第 34 页

alone a minute, and don't disturb him. So he thought and thought, and

pretty soon he says:

"It's all right; I've got it. Take my trunk in your wagon, and let on

it's your'n; and you turn back and fool along slow, so as to get to the

house about the time you ought to; and I'll go towards town a piece, and

take a fresh start, and get there a quarter or a half an hour after you;

and you needn't let on to know me at first."

I says:

"All right; but wait a minute. There's one more thing--a thing that

NOBODY don't know but me. And that is, there's a nigger here that I'm

a-trying to steal out of slavery, and his name is JIM--old Miss Watson's

Jim."

He says:

"What! Why, Jim is--"

He stopped and went to studying. I says:

"I know what you'll say. You'll say it's dirty, low-down business; but

what if it is? I'm low down; and I'm a-going to steal him, and I want

you keep mum and not let on. Will you?"

His eye lit up, and he says:

"I'll HELP you steal him!"

Well, I let go all holts then, like I was shot. It was the most

astonishing speech I ever heard--and I'm bound to say Tom Sawyer fell

considerable in my estimation. Only I couldn't believe it. Tom Sawyer a

NIGGER-STEALER!

"Oh, shucks!" I says; "you're joking."

"I ain't joking, either."

"Well, then," I says, "joking or no joking, if you hear anything said

about a runaway nigger, don't forget to remember that YOU don't know

nothing about him, and I don't know nothing about him."

Then we took the trunk and put it in my wagon, and he drove off his way

and I drove mine. But of course I forgot all about driving slow on

accounts of being glad and full of thinking; so I got home a heap too

quick for that length of a trip. The old gentleman was at the door, and

he says:

"Why, this is wonderful! Whoever would a thought it was in that mare to

do it? I wish we'd a timed her. And she hain't sweated a hair--not a

hair. It's wonderful. Why, I wouldn't take a hundred dollars for that

horse now--I wouldn't, honest; and yet I'd a sold her for fifteen

before, and thought 'twas all she was worth."

That's all he said. He was the innocentest, best old soul I ever see.

But it warn't surprising; because he warn't only just a farmer, he was a

preacher, too, and had a little one-horse log church down back of the

plantation, which he built it himself at his own expense, for a church

and schoolhouse, and never charged nothing for his preaching, and it was

worth it, too. There was plenty other farmer-preachers like that, and

done the same way, down South.

In about half an hour Tom's wagon drove up to the front stile, and Aunt

Sally she see it through the window, because it was only about fifty

yards, and says:

"Why, there's somebody come! I wonder who 'tis? Why, I do believe it's

a stranger. Jimmy" (that's one of the children) "run and tell Lize to

put on another plate for dinner."

Everybody made a rush for the front door, because, of course, a stranger

don't come EVERY year, and so he lays over the yaller-fever, for

interest, when he does come. Tom was over the stile and starting for the

house; the wagon was spinning up the road for the village, and we was all

bunched in the front door. Tom had his store clothes on, and an

audience--and that was always nuts for Tom Sawyer. In them circumstances

it warn't no trouble to him to throw in an amount of style that was

suitable. He warn't a boy to meeky along up that yard like a sheep; no,

he come ca'm and important, like the ram. When he got a-front of us he

lifts his hat ever so gracious and dainty, like it was the lid of a box

that had butterflies asleep in it and he didn't want to disturb them, and

says:

"Mr. Archibald Nichols, I presume?"

"No, my boy," says the old gentleman, "I'm sorry to say 't your driver

has deceived you; Nichols's place is down a matter of three mile more.

Come in, come in."

Tom he took a look back over his shoulder, and says, "Too late--he's out

of sight."

"Yes, he's gone, my son, and you must come in and eat your dinner with

us; and then we'll hitch up and take you down to Nichols's."

"Oh, I CAN'T make you so much trouble; I couldn't think of it. I'll walk

--I don't mind the distance."

"But we won't LET you walk--it wouldn't be Southern hospitality to do it.

Come right in."

"Oh, DO," says Aunt Sally; "it ain't a bit of trouble to us, not a bit in

the world. You must stay. It's a long, dusty three mile, and we can't

let you walk. And, besides, I've already told 'em to put on another

plate when I see you coming; so you mustn't disappoint us. Come right in

and make yourself at home."

So Tom he thanked them very hearty and handsome, and let himself be

persuaded, and come in; and when he was in he said he was a stranger from

Hicksville, Ohio, and his name was William Thompson--and he made another

bow.

Well, he run on, and on, and on, making up stuff about Hicksville and

everybody in it he could invent, and I getting a little nervious, and

wondering how this was going to help me out of my scrape; and at last,

still talking along, he reached over and kissed Aunt Sally right on the

mouth, and then settled back again in his chair comfortable, and was

going on talking; but she jumped up and wiped it off with the back of her

hand, and says:

"You owdacious puppy!"

He looked kind of hurt, and says:

"I'm surprised at you, m'am."

"You're s'rp--Why, what do you reckon I am? I've a good notion to take

and--Say, what do you mean by kissing me?"

He looked kind of humble, and says:

"I didn't mean nothing, m'am. I didn't mean no harm. I--I--thought

you'd like it."

"Why, you born fool!" She took up the spinning stick, and it looked like

it was all she could do to keep from giving him a crack with it. "What

made you think I'd like it?"

"Well, I don't know. Only, they--they--told me you would."

"THEY told you I would. Whoever told you's ANOTHER lunatic. I never

heard the beat of it. Who's THEY?"

"Why, everybody. They all said so, m'am."

It was all she could do to hold in; and her eyes snapped, and her fingers

worked like she wanted to scratch him; and she says:

"Who's 'everybody'? Out with their names, or ther'll be an idiot short."

He got up and looked distressed, and fumbled his hat, and says:

"I'm sorry, and I warn't expecting it. They told me to. They all told

me to. They all said, kiss her; and said she'd like it. They all said

it--every one of them. But I'm sorry, m'am, and I won't do it no more

--I won't, honest."

"You won't, won't you? Well, I sh'd RECKON you won't!"

"No'm, I'm honest about it; I won't ever do it again--till you ask me."

"Till I ASK you! Well, I never see the beat of it in my born days! I

lay you'll be the Methusalem-numskull of creation before ever I ask you

--or the likes of you."

"Well," he says, "it does surprise me so. I can't make it out, somehow.

They said you would, and I thought you would. But--" He stopped and

looked around slow, like he wished he could run across a friendly eye

somewheres, and fetched up on the old gentleman's, and says, "Didn't YOU

think she'd like me to kiss her, sir?"

"Why, no; I--I--well, no, I b'lieve I didn't."

Then he looks on around the same way to me, and says:

"Tom, didn't YOU think Aunt Sally 'd open out her arms and say, 'Sid

Sawyer--'"

"My land!" she says, breaking in and jumping for him, "you impudent young

rascal, to fool a body so--" and was going to hug him, but he fended her

off, and says:

"No, not till you've asked me first."

So she didn't lose no time, but asked him; and hugged him and kissed him

over and over again, and then turned him over to the old man, and he took

what was left. And after they got a little quiet again she says:

"Why, dear me, I never see such a surprise. We warn't looking for YOU at

all, but only Tom. Sis never wrote to me about anybody coming but him."

"It's because it warn't INTENDED for any of us to come but Tom," he says;

"but I begged and begged, and at the last minute she let me come, too;

so, coming down the river, me and Tom thought it would be a first-rate

surprise for him to come here to the house first, and for me to by and by

tag along and drop in, and let on to be a stranger. But it was a

mistake, Aunt Sally. This ain't no healthy place for a stranger to

come."

"No--not impudent whelps, Sid. You ought to had your jaws boxed; I

hain't been so put out since I don't know when. But I don't care, I

don't mind the terms--I'd be willing to stand a thousand such jokes to

have you here. Well, to think of that performance! I don't deny it, I

was most putrified with astonishment when you give me that smack."

We had dinner out in that broad open passage betwixt the house and the

kitchen; and there was things enough on that table for seven families

--and all hot, too; none of your flabby, tough meat that's laid in a

cupboard in a damp cellar all night and tastes like a hunk of old cold

cannibal in the morning. Uncle Silas he asked a pretty long blessing

over it, but it was worth it; and it didn't cool it a bit, neither, the

way I've seen them kind of interruptions do lots of times. There was a

considerable good deal of talk all the afternoon, and me and Tom was on

the lookout all the time; but it warn't no use, they didn't happen to say

nothing about any runaway nigger, and we was afraid to try to work up to

it. But at supper, at night, one of the little boys says:

"Pa, mayn't Tom and Sid and me go to the show?"

"No," says the old man, "I reckon there ain't going to be any; and you

couldn't go if there was; because the runaway nigger told Burton and me

all about that scandalous show, and Burton said he would tell the people;

so I reckon they've drove the owdacious loafers out of town before this

time."

So there it was!--but I couldn't help it. Tom and me was to sleep in the

same room and bed; so, being tired, we bid good-night and went up to bed

right after supper, and clumb out of the window and down the

lightning-rod, and shoved for the town; for I didn't believe anybody was

going to give the king and the duke a hint, and so if I didn't hurry up

and give them one they'd get into trouble sure.

On the road Tom he told me all about how it was reckoned I was murdered,

and how pap disappeared pretty soon, and didn't come back no more, and

what a stir there was when Jim run away; and I told Tom all about our

Royal Nonesuch rapscallions, and as much of the raft voyage as I had time

to; and as we struck into the town and up through the--here comes a

raging rush of people with torches, and an awful whooping and yelling,

and banging tin pans and blowing horns; and we jumped to one side to let

them go by; and as they went by I see they had the king and the duke

astraddle of a rail--that is, I knowed it WAS the king and the duke,

though they was all over tar and feathers, and didn't look like nothing

in the world that was human--just looked like a couple of monstrous big

soldier-plumes. Well, it made me sick to see it; and I was sorry for

them poor pitiful rascals, it seemed like I couldn't ever feel any

hardness against them any more in the world. It was a dreadful thing to

see. Human beings CAN be awful cruel to one another.

We see we was too late--couldn't do no good. We asked some stragglers

about it, and they said everybody went to the show looking very innocent;

and laid low and kept dark till the poor old king was in the middle of

his cavortings on the stage; then somebody give a signal, and the house

rose up and went for them.

So we poked along back home, and I warn't feeling so brash as I was

before, but kind of ornery, and humble, and to blame, somehow--though I

hadn't done nothing. But that's always the way; it don't make no

difference whether you do right or wrong, a person's conscience ain't got

no sense, and just goes for him anyway. If I had a yaller dog that

didn't know no more than a person's conscience does I would pison him.

It takes up more room than all the rest of a person's insides, and yet

ain't no good, nohow. Tom Sawyer he says the same.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

WE stopped talking, and got to thinking. By and by Tom says:

"Looky here, Huck, what fools we are to not think of it before! I bet I

know where Jim is."

"No! Where?"

"In that hut down by the ash-hopper. Why, looky here. When we was at

dinner, didn't you see a nigger man go in there with some vittles?"

"Yes."

"What did you think the vittles was for?"

"For a dog."

"So 'd I. Well, it wasn't for a dog."

"Why?"

"Because part of it was watermelon."

"So it was--I noticed it. Well, it does beat all that I never thought

about a dog not eating watermelon. It shows how a body can see and don't

see at the same time."

"Well, the nigger unlocked the padlock when he went in, and he locked it