would be the Council of Three. Because the Council of Three was supreme and could abrogate anything the other Council done. That was his word—one of his pile-drivers. I sejested it would save wages to leave out the Council of Ten, and there warn’t hardly enough stuff for it anyway; but he only said—

“If I didn’t know any more about conspiracies than you do, Huck Finn, I wouldn’t expose myself.”

So then he said we would go to the Council Chamber now, and hold the first meeting without any gowns or masks, and pass a resolution of oblivionⒺexplanatory note next meeting and justify it; then it would go on the minutes all regular, and nobody could be put under attainder on account of it. It was his way, and he was born so, I reckon. Everything had to be regular, or he couldn’t stand it. Why, I could steal six watermelons while he was chawing over authorities and arranging so it would be regular.

We found our old cave just as me and Jim had left it the time we got scared out and started down the river on the raft. Tom called up the Council of Ten, and made it a speech about the seriousness of the occasion, and hoped every member would reconnize it and put his hand sternly to the wheel and do his duty without fear or favor. Then he made it take an oath to run the conspiracy the best it [begin page 145] knowed how in the interests of Christianity and sivilization and to get up a sweat in the town; and God defend the right, amen.

So then he elected himself President of the Council and Secretary, and opened the business. He says—

“There’s a lot of details—no end of them—but they don’t all come first, they belong in their places; they’ll fall in all right, as we go along. But there’s a first detail, and that is the one for us to take hold of now. What does the Council reckon it is?”

I was stumped, and said so. Jim he said the same.

“Well, then, I’ll tell you. What is it the people are a-worrying about? What is it they are afraid of? You can answer that, I reckon.”

“Why, they’re afraid there’s going to be some niggers run off.”

“That is right. Now, then, what is our duty as a conspiracy?”

Jim didn’t know, and I didn’t.

“Huck Finn, if you would think a minute you would know. There’s a lack—we’ve got to supply it. Ain’t that plain enough? We’ve got to run off a nigger.”

“My lan’, Mars Tom! W’y, dey’ll hang us.”

“Well, what do you want? What is a conspiracy for? Do you reckon it’s to propagate immortality? We’ve got to run risks, or it ain’t any conspiracy at all, and no honor in it. The honor of a conspiracy is to do the thing you are after, but do it right and smart and not get hung. Well, we will fix that. Now then, come back to business. The first thing is, to pick out the nigger, and the next is, to arrange about running him off.”

“Why, Tom, we can’t ever do it. There ain’t a nigger in the town that ’llⒶemendation listen to it a minute. It would scare him out of his life, and he would run straight to his master and tell on us.”

He looked as if he was ashamed of me; and says—

“Now, Huck Finn, do you reckon I didn’t know that?”

I couldn’t understand what he was getting at. I says—

“Well, then, Tom Sawyer, if there ain’t a nigger in the town that will let us run him off, how can we manage?”

“Very easy. We’ll put one there.”

“Oh, cert’nly—that’s very easy. Where are we going to get him?”

[begin page 146] “He’s here; I’m the one.”

Me and Jim laughed; but Tom said he had thought it all out, and it would work. So then he told us the plan, and it was a very good one, sure enough. He would black up for a runaway nigger and hide in the hanted house, and I would betray him and sell him to old BradishⒺexplanatory note, up in Catfish hollow, which was a nigger trader in a little small way, and the orneriest hound in town, and then we would run him off and the music would begin, Tom said. And I reckoned it would.

But of course, just as everything was fixed all ship-shape and satisfactry, Jim’s morals begun to work again. It was always happening to him. He said he belonged to the church, and couldn’t do things that warn’t according to religion. He reckoned the conspiracy was all right, he wasn’t worried about that, but oughtn’t we to take out a licence?

It was natural for him to think that, you know, becuz he knowed that if you wanted to start a saloon, or peddle things, or trade in niggers, or drive a dray, or give a show, or own a dog, or do most any blame thing you could think of, you had to take out a licence, and so he reckoned it would be the same with a conspiracy, and would be sinful to run it without one, becuz it would be cheating the gover’ment. He was troubled about it, and said he had been praying for light. And then he says, in that kind of pitiful way a nigger has that is feeling ignorant and distressed—

“De prar hain’t ben answered straight en squah, but as fur as I can make out fum de symptoms, hit’s agin de conspiracy onless we git de licence.”

Well, I could see Jim’s side, and knowed I oughtn’t to fret at a poor nigger that didn’t mean no harm, but was only going according to his lights the best he could, and yet I couldn’t help being aggeravated to see our new scheme going to pot like the civil war and the revolution and no way to stop it as far as I could see—for Jim was set; you could see it; and of course when he was set, that was the end; arguments couldn’t budge him. I warn’t going to try; breath ain’t given to us for to be wasted. I reckoned Tom would try, becuz the conspiracy was the last thing we had in stock and he [begin page 147] would want to save it if he could; and I judged he would flare up and lose his temper right at the start, becuz it had had so much strain on it already—and then the fat would be in the fire of course, and the last chance of a conspiracy along with it.

But Tom never done anything of the kind. No, he come out of it beautiful. I hardly ever seen him rise to such grandure of wisdom as he done that time. I’ve seen him in delicate places often and often, when there warn’t no time to swap horses, and seen him pull through all right when anybody would a said he couldn’t, but I reckon they warn’t any delicater than this one. He was catched sudden—but no matter, he was all there. When I seen him open his mouth I says to myself wherever one of them words hits it’s agoing to raise a blister. But it warn’t so. He says, perfectly cam and gentle—

“Jim, I’ll never forget you for thinking of that, and reminding us. I clean forgot the licence, and if it hadn’t been for you we might never thought of it till it was too late and we’d gone into a conspiracy that warn’t rightly and lawfully sanctified.” Then he speaks out in his official voice, very imposing, and says, “Summons the Council of Three.” So then he mounted his throne in state, which was a nail-kag, and give orders to grant a licence to us to conspire in the State of Missouri and adjacent realms and apinages for a year, about anything we wanted to; and commanded the Grand Secretary to set it down in the minutes and put the great seal to it.

Jim was satisfied, then, and full of thankfulness, and couldn’t find words enough to say it; though I thought then and think yet that the licence warn’t worth a dern. But I didn’t say anything.

There was only one more worry on Jim’s mind, and it didn’t take long to fix that. He was afeared it wouldn’t be honest for me to sell Tom when Tom didn’t belong to me; he was afeared it looked like swindling. So Tom didn’t argue about it. He said wherever there was a doubt, even if it was ever so little a one, but yet had a look of being unmoral, he wanted it removed out of the plan, for he would not be connected with a conspiracy that was not pure. It looked to me like this conspiracy was a-degenerating into a Sunday school. But I never said anything.

[begin page 148] So then Tom changed it and said he would get out handbills and offer a reward for himself, and I could find him, and not sell him but betray him over to Bat Bradish for part of the reward. Bat warn’t his name; people called him that becuz he couldn’t more than half see. Jim was satisfied with that, though I couldn’t see where was the difference between selling a boy that don’t belong to you and selling shares in a reward that was a fraud and warn’t ever going to be paid. I said so to Tom, private, but he said I didn’t know as much as a catfish; and said did I reckon we warn’t going to pay the money back to Bat Bradish? Of course we would, he said.

I never said anything; but I reckoned to myself that if I got the money and Tom forgot and didn’t interfere, me and Bat Bradish would settle that somehow amongst ourselves.

We paddled over to town, and Jim went home and me and Tom went to the carpenter shop and got a lot of smooth pine blocks that Tom wanted, and then to a shop and got an awl and a gouge and a little chisel, and took them to Tom’s aunt Polly’sⒺexplanatory note and hid them up garret, and I stayed for supper and for all night; and in the middle of the night we slipped out and trapsed all over town to see the paterollers; and it was dim and quiet and still, except a dog or two and a cat that warn’t satisfied, and nobody going about, but everybody asleep and the lights out except where there was sickness, then there would be a pale glow on the blinds; and a pateroller stood on every corner, and said “Who goes there?” and we said “Friends,” and they said “Halt, and give the countersign,” and we said we didn’t have any, and they come and looked, and said, “Oh, it’s you; well, you better get along home, no time for young trash like you to be out of bed.”

And then we watched for a chance and slipped up stairs into the printing office, and put down the blinds and lit a candle, and there was old Mr. Day, the traveling jour. printer, asleep on the floor [begin page 149] under a stand, with his old gray head on his carpet-sack for a pillow; but he didn’t stir, and we shaded the light and tip-toed around and got some sheets of printing paper, blue and green and red and white, and some red printing ink and some black, and snipped off a little chunk from the end of a new roller to dab it with, and left a quarter on the table for pay, and was thirsty, and found a bottle of something and drunk it up for lemonade, but it turned out it was consumption medicine, becuz there was a label on it, but it was very good and answered. It was Mr. Day’s; and we left another quarter for it, and blowed out the light, and got the things home all right and was very well satisfied, and hooked a hairbrush from Tom’s aunt Polly to do the printing with and went to sleep.

Tom warn’t willing to do business on Sunday, but Monday morning we went up garret and got out all our old nigger-show things, and Tom tried on his wig and the tow-linen shirt and ragged britches and one suspender, and straw hat with the roof caved in and part of the brim gone, and they was better than ever, becuz the shirt hadn’t been washed since the cows come home and the rats had been sampling the other things.

Then Tom wrote out the handbill, “$100 Reward, Elegant Deef and Dumb Nigger Lad run away from the subscriber,” and so on, and described himself to a dot the way he would look when he was blacked and dressed up for business, and said the nigger could be returned to “Simon Harkness, Lone Pine, Arkansaw;” and there warn’t no such place, and Tom knowed it very well.

Then we hunted out the old chain and padlock and two keys that we used to play the Prisoner of the Basteel with, and some lampblack and some grease, and put them with the other things— “properties,” Tom called them, which was a large name for truck which was not rightly property at all, for you could buy the whole outfit for forty cents and get cheated.

We had to have a basket, and there wasn’t any that was big enough except aunt Polly’s willow one, which she was so proud of and particular about, and it wasn’t any use asking her to lend us that, becuz she wouldn’t; so we went down stairs and got it while she was pricing a catfish that a nigger had to sell, and fetched it up [begin page 150] and put the outfit in it, and then had to wait nearly an hour before we could get away, becuz Sid and MaryⒺexplanatory note was gone somewheres and there wasn’t anybody but us to help her hunt for the basket. But at last she had suspicions of the nigger that sold her the catfish, and went out to hunt for him, so then we got away. Tom allowed the hand of Providence was plain in it, and I reckoned it was, too, for it did look like it, as far as we was concerned, but I couldn’t see where the nigger’s share come in, but Tom said wait and I would see that the nigger would be took care of in some mysterious inscrutable way and not overlooked; and it turned out just so, for when aunt Polly give the nigger a raking over and then he proved he hadn’t took the basket she was sorry and asked him to forgive her, and bought another catfish. And we found it in the cubberd that night and traded it off for a box of sardines to take over to the island, and the cat got into trouble about it; and when I said, now then the nigger is rectified but the cat is overlooked, Tom said again wait and I would see that the cat would be took care of in some mysterious inscrutable way; and it was so, for while aunt Polly was gone to get her switch to whip her with she got the other fish and et it up. So Tom was right, all the way through, and it shows that every one is watched over, and all you have to do is to be trustful and everything will come out right, and everybody helped.

We hid the outfit up stairs in the hanted house that morning, and come back to town with the basket, and it was very useful to carry provisions to Jim’s big boat in, and cooking utensils. I stayed in the boat to take care of the things, and Tom done the shopping—not buying two basketfuls in one shop, but going to another shop every time, or people would have asked questions. Last of all, Tom fetched the pine blocks and printing ink and stuff from up garret, and then we pulled over to the island and stowed the whole boatload in the cave, and knowed we was well fixed for the conspiracy now.

We got back home before night and hid the basket in the woodshed, and got up in the night and hung it on the front door knob, and aunt Polly found it there in the morning and asked Tom how it come there, and he said he reckoned it was angels, and [begin page 151] she said she reckoned so too, and suspicioned she knowed a couple of them and would settle with them after breakfast. She would a done it, too, if we had stayed.

But Tom was in a hurry about the handbills, and we took the first chance and got away and paddled down the river seven miles in the dugout to HookervilleⒺexplanatory note, where there was a little printing office that had a job once in four years, and got a hundred and fifty Reward bills printed, and paddled back in the dead water under the banks, and got home before sundown and hid the bills up garret and had a licking, not much of a one, and then supper and family worship, and off to bed dog tired; but satisfied, becuz we had done every duty.

We went straight to sleep, for it ain’t any trouble to go to sleep when you are tired and have done everything there was time to do, and done it the best you could, and so nothing on your conscience and nothing to trouble about. And we didn’t take any pains about waking up, becuz the weather was good, and if it stayed so we couldn’t do anything more till there was a change; and if a change come it would wake us. And it did.

It come on to storm about one in the morning, and the thunder and lightning woke us up. The rain come down in floods and floods; and ripped and raced along the shingles enough to deefen you, and would come slashing and thrashing against the windows, and make you feel so snug and cosy in the bed, and the wind was a howling around the eaves in a hoarse voice, and then it would die down a little and pretty soon come in a booming gust, and sing, and then wheeze, and then scream, and then shriek, and rock the house and make it shiver, and you would hear the shutters slamming all down the street, and then there’d be a glare like the world afire, and the thunder would crash down, right at your head and seem to tear everything to rags, and it was just good to be alive and tucked up comfortable to enjoy it; but Tom shouts “Turn out, Huck, we can’t ever have it righter than this,” and although he shouted it I could hardly hear him through the rattle and bang and roar and racket.

I wished I could lay a little bit longer, but I knowed I couldn’t, for Tom wouldn’t let me; so I turned out and we put on our clothes [begin page 152] by the lightning and took one of the handbills and some tacks and got out of the back window onto the L, and crope along the comb of the roof and down onto the shed, and then onto the high board fence, and then to the ground in the garden the usual way, then down the back lane and out into the street.

It was a-drenching away just the same, and blowing and storming and thundering, a wild night and just the weather for ockult business like ourn, Tom said. I said yes; and said we ought to brought all the bills, becuz we wouldn’t have another such a night soon. But he said—

“What do we want of any more? Where do they stick up bills, Huck?”

“Why, on the board that leans up against the postoffice door, where they stick up strayeds and stolens, and temperance meetings, and taxes, and niggers for sale, and stores to rent, and all them things, and a good place, too, and don’t cost nothing, but an advertisement does, and don’t anybody read it, either.”

“Of course. They don’t put up two bills, do they?”

“No. Only one. You can’t read two at a time, except people that is cross-eyed, and there ain’t enough of them for to make it worth the trouble.”

“Well, then, that’s why I fetched only one.”

“What did you get 150 for, then? Are we going to stick up a new one every night for six months?”

“No, we ain’t ever going to stick up any but the one. One’s a plenty.”

“Why, Tom, what did you spend all that money for, then? Why didn’t you get only one printed?”

“On account of its being the regular number. If I had got only one, the printer would a gone soliloquising around to himself, saying ‘This is curious; he could get 150 for the same money, and he takes only one; there’s something crooked about this, and I better get him arrested.’ ”

Well, that was Tom Sawyer all over; always thought of everything. A long head; the longest I ever see on a boy.

Then come a glare that didn’t leave a thimbleful of darkness [begin page 153] betwixt us and heaven, and you could see everything, plumb to the river, the same as day. By gracious, not a pateroller anywheres; the streets was empty. And every gutter was a creek, and nearly washed us off of our feet the water run so deep and strong. We stuck up the bill, and then stood there under the awning a while listening to the storm and watching bunches of packing-straw and old orange boxes and things sailing down the gutter when it lightened, and wanted to stay and see it out, but dasent; becuz we was afraid of Sid. The thunder might wake him up; and he was scared of thunder and might go to the nearest room for comfort, which was ourn, and find out we was gone, and watch and see how long we was out, so he could tell on us in the morning, and give all the facts, and get us into trouble. He was one of them kind that don’t commit no sin themselves, but ain’t satisfied with that, but won’t let anybody else have a good time if they can help it. So we had to get along home. Tom said he was too good for this world, and ought to be translated. I never said anything, but let him enjoy his word, for I think it is mean to take the tuck out of a person just to show how much you know. But many does it, just the same. I knowed all about that word, becuz the Widow told me; I knowed you can translate a book, but you can’t translate a boy, becuz translating means turning a thing out of one language into another, and you can’t do that with a boy. And besides it has to be a foreign one, and Sid warn’t a foreign boy. I am not blaming Tom for using a word he didn’t know the meaning of; becuz he warn’t dishonest about it, he used a many a one that was over his size, but he didn’t do it to deceive, he only done it becuz it tasted good in his mouth.

So we got home hoping Sid hadn’t stirred; and kind of calculating on it, too, seeing how we was being looked out for in inscrutable ways and how many signs there was that Providence was satisfied with the conspiracy as far as we had got. But there come a little hitch, now. We was on the roof of the L, and clawing along the comb in the dark, and I was in the lead and was half way to our window, and had set down frog-fashion, very gentle and soft, to feel for a nail that was along there, becuz I had set down on it hard, sometimes, when I warn’t wanting to, and it was that kind of a nail [begin page 154] which the more you don’t set down on it at all the more comfortable you can set down somewheres else next day, when there come a sudden sharp glare of lightning that showed up everything keen and clear, and there was Sid at his window watching.

We clumb into our window and set down and whispered it over. We had to do something, and we didn’t know what. Tom said, as a general thing he wouldn’t care for this, but it wasn’t a good time, now, to be attracting attention. He said if Sid could have a holiday out on his uncle Fletcher’s farmⒺexplanatory note, thirty miles in the country, for about four weeks, it would clear the decks and be the very thing, and the conspiracy would glide along and be in smooth water and safe, by that time. He didn’t reckon Sid was suspicioning anything yet, but would start in to watch us, and pretty soon he would. I says—

“When are you going to ask your aunt Polly to let him have the holiday, Tom—in the morning?”

“Why, I ain’t going to ask her at all. That’s not the way. She would ask me what was interesting me in Sid’s comfort all of a sudden, and she would suspicion something. No, we must cunjer up some way to make her invent the idea herself and send him away.”

“Well,” I says, “I’ll let you have the job—it ain’t in my line.”

“I’ll study it over,” he says, “I reckon it can be fixed.”

I was going to pull off my clothes, but he says, “Don’t do that, we’ll sleep with them on.”

“What for?”

“It’s nothing but shirt and nankeen pants, and they’ll dry in three hours.”

“What do we want them dry for, Tom?”

But he was listening at Sid’s door, to hear if he was snoring. Then he slipped in there and got Sid’s clothes and fetched them and hung them out of the window till they was soaked, then he carried them back and come to bed. So then I understood. We snuggled up together, and pulled up the blankets, and wasn’t overly comfortable, but of course we had to stand it. After a long thinking spell, Tom says—

[begin page 155] “Huck, I believe I’ve got it. I know where I can get the measles. We’ve all got to have them some time or other anyway, and I better have them now, when they can do some good.”

“How?”

“Aunt Polly wouldn’t let Sid and Mary stay in the house if we had measles here; she would send them to uncle Fletcher’s—it’s the only place.”

I didn’t like the idea, it made me half sick; and I says—

“Tom, don’t you do it; it’s a fool idea. Why, you might die.”

“Die, you pelican? I never heard such foolishness. Measles never kills anybody except grown people and babies. You never heard of a case.”

I was worried, and tried to talk him out of it, and done my best, but it didn’t do any good. He was full of it, and bound to try it, and wanted me to help him; so I give it up and said I would. So he planned it out how we was to manage it, and then we went to sleep.

We got up dry, but Sid’s things was wet; and when he said he was going to tell on us, Tom told him he could go and tell, as fast as he wanted to, and see if him and his wet clothes could beat our dry ones testifying. Sid said he hadn’t been out, but knowed we had, becuz he seen us. Tom says—

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself. You are always walking in your sleep and dreaming all kinds of strange things that didn’t happen, and now you are at it again. Can’t you see, perfectly plain, it’s nothing but a dream? If you didn’t walk, how comes your clothes wet? and if we did, how comes ourn dry?—you answer me that.”

Sid was all puzzled and mixed up, and couldn’t make it out. He felt of our clothes, and thought and thought; but he had to give it up. He said he judged he could see, now, it was only a dream, but it was the amazingest vividest one he ever had. So the conspiracy was saved, and out of a close place, too, and Tom said anybody could see it was approved of. And he was awed about it, and said it was enough to awe anybody and make them better, to see the inscrutable ways that that conspiracy was watched over and took care of, and I felt the same. Tom resolved to be humbler and gratefuller [begin page 156] from this out, and do everything as right as he could, and said so; and after breakfast we went down to Captain Harper’s to get the measles, and had a troublesome time, but we got it. We didn’t go at it the best way at first, that was the reason. Tom went up the back stairs and got into the room all right, where Joe was laying sickⒺexplanatory note, but before he could get into bed with him his mother come in to give him the medicine, and was scared to see him there, and says—

“Goodness gracious, what are you doing here! Clear out, you little idiot, don’t you know we’ve got the measles?”

Tom wanted to explain that he come to ask how Joe was, but she shoo’d and shoo’d him to the door and out, and wouldn’t listen, and says—

“Oh, do go away and save yourself. You’ve frightened the life out of me, and your aunt Polly will never forgive me, and yet it’s nobody’s fault but yourn, for not going to the front door, where anybody would that had any sense of discretion,” and then she slammed the door and shut Tom out.

But that give him an idea. So in about an hour he sent me to the front door to knock and fetch her there; and she would have to go, becuz the children was with the neighbors on account of the measles, and the captain out at his business; and so, whilst I kept her there asking her all about Joe for the Widow Douglas, Tom got in the back way again and got into bed with Joe, and covered up, and when she come back and found him there, she had to drop down in a chair or she would a fainted; and she shut him up in another room until she sent word to aunt Polly.

So aunt Polly was frightened stiff, and shook so she could hardly pack Sid and Mary’s things. But she had them out of the house in a half an hour and into the tavern to stay there over night and take the stage for her brother Fletcher’s at four in the morning, and then went and fetched Tom home, and wouldn’t let me come in the house; and she hugged him and hugged him, and cried, and said she would lick him within an inch of his life when he got well.

So then I went up on the hill to the Widow’s, and told Jim, but he said it was a right down smart plan, and he hadn’t ever seen a [begin page 157] plan work quicker and better; and Jim warn’t worried, he said measles didn’t amount to anything, everybody has them and everybody’s got to; so I stopped worrying, too.

After a day or two Tom had to go to bed and have the doctor. Me and Jim couldn’t work the conspiracy without Tom, so we had to let it lay still and wait, and I reckoned it was going to be dull times for me for a spell. But no, Tom warn’t hardly to bed before Joe Harper’s medicine fetched his measles out onto the surface, and then the doctor found it warn’t measles at all, but scarlet fever. When aunt Polly heard it she turned that white she couldn’t get her breath, and was that weak she couldn’t see her hand before her face, and if they hadn’t grabbed her she would have fell. And it just made a panic in the town, too, and there wasn’t a woman that had children but was scared out of her life.

But it crossed off the dull times for me, and done that much good; for I had had scarlet fever, and come in an ace of going deef and dumb and blind and baldheaded and idiotic, so they said; and so aunt Polly was very glad to let me come and help her.

We had a good doctor, one of them old fashioned industrious kind that don’t go fooling around waiting for a sickness to show up and call game and start fair, but gets in ahead, and bleeds you at one end and blisters you at the other, and gives you a dipperful of castor oil and another one of hot salt water with mustard in it, and so gets all your machinery agoing at once, and then sets down with nothing on his mind and plans out the way to handle the case.

Along as Tom got sicker and sicker they shut off his feed, and closed up the doors and windows and made the room snug and hot and healthy, and as soon as the fever was warmed up good and satisfactry, they shut off his water and let him have a spoonful of panada every two hours to squench his thirst with. Of course that is dreadful when you are burning up, and nice cool water there for other people to drink and you can’t touch it but need it more than anybody else; so Tom arranged to wink when he couldn’t stand it any longer, and I watched my chance and give him a good solid drink when aunt Polly’s back was turned; and after that it was more [begin page 158] comfortable, for I kept an eye out sharp and filled him up every time he wunk. The doctor said water would kill him, but I knowed that when you are blazing with scarlet fever you don’t mind that.

Tom was sick two weeks, and got very bad, and then one night he begun to sink, and sunk pretty fast. All night long he got worse and worse, and was out of his head, and babbled and babbled, and give the conspiracy plumb away, but aunt Polly was that beside herself with misery and grief that she couldn’t take notice, but only just hung over him, and cried, and kissed him and kissed him, and bathed his face with a wet rag, and said oh, she could not bear to lose him, he was the darling of her heart and she couldn’t ever live without him, the world wouldn’t ever be the same again and life would be so empty and lonesome and not worth while; and she called him by all the pet names she could think of, and begged him to notice her and say he knowed her, but he couldn’t, and once when his hand went groping about and found her face and stroked it and he took it for me, and said “good old Huck,” she was broken-hearted, and cried so hard and mourned so pitiful I had to look away, I couldn’t bear it. And in the morning when the doctor come and looked at him and says, kind of tender and low, “He doeth all things for the best, we must not repine,” she—but I can’t tell it, it would a made anybody cry to see her. Then the doctor motioned, and the preacher was there and had been praying, and we all went and stood around the bed, waiting and still, and aunt Polly crying, and nobody saying anything. Tom was laying with his eyes shut, and very quiet. Then he opened them, but didn’t seem to notice, much, or see anything; but they kind of wandered about, and fell on me; and steadied there. And one of them begun to sag down, went shut, and t’other one begun to work and twist, and twist and work, and kind of squirm; and at last he got it, though pretty lame and out of true—it was a wink. I jumped for the fresh cold water, tin pail and all, and says “Hold up his head!” and put it to his lips, and he drunk and drunk and drunk—the very first I had had a chance to give him in a whole day and night. The doctor said, “Poor boy, give him all he wants, he is past hurting, now.”

It warn’t so. It saved him. He begun to pull back to life again [begin page 159] from that very minute, and in five days he was setting up in bed, and in five more was walking about the floor; and aunt Polly was that full of joy and gratefulness that she told me, private, she wished he would do something he had no business to, so she could forgive him; and said she never would a knowed how dear he was to her if she hadn’t come so near losing him; and said she was glad it happened and she’d got her lesson, she wouldn’t ever be rough on him again, she didn’t care what he done. And she said it was the way we feel when we’ve laid a person in the grave that is dear to us and we wish we could have them back again, we wouldn’t ever say anything to grieve them any more.

All the first week that Tom was sick he wasn’t very sick, and then for a while he was, and after that he wasn’t, again, but was getting well; so he lost only the between-time. Both of the other times he worked on the conspiracy—first to get it all shaped out so me and Jim could finish it if he died, and leave it behind him for his monument; and the other time to boss it himself. So the minute I come down to help take care of him he said he wanted some type, and to learn how to set them up; and told me to go to Mr. Baxter about it. He was the foreman of the printing office, and had Mr. Day and a boy under him and was one of the most principal men in the town, and looked up to by everybody. There warn’t nothing agoing for the highsting up of the human race but he was under it and a-shoving up the best he could—being a pillow of the church and taking up the collection, Sundays, and doing it wide open and square, with a plate, and setting it on the table when he got done where everybody could see, and never putting his hand anear it, never pawing around in it the way old Paxton always done, letting on to see how much they had pulled in; and he was Inside Sentinel of the Masons, and Outside Sentinel of the Odd Fellows, and a kind a head bung-starter or something of the Foes of the Flowing [begin page 160] Bowl, and something or other to the Daughters of Rebecca, and something like it to the King’s Daughters, and Royal Grand Warden to the Knights of Morality, and Sublime Grand Marshal of the Good Templars, and there warn’t no fancy apron agoing but he had a sample, and no turnout but he was in the procession, with his banner, or his sword, or toting a bible on a tray, and looking awful serious and responsible, and yet not getting a cent. A good man, he was, they don’t make no better.

And when I come he was setting at his table with his pen, and leaning low down over a narrow long strip of print with wide margins, and he was crossing out most everything that was in it and freckling-up the margins with his pen and cussing. And I told him Tom was sick and maybe going to die, and—

There he shut me off sudden, and says, prompt and warm—

“Him die? We can’t have it. There’s only one Tom Sawyer, and the mould’s busted. Can I do anything? Speak up.”

I says—

“Tom says, can he have—”

“Yes; he can have anything he wants. Speak out,” he says, all alive and hearty and full of intrust.

“He’d like to have about a handful of old type that you hain’t got any use for, and—”

Then he broke in again and sung out to Mr. Day, and says—

“Tell the devil to go to hell and fetch a hatful; and quick about it.”

It give me the cold shivers to hear him. In about a minute Mr. Day says—

“The devil says hell’s empty, sir.”

“All right, fetch a hatful of pie.”

That made my mouth water, and I was glad I come. Then the boy fetched a couple of oyster cans full of old type; it had to be old, there warn’t any new in the place; and Mr. Baxter told him to fetch a stick and a rule.1 And last, he told him to fetch an old half-case,

---

1. Hell, printer’s term for broken and otherwise disabled type. 2. Printer’s Devil, apprentice. 3. Pi, printer’s term for a mass of mixed-up type. 4. The (composing) stick and rule are used in setting the type.— Editor.Ⓐemendation [begin page 161] which he done; it was the size of a wash-board, and was all separated up into little square boxes. Then they pasted A’s and B’s and C’s and so on on the boxes, to show which boxes they belonged in—two sets, capital letters and little ones; and Mr. Baxter told the boy to go with me and help carry the things and learn Tom how to set the type. And he done it.

He learnt Tom, and Tom set up all the type in the oyster cans and then put all the letters where they belonged in the case, setting up in bed and using up about two days at it. Bright? Tom Sawyer? I should reckon so. Inside of five days he had learnt himself the whole trade, and could set up type as well as anybody; and I can prove what I am saying. Becuz, that day he set up this, and I took it over and Mr. Baxter printed it, and when he took up the print he was astonished, and said so; and give me a copy for myself, and one for Tom, and I’ve got mine yet.

When Mr. Baxter printed it and took it up and looked at it the tears come in his eyes, and he says—

“Derned if any comp. in christiandum can lay over it but old Day, and he can’t when he’s sober.”

It made Tom mighty proud when I told him, and well it might. But the strain of composing of it out of his head thataway, and setting it up without anybody’s help, and the general excitement of it and anxiousness it cost him to get it ackurate, was too many for him and knocked him silly and laid him out, and the sickness went [begin page 162] for him savage; and so that was the last thing he ever done till the day the doctor says—

“Huck, he’s convalescent.”

I warn’t prepared, and fell flat in my tracks where I was. But when they throwed water on me and I come to and they told me what the doctor was trying to mean when the word fell out of him, I see it warn’t so bad as I reckoned.

Now some boys quits repenting as soon as they are getting well, and goes to getting worldly again, and judging they hadn’t ought to have got flustered so soon, it wasn’t necessary, but it warn’t so with Tom, he said he had a close shave and ought to be grateful to Providence, and was; and man’s help warn’t worth much, and man’s wisdom warn’t anything at all—look at ourn, he says.

“Look at ourn, Huck. We went for measles. It shows how little we knowed and how blind we was. What good was measles, when you come to look at it? None. As soon as it’s over you wash up the things and air out the house and send for the children home again, and a person has been sick all for nothing. But you take the scarlet fever and what do you find? You scour out the place, and burn up every rag when it’s over and you’re well again, and from that very day no Sid and no Mary can come anear it for six solid useful weeks. Now who thought of scarlet fever for us, Huck, and arranged it, when we was ignorant and didn’t know any better than to go for measles? Was it us? You know it warn’t. Now let that learn you. This conspiracy is being took care of by a wiser wisdom than ourn, Huck. Whenever you find yourself getting untrustful and worried, don’t you be afraid, but recollect about the scarlet fever, and remember that where that help come from there’s more to be had. All you want is faith; then everything will come out right, and better than you can do it yourself.”

Well, it did look so; there wasn’t any way to get around it. It was the scarlet fever that saved the game and kept Sid up country, and it wasn’t us that thought of it.

It was real summer by now, and Tom was well and hearty, and the weather and everything suitable and ready for us to go ahead. So we took our little printing office over to the island to have it [begin page 163] handy any time we might want it; and I fished all the afternoon, and smoked and swum and napped, whilst Tom took his chisels and things and one of his blocks, and carved this on it.

Then he dabbed it over with black ink, and dampened some white printer’s paper and laid it on, and a piece of blanket on that and a heavy smooth block on top of that and give it a good hammering with his mallet, and then took off the paper and it was [begin page 164] printed very beautiful, but by gracious it was all wrong-end first and you had to stand on your head to read it. Well, it beat me, and it beat Tom. There warn’t any way to understand how it come like that. We took and looked at the block, but the block was all right, it was only the printing that was crazy. We printed it again, but it come wrong again, just the same. So then we studied it out and judged we had got at the trouble this time; we put the paper underneath and turned the block upside down on it and printed it. But it never done any good; it was as crazy as it was before.

Tom said that when he set up type in the stick it read from left to right and upside down, but he hadn’t reckoned Mr. Baxter would leave it so, but would fix it right before he printed it, and of course he done it, becuz it was right when it come back printed, but we couldn’t learn that juglery out of our own heads, we would have to wait and get him to tell us the secret; and we reckoned he would, if we swore we wouldn’t tell anybody; and Tom was willing to do that, and so was I.

Tom was ever so disappointed, after all his hard work, and I was very sorry for him, to see him setting there all tired and idle and low spirited; but all of a sudden he got excited and glad, and said it was the luckiest thing that ever happened, and the very thing for a conspiracy, becuz it was so strange and grisly and mysterious, and looked so devilish; and said it would scare the people twice as much as it would if it was in its right mind, and all ship-shape and regular, the common old way; and says—

“Huck, it’s a new thing, and we’ve discovered it, and will go down to prosperity along with Guttingburg and Fowst, and be celebrated everywheres, and can take out a patent on it and not let anybody use it except for conspiracies, and not even then unless they have a pure character and are the best people in the business.”

So it come out right, after all. And it’s mostly so, when things is looking the darkest, Tom said, you only have to wait, and be trustful, and keep your shirt on.

And I asked him who was the Sons of Freedom, and he said the people would think it was the ablitionists, and it would scare the [begin page 165] cold sweat out of them. And I asked him what that nut was for, at the top, and he said it wasn’t a nut, it was an eye and an eyebrow, and stood for vigilance and was emblumatic. That was him—all over; if a thing hadn’t a chance in it somewheres for the emblumatics it warn’t in his line, and he would shake it and hunt up something else.

He said we must have a horn of a solemn deep sound, for the Sons of Freedom to make the signal with; so we chopped down a hickory sapling and skinned it and got a wide strip of bark that was plenty long enough, and went home to supper, and carried it to Jim that night, and he twisted it into a tapering long horn, and we took it into the Widow Douglas’s woods on the front slope of the hill towards the town and Jim clumb the highest tree and hid it there. Then home and to bed; and slid out, away in the night, and down to the river street, and slipped into Slater’s alley when the paterollers was asleep, and so up back behind the blocks and come out through that crack that was betwixt the julery shop and the postoffice, and tacked our bill onto the board, and back the way we come, and home again.

At breakfast in the morning a person could see that aunt Polly was kind of excited about something, becuz she was nervous and absent mindedⒶemendation, and kept getting up and going to the window and looking out, and muttering to herself; and once she sweetened her coffee with salt and it made her choke and strangle; and she would take up her toast and start to butter it and forget what she was doing and lay it down; and when Tom put the little Webster spelling bookⒺexplanatory note in the place of it when she was staring haggard towards the window she buttered that and took a bite, and lost her temper and throwed the book across the house, and says—

“There, hang the thing, I’m that upset I don’t know what I’m a doing. And reason enough. Oh, dear, you little know what danger you’re in, poor things, and what danger we’re all in.”

“Why, what is it, aunt Polly,” Tom says, like he was surprised.

“Don’t you see the people flocking down street and flocking back, and talking so excited, and most of them gone half crazy? Why [begin page 166] there’s an awful bill sticking up, down at the postoffice, and the ablitionists are going to burn the town and run off the niggers.”

“Goodness, aunt Polly, it ain’t as bad as that, I reckon.”

“What do you know about it, you numscull! Hain’t Oliver Benton been here, and PlunketⒺexplanatory note the editor, and Jake Flacker, and told me all about it, and do you reckon you are going to lay abed asleep and then come down here a-reckoning and a-reckoning and a-reckoning, and suppose that that is going to count for anything when a person has been listening to grown people that don’t go reckoning around, but digs up the cold facts and examines them and knows?”

She wouldn’t let him say a word, but said if we was done breakfast, clear out and get hold of everything that was going on, and come and tell her, so she could prepare for the worst. We was glad of the chance; and when we got out in the street we see that everything was working prime, and couldn’t be no better; and Tom said if he had died he would always regretted it.

Down at the postoffice you couldn’t get anear it. Everybody was there, and scrowging in to get a look at the bill, going in red and coming out pale and telling all about it to them that was on the outside edge pawing and shouldering to get in.

Jake Flacker the detective was the biggest man in town, now, and everybody was cringing to him and trying to get something out of him, but he was mum, and only wagged his head as much as to say, “Never you mind, just leave this thing to me, don’t you worry;” and people whispered around and said, “I bet you he knows them rascals, and every move they make in the game, and can put his hand on them whenever he wants to—look at that eye of his’n; you can’t hide nothing from an eye like that.” And Colonel ElderⒺexplanatory note said the bill was a most remarkable one and proved that these warn’t no common ornery canail, but blackhearted biggots of the highest intelligents. It pleased Tom to hear him say that, for he was the most looked up to of any man in town, and come from old Virginia and belonged to the quality. Colonel Elder said the bill was done in a new and ockult and impossible way, and showed what we was [begin page 167] coming to in these abandund days; and that seemed to make everybody shudder.

And that warn’t all the shuddering they done. They shivered every time the signals was mentioned. They said they would wake up some night with their throats cut and them awful sounds dinging in their ears. And then somebody noticed that the kind of sound it was going to be warn’t named distinct in the bill. Mostly they reckoned it was a horn, but said there warn’t no proof of it; it might be blows on a anvil, Pete Kruger the German blacksmith said; and Abe Wallace the sexton said yes, and it might be blows on a bell, too. And then they all up and cussed the uncertainty of it, and said they could stand it better, and maybe get some sleep, too, if they knowed what it was.

Colonel Elder spoke up again, and said yes, that was bad, but the uncertainty about the date was worse.

“That’s so,” they said; “we don’t know when they’re coming— the bill don’t say. Maybe it’s weeks, maybe it’s days,—”

“And maybe it’s to-night,” says the Colonel, and that made them shiver again. “We must take time by the firelock, friends; we must get ready; not next week, not to-morrow, but to-day.” They give a little shout, and said the Colonel was right. He went on and made them a speech and braced them up, then Claghorn the justice of the peace made one, and by this time everything was booming and the most of the town was there and they turned it into a public meeting; and whilst the iron was hot, Plunket the editor got up and spoke, and praised up Colonel Elder, which was in the last war and at the battle of New Orleans, and knowed all about soldiering, and was the man they needed now. And he moved to elect him Provo Marshal and set up martial law in the town, and they done it. And then the Colonel he thanked them for the honor they done him, and ordered Captain Haskins and Captain Sam RumfordⒺexplanatory note to call out their companies and go into camp in the public square, and put details all about town to guard it, and issue ball cartridge, and have them in uniform, and all that. So then the meeting broke up, and we started along.

[begin page 168] Tom said everything was working splendid, but it didn’t seem so to me. I says—

“How are we going to get around, nights? Won’t the soldiers watch us and meddle with us? We are tied, Tom, we can’t do a thing.”

“No,” he says, “it’s going to be better for us than ever, now.”

“How?” ’

“They’ll want spies, and they can’t get them. They know it. And Jake Flacker’s no good. He don’t know enough to follow the fence and find the corner. I’ve got a ruputation, on account of beating the DunlapsⒺexplanatory note and getting the di’monds, and I’ll manage for us—you’ll see.”

He done it, too. The Colonel was glad to have him, and wanted him to get some more, if he could, and he would put them under him. So Tom said all he wanted was me and Jim. He said he wanted Jim to spy amongst the niggers. The Colonel said it was a good idea, and everybody knowed Jim and could trust him; so he give Tom passes, for us and him, and that fixed us all right.

Then we went home and told about everything except spying and the passes; and soon we heard drums and a fife away off, and it come nearer, and pretty soon Sam Rumford’s company went a marching by—tramp, tramp, tramp, all the feet a-rumbling down just as regular, and Sam a-howling the orders, “ Shoul- - - der—arms! by the left file, for- - - -wordⒶemendation!” and so on, and the fifes a-screaming and the drums a-banging and a-crashing so you couldn’t hear yourself think, by George it was splendid and stirred a person up, and there was more children along than soldiers; and the uniforms was beautiful, and so was the flag, and every time Sam Rumford whirled his sword in the air and yelled, it catched the sun and made the prettiest flash you ever see. But aunt Polly she stood there white and quivery, and looked perfectly gashly. And she says—

“Goodness only knows what is coming to us. I am so thankful Sid and Mary—oh, Tom, if you was only with them.”

It was Tom’s turn to shiver—and mine, too; and we done it. The next thing, she would be arranging for him to go out somewheres in [begin page 169] the country where some family had had scarlet fever and would take him. Tom knowed it, and knowed there wasn’t any time to waste; so we went out back to fetch some wood for the kitchen, and paddled over to the island to think up what we better do to get around this trouble; and Tom set down, off by himself, and thought it out, and took a pine block and carved this on it and printed a lot of them with red ink.

We fetched them home, and away in the night we went spying around and showing the passes when the soldiers stopped us, and stuck one on Judge Thatcher’s door and fifteen others, and on aunt Polly’s; becuz Tom said if we didn’t stick them on anybody’s door but aunt Polly’s the people might suspicion something. We had lots of them left, but Tom said he reckoned we would need them.

[begin page 170] In the morning—it was Wednesday—it made another big stir, and them that had them on their doors was thankful and glad, and them that hadn’t was scared and mad, and said pretty rough things about the others, and said if they warn’t ablitionists they was pets of them, anyway, and they reckoned it was about the same thing. And everybody was astonished to see how the S. of F. gang had managed to come right into the town and stick up the things under the soldiers’s noses; and of course they was troubled and worried about it, and got suspicious of one another, not knowing who was a friend and who wasn’t; and some begun to say they believed the town was full of traitors; and then they shut up, all of a sudden, and got afraid to say anything; and got a notion that they had already said too much, and maybe to the wrong people.

I never see a person do such a noble job of cussing as the Colonel; and Tom he said the same. And he had up the captains to headquarters and said it was scandlous, and said he couldn’t have things going on like this, and they’d got to keep better watch, and they promised they would.

Tom told me to set down the name of everybody I heard talking against people that had our protection-paper on their doors, and he done the same.

Aunt Polly was comforted to have the paper on her door, and not scared any more, like she was; but Mrs. Lawson the lawyer’s wife come in, in the morning, and made her feel bad about it. She let on she didn’t know aunt Polly had one, and said thank goodness she hadn’t any, and didn’t want it, but at the same time whoever wished to be protected by ablition secret gangs and warn’t ashamed of it was welcome for all her. And when aunt Polly colored up a little and couldn’t say anything, she got up and says “but maybe I’m indiscreet, please forgive me,” and went out very grand, and aunt Polly’s comfort was most all gone.

That night we stuck the papers on all the doors we took the names of, and stuck one on Mrs. Lawson’s, too. It shut up a lot of people’s mouths, and made Mrs. Lawson quiet; and comfortabler, too, than she was before, I reckon. And we found Jake Flacker standing watch asleep down by the lumber yard, and stuck one on [begin page 171] his back. Me and Tom went about town in the morning, and lo and behold some of the papers was missing from some of the doors— five—and there was five papers on doors that we hadn’t put them on.

And he said wait till next morning and we would see something more that was fresh. And it was so. Everybody that had a paper had wrote his name on it to keep people from stealing it, for it was all over town how they was being smouched. Aunt Polly had her name on her paper, wrote large and plain, and the same with Mrs. Lawson.

When Saturday come all the town that hadn’t the papers was tuckered out and looked seedy, becuz they had set up the most of three nights listening for the signals, and then laid down to sleep in their clothes when they couldn’t keep awake any more. Then, just as the excitement was wavering a little and getting ready to go down, on account of no signals yet, the paper come out and started it all up again; for it was full of it, and just wild about it; and it had extracts from papers in Illinois and St Louis about it, and showed how it was traveling and making the town celebrated; and so everybody was proud as well as worried, and read the paper all through, and Tom said they hadn’t ever done that before. So he was proud, too, and said it was a good conspiracy, and we would go ahead, now, and give it another boom.

So everything was all right, now, and we went around in the night and stuck up the reward-bill for the runaway nigger-boy; and Jim was along, on spy-business. Then we laid the plans for next afternoon—like this. Towards evening me and Tom would go up to the hanted house on Crawfish Branch, and whilst Tom was in there dressing to play nigger, I would go on up to Bat Bradish’s and tell him I knowed where the nigger was that was advertised, and would show him the place if he would give me some of the money [begin page 172] when he got the reward. Then I would fetch him and turn Tom over to him, chain and all, and Tom was to have the extra key along, and unlock the chain in the night and escape and go back to the hanted house and change clothes again and wash up, in the Branch, and carry his nigger clothes home; and Jim would blow the horn-signals in the high tree at midnight and set the town wild; and in the morning of course Bat would come to town and tell about his nigger that was escaped, and that would make everybody sure that the ablishonists was on hand to a certainty; and that would fire things up worse than ever and make the conspiracy the best success we ever had; and Tom could be a detective and help hunt for himself, and have a grand time.

So next afternoon towards dusk we come in sight of the hanted house, and was about to step out of the woods into the open, but Tom pulled me back, and said somebody was coming down the Branch. And it was so. It was Bat Bradish. So Tom told me to go and meet up with him and tell him, and then get him out of the way until Tom could go and dress in the hanted house. I left Tom waiting in the bushes and went out and when I got to where Bat was I told him about the nigger. But stead of jumping at the chance he looked kind of bothered; and scratched his head and cussed a little, and said he had just got one runaway nigger a half an hour ago, and couldn’t manage two in these skittish times; did I reckon I could keep watch of mine a few days and then come?

I didn’t know anything else to do, and of course it could take some of the tuck out of the conspiracy and Tom wouldn’t like that, so I done the best I could the way things stood and told him I reckoned I could manage it. That cheered him up and he said I wouldn’t lose anything by it, he would look out for that; and said the nigger he had got was a splendid one and had a five hundred dollar reward on him, and he had bought the chance off of the man that found him for two hundred cash and would clear about three hundred, and a profitable good job, too. He was going down to town now to see the sheriff and make his arrangements. As soon as he was out of sight down the Cold Spring road I whistled to Tom and he come and I told him the bad news.

[begin page 173] It just broke his heart. I knowed it would. He had been imagining all kinds of adventures and good times he was going to have when he was washed up and hunting for himself, and he couldn’t seem to get over it. It looked to me, in a private way, like Providence was drawing out of the conspiracy; and so, by and by I made a mistake and said so. It made him pretty fierce, and he turned on me and said I ought to be ashamed of myself—a person without any trust, and not deserving any blessings; and then he went on and give me down the banksⒺexplanatory note; and said how could I know but this was one of the most mysterious and inscrutablest moves connected with the whole conspiracy? He had got a good start, now, so I knowed everything was going to be comfortable again; for if I let him alone and didn’t interrupt, he would hammer right along with his arguments till he proved to himself that this was a planned-out move and belonged in the game. And sure enough, he done it. Then he was gay and cheerful right away, and said he was glad it happened and said he was foolish and wicked for losing pluck merely because he couldn’t see the design straight off. I let him alone and he rattled along, and finally he got the notion that maybe he had guessed out what the new design was—it was for him to go yonder and trade places with that nigger. And so he was going straight to dress and get ready; but I says—

“Tom Sawyer, that’s a five-hundred-dollar nigger; you ain’t a five-hundred-dollar nigger, I don’t care how you dress up.”

He couldn’t get around that, you know; there warn’t any way. But he didn’t like to let on that I had laid him out; so he talked random a minute, trying to work out, then he said we couldn’t tell anything about it till we had seen the nigger. And said, come along.

I didn’t think there was any sense in it, but I was willing to let him down as easy as I could, so we struck out up the hollow. It was dark, now, but we knowed the way well enough. It was a log house, and no light in it; but there was a light in the lean-to, and we could see through the chinks. Sure enough it was a man, and a hearty good strong one—a thousand-dollar nigger, and worth it anywhere. He was stretched out on the ground, chained, and snoring hard.

[begin page 174] So then Tom wanted us to go in and look at him good. But I wouldn’t do it. I warn’t going to fool with a strange nigger in the night in a lonesome place like that, I will get you to excuse me, I says. Tom said, all right, I needn’t if I didn’t want to, nobody was forcing me. Then he pulled the latch-string easy and got down on his hands and knees and crope in, and I kept my eye to the chink to see what would happen. When Tom got to the other end where the nigger was, he took up the candle and shaded it with his hand and examined the nigger, which had his mouth wide open to let the snore out. I see Tom lookⒶemendation surprised at something; and I reckoned it was something the nigger said in his sleep, becuz I heard him growl out something. Then Tom took up the nigger’s old battered shoes and turned them this way and that, examining them like a detective, and something fell out of one of them, and he picked it up, and looked around the place a little, here and there, same as a detective would, then set the candle back and crope out, and says come along.

So we went to the hanted house and struck up over Cardiff Hill, and Tom says—

“I reckon this ’llⒶemendation learn you to have trust next time, Huck Finn.”

“What will?”

“Well, there was a plan and a program, wasn’t there?”

“There was, yes—and it got busted.”

“Did, did it? According to the plan and the program a runaway nigger was going to escape from there to-night—ain’t that so?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it’s going to happen.”

“Shucks—what are you talking?”

“It was going to be a white nigger wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“All right, that’s going to happen.”

“Tom, you don’t mean it.”

“Yes I do.”

“Honest Injun, Tom, is that man white?”

“Honest Injun, Huck, he is.”

“Why, it’s the most astonishing thing I ever see.”

[begin page 175] “Huck, it’s the very same game we laid out to play ourselves. Providence hasn’t changed anything in the program except just the person—that’s all. Now I reckon you’ll have trust hereafter.”

“Why Tom, it’s the strangest thing that ever—”

“Happened? I told you it was the most mysterious and inscrutablest design in the whole conspiracy. I reckon you believe me now. We don’t know what the change is made for Huck, but we know one thing—it was for the best.”

He said it very solemn, and it made me feel thataway. Well, it was all very wonderful and strange. It made us kind of quiet a while, then I says—

“Tom, how’d you know he is white?”

“Oh, a lot of things. They couldn’t fooled old Bat if he had good eyesight. Huck, for one thing, the inside of that nigger’s hands are black.”

“Well, what’s the matter of that?”

“Why, you idiot, the inside of a nigger’s hands ain’t black.”

“That’s so, Tom, I didn’t think of it.”

“And he talked some words in his sleep; he talked white, not nigger; hasn’t learnt to talk nigger in his sleep, yet.”

“Tom, what makes you think he’s going to get out to-night.”

“Evidence of it in his shoe.”

“Something fell out of it; was that it?”

“Two things fell out; I put one back. It was a key. But I tried it in his padlock first, and it fitted.”

“By gracious!”

“He’s playing our scheme to a dot, don’t you see?”

“Why, Tom, it just beats anything that ever was. Say—what was the other thing that fell out?”

“I didn’t put that back—I’ve got it yet.”

“Lemme see it, Tom; what is it?”

But he put me off, and said it was too dark to see it; so I knowed he was working one of his mysteries and I’d got to wait till it suited him to come out with it. I asked him how he come to look in the nigger’s shoe. He sniffed, and says—

“Huck Finn, hain’t you got any reasoning powers at all? Where [begin page 176] would a detective look? He looks everywheres—he don’t make any exceptions. First, he looks where he ain’t likely to find anything— becuz that is where he’d druther find it, of course, on account of the showiness of it; and if he is disappointed he turns to and hunts in the likely places. But he’s got to examine everything—it’s his business; and he must remember all about it at the trial, too. I didn’t want to find the things in the shoe, of course—”

“Why, Tom?”

“Didn’t I just tell you why? Becuz it was the likely place. A white nigger that’s playing a swindle knows his new marster might take a notion to search him; so he don’t hide his suspiciousest things in his pockets, does he?”

“Well, now, I wouldn’t a thought of that, but I reckon it’s so, Tom. You think of everything and you notice everything.”

“A detective’s got to. I noticed everything in that lean-to, and can tell all about it, from the musket on the hooks with no flint in the lock to Bat’s old silver-plated watch hanging under the shelf with the minute-hand broke off the same length as the hour-hand and you can’t come within two weeks of telling what time of day it is, to save you; and I noticed—”

All of a sudden I thought of something—

“Tom!”

“Well?”

“We are just foolish.”

“How?”

“To be fooling along here like this. The thing for us to do is to rush to the sheriff’s and tell him, so he can slip up here and catch this humbug and jail him for swindling Bat.”

He stopped where he was, and says, very sarcastic—

“You think so, do you?”

It made me feel sheepish, but I said “Yes,” anyway, though I didn’t say it very confident.

“Huck Finn,” he says, kind of sorrowful, “ youⒶemendation can’t ever seem to see the noblest opportunities. Here is this conspiracy weaving along just perfect, and you want to turn him in in this ignorant way and spoil it all.”

[begin page 177] “How is that going to spoil it, Tom Sawyer?”

“Well, just look at it a minute,” he says, “and I reckon you’ll see. How would a detective act? I’ll ask you that. Would he go in that simple girly way and catch this humbug and make him tell where the other one is, and then catch the other one and make him hand out the two hundred dollars, and have the whole thing over and done with before morning and not a rag of glory in it anywhere? I never see such a mud turtle as you, Huck Finn.”

“Well, then,” I says, “ whatⒶemendation would he do? It looks like the common sense way, to me, Tom Sawyer.”

“Common sense!” he says, as scornful as he could. “What’s common sense got to do with detecting, you leatherhead? It ain’t got anything to do with it. What is wanted is genius and penetration and marvelousness. A detective that had common sense couldn’t ever make a ruputation—couldn’t even make his living.”

“Well, then,” I says, “what is the right way?”

“There’s only one. Let these frauds go ahead and play their game and get away, then follow them up by clews—that’s the way. It may take weeks and weeks, but is full of glory. Clews is the thing.”

“All right,” I says, ruther aggravated, “have it your own way, but I think it’s an assful way.”

“What is there assful about it, Huck Finn?”

“It’s assful because you mayn’t ever catch them at all, and when you do they’ve spent all of Bat’s two hundred and he can’t get it back. Where’s the sense in that?”

“Don’t I tell you there ain’t any sense in detecting,—I never see such a clam. It’s nobler—and higher—and grander; and who cares for the money, anyway?—the glory’s the thing.”

“All right,” I says, “go it—I ain’t interfering. What’s your plan?”

“Now you’re getting into your right mind. Come along, and I’ll tell you as we climb. These two frauds think they are safe—they don’t know there’s any detectives around, in a little back settlement like ourn. They’d never think of such a thing. It makes them our meat. Why? Becuz the nigger will wash up, and both of them will [begin page 178] get up some new disguises so as Bat and anybody else won’t know them, and like as not they’ll stay here a while and try to play some more swindles. Now then, the plan is this. Whenever you and Jim sees a stranger, you let me know. If he’s the nigger, I’ll reconnize him; and I’ll let him alone till I catch him with another stranger—then we’ll take them into camp.”

“You might get the wrong ones.”

“You leave it to me—I’ll show you.”

“Is that the whole plan, Tom?”

“You’ll find it’s a plenty. You lay for strangers and tell me—that’s all I want.”

So then we went ahead and clumb the tree and found Jim there and told him the whole thing, and he said it was splendid, and believed it was the best conspiracy that ever was, and was coming along judicious and satisfactory. And about half past one in the morning he blowed the signals and it was a perfectly horrible noise, enough to make a person turn in his grave; and then we pulled out for town to sample the effects.

It couldn’t a been better, it couldn’t a been finer. Tom said so his own self, and Jim said the same. The whole town was out in the streets, taking on like it was the Last Day. There was lights in all the houses, and people ranting up and down and carrying on and prophecying, and that scared they didn’t know what they was about. And the drums was rumbling and the fifes tooting and the soldiers tramp-tramping, and Colonel Elder and Sam Rumford shouting the orders, and the dogs howling—it was all beautiful and glorious.

When it got to be about an hour before dawn Tom said he must get back to Bat’s place, now, so as to get footprints and other clews while they was fresh, so he could begin to track out the escaped nigger. He knowed his aunt Polly would be uneasy about him, but [begin page 179] it wouldn’t do for him to go there, he might get locked up for safety, and that could make no end of trouble with the conspiracy, so he told Jim to go and explain to her how he was out on detective work, and ask her permission and comfort her up; then he could rush and overtake us. Me and Tom struck out up the river road, then, and got to Bat’s just in the gray of the dawn.

And by gracious! Right before the lean-to was Bat Bradish stretched out on the ground, and seemed to be dead, and was all bloody; and his old musket was laying there with blood and hair on the barrel; and the lean-to was open and the nigger gone, and things upset and smashed around in a great way, and plenty of footprints and clews and things, all a person could want. Tom told me to rush for the undertaker—not the new one, give the job to the old one, Jake Trumbull, which was a friend of ourn—and said he would come along and catch up with me as soon as he had got the clews tallied up.

He was always quick, Tom was. I warn’t out of sight at the turn of the river road when I looked back and see him waving his hat for me. So I run back, and he says—

“We needn’t go for help, Huck, it’s been ’tended to.”

“What makes you reckon so, Tom?”

“I don’t reckon anything about it, I know it. Jim’s been here.”

And sure enough he had. Tom had found his tracks. Of course he had come the short way over the hill and beat us, becuz we come the long way, up the river road. I was dog-tired, and glad we didn’t have to go for anybody. I went behind the house, out of sight of the dead man, and set down and rested whilst Tom examined around amongst the clews. It warn’t but a few minutes till he come and said he was through, and said there’d been four men there besides Bat and Jim, and he had their prints, but nobody’s prints was inside the lean-to except Bat’s and the white nigger’s and another man’s—the nigger’s pal, he reckoned. He said Jim and two of the men was gone for help by the short way over the hill, and the nigger and his pal had made for the creek, and we would take out after them—come along.

It was an easy trail,Ⓐemendation through mangy poor little grass-patches with [begin page 180] bare dust between; and where the tracks struck the dust they bored in heavy and showed that the men was running as hard as they could go. Tom says—

“They don’t know the country very well, you see; or they’re too excited; or they’ve got pointed a little wrong on account of it’s being dark. Anyway, if they don’t slew to the left pretty soon they’ll get into trouble.”

“Looks like it,” I says; “they’re aiming for the jumping-off place.”

The jumping-off place was twelve foot high, and had low bushes on it, and even in the daytime an ignorant person wouldn’t know it was there till he was over it. We chased the tracks plumb to the edge. Then we pulled off to the left and clumb down and got the trail again at the jumping-off place and followed it fifty yards to the Branch. The Branch was uncommon high but had begun to fall; so there was a flat wide belt of half-dry mud at the edge, shriveling and stinking, and Tom says—

“Good luck, Huck, the pal hurt his left leg when he fell over the jumping-off place, it only makes a dragging-print here, and the nigger had to help him along. It’s a clew, don’t you know!”

He would trade pie for a clew, any time. Next, he says—

“They’ve got old Cap. Haines’sⒺexplanatory note canoe; hooked it, I reckon.”

Said he knowed it by the print the bow made in the mud. It might be—I didn’t know. I had stole the canoe lots of times, but never noticed. I says—

“Now we can go home. They’re safe in Illinois by this time and we ain’t going to hear of them no more.”

But he said no, it might be and it mightn’t be; he wouldn’t jump to no conclusions about it—best way was to go ahead and find out; and says—

“The only way to ascertain a thing is to ascertain; guessing ain’t any good. And besides—look at it all around. Suppose this pal’s leg is broke? Is he going to strike for Illinois and the everlasting woods? No; he’ll want a doctor. They haven’t been in town—they’d have been in jail in two minutes, becuz they’re strangers; it ain’t any healthy place for strangers in these conspiracy times. They’ve come [begin page 181] from up river or over river; they know Bat; they’ve traded with him before, some time or other. If the leg’s broke they’ve got to have a doctor—”

“Well then, they’ve gone to town, Tom.”

“In Cap. Haines’s canoe?—from close to the murder?—a canoe that they stole, you can bet on it—it’s the kind of folks they are. I don’t think they’ve gone to town.”

“Well, I don’t, nuther, come to think. What will they do, Tom?”

We was tramping along down the Branch, all this time. Tom thought a while, then says—

“Huck, if they had plenty of time, they could manage, but I reckon they haven’t. Nearest town up-stream, twenty-five miles— an all-day trip with one paddle; nearest town down-stream, twenty-one miles—five hours; but it wouldn’t do any good; the news of the murder will be there to-day, and even if they sunk Haines’s canoe and stole another, people would still want to know where they got that leg.” After studying a little, he says “I hope they’ve done that. I hope they’ve had the time. We’d have them before night, dead sure!”

“Good!” says I.

We went tramping along, Tom a-watching for clews. Pretty soon he shook his head and pulled a long breath, and says—

“No, it won’t work, Huck; they’re around here somewheres— they hadn’t the time.”

“How do you know?”

“Well, the nigger overslept or something, the pal didn’t turn up till hours after he oughter, and so the thing didn’t come off till towards dawn.”

“What makes you think that, Tom?”

“Becuz Bat was warm yet, when we got there; I felt of him, under his waistcoat.”

It give me the cold shivers; I wouldn’t a done it.

“Go on,” I says.

“The nigger has got to wash up and change to white folks’ clothes before he can go and smuggle a doctor to his pal, and like [begin page 182] enough the pal’s got a disguise, too. The nigger’s got another suit, anyway—that’s sure. He would want to make his change pretty soon after he escaped, before he met up with anybody. So I reckon the clothes must be hid around here somewheres, not very far. Well, by the time the washing and dressing and paddling three miles was done it would be daylight and they would be chased and caught as they passed the town, I don’t care which side of the river they went down. If they’ve tried it they’ve made a mistake.”

Well, when we had gone along down about a half a mile and was abreast the stretch of bushes back of the hanted house, right there we struck the trail again. Tom says—

“Ain’t it curious? They got in ahead of us on our scheme all around: play counterfeit-nigger like we was going to do, and jump our dressing-room, too. They’ve been around here before, Huck.”

The canoe warn’t anywhere in sight; they had hid her or turned her loose, we didn’t know which, and didn’t care anyway, it warn’t any matter. We crope through the bushes and there was the trail plowing straight for the house through the high weeds where the garden used to was. The windows was still boarded up the way me and Tom done it the summer before, the time we let on to be a gang of counterfeiters and used to go there and cut out tin money in the night and contribbit it to the mishonary business Sundays, and she was looking awful lonesome and mournful, the way she always done. Tom said we’d got to get down on our hands and knees and crawl through the weeds, and go very, very slow, and not make the least noise or they might hear us. I says—

“Who? Me? I reckon I see myself a doing it. If you want to go and get into trouble with them hellions,” I says, “it’s your instincts and it’s all right, and I’ll wait for you; but nary a peg do I budge.”

So he took his course with his little compass and started, and I watched, out of the shadder of the bushes. He done it first rate. You would see the tops of the weeds wiggle a little, and after a quiet spell they would wiggle again, a little further along—the slowest business; but always I could keep track of him, and always he was getting ahead. So he got there by and by, and I waited the dullest longest time, and got afraid they had grabbed him and choked him [begin page 183] to death; but at last I see by the weeds that he was coming again, and I was awful glad. As soon as he got to me he says—

“Come along, it’s all right—they’re there. I crep’ through the hole where the hogs get under the house, and it was dark as pitch in there and in the house, and I stuck my head up through the busted place in the floor—”

“What a fool!”

“Fool yourself!—they couldn’t see me; and couldn’t if it had been light—our old counterfeiter-chest was in the way. And I didn’t see them, either, but I’ve heard them talk. I was ’most as close to them as I am to you, now. If I had had a walking stick I could a punched them with it. But I wouldn’t.”

“Well, then, you’ve got some sense left, but not enough to hurt, Tom Sawyer. What did they say?”

“Talked about the scrimmage.”

“Like enough—but what did they say?”

“Lots.”

Then he said he was too tired to walk down to town, and no hurry anyway—we must jump in the river and float down on our backs—which was satisfactry to me; but I knowed I had got all I was going to get about that talk for just now. Them old roosters had laid another mystery, and he warn’t ready to have it hatched out yet.

Just where the Branch goes into the river we struck a mortal piece of good luck. Some person had come ashore and left his skiff pulled up, with the oars in the rollocks, and warn’t anywhere in sight; so we borrowed it, Tom saying something grateful about Providence, and we got in and pulled out a good piece and laid down in her and lit the pipes and let her float. It was very comfortable after all the hard work we’d been through. By and by Tom says—

“It warn’t in the plan, but of course it’s there for the best.”

“What ain’t in the plan?”

“The murder. It’s a kind of a pity, becuz there warn’t any real harm in Bat Bradish, but as long as it had to be somebody I reckon it’s as well it’s him, and it does give this conspiracy a noble lift, now [begin page 184] don’t it, Huck? We’d be mean not to be grateful. And more trustful than ever, too. Why, Huck, a body wouldn’t think it, but a person can see, now, that a conspiracy that is conducted right is just as good as a revolution. Just as good and ain’t half the trouble.”

“Looks so to me, Tom.”

“Huck, it’s just like a revolution in some ways—a person that hadn’t had any experience couldn’t tell it from a revolution. You see, it starts in for one thing, and comes out another; starts in in a little small way to worry a village, and murders a nigger-trader. Yes, sir, it’s got all the marks of a revolution; and the way it’s prospering along now, I believe it could be nursed up and turned into a revolution. All it wants now is capital, and something to revolute about.”

Well, he was started, and so I let him alone. It was the best way. He would think it out, and gild it up, and put the ruffles on it, and I could lay still and rest, and that suited me.

Just as we struck into town and went ashore by the Cold Spring where the flour mill is, here comes Higgins’s BillⒺexplanatory note, the one-legged nigger, hopping along on his crutch, very much excited and all out of breath and says—

“Marse Tom, ole Jim want you en Huck to come to de jail quick as you kin—dey’s got him, en jammed him in, seh.”

“What for?”

“Killin’ ole Bat Bradish.”

I says—

“Great jeeminy!”

But Tom’s face lit up pious and happy—it made me shiver to see it; and he give Bill a dime, and says, quite ca’m—

“All right; run along; we are a coming.” Bill cleared out and we hurried up, and Tom says, kind of grateful, “Ain’t it beautiful, the way it’s developing out?—we couldn’t ever thought of that, and it’s the splendidest design yet. Now you’ll be trustful, I reckon, and quit fretting and losing confidence.”

“Tom Sawyer,” I says, “ whatⒶemendation in the nation is there splendid about it?” I was mad, and grieved, and most crying. “There’s our old Jim, the best friend we ever had, and the best hearted, and the [begin page 185] whitest man inside that ever walked, and now he’s going to get hung for a murder he never done, I just know he never done it, and whose fault is it but this blame conspiracy, I wish it was in—”

“Shut up!” he says, “ youⒶemendation can’t tell a blessing from a bat in the eye, I never see such an idiot—always flying at everything Providence does, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Who’s running this conspiracy?—you? Blame it, you are hendering it every way you can think of. Old Jim get hung? Who’s going to let him get hung, you tadpole?”

“Well, but—”

“Hush up! there ain’t any well about it. It’s going to come out all right, and the grandest thing that ever was, and just oceans of glory for us all—and here you are finding fault with your blessings, you catfish. Old Jim get hung! He’s going to be a hero, that’s what he’s going to be. Yes, and a brass band and a torchlight procession on top of it, or I ain’t no detective.”

It made me feel good and satisfied again, I couldn’t help it. It was always just so. He had so much confidence it was catching, and a person always had to knock under and come to his notions.

We had our passes, and was officials, so we shouldered through the crowd at the jail door and the sheriff let us in, though he wouldn’t let anybody else. Tom told me private not to know anything, and he wasn’t going to know anything himself—he would do the talking for us both, to the sheriff. He done it. The sheriff didn’t get anything out of him. Old Jim was scared most to death, and was sure he was going to be hung; but Tom was ca’m, and told him he needn’t worry, it warn’t going to happen; and so it warn’t ten minutes till Jim was ca’m, too, and all cheered up and comfortable. Tom told Jim the officers wouldn’t ask him any questions, and if visitors got in and asked him questions he must say he couldn’t answer anybody but his lawyer. Then Jim went ahead and told us his tale.

He didn’t find aunt Polly at home, of course she was out getting her share of the scare; so he was after us pretty soon, and hurried up, reckoning he could catch up with us, but we went the long way by the river road and he went the short one over Cardiff Hill; so it [begin page 186] wasn’t light, yet, when he got to Bat’s place, and he stumbled over Bat and fell on him; and just as he was getting up a couple of men come running, and grabbed him, and it was Buck Fisher and old Cap. Haines, and they said they had heard the murdersome row and was glad they catched him in the act. He was going to explain, but they shut him up and wouldn’t let him say a word—said a nigger’s word warn’t any account anyway. They felt of Bat’s heart and said he was dead, then they took Jim back over the hill and down to the jail, and spread the news, and then the town was that beside itself it didn’t know what to do. Tom studied a while, and says, kind of thoughtful—

“It could be better. Still, it ain’t bad, the way it is.”

“Good lan’, Mars Tom, how you’s a talkin’! Here I is, wid de man’s blood all over me, en you—”

“That’s all right, as far as it goes—a good point, a very good point; but it don’t go far enough.”

“How does you mean, Marse Tom?”

“By itself it ain’t any evidence of a motive. What we want’s,Ⓐemendation a motive.”

“What’s a motive, Marse Tom?”

“A reason for killing the man.”

“My goodness, Marse Tom, I never killed him.”

“I know. That’s the weak place. It’s easy to show that you probably killed him, and of course that is pretty good, but it can’t hang a man—a white one, anyway. It would be ever so much stronger if you had a motive to kill him, you see.”

“Marse Tom, is I in my right mine, or is it you? Blame my cats if I kin understan’.”

“Why, plague take it, it’s plain enough. Look at it. I’m going to save you—that’s all right, and perfectly easy. But where’s the glory of saving a person merely just from jail. To save him from the gallows is the thing. It’s got to be murder in the first degree—you get the idea? You’ve got to have a motive for killing the man—then we’re all right! Jim, if you can think up a rattling good motive, I can get you put up for murder in the first degree just as easy as turning your hand over.”

[begin page 187] He was all excitement and hope, but Jim—why, Jim could hardly get out his words he was that astonished and scared.

“Why, Marse Tom—why, bless yo’ heart, honey, I ain’t in no sweat to hunt up dish-yer—”

“Hold still, I tell you, and think of a motive! I could have thought up a dozen while you are fooling away all this time. Look here, did Bat Bradish like you?—did you like Bat?”

That seemed to jostle Jim. Tom saw it, and followed it right up. Jim dodged this and that and t’other way, but it didn’t do any good, Tom chased him up and found out it was Bradish that was at the bottom of it the time old Miss Watson come so near selling Jim down the river and Jim heard about it and run away and me and him floated down to Arkansaw on the raft. It was Bradish that persuaded her to sell Jim and give him the job of doing it for her. So at last Tom says—

“That’s enough. That’s a motive. We are all right, now, it’s murder in the first degree, and we’ll have a grand time out of it and when we get through you’ll be a hero, Jim. I wouldn’t take a thousand dollars for your chances.”

But Jim didn’t like it a bit, and said he would sell out for ten cents, and glad to. Tom was very well satisfied, now, and said we would tell the district attorney—which is the lawyer for the prostitution—all about the motive, and then things would go right along. Then he arranged with the sheriff for Jim to have pipes and good vittles and everything he wanted, and said good-bye to Jim, promising we would come every day and amuse him some more. Then we left.

The town was booming. Everybody was raging about the murder, and didn’t doubt but Jim was in with the Sons of Freedom and been paid by the gang to murder the nigger-trader, and there’d be more—every man that owned niggers was in danger of his life; it [begin page 188] was only just the beginning, the place was going to swim in blood, you’ll see. That is what they said. It was foolish talk, that talk about Jim, becuz he had always been a good nigger, and everybody knowed it; but you see he was a free nigger this last year and more, and that made everybody down on him, of course, and made them forget all about his good character. It’s just the way with people. And the way they was taking on about Bat Bradish you would a thought they had lost a angel; they couldn’t seem to get over grieving about him and telling one another no end of sweet little beautiful things he had done, one time or another, which they had forgot till now; and it warn’t no trouble, nuther, becuz they hadn’t ever happened. Yesterday there wouldn’t anybody say a good word for the nigger-trader nor care a dern about him, becuz everybody despised nigger-traders, of course; but to-day, why, they couldn’t seem to get over the loss of him, nohow. Well, it’s people’s way; they’re mostly puddnheads—looks so to me.

Of course they was going to lynch Jim, everybody said it; and they just packed all the streets around the jail, and talked excited, and couldn’t hardly wait to commence. But Cap’n Ben Haskins, sheriff, was inside, and the mob that started in there without an invite would have a sickly time, and knowed it; and Colonel Elder was outside, and that warn’t healthy for a mob, and they knowed it. So me and Tom went along; we warn’t worried about Jim. Tom let the motive leak out where it would get to the attorney for the prostitution; then we got in the back way at his aunt Polly’s and got something to eat and didn’t have any trouble becuz she was out enjoying the excitements and hunting for Tom; and from there we went up in the woods on the hill to get some sleep where we wouldn’t be in the way, and Tom made his plans.

He said we would ’tend the inquest to-day, and be on hand at the Grand Jury to-morrow, but our evidence wouldn’t go for anything against Cap. Haines’s and Buck Fisher’s, and Jim would be brought in for first degree all right. His trial would come off in about a month. It would take that long for the pal’s leg to get so he could walk on it. Then we must have it fixed so that when the trial was just going against Jim we could snatch the two frauds into court and [begin page 189] clear Jim and make a noble sensation, and Jim would be a hero and we would all be heroes.

I didn’t like it; I was scared of it; it was too risky; something might happen; any little hitch, and Jim’s a goner! A nigger don’t stand any show. I said we ought to tell the sheriff and let him go and get the men now—and jail them, and then we’d have them when we wanted them.

But Tom wouldn’t listen to it for a minute. There warn’t anything stunning about it. He wanted to get the men into the court without them suspicioning anything—and then make the grand pow-wow, the way he done in ArkansawⒺexplanatory note. That Arkansaw business had just pisoned him, I could see it plain; he wouldn’t ever be satisfied to do things in a plain common way again.

Well, we couldn’t keep awake any longer, so we reckoned we would sleep an hour, and then step down to the inquest. And of course when we woke it was too late. When we got down there it was over, and everybody gone—corpse and all. But it warn’t much matter, we could go to the Grand Jury to-morrow.

Why, we had slept away past the middle of the afternoon and it was coming on sundown. Time to go home for supper; but Tom said no, he wanted to make sure of his men; so we would wait till night and he would step to the hanted house and listen again. I was very willing for him to do it, it would make me feel easier; so we struck down the Branch and slid past, and down to the river and up it a quarter of a mile under the bluff and went in swimming and stayed in till an hour after dark, then come back and Tom crope through the weeds to the house, and I waited.

I waited and waited, and it was awful lonesome and still and creepy there in the dark, and the hanted house so close. It wasn’tⒶemendation actually very long, but it seemed so, you know. At last Tom come a tearing through the weeds and says—

“Oh, poor Jim, poor Jim, he’ll be hung— they’re gone!”

I just fell flat, where I was. Everything was swimming, it seemed to me I was going to faint. Then I let go and cried, I couldn’t help it and didn’t want to. And Tom was crying, too, and said—

“What did I ever do it for?—Huck what did I do it for! I had [begin page 190] them safe, and I could a saved Jim spite of anything anybody could do, if I only hadn’t been a fool. Oh, Huck you wanted me to tell the sheriff, and I was an idiot and wouldn’t listen, and now they’ve got away and we’ll never see them again, and nothing can save Jim, and it’s all my fault, I wish I was dead.”

He took it so hard, and said so many hard things about himself that I hadn’t the heart to say any myself, though I was going to, and had them on my tongue’s end, but you know how it is, that way. I begun to try to comfort him, but he couldn’t bear it, and said call him names, call him the roughest ones I knowed, it was the only thing could do him any good; and then he broke out and abused himself for taking for granted the man’s leg was broke, and maybe it was only sprained—of course it was only sprained, it was perfectly plain, now. Then he had a sudden idea, and said—

“Come!”

So we went tearing down the road for town; said maybe the men would make for the next town below, and we would catch the steamboat and beat them. As we passed the Cold Spring the boat went by; when we got to the wharf she was pulling in the stage, but we jumped for it and made it. People yelled at us to know where we was bound for, but we never took any notice, and went up on the harricane roof and away aft, and set down in the sparks to watch for the canoe, and forgot all about the Grand Jury, but Tom said it wasn’t any matter, nothing could save Jim but to find the men.

Tom couldn’t talk straight and connected, he was gone clean off of hisⒶemendation head by the disastersomeness of what was come to Jim on accounts of him letting the men get away; and pretty soon he seen, himself, that his mind was upside down, becuz he says—

“Huck, I’m so miserable it has knocked all the judgment out of me. Don’t you know there ain’t any sense in us being on this boat?”

“Why, Tom?”

“Becuz it’s in the plan I made on the broken-leg theory, and the leg ain’t broke. The man don’t have to hunt a doctor, and he can go wherever he wants to. And they have gone to Illinois and the [begin page 191] everlasting woods—it’s the rightest place and the safest for them. Huck, they went the minute it was dark, and if we had went in swimming at the mouth of the Branch ’stead of a quarter of a mile above, we’d a seen them. I wish we was back to town, I’d give a million dollars. We would get on their trail and tree them in their camp quick and easy, because the pal’s leg is hurt and he can’t go a yard without help. Huck, we’ve got to get back there the minute we can—what a fool I’ve been to forget that broken-leg theory and come on this boat.”

Well, I could see it now, myself; I didn’t think of it before. But I didn’t say anything mean; his mind warn’t to blame for getting out of true, when you come to think. Anybody’s would. I was starting in to encourage him up, but he busted out bitter and aggravated, and says—

“The luck has turned against us, there ain’t any getting around it—look at this!”

It was rain. I was sorry enough for him to cry.

“It’s going to wipe out the trail.” He begun to get perfectly desprate, and said if any harm come to Jim he would square up the best he could—he would blow his brains out, he wouldn’t miss them.

I couldn’t bear to see him in so much trouble, so I tried to soothe him up, and told him we couldn’t know where the men went to, becuz we didn’t know the men, and so how could we know how they would act? Mightn’t they belong to Burrell’s GangⒺexplanatory note?

“Yes—prob’ly do. What of it?”

“Wouldn’t they be safe if they was with the Gang?”

“Perfectly. Go on.”

“Fox island is their den, ain’t it?”

“Yes.”

“How far from here?”

“Hundred and seventy mile.”

“They can make it in four nights in a canoe and lay up and hide daytimes, and so how do we know they ain’t making for home?”

“Lemme hug you, Huck! There’s one level head left, anyway. If we can head them off before they get there, and have a sheriff with [begin page 192] us—Huck, if they are ahead of us we’ll catch up on them inside of an hour and make this boat chase them down. I bet you we’re all right, Huck. Rush! Go down on the foc’sle and watch; I’ll go in the pilot house and watch. If you see them, give three whoops as loud as you can, and I’ll have the pilot all ready and anxious for business. Rush!”

So we both rushed. He was all right again and hopeful, and I was glad I thought of that idea, though I didn’t take no stock in it, much. I knowed Tom’s notion that the men had broke for Illinois was worth six of it. He would know it, too, when his mind got settled, then we would go home, and if that pal’s leg was much hurt there would be new trails in a day or two, and not so very deep in the woods, either.

It was as dark as pitch on the foc’sle, and I fell over a man, and he storms out—

“What in hell are you doin’!” and grabbed me by the leg.

I sunk right down where I was, pulpy and sick, and begun to whimper, for it was the King’s voice! Another voice says—

“Seems to be only a boy, you old hog—he didn’t do it a-purpose. You’ve got no bowels—and never had any.”

By George, it was the Duke!

And there I was!

The King spoke up again—

“A boy, are ye? Why didn’t you say so? I took you for a cow. What do you want here—hey? Who are ye? What’s your name?”

Of course I didn’t want to answer, but I knowed I had to. But I tried to make my voice different—

“Bill Parsons, please sir.”

“Ger-reat Scott!” says the Duke, setting up, and poking his face in mine, “what’s brought you here, Huck Finn?”

He talked ruther thick, and I judged he was drunk; but that was all right, becuz if the Duke was more good-natureder one time than another it was when he was drunk. I had to tell them about myself, I knowed there warn’t any way to get around it; so I done it as judicious as I could, caught sudden thataway, and unloaded [begin page 193] considerable many lies onto them. When I got done they grunted, and the Duke says—

“Now tell some truth for a change.”

I started painting again, but the Duke stopped me, and says—

“Wait, Huckleberry, you better let me help, I reckon.”

My time was come, and I knowed it. He was sharp, and he would begin to chase me up with questions and follow me right to my hole. Of course I knowed his game, and was scared. The time I let Jim get away, down there in Arkansaw, it took a pile of money out of him and the King’s pocketⒺexplanatory note, and they had me, now. They wouldn’t let up till they found out where Jim was—that was certain. The Duke begun; then the King begun to shove in questions, but the Duke shut him up and told him he was only botching the business, and didn’t know enough to come in when it rained. It made the King pretty grouty.

It warn’t long till they had it out of me—Jim was in jail, in our town.

“What for?”

Now the minute the Duke asked that, I see my way perfectly clear. If Jim was to get clear they could come with their sham papers and run him South and sell him, but if I showed them he was going to get hung, and hung for sure, they wouldn’t bother about him no more, and we would be shut of them. I was glad I had that idea, and I made up my mind to put the murder on Jim and do it strong.

“What for?” the Duke says.

“Murder,” I says, perfectly ca’m.

“Great guns!”

“Yes,” I says, “he done it, and he done right—but he done it, ain’t any doubt about that.”

“It’s an awful pity, becuz he warn’t a bad nigger at bottom; but how do you know he done it?”

“Becuz old Cap. Haines and Buck Fisher come on him in the very act. He had hit a nigger-trader over the head with his own musket, and stumbled and fell on him, and was getting up when the men come running. It was dark, but they heard the row and [begin page 194] warn’t far off. I wisht they had been somewheres else. If Jim hadn’t fell he might a got away.”

“Too bad. Is the man really dead?”

“I reckon so. They buried him this afternoon.”

“It’s awful. Does Jim give in that he done it?”

“No. Only just says it ain’t any use for a nigger to talk when there’s two white men against him.”

“Well, that’s so—hey, Majesty?”

“Head’s level for a nigger—yes.”

“Why, maybe he didn’t kill the man. Any suspicious characters around?”

“Nary.”

“Hasn’t anybody seen any?”

“No. And besides, if there’d been any, where’s their motive? They wouldn’t kill a man just for fun, would they?”

“Well, no. And maybe Jim hadn’t any motive, either.”

“Why, your grace, the motive’s the very worst thing against him. Everybody knows what he done to Jim once, and two men heard Jim tell him he was going to lay him out for it one of these days. It was only talk, and I know it, but that ain’t any difference, it’s white man’s talk and Jim’s only a nigger.”

“It does look bad for Jim.”

“Poor old Jim, he knows it. Everybody says he’ll be hung, and of course he hain’t got any friends, becuz he’s free.”

Nobody said anything, now, and I judged I had put it home good and strong, and they would quit bothering about Jim, and me and Tom would be let alone to go ahead and find the men and get Jim out of his scrape. So I was feeling good and satisfied. After a little bit the Duke says—

“I’ve been a thinking. I’ll have a word with you, Majesty.”

Him and the King stepped to the side and mumbled together, and come back, and the Duke says—

“You like Jim, and you’re sorry for him. Now which would you druther—let him get sold down South, or get hung?”

It was sudden. It knocked me silly. I couldn’t seem to understand what his idea was. Before I could come to myself, he says—

“It’s for you to say. Now and then and off and on me and the King have struck Jim’s trail and lost it again; for we’ve got a requisition for Jim from the Governor of Kentucky onto the Governor of Missouri and his acceptans of the same—all bogus, you know, but the seals and the paper, which is genuwyne—and on them papers we can go and grab Jim wherever we find him and there ain’t anybody can prevent us. First and last we’ve followed that trail but first and last we’ve followed it to Elexandry, sixty mile above here. Lost it again, and give it up for good and all, and took this boat there towards the middle of the afternoon to-day—”

“Not knowin’ that a righteous overrulin’ Providence—”

“Shut up, you old rum-barrel, and don’t interrupt. It’s with you, Huck, to save him or hang him. Which is it?”

“Oh, goodness knows, your grace, I’m anxious enough—tell me how.”

“It’s easy. Spose Jim murdered a man down yonder in Tennessee or Mississippi or Arkansaw fourteen months ago when you and Jim was helping me and the King run the raft, and me and the King was going to sell Jim for our nigger, becuz he was ourn, by rights of discovery, we having found him floating down the river without any owner—”

“Yes, and he’s ourn yit,” says the King, in that snarly way of his’n.

“Stick your feet in your mouth and stop some of your gas from escapin’, Majesty. Spose Jim done that, Huck—murdered a planter or somebody down there. Take it in? Get the idea?”

“Not by a blame’ sight I don’t. Jim never done it. Jim warn’t scasely ever out of my sight a day on a stretch; and if he—”

[begin page 196] “There—don’t be a fool. Of course he never done it; that ain’t the idea. The idea is—spose he done it. See? Spose he had a done it. Now you see?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Shucks! Why, blame it, you couldn’t try him up here till after you had tried him down there, could you? Got to take his murders in the order of preseedence, hain’t you? ’Course. Any idiot knows that much. Very good. Now then, here’s the scheme that’ll give us back our nigger and save your black chum’s life. To-morrow in Sent Louis we’ll go to a friend of ourn that’s in a private business up a back alley and got up our papers for us, and he’ll change them so as to fit the case the way it stands now; change them from nigger ‘escaped from service’ to murder—murder done by Jim down South, you know. Then we’ll come straight up here to-morrow or next day and show the papers and take Jim down South and sell him—not in Kentucky, of course, but ’way down towards the mouth of the river, where Missouri couldn’t ever get on his track when she found she’d been played. See it now, don’t you?”

By gracious I felt that good, I reckon the angels don’t feel no better when they looks down Sabberday morning and sees the Catholic kids getting roped into the Presbyterium Sunday school. Well, the world, it’s curious, thataway. One minute your heart is away down and miserable, and don’t seem to be no way out of your troubles, and next minute some little thing or another happens you warn’t looking for and just lifts her to your teeth with a bounce, and all your worries is gone and you feel as happy and splendid as Sodom and Gomorrah or any other of them patriarchs. I says to myself, it’s nuts for Tom Sawyer, this is. And it’s nuts for Jim, too. Jim’s life’s safe by this game, if they play it good, and if he ain’t in England and free again three months after they sell him it’ll be becuz we’ve forgot how to run niggers out of slavery and better quit the business.

So I told them to count me in, the ’rangement was satisfactry to me. They was very much pleased, and shuck me by the hand; the first time they ever come down onto my level like that, I reckon. [begin page 197] And I said I wanted to help if they’d tell me how; and the Duke says—

“You can be a prime help, Huck, and you won’t lose nothing by it, nuther. All you got to do is, keep mum—don’t talk.”

“All right, I won’t.”

“Tell Jim, if you want to; tell him to look awful scared and guilty when he sees us and finds we are sheriff’s officers and hears what we’ve come for—it’ll have a good effect; but he mustn’t show that he has seen us before. And you mustn’t. You want to be particular about that.”

“I won’t let on to know you, your grace—I’ll be particular.”

“That’s the idea. Say—what are you doing on this boat?”

It took me ruther sudden, and I didn’t know what to say, so I said I was traveling for my health. But they was feeling good, now, and unparticular; so they laughed and asked me where was the resort, and I said the town down yonder where the lights is showing; so they let me go, then, and told me good-bye and said there was going to be trouble in the chicken coops of that resort before morning, but they reckoned I would pull through all right.

I cleared for the pilot house, feeling first rate; then I remembered I had forgot to watch for the canoe, but I didn’t care; I knowed there hadn’t been any or the pilot and Tom would a seen it and chased it down. The mud-clerk was up there collecting our passages, and me and Tom come down on the texas roof, and I whispers and says—

“What do you think—the King and the Duke’s down on the foc’sle!”

“Go ’long—you don’t mean it!”

“Wish I may never die. You want to have a sight of them?”

“Well, I should reckon! Come along.”

So we flew down. They was celebrated in our town on accounts of me and Jim’s adventures with them, and there wasn’t a person but would give his shirt for a look at them—including Tom. The time Tom saw them down in Arkansaw it was night, and they was tarred and featheredⒺexplanatory note and the public was riding them on a rail in a [begin page 198] torchlight procession and they was looking like the pillar of cloud that led Moses out of the bulrushers; but of course he would like to see them without the feathers on, becuz with the feathers on you couldn’t tell them from busted bolsters.

But we didn’t make it. The boat was sidling in to the wharfboat, and of course the mates had cleared the foc’sle and there warn’t anybody there but a crowd of deckhands, now, bustling with the freight. They was red and vivid in the shine of the fire-doors and the torch-basket, but it was pitch dark everywheres else and you couldn’t see anything. So we hopped ashore and took out to the upper end of the town and found a long lumber raft there and went out and set down on the outside edge of it with our legs in the water and listened to the quietness and the little waves slapping soft against it, and begun to talk, and watch out for the canoe, and it was ever so summery and bammy and comfortable, and the mosquitoes a singing and the frogs a goingⒶemendation it, the way they do, such nights.

So then I told Tom the scheme and said we must keep mum, and not tell anybody but Jim. It cheered him up and nearly made him gay; and he said Jim was safe now; if we didn’t find the men the Duke’s plan would save him, sure, and we would have good times running him out of slavery again, and then we would take him over to England and hand him over to the QueenⒺexplanatory note ourselves to help in the kitchen and wait on table and be a body-guard and celebrated; and we would have the trip, and see the Tower and Shackspur’s grave and find out what kind of a country we all come from before we struck for taxation and misrepresentation and raised Cain becuz we couldn’t get it.

But he said he’d got his lesson, and warn’t going to throw any more chances away for glory’s sake; no, let glory go, he was for business, from this out. He was going to save Jim the quickest way, never mind about the showiest.

It sounded good, and I loved to hear it. He hadn’t ever been in his right mind before; I could see it plain. Sound? He was as sound as a nut, now. Why, he even said he wished the King and the Duke would come and take Jim out of jail and out of town in the night, so [begin page 199] there wouldn’t be nary a sign of gaudiness and showiness about it, he was done with pow-wow, and didn’t want no more. By gracious that made me uncomfortable again, it looked like he’d gone off his balance the other way, now. But I didn’t say nothing.

He said the new scheme was a hundred times the most likeliest, but he warn’t going to set down and take it easy on that account, becuz who knows but the Duke and the King will get into jail down there, which is always to be expected, and mightn’t get out till it was too late for Jim’s business—

“Don’t, Tom!” says I, breaking in, “don’t let’s talk about it, don’t let’s even think about it.”

“We’ve got to, Huck; it’s in the chances, and we got to give all the doubts a full show from this out—there ain’t going to be any more taking things for granted. We’ll hunt for the men a couple of days while we’re waiting—we won’t throw any chance away.” After a spell he drawed a sorrowful deep breath and says, “it was a prime good chance before the rain—I wish we hadn’t come down here.”

We watched faithful, all night till most daylight, and warn’t going to go to sleep at all, but we did; and when we woke up it was noon and we was disgusted; and peeled and had a swim, and went down to town and et about 64 battercakes and things and felt crowded and better; and inquired around and didn’t hear of the canoe, and a steamboat come along late and we got home at dark and Jim was slated for first degree and Bat was in the ground, and everybody was talking about the watchful inscrutableness of Providence, and thankful for it and astonished at it, but didn’t das’t to say so right out.

And after 64 more we went to jail and comforted Jim up and told him about the new plan, and it joggled him considerable, and he couldn’t tell straight off whether to be glad or not, and says—

“By jimminies, I don’t mo’n git outer one scrape tell I gits in a wuss one.” But when he see how down-hearted it made Tom to hear him say that, he was sorry, and put his old black hand on Tom’s head and says, “but I don’t mine, I don’t mine, honey, don’t you worry; I knows you’s gwyne to do de bes’ you kin, en it don’t [begin page 200] make no diffunce what it is, ole Jim ain’t gwyne to complain.”

Of course it was awful to him, the idea of the King and the Duke getting a grip on him again, and he could scasely bear to talk about it; still, he knowed me and Tom wouldn’t let him be a slave long if industriousness and enterprise and c’ruption was worth anything; so he quieted down, and reckoned if the Queen was satisfied with him after she tried him and found he was honest and willing, she would raise his wages next year; and Tom said she was young and inexperienced and would, he knowed it. So it was all satisfactry, and Tom went along home, and told me to come too, and I done it.

His aunt Polly give him a hiding, but it didn’t hurt—nor me, neither; we didn’t care for it. She was in a towering way, but when we explained we had been over on t’other side of the river fishing, about a couple of days and nights, and didn’t know the horn-signal had blowed and scared the town to death and there’d been a murder and a funeral and Jim done it, she forgot she was mad at us, and wouldn’t a sold out her chance for a basket of money, she being just busting to tell the news.

So she started in, and never got a dern thing right, but enjoyed herself, and it took her two solid hours; and when she got done painting up the show it was worth four times the facts, and I reckon Tom was sorry he didn’t get her to run the conspiracy herself. But she was right down sorry for Jim, and said Bat must a tried to kill Jim or he never would a blowed his brains out with the musket.

“Did blow them out, did he, aunt Polly?”

“Such as he had—yes.”

Then company come in to spend the evening, and amongst them was Flacker the detective, and he had been working up his clews and knowed all about the murder, same as if he’d seen it; and they all set with their mouths open a listening and holding their breath and wondering at his talents and marvelousness whilst he went on.

Why, it was just rot and rubbage—clean, straight foolishness, but them people couldn’t see it. According to him, the Sons of Freedom was a sham—it was Burrell’s Gang, and he had the clews [begin page 201] that would prove it. Burrell’s Gang—it made them fairly shudder and hitch their chairs clos’ter together when he said it. He said there was six members of it right here in town, friends of you all, you meet up and chat with them every day—it made them shudder again. Said he wouldn’t mention no names, he warn’t ready yet, but he could lay his hands on them whenever he wanted to. Said they had a plan to burn the town and rob it and run off the niggers, he had the proofs; and so they went on a shuddering, enough to shake the house and sour the milk. Said Jim was in leagues with them, he had the facts and could prove it any day; and said he had shaddered the Sons to their den—wouldn’t say where it was, just now; and he come onto provisions there cal’lated to feed sixteen men six weeks—(ourn, by jings!) And found their printing ’rangements, too, and lugged them off and hid them, and could show them whenever he got ready. Said he knowed the secret of the figures that was printed on the bills with red ink, and it was too awful to tell where there was senstive scary women. That made everybody scrunch together and look sick. And he said the man that got up them bills warn’t any common ornery person, he was a gigantic intelleck, and was prob’ly the worst man alive; and he knowed by some little marks on the bills that another person wouldn’t notice and wouldn’t understand them if he did, that it was Burrell his own self that done it; and said there warn’t another man in America could get up them bills but Burrell. And that very Burrell was in this town this minute, in disguise and running a shop, and it was him that blowed the signal-horn. Old Miss Watson fainted and fell onto the cat when she heard that, and she yowled, becuz it was her tail that got hurt, and they had a lot of trouble to fetch her to. And last of all, he said Jim had two ’complices to the murder and he seen their footprints—dwarfs, they was, one cross-eyed and t’other left-handed; didn’t say how he knowed it, but he was shaddering them, and although they had escaped out of town for now, he warn’t worrying, he allowed he would take them into camp when they was least expecting of it.

Why that was me and Tom—I never see such an idiot. But the company was charmed to death with that stuff, and said it was the [begin page 202] most astonishing thing the way a detective could read every little sign he come across same as if it was a book, and you couldn’t hide nothing from him. And they said this town would a lived and died and never knowed what started the row and who done it if it hadn’t been for Flacker, and they was all under obligations to him; but he said it warn’t nothing, it was his perfeshon, and anybody could do it that had practice and the gifts.

“And the gifts! you may well say that,” says Tom’s aunt Polly; and then they all said it.

She was soft on detectives, becuz Tom had an ambitiousness thataway, and she was proud about what he done that time down at his uncle Silas’s.

We was over the river before daylight next morning, and as soon as the dawn come we begun to search for them foot-tracks. Tom had the measures of the two men’s tracks—length and width; and he had the heels exact, just as they was printed in the ground in the lean-to, becuz he had run tallow into them from the candle and made thin moulds, and then traced them around on a leaf which he tore out of Bat’s grocery-store book and done it with Bat’s pen. The prints was like anybody else’s to me, except the pal’s left heel, which had a little of the north-east corner gone, and it oughter been the other one, to do us any good, I reckoned, becuz it was the left one he dragged after he hurt it falling down the jumping-off place, and the corner wouldn’t show, now, if he was still a-dragging it; but Tom said I was a sap-head, and said if it dragged couldn’t we see the drag-mark. Well, that was so; so then I didn’t say no more.

We started work about a mile above the ferry on the Illinois shore. There was a low place where you could land a lame man there, and it was the only one above the ferry—the rest was all bluff bank ten foot high, like a wall, at this stage of the river. There [begin page 203] was considerable many tracks, some fresh and some old, but if the ones we wanted was there they was too old to show up, now. We went out in the woods a piece and struck down-stream and went as far as the ferry, and found tracks in places, but they warn’t the right ones. There wasn’t a place for miles below the ferry where they could land; so we struck out on the ferry road and hunted the ground on both sides of it away out double as far as a lame man could get to in the time they had, since they started, but we hadn’t any luck.

We stuck to it all day, and went back next day and ransacked again—rummaged the whole country betwixt the landings, plum till dark. It warn’t any good. Next day we went down and rummaged Jackson’s island—no tracks there but Flacker’s; and he had lugged off our print-works, and some of our feed, too. So then we crossed to our shore and went to the cave, but that warn’t any use, becuz the soldiers was there that Colonel Elder sent on accounts of the pow-wow the conspiracy made, and if any strangers had tried to get in there it would a been hark from the tomb for themⒺexplanatory note.

We had to give it up, then, and paddled along home. Tom was down in the mouth again, becuz Jim would have to go down South with the King and the Duke, now, and could have a terrible rough time before we could run him out of slavery and break for England. But pretty soon he jumps up, all excited and glad, and says—

“We’re fools, Huck, just fools!”

“Tain’t no news,” I says, “but what’s the matter now?”

“Why, we’re in luck—that’s what’s the matter.”

“Skin it to me,” I says, “I’m a listening.”

“Well, you see, we didn’t find the men, and ain’t ever going to; so Jim hangs, for dead sure, now, if he stays here—ain’t it so? And so it’s splendid that he’s going to be sold South, and I’m glad you run across the Duke and the King. It’s the best thing that ever happened, becuz—”

“Shucks,” I says, “is it any more splendider now than it was two minutes ago? You was ’most sick about it, then. How is it such good luck?”

“Becuz he ain’t agoing to be sold South.”

[begin page 204] It sounded so good I come near jumping up and cracking my heels; but I held in, becuz I don’t like disapp’intments, and says—

“How you going to prevent it?”

“Easy. We’re just fools for not thinking of it sooner. We’ll go down the river with them on the same boat, and when we get to Cairo we’re in a free StateⒺexplanatory note, and we’ll say, now then, the most you can get for Jim down South is a thousand dollars—you can get that right here for him!”

So then I did jump up and crack my heels, and says—

“It’s splendid, Tom. I’m in for half of the money.”

“No you ain’t.”

“Yes I am.”

“No you ain’t. If it hadn’t been for the conspiracy Jim wouldn’t been at that place, and wouldn’t be in no trouble now. It’s my fault, and I foot the bill.”

“It ain’t fair,” I says. “How did I come to hog half of the robber’s money and get so rotten flush?Ⓔexplanatory note Was it my smartness? No, it was yourn. By rights you ought to took it all, and you wouldn’t.”

And I stuck to him till he give in.

“Now then,” I says, “we ain’t such fools as you think, for not thinking about this sooner. We couldn’t buy Jim here, becuz he’s free and there ain’t anybody to buy him of. We couldn’t buy him of anybody but the King and the Duke, and can’t buy him of them till he’s on free ground where we can run him up the Ohio and into Canada and over to England—so we’ve thought of it plenty soon enough, and ain’t fools, nuther.”

“All right, then, we ain’t fools, but ain’t it lucky that we went down the river when there warn’t the least sense in it, and yet it was the very thing that met us up with the King and the Duke, and we can see, now, Jim would be hung, sure, if it hadn’t happened. Huck—something else in it, ain’t there?”

He said it pretty solemn. So I knowed he had treed the hand of Providence again, and said so.

“I reckon you’ll learn to trust, before long,” he says.

I started to say “I wisht I could get the credit for everything [begin page 205] another person does,” but pulled it in and crowded it down and didn’t say nothing. It’s the best way. After he had studied a while he says—

“We got to neglect the conspiracy, Huck, our hands is too full to run it right.”

I was graveled, and was agoing to say “Long’s we ain’t running it anyway—’least don’t get none of the credit of it—it ain’t worth the trouble it is to us,” but pulled it in and crowded it down like I done before. Best way, I reckon.

After supper we went to the jail and took Jim a pie and one thing and another and told him how we was going to buy him at Cairo and run him to England, and by Jackson he busted out and cried; and the pie went down the wrong way and we had to beat him and bang him or he would a choked to death and might as well a been hung.

Jim was all right, now, and joyful, and his mournfulness all went away, and took his banjo, and ’stead of singing “Ain’t got long to stay here,” the way he done since he got into jail, he sung “Jinny git de hoecake done,” and the gayest songs he knowed; and laughed and laughed about the King and the Duke and the Burning ShameⒺexplanatory note till he ’most died; it was good to see him; and then danced a nigger breakdownⒺexplanatory note, and said he hadn’t been so young in his heart since he was a boy.

And he was willing for his wife and children to come and see him now, if their marsters would let them—and the sheriff; he couldn’t bear the idea of it before. So we said we would try for it, and hoped we’d have them there in the morning so he could see them and say good-bye before the King and the Duke come up on the boat.

That night we packed our things, and in the morning I went to Judge Thatcher and drawed eight hundred dollars, and he was surprised, but he didn’t get no information out of me; and Tom drawed the same, and then we went to ’range about Jim’s wife and children, and their marsters was very good and kind, but couldn’t spare them now, but would let them come before long—maybe [begin page 206] next week—was there any hurry? Of course we had to say no, that would answer very well.

Then we went to the jail and Jim was dreadful sorry, but knowed it couldn’t be helped and he had to get along the way things was; but he didn’t take on, becuz niggers is used to that.

We chattered along pretty comfortable till we heard the boat coming, but after that we was too excited to talk, but only fidgeted up and down; and every time the bolts and chains on the jail door rattled I catched my breath and says to myself, that’s them a-coming! But it wasn’t.

They didn’t come at all. We was disappointed, and so was Jim, but it warn’t any matter, they was prob’ly in the calaboose for getting drunk and raising a row, and would turn up to-morrow. So then we hid the money and went a-fishing.

Next day Jim’s trial was set for three weeks ahead.

No Duke and no King, yet.

So we allowed we would wait one more day, and then if they didn’t come we would go down to Sent Louis and go to the calaboose and find out how long they was in for.

Well, they didn’t come; so we went down. And by George they warn’t in the calaboose, and hadn’t been!

It was perfectly awful. Tom was that sick he had to set down on something—he couldn’t stand.

What to do we didn’t know; becuz the calaboose was the only address them bilks ever had.

Then we went and tried the jail. No use—they hadn’t been there, either.

It was getting to look right down scary; I knowed it, and Tom knowed it. But we’d got to keep moving, we couldn’t rest. It was a powerful big town—some said it had sixty thousand people in it, prob’ly a lieⒺexplanatory note; but we searched it high and low for four days just the same, particularly the worst parts, like what they call Hell’s Half-Acre. But we couldn’t run across them; they was gone—clean gone, just the same as if they had been blowed out, like a candle.

We got downer and downer in the mouth, we couldn’t make it out nohow. Something had gone and happened to them, of course, [begin page 207] but there warn’t no guessing what, only we knowed it was serious. And could be mighty serious for Jim, too, if it went on so. I reckoned they was dead, but I didn’t say so, it wouldn’t help Tom feel any better.

We had to give it up, and we went back home. And not talking much; there warn’t anything to talk about, but plenty to think. And mainly what to say to Jim, and how to let on to be hopeful.

Well, we went to the jail every day, and pretended we warn’t uneasy, and let on to be pretty gay, and done it the best we could, but it was pretty poor and wouldn’t fooled anybody but old Jim, which believed in us. We kept it up more than two weeks, and it was the hardest work we ever had and the sorrowfulest. And always we said it was going to come out all right, but towards the last we couldn’t say it hearty and strong, and that made Jim suspicion something, and he turned in and went to bracing us up and trying to make us cheerful, and it ’most broke us down, and was the hardest of all for us to bear, becuz it showed he had as good as found out we hadn’t any real hope, and so he was forgetting to be troubled about himself he was so sorry for us.

But there was one part of the day that we warn’t ever in the jail. It was when the boat come. We was always there, and seen everybody that come ashore. And every now and then, along at first, as the boat sidled in I would think I saw them bilks in the jam on the foc’sle and nudge Tom and say “There they are!” but it was a mistake; and so towards the last we only went becuz we couldn’t help it, and looked at the passengers without any intrust, and turned around and went away without saying anything when they had all come ashore. It seemed kind of strange: last month I would a broke my neck getting away from the King and the Duke, but now I would druther see them than the angels.

Tom was pale, and hadn’t any appetite for his vittles, and didn’t sleep good, and hadn’t any spirits and wouldn’t talk, and his aunt Polly was worried out of her life about him, and believed the Sons of Freedom and their bills and their horn had scared Tom into a sickness; and every day she loaded him up with any kind of medicine she could get aholt of; and she watched him through the [begin page 208] keyhole, and ’stead of giving it to the cat he took it himself, and that just scared her crazy; and she said if she could get her hands on the Son of Freedom that scattered them bills around she believed to gracious she would break his leg if it was the last act.

Me and Tom had to be witnesses, and Jim’s lawyer was a young man and new to the village, and hadn’t any business, becuz of course the others didn’t want the job for a free nigger, though we offered to pay them high. They hated to go back on Tom, but they was plenty right enough, they had to get their living and the prejudices was pretty strong, which was natural. Tom reconnized that; he wouldn’t be lawyer for a free nigger himself, unless it was Jim.

The morning of the trial Tom’s aunt Polly stopped him and warn’t going to let him go; she said it warn’t any place for boys, and besides, they wouldn’t be allowed—everybody was going and there wouldn’t be room; but Tom says—

“There’ll be room for me and Huck. We’re going to be witnesses.”

She was that astonished you could a knocked her down with a brickbat; and shoved her spectacles up on her forehead and says—

“You two! What do you know about it, I’d like to know!”

But we didn’t stop to talk, but cleared out and left her finishing fixing up; becuz she was coming, of course—everybody was.

The court-house was jammed. Plenty of ladies, too—seven or eight benches of them; and aunt Polly and the Widow Douglas and Miss Watson and Mrs. Lawson, they all set together, and the Thatchers and a lot more back of them—all of the quality. And Jim was there, and the sheriff.

Then the judge come in and set down very solemn, and opened court; and Mr. Lawson made a speech and said he was going to [begin page 209] prove Jim done it by two witnesses, and he had a motive, and would prove that, too. I knowed it didn’t make Tom feel good to hear him say that.

Jim’s young lawyer made a speech and said he was going to prove an allyby—prove it by two witnesses; and that it warn’t done by Jim but by a stranger unknown. It made everybody smile; and I was sorry for that young man, becuz he was nervous and scared, and knowed he hadn’t any case, and so couldn’t talk out bold and strong like Mr. Lawson done. And he knowed everybody was making fun of him, too, and didn’t think much of him for being a free nigger’s lawyer and a nobody to boot.

Flacker he went on the stand and give his idea of how it all happened; and mapped it out and worked his clews, and everybody held their breath and was full of wonderment to hear him make it so plain and clear, and nothing in the world to do it with but just his intellects.

Then Cap. Haines and Buck Fisher told how they catched Jim as good as in the very act; and how poor old Bat was laying there dead, and Jim just getting up, having caved his head in with the musket and slipped and fell on him.

And then the musket was showed, with rust and hair on the barrel, and the people shuddered; and when they held up the bloody clothes they shuddered some more.

Then I told all I knowed and got back out of the way; and hadn’t done no good, becuz there wasn’t anybody there believed any of it, and the most of them looked it.

Then they called Tom Sawyer, and people around me mumbled and said, “’Course—couldn’t happen ’thout him being in it; couldn’t do an eclipse successful if Tom Sawyer was took sick and couldn’t superintend.” And his aunt Polly and the women perked up and got ready to wonder what kind of ’sistance he was going to contribbit and who was going to get the benefit of it.

“Thomas Sawyer, where was you on the Saturday night before the Sunday that this deed was done?”

“Running a conspiracy.”

[begin page 210] “Doing what?” says the judge, looking down at him over his pulpit.

“Running a conspiracy, your honor.”

“This sounds like a dangerous candor. Tell your story; and be careful and not reveal things that can hurt you.”

So Tom went on and told the whole thing, how we got up the conspiracy and run it for all it was worth; and Colonel Elder and Captain Sam set there looking ashamed and pretty mad, for ’most everybody was laughing; and when he showed that it was us that was the Sons of Freedom and got up the scare-bills and stuck them on the doors, and not Burrell, which Flacker said it was, they laughed again, and it was Flacker’s turn to look sick, and he done it.

So he went on telling it, straight out and square, and no lies, all the way down to where Jim come down out of the tree after he blowed the signal-horn and we all went into the town and sampled the excitement—and you could see the people was believing it all, becuz it sounded honest and didn’t have a made-up look; and so the alliby was getting to look right down favorable, and people was nodding their heads at one another as much as to say so, and looking more friendlier at Jim, too, and Mr. Lawson warn’t looking so comfortable as he was before; but at last come the question—

“You say the prisoner was to go and report to your aunt, and then follow you. What time was that?”

And by Jackson Tom couldn’t tell him. We hadn’t noticed. Tom had to guess; it was all he could do, and guessing warn’t worth much. It was mighty bad—and it showed in people’s faces. Mr. Lawson was looking comfortable again.

“Why were you three going to Bradish’s house?”

Then Tom told them that part of the conspiracy; how he was going to play runaway nigger and I was going to play him onto Bradish, but Bradish had already got one—and so on; and how Tom examined the nigger in the night and see that he warn’t a nigger at all, and had a key in his shoe, and he judged he was going to escape, and he wanted to be there and get the clews and hunt him down after he got away. And the people and the judge listened [begin page 211] right along, and it was just as good as a tale out of a book.

And he told how me and him got there at daylight and see Bat laying dead, and he told me to go for the undertaker, and then found Jim’s track and called me back and said it was all right, Jim had been there and of course he was gone to tell about the murder.

A lot of them smiled at that, and Mr. Lawson laughed right out.

But Tom went right along, and told how we followed the tracks to the hanted house and he crope in under there and listened and heard the murderers talk, but didn’t see them.

“Didn’t see them?”

“No, sir;” and he told why.

“Imaginary ones, maybe,” says Mr. Lawson, and laughed; and a lot of the others laughed, too, and a fellow close to me says to a friend, “he better stopped when he was well off—he’s got to embroiderin’, now.” “Yes,” says the other one, “he’s spiling it.”

“Go on,” says the judge; “tell what you heard.”

“It was like this. One was a thrashing around a little now and then and growling, and the other one was groaning; and by and by the one that thrashed around says in a low voice, ‘Shut up, you old cry-baby, and let a person get some sleep.’ Then the groaner says, ‘If your leg was hurt as bad as mine, you’d be a cry-baby too, I reckon, and it’s all your fault, anyway; when Bradish come and catched us escaping, if you had a helped me ’stead of trying to prevent me, I would a busted his head right there in the lean-to, ’stead of outside, and he wouldn’t a had a chance to yell and fetch them men a-running, and we wouldn’t a had to take a short cut and hurt my leg and have to lay up here and p’raps get catched before the day’s over—and yet here you are a-growling about cry-babies, and it shows you hain’t got no real heart, and no Christian sentiments and bringing up.’ Then the other one says, ‘The whole blame’s your own, for coming three or four hours late—drunk, as usual.’ ‘I warn’t drunk, neither; I got lost—ain’t no crime in that, I don’t reckon.’ ‘All right,’ says the other one, ‘have it your own way, but shut up and keep still now; you want to be thinking up your last [begin page 212] dying speech, becuz you’re going to need it on the gallows for this piece of work, which was just unnecessary blame foolishness, and I’ll be hung too, and serve me right, for being in such dam company.’ The other one wanted to growl some more about his leg, but this one said if he didn’t shut up he would pull it out and belt him over the head with it. So then they quieted down and I come away.”

When Tom got done it was dead still, just the way it always is when people has been listening to a yarn they don’t take no stock in and are sorry for the person that has told it. It was kind of miserable, that stillness. At last the judge he cleared his throat and says, very grave—

“If this is true, how is it you didn’t come straight and tell the sheriff? How do you explain that?”

Tom was working at a button with his fingers and looking down at the floor. It was too many for him, that question, and I knowed it. How was he going to tell them he didn’t do it becuz he was going to work the thing out on detective principles and git glory out of it? And how was he going to tell them he wanted to make the glory bigger by making it seem Jim killed the man, and even crowded him into a motive, and then went and told about the motive where Mr. Lawson could get on it—and so just by reason of him and his foolishness the murderers got away and now Jim was going to be hung for what they done. No, sir, he couldn’t say a word. And so when the judge waited a while, everybody’s eyes on Tom a fooling with his button, and then asked him again why he didn’t go and tell the sheriff, he swallowed two or three times, and the tears come in his eyes, and he says, very low—

“I don’t know, sir.”

It was still again, for a minute, then the lawyers made their speeches, and Mr. Lawson was terrible sarcastic on Tom and his fairy tale, as he called it, and so then the jury fetched Jim in guilty in the first degree in two minutes, and old Jim stood up and the judge begun to make his speech telling him why he’d got to die; and Tom he set there with his head down, crying.

And just then, by George, the Duke and the King come [begin page 213] a-working along through the crowd, and worked along up front, and the King says—

“Pardon a moment, your honor,” and Tom glanced up; and the Duke says—

“We’ve got a little matter of business which—”

Tom jumps up and shouts—

“I reconnize the voices—it’s the murderers!”

Well, you never see such a stir. Everybody rose up and begun to stretch their necks to get a view, and the sheriff he stormed at them and made them set down; and the King and the Duke looked perfectly astonished, and turned pretty white, I tell you; and the judge says—

“Why do you make such a charge as this?”

“Becuz I know it, your honor,” Tom says.

“How do you know it—you said, yourself, you didn’t see the men?”

“It ain’t any difference, I’ve got the proofs.”

“Where?”

He fetched out the leaf from Bat’s book and showed the drawing, and says—

“If this one hasn’t changed his shoes, this is the print of the left one.”

And it was, sure enough, and the King looked very sick.

“Very good indeed,” says the judge. “Proceed.”

Tom fetched a set of false teeth out of his pocket, and says—

“If they don’t fit the other one’s mouth he ain’t the white nigger that was in the lean-to.”