第 38 页

PHELPS!"

Whack comes the thimble, and the child snatches her claws out of the

sugar-bowl without fooling around any. Just then the nigger woman steps

on to the passage, and says:

"Missus, dey's a sheet gone."

"A SHEET gone! Well, for the land's sake!"

"I'll stop up them holes to-day," says Uncle Silas, looking sorrowful.

"Oh, DO shet up!--s'pose the rats took the SHEET? WHERE'S it gone,

Lize?"

"Clah to goodness I hain't no notion, Miss' Sally. She wuz on de

clo'sline yistiddy, but she done gone: she ain' dah no mo' now."

"I reckon the world IS coming to an end. I NEVER see the beat of it in

all my born days. A shirt, and a sheet, and a spoon, and six can--"

"Missus," comes a young yaller wench, "dey's a brass cannelstick miss'n."

"Cler out from here, you hussy, er I'll take a skillet to ye!"

Well, she was just a-biling. I begun to lay for a chance; I reckoned I

would sneak out and go for the woods till the weather moderated. She

kept a-raging right along, running her insurrection all by herself, and

everybody else mighty meek and quiet; and at last Uncle Silas, looking

kind of foolish, fishes up that spoon out of his pocket. She stopped,

with her mouth open and her hands up; and as for me, I wished I was in

Jeruslem or somewheres. But not long, because she says:

"It's JUST as I expected. So you had it in your pocket all the time; and

like as not you've got the other things there, too. How'd it get there?"

"I reely don't know, Sally," he says, kind of apologizing, "or you know I

would tell. I was a-studying over my text in Acts Seventeen before

breakfast, and I reckon I put it in there, not noticing, meaning to put

my Testament in, and it must be so, because my Testament ain't in; but

I'll go and see; and if the Testament is where I had it, I'll know I

didn't put it in, and that will show that I laid the Testament down and

took up the spoon, and--"

"Oh, for the land's sake! Give a body a rest! Go 'long now, the whole

kit and biling of ye; and don't come nigh me again till I've got back my

peace of mind."

I'd a heard her if she'd a said it to herself, let alone speaking it out;

and I'd a got up and obeyed her if I'd a been dead. As we was passing

through the setting-room the old man he took up his hat, and the

shingle-nail fell out on the floor, and he just merely picked it up and

laid it on the mantel-shelf, and never said nothing, and went out. Tom

see him do it, and remembered about the spoon, and says:

"Well, it ain't no use to send things by HIM no more, he ain't reliable."

Then he says: "But he done us a good turn with the spoon, anyway,

without knowing it, and so we'll go and do him one without HIM knowing

it--stop up his rat-holes."

There was a noble good lot of them down cellar, and it took us a whole

hour, but we done the job tight and good and shipshape. Then we heard

steps on the stairs, and blowed out our light and hid; and here comes the

old man, with a candle in one hand and a bundle of stuff in t'other,

looking as absent-minded as year before last. He went a mooning around,

first to one rat-hole and then another, till he'd been to them all. Then

he stood about five minutes, picking tallow-drip off of his candle and

thinking. Then he turns off slow and dreamy towards the stairs, saying:

"Well, for the life of me I can't remember when I done it. I could show

her now that I warn't to blame on account of the rats. But never mind

--let it go. I reckon it wouldn't do no good."

And so he went on a-mumbling up stairs, and then we left. He was a

mighty nice old man. And always is.

Tom was a good deal bothered about what to do for a spoon, but he said

we'd got to have it; so he took a think. When he had ciphered it out he

told me how we was to do; then we went and waited around the spoon-basket

till we see Aunt Sally coming, and then Tom went to counting the spoons

and laying them out to one side, and I slid one of them up my sleeve, and

Tom says:

"Why, Aunt Sally, there ain't but nine spoons YET."

She says:

"Go 'long to your play, and don't bother me. I know better, I counted 'm

myself."

"Well, I've counted them twice, Aunty, and I can't make but nine."

She looked out of all patience, but of course she come to count--anybody

would.

"I declare to gracious ther' AIN'T but nine!" she says. "Why, what in

the world--plague TAKE the things, I'll count 'm again."

So I slipped back the one I had, and when she got done counting, she

says:

"Hang the troublesome rubbage, ther's TEN now!" and she looked huffy and

bothered both. But Tom says:

"Why, Aunty, I don't think there's ten."

"You numskull, didn't you see me COUNT 'm?"

"I know, but--"

"Well, I'll count 'm AGAIN."

So I smouched one, and they come out nine, same as the other time. Well,

she WAS in a tearing way--just a-trembling all over, she was so mad. But

she counted and counted till she got that addled she'd start to count in

the basket for a spoon sometimes; and so, three times they come out

right, and three times they come out wrong. Then she grabbed up the

basket and slammed it across the house and knocked the cat galley-west;

and she said cle'r out and let her have some peace, and if we come

bothering around her again betwixt that and dinner she'd skin us. So we

had the odd spoon, and dropped it in her apron-pocket whilst she was

a-giving us our sailing orders, and Jim got it all right, along with her

shingle nail, before noon. We was very well satisfied with this

business, and Tom allowed it was worth twice the trouble it took, because

he said NOW she couldn't ever count them spoons twice alike again to save

her life; and wouldn't believe she'd counted them right if she DID; and

said that after she'd about counted her head off for the next three days

he judged she'd give it up and offer to kill anybody that wanted her to

ever count them any more.

So we put the sheet back on the line that night, and stole one out of her

closet; and kept on putting it back and stealing it again for a couple of

days till she didn't know how many sheets she had any more, and she

didn't CARE, and warn't a-going to bullyrag the rest of her soul out

about it, and wouldn't count them again not to save her life; she druther

die first.

So we was all right now, as to the shirt and the sheet and the spoon and

the candles, by the help of the calf and the rats and the mixed-up

counting; and as to the candlestick, it warn't no consequence, it would

blow over by and by.

But that pie was a job; we had no end of trouble with that pie. We fixed

it up away down in the woods, and cooked it there; and we got it done at

last, and very satisfactory, too; but not all in one day; and we had to

use up three wash-pans full of flour before we got through, and we got

burnt pretty much all over, in places, and eyes put out with the smoke;

because, you see, we didn't want nothing but a crust, and we couldn't

prop it up right, and she would always cave in. But of course we thought

of the right way at last--which was to cook the ladder, too, in the

pie. So then we laid in with Jim the second night, and tore up the sheet

all in little strings and twisted them together, and long before daylight

we had a lovely rope that you could a hung a person with. We let on it

took nine months to make it.

And in the forenoon we took it down to the woods, but it wouldn't go into

the pie. Being made of a whole sheet, that way, there was rope enough

for forty pies if we'd a wanted them, and plenty left over for soup, or

sausage, or anything you choose. We could a had a whole dinner.

But we didn't need it. All we needed was just enough for the pie,

and so we throwed the rest away. We didn't cook none of the pies in the

wash-pan--afraid the solder would melt; but Uncle Silas he had a noble

brass warming-pan which he thought considerable of, because it belonged

to one of his ancesters with a long wooden handle that come over from

England with William the Conqueror in the Mayflower or one of them early

ships and was hid away up garret with a lot of other old pots and things

that was valuable, not on account of being any account, because they

warn't, but on account of them being relicts, you know, and we snaked her

out, private, and took her down there, but she failed on the first pies,

because we didn't know how, but she come up smiling on the last one. We

took and lined her with dough, and set her in the coals, and loaded her

up with rag rope, and put on a dough roof, and shut down the lid, and put

hot embers on top, and stood off five foot, with the long handle, cool

and comfortable, and in fifteen minutes she turned out a pie that was a

satisfaction to look at. But the person that et it would want to fetch a

couple of kags of toothpicks along, for if that rope ladder wouldn't

cramp him down to business I don't know nothing what I'm talking about,

and lay him in enough stomach-ache to last him till next time, too.

Nat didn't look when we put the witch pie in Jim's pan; and we put the

three tin plates in the bottom of the pan under the vittles; and so Jim

got everything all right, and as soon as he was by himself he busted into

the pie and hid the rope ladder inside of his straw tick, and scratched

some marks on a tin plate and throwed it out of the window-hole.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

MAKING them pens was a distressid tough job, and so was the saw; and Jim

allowed the inscription was going to be the toughest of all. That's the

one which the prisoner has to scrabble on the wall. But he had to have

it; Tom said he'd GOT to; there warn't no case of a state prisoner not

scrabbling his inscription to leave behind, and his coat of arms.

"Look at Lady Jane Grey," he says; "look at Gilford Dudley; look at old

Northumberland! Why, Huck, s'pose it IS considerble trouble?--what you

going to do?--how you going to get around it? Jim's GOT to do his

inscription and coat of arms. They all do."

Jim says:

"Why, Mars Tom, I hain't got no coat o' arm; I hain't got nuffn but dish

yer ole shirt, en you knows I got to keep de journal on dat."

"Oh, you don't understand, Jim; a coat of arms is very different."

"Well," I says, "Jim's right, anyway, when he says he ain't got no coat

of arms, because he hain't."

"I reckon I knowed that," Tom says, "but you bet he'll have one before he

goes out of this--because he's going out RIGHT, and there ain't going to

be no flaws in his record."

So whilst me and Jim filed away at the pens on a brickbat apiece, Jim

a-making his'n out of the brass and I making mine out of the spoon, Tom

set to work to think out the coat of arms. By and by he said he'd struck

so many good ones he didn't hardly know which to take, but there was one

which he reckoned he'd decide on. He says:

"On the scutcheon we'll have a bend OR in the dexter base, a saltire

MURREY in the fess, with a dog, couchant, for common charge, and under

his foot a chain embattled, for slavery, with a chevron VERT in a chief

engrailed, and three invected lines on a field AZURE, with the nombril

points rampant on a dancette indented; crest, a runaway nigger, SABLE,

with his bundle over his shoulder on a bar sinister; and a couple of

gules for supporters, which is you and me; motto, MAGGIORE FRETTA, MINORE

OTTO. Got it out of a book--means the more haste the less speed."

"Geewhillikins," I says, "but what does the rest of it mean?"

"We ain't got no time to bother over that," he says; "we got to dig in

like all git-out."

"Well, anyway," I says, "what's SOME of it? What's a fess?"

"A fess--a fess is--YOU don't need to know what a fess is. I'll show him

how to make it when he gets to it."

"Shucks, Tom," I says, "I think you might tell a person. What's a bar

sinister?"

"Oh, I don't know. But he's got to have it. All the nobility does."

That was just his way. If it didn't suit him to explain a thing to you,

he wouldn't do it. You might pump at him a week, it wouldn't make no

difference.

He'd got all that coat of arms business fixed, so now he started in to

finish up the rest of that part of the work, which was to plan out a

mournful inscription--said Jim got to have one, like they all done. He

made up a lot, and wrote them out on a paper, and read them off, so:

1. Here a captive heart busted. 2. Here a poor prisoner, forsook by the

world and friends, fretted his sorrowful life. 3. Here a lonely heart

broke, and a worn spirit went to its rest, after thirty-seven years of

solitary captivity. 4. Here, homeless and friendless, after thirty-seven

years of bitter captivity, perished a noble stranger, natural son of

Louis XIV.

Tom's voice trembled whilst he was reading them, and he most broke down.

When he got done he couldn't no way make up his mind which one for Jim to

scrabble on to the wall, they was all so good; but at last he allowed he

would let him scrabble them all on. Jim said it would take him a year to

scrabble such a lot of truck on to the logs with a nail, and he didn't

know how to make letters, besides; but Tom said he would block them out

for him, and then he wouldn't have nothing to do but just follow the

lines. Then pretty soon he says: