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touch a case-knife with them sooner."

"Well, then, what we going to do, Tom?"

"I'll tell you. It ain't right, and it ain't moral, and I wouldn't like

it to get out; but there ain't only just the one way: we got to dig him

out with the picks, and LET ON it's case-knives."

"NOW you're TALKING!" I says; "your head gets leveler and leveler all

the time, Tom Sawyer," I says. "Picks is the thing, moral or no moral;

and as for me, I don't care shucks for the morality of it, nohow. When I

start in to steal a nigger, or a watermelon, or a Sunday-school book, I

ain't no ways particular how it's done so it's done. What I want is my

nigger; or what I want is my watermelon; or what I want is my

Sunday-school book; and if a pick's the handiest thing, that's the thing

I'm a-going to dig that nigger or that watermelon or that Sunday-school

book out with; and I don't give a dead rat what the authorities thinks

about it nuther."

"Well," he says, "there's excuse for picks and letting-on in a case like

this; if it warn't so, I wouldn't approve of it, nor I wouldn't stand by

and see the rules broke--because right is right, and wrong is wrong, and

a body ain't got no business doing wrong when he ain't ignorant and knows

better. It might answer for YOU to dig Jim out with a pick, WITHOUT any

letting on, because you don't know no better; but it wouldn't for me,

because I do know better. Gimme a case-knife."

He had his own by him, but I handed him mine. He flung it down, and

says:

"Gimme a CASE-KNIFE."

I didn't know just what to do--but then I thought. I scratched around

amongst the old tools, and got a pickaxe and give it to him, and he took

it and went to work, and never said a word.

He was always just that particular. Full of principle.

So then I got a shovel, and then we picked and shoveled, turn about, and

made the fur fly. We stuck to it about a half an hour, which was as long

as we could stand up; but we had a good deal of a hole to show for it.

When I got up stairs I looked out at the window and see Tom doing his

level best with the lightning-rod, but he couldn't come it, his hands was

so sore. At last he says:

"It ain't no use, it can't be done. What you reckon I better do? Can't

you think of no way?"

"Yes," I says, "but I reckon it ain't regular. Come up the stairs, and

let on it's a lightning-rod."

So he done it.

Next day Tom stole a pewter spoon and a brass candlestick in the house,

for to make some pens for Jim out of, and six tallow candles; and I hung

around the nigger cabins and laid for a chance, and stole three tin

plates. Tom says it wasn't enough; but I said nobody wouldn't ever see

the plates that Jim throwed out, because they'd fall in the dog-fennel

and jimpson weeds under the window-hole--then we could tote them back and

he could use them over again. So Tom was satisfied. Then he says:

"Now, the thing to study out is, how to get the things to Jim."

"Take them in through the hole," I says, "when we get it done."

He only just looked scornful, and said something about nobody ever heard

of such an idiotic idea, and then he went to studying. By and by he said

he had ciphered out two or three ways, but there warn't no need to decide

on any of them yet. Said we'd got to post Jim first.

That night we went down the lightning-rod a little after ten, and took

one of the candles along, and listened under the window-hole, and heard

Jim snoring; so we pitched it in, and it didn't wake him. Then we

whirled in with the pick and shovel, and in about two hours and a half

the job was done. We crept in under Jim's bed and into the cabin, and

pawed around and found the candle and lit it, and stood over Jim awhile,

and found him looking hearty and healthy, and then we woke him up gentle

and gradual. He was so glad to see us he most cried; and called us

honey, and all the pet names he could think of; and was for having us

hunt up a cold-chisel to cut the chain off of his leg with right away,

and clearing out without losing any time. But Tom he showed him how

unregular it would be, and set down and told him all about our plans, and

how we could alter them in a minute any time there was an alarm; and not

to be the least afraid, because we would see he got away, SURE. So Jim

he said it was all right, and we set there and talked over old times

awhile, and then Tom asked a lot of questions, and when Jim told him

Uncle Silas come in every day or two to pray with him, and Aunt Sally

come in to see if he was comfortable and had plenty to eat, and both of

them was kind as they could be, Tom says:

"NOW I know how to fix it. We'll send you some things by them."

I said, "Don't do nothing of the kind; it's one of the most jackass ideas

I ever struck;" but he never paid no attention to me; went right on. It

was his way when he'd got his plans set.

So he told Jim how we'd have to smuggle in the rope-ladder pie and other

large things by Nat, the nigger that fed him, and he must be on the

lookout, and not be surprised, and not let Nat see him open them; and we

would put small things in uncle's coat-pockets and he must steal them

out; and we would tie things to aunt's apron-strings or put them in her

apron-pocket, if we got a chance; and told him what they would be and

what they was for. And told him how to keep a journal on the shirt with

his blood, and all that. He told him everything. Jim he couldn't see no

sense in the most of it, but he allowed we was white folks and knowed

better than him; so he was satisfied, and said he would do it all just as

Tom said.

Jim had plenty corn-cob pipes and tobacco; so we had a right down good

sociable time; then we crawled out through the hole, and so home to bed,

with hands that looked like they'd been chawed. Tom was in high spirits.

He said it was the best fun he ever had in his life, and the most

intellectural; and said if he only could see his way to it we would keep

it up all the rest of our lives and leave Jim to our children to get out;

for he believed Jim would come to like it better and better the more he

got used to it. He said that in that way it could be strung out to as

much as eighty year, and would be the best time on record. And he said

it would make us all celebrated that had a hand in it.

In the morning we went out to the woodpile and chopped up the brass

candlestick into handy sizes, and Tom put them and the pewter spoon in

his pocket. Then we went to the nigger cabins, and while I got Nat's

notice off, Tom shoved a piece of candlestick into the middle of a

corn-pone that was in Jim's pan, and we went along with Nat to see how it

would work, and it just worked noble; when Jim bit into it it most mashed

all his teeth out; and there warn't ever anything could a worked better.

Tom said so himself. Jim he never let on but what it was only just a

piece of rock or something like that that's always getting into bread,

you know; but after that he never bit into nothing but what he jabbed his

fork into it in three or four places first.

And whilst we was a-standing there in the dimmish light, here comes a

couple of the hounds bulging in from under Jim's bed; and they kept on

piling in till there was eleven of them, and there warn't hardly room in

there to get your breath. By jings, we forgot to fasten that lean-to

door! The nigger Nat he only just hollered "Witches" once, and keeled

over on to the floor amongst the dogs, and begun to groan like he was

dying. Tom jerked the door open and flung out a slab of Jim's meat, and

the dogs went for it, and in two seconds he was out himself and back

again and shut the door, and I knowed he'd fixed the other door too.

Then he went to work on the nigger, coaxing him and petting him, and

asking him if he'd been imagining he saw something again. He raised up,

and blinked his eyes around, and says:

"Mars Sid, you'll say I's a fool, but if I didn't b'lieve I see most a

million dogs, er devils, er some'n, I wisht I may die right heah in dese

tracks. I did, mos' sholy. Mars Sid, I FELT um--I FELT um, sah; dey was

all over me. Dad fetch it, I jis' wisht I could git my han's on one er

dem witches jis' wunst--on'y jis' wunst--it's all I'd ast. But mos'ly I

wisht dey'd lemme 'lone, I does."

Tom says:

"Well, I tell you what I think. What makes them come here just at this

runaway nigger's breakfast-time? It's because they're hungry; that's the

reason. You make them a witch pie; that's the thing for YOU to do."

"But my lan', Mars Sid, how's I gwyne to make 'm a witch pie? I doan'

know how to make it. I hain't ever hearn er sich a thing b'fo'."

"Well, then, I'll have to make it myself."

"Will you do it, honey?--will you? I'll wusshup de groun' und' yo' foot,

I will!"

"All right, I'll do it, seeing it's you, and you've been good to us and

showed us the runaway nigger. But you got to be mighty careful. When we

come around, you turn your back; and then whatever we've put in the pan,

don't you let on you see it at all. And don't you look when Jim unloads

the pan--something might happen, I don't know what. And above all, don't

you HANDLE the witch-things."

"HANNEL 'm, Mars Sid? What IS you a-talkin' 'bout? I wouldn' lay de

weight er my finger on um, not f'r ten hund'd thous'n billion dollars, I

wouldn't."

CHAPTER XXXVII.

THAT was all fixed. So then we went away and went to the rubbage-pile in

the back yard, where they keep the old boots, and rags, and pieces of

bottles, and wore-out tin things, and all such truck, and scratched

around and found an old tin washpan, and stopped up the holes as well as

we could, to bake the pie in, and took it down cellar and stole it full

of flour and started for breakfast, and found a couple of shingle-nails

that Tom said would be handy for a prisoner to scrabble his name and

sorrows on the dungeon walls with, and dropped one of them in Aunt

Sally's apron-pocket which was hanging on a chair, and t'other we stuck

in the band of Uncle Silas's hat, which was on the bureau, because we

heard the children say their pa and ma was going to the runaway nigger's

house this morning, and then went to breakfast, and Tom dropped the

pewter spoon in Uncle Silas's coat-pocket, and Aunt Sally wasn't come

yet, so we had to wait a little while.

And when she come she was hot and red and cross, and couldn't hardly wait

for the blessing; and then she went to sluicing out coffee with one hand

and cracking the handiest child's head with her thimble with the other,

and says:

"I've hunted high and I've hunted low, and it does beat all what HAS

become of your other shirt."

My heart fell down amongst my lungs and livers and things, and a hard

piece of corn-crust started down my throat after it and got met on the

road with a cough, and was shot across the table, and took one of the

children in the eye and curled him up like a fishing-worm, and let a cry

out of him the size of a warwhoop, and Tom he turned kinder blue around

the gills, and it all amounted to a considerable state of things for

about a quarter of a minute or as much as that, and I would a sold out

for half price if there was a bidder. But after that we was all right

again--it was the sudden surprise of it that knocked us so kind of cold.

Uncle Silas he says:

"It's most uncommon curious, I can't understand it. I know perfectly

well I took it OFF, because--"

"Because you hain't got but one ON. Just LISTEN at the man! I know you

took it off, and know it by a better way than your wool-gethering memory,

too, because it was on the clo's-line yesterday--I see it there myself.

But it's gone, that's the long and the short of it, and you'll just have

to change to a red flann'l one till I can get time to make a new one.

And it 'll be the third I've made in two years. It just keeps a body on

the jump to keep you in shirts; and whatever you do manage to DO with 'm

all is more'n I can make out. A body 'd think you WOULD learn to take

some sort of care of 'em at your time of life."

"I know it, Sally, and I do try all I can. But it oughtn't to be

altogether my fault, because, you know, I don't see them nor have nothing

to do with them except when they're on me; and I don't believe I've ever

lost one of them OFF of me."

"Well, it ain't YOUR fault if you haven't, Silas; you'd a done it if you

could, I reckon. And the shirt ain't all that's gone, nuther. Ther's a

spoon gone; and THAT ain't all. There was ten, and now ther's only nine.

The calf got the shirt, I reckon, but the calf never took the spoon,

THAT'S certain."

"Why, what else is gone, Sally?"

"Ther's six CANDLES gone--that's what. The rats could a got the candles,

and I reckon they did; I wonder they don't walk off with the whole place,

the way you're always going to stop their holes and don't do it; and if

they warn't fools they'd sleep in your hair, Silas--YOU'D never find it

out; but you can't lay the SPOON on the rats, and that I know."

"Well, Sally, I'm in fault, and I acknowledge it; I've been remiss; but I

won't let to-morrow go by without stopping up them holes."

"Oh, I wouldn't hurry; next year 'll do. Matilda Angelina Araminta