Mark
Twain
Tom
Sawyer, Detective
Chapter I.
AN INVITATION FOR TOM AND HUCK
[Footnote: Strange as the incidents of this story are, they
are not inventions, but factseven to the public confession of the accused. I take
them from an old-time Swedish criminal trial, change the actors, and transfer
the scenes to America. I have added some details, but only a couple of them are
important ones. M. T.]
WELL, it was the next spring after me and Tom Sawyer set our
old nigger Jim free, the time he was chained up for a runaway slave down there
on Tom's uncle Silas's farm in Arkansaw. The frost was working out of the
ground, and out of the air, too, and it was getting closer and closer onto
barefoot time every day; and next it would be marble time, and next
mumbletypeg, and next tops and hoops, and next kites, and then right away it
would be summer and going in a-swimming. It just makes a boy homesick to look
ahead like that and see how far off summer is. Yes, and it sets him to sighing
and saddening around, and there's something the matter with him, he don't know
what. But anyway, he gets out by himself and mopes and thinks; and mostly he
hunts for a lonesome place high up on the hill in the edge of the woods, and
sets there and looks away off on the big Mississippi down there a-reaching
miles and miles around the points where the timber looks smoky and dim it's so
far off and still, and everything's so solemn it seems like everybody you've
loved is dead and gone, and you 'most wish you was dead and gone too, and done
with it all.
Don't you know what that is? It's spring fever. That is what
the name of it is. And when you've got it, you wantoh, you don't quite know
what it is you DO want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it
so! It seems to you that mainly what you want is to get away; get away from the
same old tedious things you're so used to seeing and so tired of, and set
something new. That is the idea; you want to go and be a wanderer; you want to
go wandering far away to strange countries where everything is mysterious and
wonderful and romantic. And if you can't do that, you'll put up with
considerable less; you'll go anywhere you CAN go, just so as to get away, and
be thankful of the chance, too.
Well, me and Tom Sawyer had the spring fever, and had it
bad, too; but it warn't any use to think about Tom trying to get away, because,
as he said, his Aunt Polly wouldn't let him quit school and go traipsing off
somers wasting time; so we was pretty blue. We was setting on the front steps
one day about sundown talking this way, when out comes his aunt Polly with a
letter in her hand and says:
Tom, I reckon you've got to pack up and go down to
Arkansawyour aunt Sally wants you.
I 'most jumped out of my skin for joy. I reckoned Tom would
fly at his aunt and hug her head off; but if you believe me he set there like a
rock, and never said a word. It made me fit to cry to see him act so foolish,
with such a noble chance as this opening up. Why, we might lose it if he didn't
speak up and show he was thankful and grateful. But he set there and studied
and studied till I was that distressed I didn't know what to do; then he says,
very ca'm, and I could a shot him for it:
Well, he says, I'm right down sorry, Aunt Polly, but I
reckon I got to be excusedfor the present.
His aunt Polly was knocked so stupid and so mad at the cold
impudence of it that she couldn't say a word for as much as a half a minute,
and this gave me a chance to nudge Tom and whisper:
Ain't you got any sense? Sp'iling such a noble chance as
this and throwing it away?
But he warn't disturbed. He mumbled back:
Huck Finn, do you want me to let her SEE how bad I want to
go? Why, she'd begin to doubt, right away, and imagine a lot of sicknesses and dangers
and objections, and first you know she'd take it all back. You lemme alone; I
reckon I know how to work her.
Now I never would 'a' thought of that. But he was right. Tom
Sawyer was always rightthe levelest head I ever see, and always AT himself and
ready for anything you might spring on him. By this time his aunt Polly was all
straight again, and she let fly. She says:
You'll be excused! YOU will! Well, I never heard the like
of it in all my days! The idea of you talking like that to ME! Now take
yourself off and pack your traps; and if I hear another word out of you about
what you'll be excused from and what you won't, I lay I'LL excuse youwith a
hickory!
She hit his head a thump with her thimble as we dodged by,
and he let on to be whimpering as we struck for the stairs. Up in his room he
hugged me, he was so out of his head for gladness because he was going
traveling. And he says:
Before we get away she'll wish she hadn't let me go, but
she won't know any way to get around it now. After what she's said, her pride
won't let her take it back.
Tom was packed in ten minutes, all except what his aunt and
Mary would finish up for him; then we waited ten more for her to get cooled
down and sweet and gentle again; for Tom said it took her ten minutes to
unruffle in times when half of her feathers was up, but twenty when they was
all up, and this was one of the times when they was all up. Then we went down,
being in a sweat to know what the letter said.
She was setting there in a brown study, with it laying in
her lap. We set down, and she says:
They're in considerable trouble down there, and they think
you and Huck'll be a kind of diversion for them'comfort,' they say. Much of
that they'll get out of you and Huck Finn, I reckon. There's a neighbor named
Brace Dunlap that's been wanting to marry their Benny for three months, and at
last they told him point blank and once for all, he COULDN'T; so he has soured
on them, and they're worried about it. I reckon he's somebody they think they
better be on the good side of, for they've tried to please him by hiring his
no-account brother to help on the farm when they can't hardly afford it, and
don't want him around anyhow. Who are the Dunlaps?
They live about a mile from Uncle Silas's place, Aunt
Pollyall the farmers live about a mile apart down thereand Brace Dunlap is a
long sight richer than any of the others, and owns a whole grist of niggers.
He's a widower, thirty-six years old, without any children, and is proud of his
money and overbearing, and everybody is a little afraid of him. I judge he
thought he could have any girl he wanted, just for the asking, and it must have
set him back a good deal when he found he couldn't get Benny. Why, Benny's only
half as old as he is, and just as sweet and lovely aswell, you've seen her.
Poor old Uncle Silaswhy, it's pitiful, him trying to curry favor that wayso
hard pushed and poor, and yet hiring that useless Jubiter Dunlap to please his
ornery brother.
What a nameJubiter! Where'd he get it?
It's only just a nickname. I reckon they've forgot his real
name long before this. He's twenty-seven, now, and has had it ever since the
first time he ever went in swimming. The school teacher seen a round brown mole
the size of a dime on his left leg above his knee, and four little bits of
moles around it, when he was naked, and he said it minded him of Jubiter and
his moons; and the children thought it was funny, and so they got to calling
him Jubiter, and he's Jubiter yet. He's tall, and lazy, and sly, and sneaky, and
ruther cowardly, too, but kind of good-natured, and wears long brown hair and
no beard, and hasn't got a cent, and Brace boards him for nothing, and gives
him his old clothes to wear, and despises him. Jubiter is a twin.
What's t'other twin like?
Just exactly like Jubiterso they say; used to was, anyway,
but he hain't been seen for seven years. He got to robbing when he was nineteen
or twenty, and they jailed him; but he broke jail and got awayup North here,
somers. They used to hear about him robbing and burglaring now and then, but
that was years ago. He's dead, now. At least that's what they say. They don't
hear about him any more.
What was his name?
Jake.
There wasn't anything more said for a considerable while;
the old lady was thinking. At last she says:
The thing that is mostly worrying your aunt Sally is the
tempers that that man Jubiter gets your uncle into.
Tom was astonished, and so was I. Tom says:
Tempers? Uncle Silas? Land, you must be joking! I didn't
know he HAD any temper.
Works him up into perfect rages, your aunt Sally says; says
he acts as if he would really hit the man, sometimes.
Aunt Polly, it beats anything I ever heard of. Why, he's
just as gentle as mush.
Well, she's worried, anyway. Says your uncle Silas is like
a changed man, on account of all this quarreling. And the neighbors talk about
it, and lay all the blame on your uncle, of course, because he's a preacher and
hain't got any business to quarrel. Your aunt Sally says he hates to go into
the pulpit he's so ashamed; and the people have begun to cool toward him, and
he ain't as popular now as he used to was.
Well, ain't it strange? Why, Aunt Polly, he was always so
good and kind and moony and absent-minded and chuckle-headed and lovablewhy,
he was just an angel! What CAN be the matter of him, do you reckon?
Chapter II.
JAKE DUNLAP
WE had powerful good luck; because we got a chance in a
stern-wheeler from away North which was bound for one of them bayous or
one-horse rivers away down Louisiana way, and so we could go all the way down
the Upper Mississippi and all the way down the Lower Mississippi to that farm
in Arkansaw without having to change steamboats at St. Louis; not so very much
short of a thousand miles at one pull.
A pretty lonesome boat; there warn't but few passengers, and
all old folks, that set around, wide apart, dozing, and was very quiet. We was
four days getting out of the upper river, because we got aground so much. But
it warn't dullcouldn't be for boys that was traveling, of course.
From the very start me and Tom allowed that there was
somebody sick in the stateroom next to ourn, because the meals was always toted
in there by the waiters. By and by we asked about itTom did and the waiter
said it was a man, but he didn't look sick.
Well, but AIN'T he sick?
I don't know; maybe he is, but 'pears to me he's just
letting on.
What makes you think that?
Because if he was sick he would pull his clothes off SOME
time or otherdon't you reckon he would? Well, this one don't. At least he
don't ever pull off his boots, anyway.
The mischief he don't! Not even when he goes to bed?
No.
It was always nuts for Tom Sawyera mystery was. If you'd
lay out a mystery and a pie before me and him, you wouldn't have to say take
your choice; it was a thing that would regulate itself. Because in my nature I
have always run to pie, whilst in his nature he has always run to mystery.
People are made different. And it is the best way. Tom says to the waiter:
What's the man's name?
Phillips.
Where'd he come aboard?
I think he got aboard at Elexandria, up on the Iowa line.
What do you reckon he's a-playing?
I hain't any notionI never thought of it.
I says to myself, here's another one that runs to pie.
Anything peculiar about him?the way he acts or talks?
Nonothing, except he seems so scary, and keeps his doors
locked night and day both, and when you knock he won't let you in till he opens
the door a crack and sees who it is.
By jimminy, it's int'resting! I'd like to get a look at
him. Saythe next time you're going in there, don't you reckon you could spread
the door and
No, indeedy! He's always behind it. He would block that
game.
Tom studied over it, and then he says:
Looky here. You lend me your apern and let me take him his
breakfast in the morning. I'll give you a quarter.
The boy was plenty willing enough, if the head steward
wouldn't mind. Tom says that's all right, he reckoned he could fix it with the
head steward; and he done it. He fixed it so as we could both go in with aperns
on and toting vittles.
He didn't sleep much, he was in such a sweat to get in there
and find out the mystery about Phillips; and moreover he done a lot of guessing
about it all night, which warn't no use, for if you are going to find out the facts
of a thing, what's the sense in guessing out what ain't the facts and wasting
ammunition? I didn't lose no sleep. I wouldn't give a dern to know what's the
matter of Phillips, I says to myself.
Well, in the morning we put on the aperns and got a couple
of trays of truck, and Tom he knocked on the door. The man opened it a crack,
and then he let us in and shut it quick. By Jackson, when we got a sight of
him, we 'most dropped the trays! and Tom says:
Why, Jubiter Dunlap, where'd YOU come from?
Well, the man was astonished, of course; and first off he
looked like he didn't know whether to be scared, or glad, or both, or which,
but finally he settled down to being glad; and then his color come back, though
at first his face had turned pretty white. So we got to talking together while
he et his breakfast. And he says:
But I aint Jubiter Dunlap. I'd just as soon tell you who I
am, though, if you'll swear to keep mum, for I ain't no Phillips, either.
Tom says:
We'll keep mum, but there ain't any need to tell who you
are if you ain't Jubiter Dunlap.
Why?
Because if you ain't him you're t'other twin, Jake. You're
the spit'n image of Jubiter.
Well, I'm Jake. But looky here, how do you come to know us
Dunlaps?
Tom told about the adventures we'd had down there at his
uncle Silas's last summer, and when he see that there warn't anything about his
folksor him either, for that matterthat we didn't know, he opened out and
talked perfectly free and candid. He never made any bones about his own case;
said he'd been a hard lot, was a hard lot yet, and reckoned he'd be a hard lot
plumb to the end. He said of course it was a dangerous life, andHe give a kind
of gasp, and set his head like a person that's listening. We didn't say
anything, and so it was very still for a second or so, and there warn't no
sounds but the screaking of the woodwork and the chug-chugging of the machinery
down below.
Then we got him comfortable again, telling him about his
people, and how Brace's wife had been dead three years, and Brace wanted to
marry Benny and she shook him, and Jubiter was working for Uncle Silas, and him
and Uncle Silas quarreling all the timeand then he let go and laughed.
Land! he says, it's like old times to hear all this
tittle-tattle, and does me good. It's been seven years and more since I heard
any. How do they talk about me these days?
Who?
The farmersand the family.
Why, they don't talk about you at allat least only just a
mention, once in a long time.
The nation! he says, surprised; why is that?
Because they think you are dead long ago.
No! Are you speaking true?honor bright, now. He jumped
up, excited.
Honor bright. There ain't anybody thinks you are alive.
Then I'm saved, I'm saved, sure! I'll go home. They'll hide
me and save my life. You keep mum. Swear you'll keep mumswear you'll never,
never tell on me. Oh, boys, be good to a poor devil that's being hunted day and
night, and dasn't show his face! I've never done you any harm; I'll never do
you any, as God is in the heavens; swear you'll be good to me and help me save
my life.
We'd a swore it if he'd been a dog; and so we done it. Well,
he couldn't love us enough for it or be grateful enough, poor cuss; it was all
he could do to keep from hugging us.
We talked along, and he got out a little hand-bag and begun
to open it, and told us to turn our backs. We done it, and when he told us to
turn again he was perfectly different to what he was before. He had on blue
goggles and the naturalest-looking long brown whiskers and mustashes you ever
see. His own mother wouldn't 'a' knowed him. He asked us if he looked like his
brother Jubiter, now.
No, Tom said; there ain't anything left that's like him
except the long hair.
All right, I'll get that cropped close to my head before I
get there; then him and Brace will keep my secret, and I'll live with them as
being a stranger, and the neighbors won't ever guess me out. What do you
think?
Tom he studied awhile, then he says:
Well, of course me and Huck are going to keep mum there,
but if you don't keep mum yourself there's going to be a little bit of a
riskit ain't much, maybe, but it's a little. I mean, if you talk, won't people
notice that your voice is just like Jubiter's; and mightn't it make them think
of the twin they reckoned was dead, but maybe after all was hid all this time
under another name?
By George, he says, you're a sharp one! You're perfectly
right. I've got to play deef and dumb when there's a neighbor around. If I'd a
struck for home and forgot that little detailHowever, I wasn't striking for
home. I was breaking for any place where I could get away from these fellows
that are after me; then I was going to put on this disguise and get some
different clothes, and
He jumped for the outside door and laid his ear against it
and listened, pale and kind of panting. Presently he whispers:
Sounded like cocking a gun! Lord, what a life to lead!
Then he sunk down in a chair all limp and sick like, and
wiped the sweat off of his face.
Chapter III.
A DIAMOND ROBBERY
FROM that time out, we was with him 'most all the time, and
one or t'other of us slept in his upper berth. He said he had been so lonesome,
and it was such a comfort to him to have company, and somebody to talk to in his
troubles. We was in a sweat to find out what his secret was, but Tom said the
best way was not to seem anxious, then likely he would drop into it himself in
one of his talks, but if we got to asking questions he would get suspicious and
shet up his shell. It turned out just so. It warn't no trouble to see that he
WANTED to talk about it, but always along at first he would scare away from it
when he got on the very edge of it, and go to talking about something else. The
way it come about was this: He got to asking us, kind of indifferent like,
about the passengers down on deck. We told him about them. But he warn't
satisfied; we warn't particular enough. He told us to describe them better. Tom
done it. At last, when Tom was describing one of the roughest and raggedest
ones, he gave a shiver and a gasp and says:
Oh, lordy, that's one of them! They're aboard sure I just
knowed it. I sort of hoped I had got away, but I never believed it. Go on.
Presently when Tom was describing another mangy, rough deck
passenger, he give that shiver again and says:
That's him!that's the other one. If it would only come a
good black stormy night and I could get ashore. You see, they've got spies on
me. They've got a right to come up and buy drinks at the bar yonder forrard,
and they take that chance to bribe somebody to keep watch on meporter or boots
or somebody. If I was to slip ashore without anybody seeing me, they would know
it inside of an hour.
So then he got to wandering along, and pretty soon, sure
enough, he was telling! He was poking along through his ups and downs, and when
he come to that place he went right along. He says:
It was a confidence game. We played it on a julery-shop in
St. Louis. What we was after was a couple of noble big di'monds as big as hazel-nuts,
which everybody was running to see. We was dressed up fine, and we played it on
them in broad daylight. We ordered the di'monds sent to the hotel for us to see
if we wanted to buy, and when we was examining them we had paste counterfeits
all ready, and THEM was the things that went back to the shop when we said the
water wasn't quite fine enough for twelve thousand dollars.
Twelve-thousand-dollars! Tom says. Was they really worth
all that money, do you reckon?
Every cent of it.
And you fellows got away with them?
As easy as nothing. I don't reckon the julery people know
they've been robbed yet. But it wouldn't be good sense to stay around St.
Louis, of course, so we considered where we'd go. One was for going one way, one
another, so we throwed up, heads or tails, and the Upper Mississippi won. We
done up the di'monds in a paper and put our names on it and put it in the keep
of the hotel clerk, and told him not to ever let either of us have it again
without the others was on hand to see it done; then we went down town, each by
his own selfbecause I reckon maybe we all had the same notion. I don't know
for certain, but I reckon maybe we had.
What notion? Tom says.
To rob the others.
Whatone take everything, after all of you had helped to
get it?
Cert'nly.
It disgusted Tom Sawyer, and he said it was the orneriest,
low-downest thing he ever heard of. But Jake Dunlap said it warn't unusual in
the profession. Said when a person was in that line of business he'd got to
look out for his own intrust, there warn't nobody else going to do it for him.
And then he went on. He says:
You see, the trouble was, you couldn't divide up two
di'monds amongst three. If there'd been threeBut never mind about that, there
warn't three. I loafed along the back streets studying and studying. And I says
to myself, I'll hog them di'monds the first chance I get, and I'll have a
disguise all ready, and I'll give the boys the slip, and when I'm safe away
I'll put it on, and then let them find me if they can. So I got the false
whiskers and the goggles and this countrified suit of clothes, and fetched them
along back in a hand-bag; and when I was passing a shop where they sell all
sorts of things, I got a glimpse of one of my pals through the window. It was
Bud Dixon. I was glad, you bet. I says to myself, I'll see what he buys. So I
kept shady, and watched. Now what do you reckon it was he bought?
Whiskers? said I.
No.
Goggles?
No.
Oh, keep still, Huck Finn, can't you, you're only just
hendering all you can. What WAS it he bought, Jake?
You'd never guess in the world. It was only just a
screwdriverjust a wee little bit of a screwdriver.
Well, I declare! What did he want with that?
That's what I thought. It was curious. It clean stumped me.
I says to myself, what can he want with that thing? Well, when he come out I
stood back out of sight, and then tracked him to a second-hand slop-shop and
see him buy a red flannel shirt and some old ragged clothesjust the ones he's
got on now, as you've described. Then I went down to the wharf and hid my
things aboard the up-river boat that we had picked out, and then started back
and had another streak of luck. I seen our other pal lay in HIS stock of old
rusty second-handers. We got the di'monds and went aboard the boat.
But now we was up a stump, for we couldn't go to bed. We
had to set up and watch one another. Pity, that was; pity to put that kind of a
strain on us, because there was bad blood between us from a couple of weeks
back, and we was only friends in the way of business. Bad anyway, seeing there
was only two di'monds betwixt three men. First we had supper, and then tramped
up and down the deck together smoking till most midnight; then we went and set
down in my stateroom and locked the doors and looked in the piece of paper to
see if the di'monds was all right, then laid it on the lower berth right in
full sight; and there we set, and set, and by-and-by it got to be dreadful hard
to keep awake. At last Bud Dixon he dropped off. As soon as he was snoring a
good regular gait that was likely to last, and had his chin on his breast and
looked permanent, Hal Clayton nodded towards the di'monds and then towards the
outside door, and I understood. I reached and got the paper, and then we stood
up and waited perfectly still; Bud never stirred; I turned the key of the
outside door very soft and slow, then turned the knob the same way, and we went
tiptoeing out onto the guard, and shut the door very soft and gentle.
There warn't nobody stirring anywhere, and the boat was
slipping along, swift and steady, through the big water in the smoky moonlight.
We never said a word, but went straight up onto the hurricane-deck and plumb
back aft, and set down on the end of the sky-light. Both of us knowed what that
meant, without having to explain to one another. Bud Dixon would wake up and
miss the swag, and would come straight for us, for he ain't afeard of anything
or anybody, that man ain't. He would come, and we would heave him overboard, or
get killed trying. It made me shiver, because I ain't as brave as some people,
but if I showed the white featherwell, I knowed better than do that. I kind of
hoped the boat would land somers, and we could skip ashore and not have to run
the risk of this row, I was so scared of Bud Dixon, but she was an upper-river
tub and there warn't no real chance of that.
Well, the time strung along and along, and that fellow
never come! Why, it strung along till dawn begun to break, and still he never
come. 'Thunder,' I says, 'what do you make out of this?ain't it suspicious?'
'Land!' Hal says, 'do you reckon he's playing us?open the paper!' I done it,
and by gracious there warn't anything in it but a couple of little pieces of
loaf-sugar! THAT'S the reason he could set there and snooze all night so
comfortable. Smart? Well, I reckon! He had had them two papers all fixed and
ready, and he had put one of them in place of t'other right under our noses.
We felt pretty cheap. But the thing to do, straight off,
was to make a plan; and we done it. We would do up the paper again, just as it
was, and slip in, very elaborate and soft, and lay it on the bunk again, and
let on WE didn't know about any trick, and hadn't any idea he was a-laughing at
us behind them bogus snores of his'n; and we would stick by him, and the first
night we was ashore we would get him drunk and search him, and get the
di'monds; and DO for him, too, if it warn't too risky. If we got the swag, we'd
GOT to do for him, or he would hunt us down and do for us, sure. But I didn't
have no real hope. I knowed we could get him drunkhe was always ready for
thatbut what's the good of it? You might search him a year and never
find"Well, right there I catched my breath and broke off my thought! For
an idea went ripping through my head that tore my brains to ragsand land, but
I felt gay and good! You see, I had had my boots off, to unswell my feet, and
just then I took up one of them to put it on, and I catched a glimpse of the
heel-bottom, and it just took my breath away. You remember about that
puzzlesome little screwdriver?
You bet I do, says Tom, all excited.
Well, when I catched that glimpse of that boot heel, the
idea that went smashing through my head was, I know where he's hid the
di'monds! You look at this boot heel, now. See, it's bottomed with a steel
plate, and the plate is fastened on with little screws. Now there wasn't a
screw about that feller anywhere but in his boot heels; so, if he needed a
screwdriver, I reckoned I knowed why.
Huck, ain't it bully! says Tom.
Well, I got my boots on, and we went down and slipped in
and laid the paper of sugar on the berth, and sat down soft and sheepish and
went to listening to Bud Dixon snore. Hal Clayton dropped off pretty soon, but
I didn't; I wasn't ever so wide awake in my life. I was spying out from under
the shade of my hat brim, searching the floor for leather. It took me a long
time, and I begun to think maybe my guess was wrong, but at last I struck it.
It laid over by the bulkhead, and was nearly the color of the carpet. It was a
little round plug about as thick as the end of your little finger, and I says
to myself there's a di'mond in the nest you've come from. Before long I spied
out the plug's mate.
Think of the smartness and coolness of that blatherskite!
He put up that scheme on us and reasoned out what we would do, and we went
ahead and done it perfectly exact, like a couple of pudd'nheads. He set there
and took his own time to unscrew his heelplates and cut out his plugs and stick
in the di'monds and screw on his plates again . He allowed we would steal the
bogus swag and wait all night for him to come up and get drownded, and by
George it's just what we done! I think it was powerful smart.
You bet your life it was! says Tom, just full of admiration.
Chapter IV.
THE THREE SLEEPERS
WELL, all day we went through the humbug of watching one
another, and it was pretty sickly business for two of us and hard to act out, I
can tell you. About night we landed at one of them little Missouri towns high up
toward Iowa, and had supper at the tavern, and got a room upstairs with a cot
and a double bed in it, but I dumped my bag under a deal table in the dark hall
while we was moving along it to bed, single file, me last, and the landlord in
the lead with a tallow candle. We had up a lot of whisky, and went to playing
high-low-jack for dimes, and as soon as the whisky begun to take hold of Bud we
stopped drinking, but we didn't let him stop. We loaded him till he fell out of
his chair and laid there snoring.
We was ready for business now. I said we better pull our
boots off, and his'n too, and not make any noise, then we could pull him and
haul him around and ransack him without any trouble. So we done it. I set my
boots and Bud's side by side, where they'd be handy. Then we stripped him and
searched his seams and his pockets and his socks and the inside of his boots,
and everything, and searched his bundle. Never found any di'monds. We found the
screwdriver, and Hal says, 'What do you reckon he wanted with that?' I said I
didn't know; but when he wasn't looking I hooked it. At last Hal he looked beat
and discouraged, and said we'd got to give it up. That was what I was waiting
for. I says:
'There's one place we hain't searched.'
'What place is that?' he says.
'His stomach.'
'By gracious, I never thought of that! NOW we're on the
homestretch, to a dead moral certainty. How'll we manage?'
'Well,' I says, 'just stay by him till I turn out and hunt
up a drug store, and I reckon I'll fetch something that'll make them di'monds
tired of the company they're keeping.'
He said that's the ticket, and with him looking straight at
me I slid myself into Bud's boots instead of my own, and he never noticed. They
was just a shade large for me, but that was considerable better than being too
small. I got my bag as I went a-groping through the hall, and in about a minute
I was out the back way and stretching up the river road at a five-mile gait.
And not feeling so very bad, neitherwalking on di'monds
don't have no such effect. When I had gone fifteen minutes I says to myself,
there's more'n a mile behind me, and everything quiet. Another five minutes and
I says there's considerable more land behind me now, and there's a man back
there that's begun to wonder what's the trouble. Another five and I says to
myself he's getting real uneasyhe's walking the floor now. Another five, and I
says to myself, there's two mile and a half behind me, and he's AWFUL
uneasybeginning to cuss, I reckon. Pretty soon I says to myself, forty minutes
gonehe KNOWS there's something up! Fifty minutesthe truth's a-busting on him
now! he is reckoning I found the di'monds whilst we was searching, and shoved
them in my pocket and never let onyes, and he's starting out to hunt for me.
He'll hunt for new tracks in the dust, and they'll as likely send him down the
river as up.
Just then I see a man coming down on a mule, and before I
thought I jumped into the bush. It was stupid! When he got abreast he stopped
and waited a little for me to come out; then he rode on again. But I didn't
feel gay any more. I says to myself I've botched my chances by that; I surely
have, if he meets up with Hal Clayton.
Well, about three in the morning I fetched Elexandria and
see this stern-wheeler laying there, and was very glad, because I felt
perfectly safe, now, you know. It was just daybreak. I went aboard and got this
stateroom and put on these clothes and went up in the pilot-houseto watch,
though I didn't reckon there was any need of it. I set there and played with my
di'monds and waited and waited for the boat to start, but she didn't. You see,
they was mending her machinery, but I didn't know anything about it, not being
very much used to steamboats.
Well, to cut the tale short, we never left there till plumb
noon; and long before that I was hid in this stateroom; for before breakfast I
see a man coming, away off, that had a gait like Hal Clayton's, and it made me
just sick. I says to myself, if he finds out I'm aboard this boat, he's got me
like a rat in a trap. All he's got to do is to have me watched, and waitwait
till I slip ashore, thinking he is a thousand miles away, then slip after me
and dog me to a good place and make me give up the di'monds, and then he'lloh,
I know what he'll do! Ain't it awfulawful! And now to think the OTHER one's
aboard, too! Oh, ain't it hard luck, boysain't it hard! But you'll help save
me, WON'T you?oh, boys, be good to a poor devil that's being hunted to death,
and save meI'll worship the very ground you walk on!
We turned in and soothed him down and told him we would plan
for him and help him, and he needn't be so afeard; and so by and by he got to
feeling kind of comfortable again, and unscrewed his heelplates and held up his
di'monds this way and that, admiring them and loving them; and when the light
struck into them they WAS beautiful, sure; why, they seemed to kind of bust,
and snap fire out all around. But all the same I judged he was a fool. If I had
been him I would a handed the di'monds to them pals and got them to go ashore
and leave me alone. But he was made different. He said it was a whole fortune
and he couldn't bear the idea.
Twice we stopped to fix the machinery and laid a good while,
once in the night; but it wasn't dark enough, and he was afeard to skip. But
the third time we had to fix it there was a better chance. We laid up at a
country woodyard about forty mile above Uncle Silas's place a little after one
at night, and it was thickening up and going to storm. So Jake he laid for a
chance to slide. We begun to take in wood. Pretty soon the rain come
a-drenching down, and the wind blowed hard. Of course every boat-hand fixed a
gunny sack and put it on like a bonnet, the way they do when they are toting
wood, and we got one for Jake, and he slipped down aft with his hand-bag and
come tramping forrard just like the rest, and walked ashore with them, and when
we see him pass out of the light of the torch-basket and get swallowed up in
the dark, we got our breath again and just felt grateful and splendid. But it wasn't
for long. Somebody told, I reckon; for in about eight or ten minutes them two
pals come tearing forrard as tight as they could jump and darted ashore and was
gone. We waited plumb till dawn for them to come back, and kept hoping they
would, but they never did. We was awful sorry and low-spirited. All the hope we
had was that Jake had got such a start that they couldn't get on his track, and
he would get to his brother's and hide there and be safe.
He was going to take the river road, and told us to find out
if Brace and Jubiter was to home and no strangers there, and then slip out
about sundown and tell him. Said he would wait for us in a little bunch of
sycamores right back of Tom's uncle Silas's tobacker field on the river road, a
lonesome place.
We set and talked a long time about his chances, and Tom
said he was all right if the pals struck up the river instead of down, but it
wasn't likely, because maybe they knowed where he was from; more likely they
would go right, and dog him all day, him not suspecting, and kill him when it
come dark, and take the boots. So we was pretty sorrowful.
Chapter V.
A TRAGEDY IN THE WOODS
WE didn't get done tinkering the machinery till away late in
the afternoon, and so it was so close to sundown when we got home that we never
stopped on our road, but made a break for the sycamores as tight as we could
go, to tell Jake what the delay was, and have him wait till we could go to
Brace's and find out how things was there. It was getting pretty dim by the
time we turned the corner of the woods, sweating and panting with that long
run, and see the sycamores thirty yards ahead of us; and just then we see a
couple of men run into the bunch and heard two or three terrible screams for
help. Poor Jake is killed, sure, we says. We was scared through and through,
and broke for the tobacker field and hid there, trembling so our clothes would
hardly stay on; and just as we skipped in there, a couple of men went tearing
by, and into the bunch they went, and in a second out jumps four men and took
out up the road as tight as they could go, two chasing two.
We laid down, kind of weak and sick, and listened for more
sounds, but didn't hear none for a good while but just our hearts. We was
thinking of that awful thing laying yonder in the sycamores, and it seemed like
being that close to a ghost, and it give me the cold shudders. The moon come
a-swelling up out of the ground, now, powerful big and round and bright, behind
a comb of trees, like a face looking through prison bars, and the black
shadders and white places begun to creep around, and it was miserable quiet and
still and night-breezy and graveyardy and scary. All of a sudden Tom whispers:
Look!what's that?
Don't! I says. Don't take a person by surprise that way.
I'm 'most ready to die, anyway, without you doing that.
Look, I tell you. It's something coming out of the
sycamores.
Don't, Tom!
It's terrible tall!
Oh, lordy-lordy! let's
Keep stillit's a-coming this way.
He was so excited he could hardly get breath enough to
whisper. I had to look. I couldn't help it. So now we was both on our knees
with our chins on a fence rail and gazingyes, and gasping too. It was coming
down the roadcoming in the shadder of the trees, and you couldn't see it good;
not till it was pretty close to us; then it stepped into a bright splotch of
moonlight and we sunk right down in our tracksit was Jake Dunlap's ghost! That
was what we said to ourselves.
We couldn't stir for a minute or two; then it was gone We
talked about it in low voices. Tom says:
They're mostly dim and smoky, or like they're made out of
fog, but this one wasn't.
No, I says; I seen the goggles and the whiskers perfectly
plain.
Yes, and the very colors in them loud countrified Sunday
clothesplaid breeches, green and black
Cotton velvet westcot, fire-red and yaller squares
Leather straps to the bottoms of the breeches legs and one
of them hanging unbottoned
Yes, and that hat
What a hat for a ghost to wear!
You see it was the first season anybody wore that kinda
black sitff-brim stove-pipe, very high, and not smooth, with a round topjust
like a sugar-loaf.
Did you notice if its hair was the same, Huck?
Noseems to me I did, then again it seems to me I didn't.
I didn't either; but it had its bag along, I noticed that.
So did I. How can there be a ghost-bag, Tom?
Sho! I wouldn't be as ignorant as that if I was you, Huck
Finn. Whatever a ghost has, turns to ghost-stuff. They've got to have their things,
like anybody else. You see, yourself, that its clothes was turned to
ghost-stuff. Well, then, what's to hender its bag from turning, too? Of course
it done it.
That was reasonable. I couldn't find no fault with it. Bill
Withers and his brother Jack come along by, talking, and Jack says:
What do you reckon he was toting?
I dunno; but it was pretty heavy.
Yes, all he could lug. Nigger stealing corn from old Parson
Silas, I judged.
So did I. And so I allowed I wouldn't let on to see him.
That's me, too.
Then they both laughed, and went on out of hearing. It
showed how unpopular old Uncle Silas had got to be now. They wouldn't 'a' let a
nigger steal anybody else's corn and never done anything to him.
We heard some more voices mumbling along towards us and
getting louder, and sometimes a cackle of a laugh. It was Lem Beebe and Jim
Lane. Jim Lane says:
Who?Jubiter Dunlap?
Yes.
Oh, I don't know. I reckon so. I seen him spading up some
ground along about an hour ago, just before sundownhim and the parson. Said he
guessed he wouldn't go to-night, but we could have his dog if we wanted him.
Too tired, I reckon.
Yesworks so hard!
Oh, you bet!
They cackled at that, and went on by. Tom said we better jump
out and tag along after them, because they was going our way and it wouldn't be
comfortable to run across the ghost all by ourselves. So we done it, and got
home all right.
That night was the second of Septembera Saturday. I sha'n't
ever forget it. You'll see why, pretty soon .
Chapter VI.
PLANS TO SECURE THE DIAMONDS
WE tramped along behind Jim and Lem till we come to the back
stile where old Jim's cabin was that he was captivated in, the time we set him
free, and here come the dogs piling around us to say howdy, and there was the
lights of the house, too; so we warn't afeard any more, and was going to climb
over, but Tom says:
Hold on; set down here a minute. By George!
What's the matter? says I.
Matter enough! he says. Wasn't you expecting we would be
the first to tell the family who it is that's been killed yonder in the
sycamores, and all about them rapscallions that done it, and about the di'monds
they've smouched off of the corpse, and paint it up fine, and have the glory of
being the ones that knows a lot more about it than anybody else?
Why, of course. It wouldn't be you, Tom Sawyer, if you was
to let such a chance go by. I reckon it ain't going to suffer none for lack of
paint, I says, when you start in to scollop the facts.
Well, now, he says, perfectly ca'm, what would you say if
I was to tell you I ain't going to start in at all?
I was astonished to hear him talk so. I says:
I'd say it's a lie. You ain't in earnest, Tom Sawyer?
You'll soon see. Was the ghost barefooted?
No, it wasn't. What of it?
You waitI'll show you what. Did it have its boots on?
Yes. I seen them plain.
Swear it?
Yes, I swear it.
So do I. Now do you know what that means?
No. What does it mean?
Means that them thieves DIDN'T GET THE DI'MONDS.
Jimminy! What makes you think that?
I don't only think it, I know it. Didn't the breeches and
goggles and whiskers and hand-bag and every blessed thing turn to ghost-stuff?
Everything it had on turned, didn't it? It shows that the reason its boots
turned too was because it still had them on after it started to go ha'nting
around, and if that ain't proof that them blatherskites didn't get the boots,
I'd like to know what you'd CALL proof.
Think of that now. I never see such a head as that boy had.
Why, I had eyes and I could see things, but they never meant nothing to me. But
Tom Sawyer was different. When Tom Sawyer seen a thing it just got up on its
hind legs and TALKED to himtold him everything it knowed. I never see such a
head.
Tom Sawyer, I says, I'll say it again as I've said it a
many a time before: I ain't fitten to black your boots. But that's all
rightthat's neither here nor there. God Almighty made us all, and some He
gives eyes that's blind, and some He gives eyes that can see, and I reckon it
ain't none of our lookout what He done it for; it's all right, or He'd 'a'
fixed it some other way. Go onI see plenty plain enough, now, that them
thieves didn't get way with the di'monds. Why didn't they, do you reckon?
Because they got chased away by them other two men before
they could pull the boots off of the corpse.
That's so! I see it now. But looky here, Tom, why ain't we
to go and tell about it?
Oh, shucks, Huck Finn, can't you see? Look at it. What's
a-going to happen? There's going to be an inquest in the morning. Them two men
will tell how they heard the yells and rushed there just in time to not save
the stranger. Then the jury'll twaddle and twaddle and twaddle, and finally
they'll fetch in a verdict that he got shot or stuck or busted over the head
with something, and come to his death by the inspiration of God. And after
they've buried him they'll auction off his things for to pay the expenses, and
then's OUR chance. How, Tom?
Buy the boots for two dollars!
Well, it 'most took my breath.
My land! Why, Tom, WE'LL get the di'monds!
You bet. Some day there'll be a big reward offered for
thema thousand dollars, sure. That's our money! Now we'll trot in and see the
folks. And mind you we don't know anything about any murder, or any di'monds,
or any thievesdon't you forget that.
I had to sigh a little over the way he had got it fixed. I'd
'a' SOLD them di'mondsyes, sirfor twelve thousand dollars; but I didn't say
anything. It wouldn't done any good. I says:
But what are we going to tell your aunt Sally has made us
so long getting down here from the village, Tom?
Oh, I'll leave that to you, he says. I reckon you can
explain it somehow.
He was always just that strict and delicate. He never would
tell a lie himself.
We struck across the big yard, noticing this, that, and
t'other thing that was so familiar, and we so glad to see it again, and when we
got to the roofed big passageway betwixt the double log house and the kitchen
part, there was everything hanging on the wall just as it used to was, even to
Uncle Silas's old faded green baize working-gown with the hood to it, and
raggedy white patch between the shoulders that always looked like somebody had
hit him with a snowball; and then we lifted the latch and walked in. Aunt Sally
she was just a-ripping and a-tearing around, and the children was huddled in
one corner, and the old man he was huddled in the other and praying for help in
time of need. She jumped for us with joy and tears running down her face and
give us a whacking box on the ear, and then hugged us and kissed us and boxed
us again, and just couldn't seem to get enough of it, she was so glad to see
us; and she says:
Where HAVE you been a-loafing to, you good-for-nothing
trash! I've been that worried about you I didn't know what to do. Your traps
has been here ever so long, and I've had supper cooked fresh about four times
so as to have it hot and good when you come, till at last my patience is just
plumb wore out, and I declare IIwhy I could skin you alive! You must be
starving, poor things!set down, set down, everybody; don't lose no more time.
It was good to be there again behind all that noble
corn-pone and spareribs, and everything that you could ever want in this world.
Old Uncle Silas he peeled off one of his bulliest old-time blessings, with as
many layers to it as an onion, and whilst the angels was hauling in the slack
of it I was trying to study up what to say about what kept us so long. When our
plates was all loadened and we'd got a-going, she asked me, and I says:
Well, you see,erMizzes
Huck Finn! Since when am I Mizzes to you? Have I ever been
stingy of cuffs or kisses for you since the day you stood in this room and I
took you for Tom Sawyer and blessed God for sending you to me, though you told
me four thousand lies and I believed every one of them like a simpleton? Call
me Aunt Sallylike you always done.
So I done it. And I says:
Well, me and Tom allowed we would come along afoot and take
a smell of the woods, and we run across Lem Beebe and Jim Lane, and they asked
us to go with them blackberrying to-night, and said they could borrow Jubiter
Dunlap's dog, because he had told them just that minute
Where did they see him? says the old man; and when I
looked up to see how HE come to take an intrust in a little thing like that,
his eyes was just burning into me, he was that eager. It surprised me so it
kind of throwed me off, but I pulled myself together again and says:
It was when he was spading up some ground along with you,
towards sundown or along there.
He only said, Um, in a kind of a disappointed way, and
didn't take no more intrust. So I went on. I says:
Well, then, as I was a-saying
That'll do, you needn't go no furder. It was Aunt Sally.
She was boring right into me with her eyes, and very indignant. Huck Finn,
she says, how'd them men come to talk about going a-black-berrying in
Septemberin THIS region?
I see I had slipped up, and I couldn't say a word. She
waited, still a-gazing at me, then she says:
And how'd they come to strike that idiot idea of going
a-blackberrying in the night?
Well, m'm, theyerthey told us they had a lantern, and
Oh, SHET updo! Looky here; what was they going to do with
a dog?hunt blackberries with it?
I think, m'm, they
Now, Tom Sawyer, what kind of a lie are you fixing YOUR
mouth to contribit to this mess of rubbage? Speak outand I warn you before you
begin, that I don't believe a word of it. You and Huck's been up to something you
no business toI know it perfectly well; I know you, BOTH of you. Now you
explain that dog, and them blackberries, and the lantern, and the rest of that
rotand mind you talk as straight as a stringdo you hear?
Tom he looked considerable hurt, and says, very dignified:
It is a pity if Huck is to be talked to that way, just for
making a little bit of a mistake that anybody could make.
What mistake has he made?
Why, only the mistake of saying blackberries when of course
he meant strawberries.
Tom Sawyer, I lay if you aggravate me a little more, I'll
Aunt Sally, without knowing itand of course without
intending ityou are in the wrong. If you'd 'a' studied natural history the way
you ought, you would know that all over the world except just here in Arkansaw
they ALWAYS hunt strawberries with a dogand a lantern
But she busted in on him there and just piled into him and
snowed him under. She was so mad she couldn't get the words out fast enough,
and she gushed them out in one everlasting freshet. That was what Tom Sawyer
was after. He allowed to work her up and get her started and then leave her
alone and let her burn herself out. Then she would be so aggravated with that
subject that she wouldn't say another word about it, nor let anybody else.
Well, it happened just so. When she was tuckered out and had to hold up, he
says, quite ca'm:
And yet, all the same, Aunt Sally
Shet up! she says, I don't want to hear another word out
of you.
So we was perfectly safe, then, and didn't have no more
trouble about that delay. Tom done it elegant.
Chapter VII.
A NIGHT'S VIGIL
BENNY she was looking pretty sober, and she sighed some, now
and then; but pretty soon she got to asking about Mary, and Sid, and Tom's aunt
Polly, and then Aunt Sally's clouds cleared off and she got in a good humor and
joined in on the questions and was her lovingest best self, and so the rest of
the supper went along gay and pleasant. But the old man he didn't take any hand
hardly, and was absent-minded and restless, and done a considerable amount of
sighing; and it was kind of heart-breaking to see him so sad and troubled and
worried.
By and by, a spell after supper, come a nigger and knocked
on the door and put his head in with his old straw hat in his hand bowing and
scraping, and said his Marse Brace was out at the stile and wanted his brother,
and was getting tired waiting supper for him, and would Marse Silas please tell
him where he was? I never see Uncle Silas speak up so sharp and fractious
before. He says:
Am I his brother's keeper? And then he kind of wilted
together, and looked like he wished he hadn't spoken so, and then he says, very
gentle: But you needn't say that, Billy; I was took sudden and irritable, and
I ain't very well these days, and not hardly responsible. Tell him he ain't
here.
And when the nigger was gone he got up and walked the floor,
backwards and forwards, mumbling and muttering to himself and plowing his hands
through his hair. It was real pitiful to see him. Aunt Sally she whispered to
us and told us not to take notice of him, it embarrassed him. She said he was
always thinking and thinking, since these troubles come on, and she allowed he
didn't more'n about half know what he was about when the thinking spells was on
him; and she said he walked in his sleep considerable more now than he used to,
and sometimes wandered around over the house and even outdoors in his sleep,
and if we catched him at it we must let him alone and not disturb him. She said
she reckoned it didn't do him no harm, and may be it done him good. She said
Benny was the only one that was much help to him these days. Said Benny
appeared to know just when to try to soothe him and when to leave him alone.
So he kept on tramping up and down the floor and muttering,
till by and by he begun to look pretty tired; then Benny she went and snuggled
up to his side and put one hand in his and one arm around his waist and walked
with him; and he smiled down on her, and reached down and kissed her; and so,
little by little the trouble went out of his face and she persuaded him off to
his room. They had very petting ways together, and it was uncommon pretty to
see.
Aunt Sally she was busy getting the children ready for bed;
so by and by it got dull and tedious, and me and Tom took a turn in the
moonlight, and fetched up in the watermelon-patch and et one, and had a good
deal of talk. And Tom said he'd bet the quarreling was all Jubiter's fault, and
he was going to be on hand the first time he got a chance, and see; and if it
was so, he was going to do his level best to get Uncle Silas to turn him off.
And so we talked and smoked and stuffed watermelons much as
two hours, and then it was pretty late, and when we got back the house was
quiet and dark, and everybody gone to bed.
Tom he always seen everything, and now he see that the old
green baize work-gown was gone, and said it wasn't gone when he went out; so he
allowed it was curious, and then we went up to bed.
We could hear Benny stirring around in her room, which was
next to ourn, and judged she was worried a good deal about her father and
couldn't sleep. We found we couldn't, neither. So we set up a long time, and
smoked and talked in a low voice, and felt pretty dull and down-hearted. We
talked the murder and the ghost over and over again, and got so creepy and
crawly we couldn't get sleepy nohow and noway.
By and by, when it was away late in the night and all the
sounds was late sounds and solemn, Tom nudged me and whispers to me to look,
and I done it, and there we see a man poking around in the yard like he didn't
know just what he wanted to do, but it was pretty dim and we couldn't see him
good. Then he started for the stile, and as he went over it the moon came out
strong, and he had a long-handled shovel over his shoulder, and we see the
white patch on the old work-gown. So Tom says:
He's a-walking in his sleep. I wish we was allowed to
follow him and see where he's going to. There, he's turned down by the
tobacker-field. Out of sight now. It's a dreadful pity he can't rest no
better.
We waited a long time, but he didn't come back any more, or
if he did he come around the other way; so at last we was tuckered out and went
to sleep and had nightmares, a million of them. But before dawn we was awake
again, because meantime a storm had come up and been raging, and the thunder
and lightning was awful, and the wind was a-thrashing the trees around, and the
rain was driving down in slanting sheets, and the gullies was running rivers.
Tom says:
Looky here, Huck, I'll tell you one thing that's mighty
curious. Up to the time we went out last night the family hadn't heard about
Jake Dunlap being murdered. Now the men that chased Hal Clayton and Bud Dixon
away would spread the thing around in a half an hour, and every neighbor that
heard it would shin out and fly around from one farm to t'other and try to be
the first to tell the news. Land, they don't have such a big thing as that to
tell twice in thirty year! Huck, it's mighty strange; I don't understand it.
So then he was in a fidget for the rain to let up, so we
could turn out and run across some of the people and see if they would say
anything about it to us. And he said if they did we must be horribly surprised
and shocked.
We was out and gone the minute the rain stopped. It was just
broad day then. We loafed along up the road, and now and then met a person and
stopped and said howdy, and told them when we come, and how we left the folks
at home, and how long we was going to stay, and all that, but none of them said
a word about that thing; which was just astonishing, and no mistake. Tom said
he believed if we went to the sycamores we would find that body laying there
solitary and alone, and not a soul around. Said he believed the men chased the
thieves so far into the woods that the thieves prob'ly seen a good chance and
turned on them at last, and maybe they all killed each other, and so there
wasn't anybody left to tell.
First we knowed, gabbling along that away, we was right at
the sycamores. The cold chills trickled down my back and I wouldn't budge
another step, for all Tom's persuading. But he couldn't hold in; he'd GOT to
see if the boots was safe on that body yet. So he crope inand the next minute
out he come again with his eyes bulging he was so excited, and says:
Huck, it's gone!
I WAS astonished! I says:
Tom, you don't mean it.
It's gone, sure. There ain't a sign of it. The ground is
trampled some, but if there was any blood it's all washed away by the storm,
for it's all puddles and slush in there.
At last I give in, and went and took a look myself; and it
was just as Tom saidthere wasn't a sign of a corpse.
Dern it, I says, the di'monds is gone. Don't you reckon
the thieves slunk back and lugged him off, Tom?
Looks like it. It just does. Now where'd they hide him, do
you reckon?
I don't know, I says, disgusted, and what's more I don't
care. They've got the boots, and that's all I cared about. He'll lay around
these woods a long time before I hunt him up.
Tom didn't feel no more intrust in him neither, only
curiosity to know what come of him; but he said we'd lay low and keep dark and
it wouldn't be long till the dogs or somebody rousted him out.
We went back home to breakfast ever so bothered and put out
and disappointed and swindled. I warn't ever so down on a corpse before.
Chapter VIII.
TALKING WITH THE GHOST
IT warn't very cheerful at breakfast. Aunt Sally she looked
old and tired and let the children snarl and fuss at one another and didn't
seem to notice it was going on, which wasn't her usual style; me and Tom had a
plenty to think about without talking; Benny she looked like she hadn't had
much sleep, and whenever she'd lift her head a little and steal a look towards
her father you could see there was tears in her eyes; and as for the old man,
his things stayed on his plate and got cold without him knowing they was there,
I reckon, for he was thinking and thinking all the time, and never said a word
and never et a bite.
By and by when it was stillest, that nigger's head was poked
in at the door again, and he said his Marse Brace was getting powerful uneasy
about Marse Jubiter, which hadn't come home yet, and would Marse Silas please
He was looking at Uncle Silas, and he stopped there, like the rest of his
words was froze; for Uncle Silas he rose up shaky and steadied himself leaning
his fingers on the table, and he was panting, and his eyes was set on the
nigger, and he kept swallowing, and put his other hand up to his throat a
couple of times, and at last he got his words started, and says:
Does hedoes hethinkWHAT does he think! Tell himtell
him Then he sunk down in his chair limp and weak, and says, so as you could
hardly hear him: Go awaygo away!
The nigger looked scared and cleared out, and we all
feltwell, I don't know how we felt, but it was awful, with the old man panting
there, and his eyes set and looking like a person that was dying. None of us
could budge; but Benny she slid around soft, with her tears running down, and
stood by his side, and nestled his old gray head up against her and begun to
stroke it and pet it with her hands, and nodded to us to go away, and we done
it, going out very quiet, like the dead was there.
Me and Tom struck out for the woods mighty solemn, and
saying how different it was now to what it was last summer when we was here and
everything was so peaceful and happy and everybody thought so much of Uncle
Silas, and he was so cheerful and simple-hearted and pudd'n-headed and goodand
now look at him. If he hadn't lost his mind he wasn't muck short of it. That
was what we allowed.
It was a most lovely day now, and bright and sun. shiny; and
the further and further we went over the hills towards the prairie the lovelier
and lovelier the trees and flowers got to be and the more it seemed strange and
somehow wrong that there had to be trouble in such a world as this. And then
all of a sudden I catched my breath and grabbed Tom's arm, and all my livers
and lungs and things fell down into my legs.
There it is! I says. We jumped back behind a bush
shivering, and Tom says:
'Sh!don't make a noise.
It was setting on a log right in the edge of a little
prairie, thinking. I tried to get Tom to come away, but he wouldn't, and I
dasn't budge by myself. He said we mightn't ever get another chance to see one,
and he was going to look his fill at this one if he died for it. So I looked
too, though it give me the fan-tods to do it. Tom he HAD to talk, but he talked
low. He says:
Poor Jakey, it's got all its things on, just as he said he
would. NOW you see what we wasn't certain aboutits hair. It's not long now the
way it was: it's got it cropped close to its head, the way he said he would.
Huck, I never see anything look any more naturaler than what It does.
Nor I neither, I says; I'd recognize it anywheres.
So would I. It looks perfectly solid and genuwyne, just the
way it done before it died.
So we kept a-gazing. Pretty soon Tom says:
Huck, there's something mighty curious about this one, don't
you know? IT oughtn't to be going around in the daytime.
That's so, TomI never heard the like of it before.
No, sir, they don't ever come out only at night and then
not till after twelve. There's something wrong about this one, now you mark my words.
I don't believe it's got any right to be around in the daytime. But don't it
look natural! Jake was going to play deef and dumb here, so the neighbors
wouldn't know his voice. Do you reckon it would do that if we was to holler at
it?
Lordy, Tom, don't
talk so! If you was to holler at it I'd die in my tracks.
Don't you worry,
I ain't going to holler at it. Look, Huck, it's a-scratching its headdon't you
see?
Well, what of
it?
Why, this.
What's the sense of it scratching its head? There ain't anything there to itch;
its head is made out of fog or something like that, and can't itch. A fog can't
itch; any fool knows that.
Well, then, if
it don't itch and can't itch, what in the nation is it scratching it for? Ain't
it just habit, don't you reckon?
No, sir, I
don't. I ain't a bit satisfied about the way this one acts. I've a blame good
notion it's a bogus oneI have, as sure as I'm a-sitting here. Because, if
itHuck!
Well, what's the
matter now?
YOU CAN'T SEE
THE BUSHES THROUGH IT!
Why, Tom, it's
so, sure! It's as solid as a cow. I sort of begin to think
Huck, it's
biting off a chaw of tobacker! By George, THEY don't chawthey hain't got
anything to chaw WITH. Huck!
I'm
a-listening.
It ain't a ghost
at all. It's Jake Dunlap his own self!
Oh your granny!
I says.
Huck Finn, did
we find any corpse in the sycamores?
No.
Or any sign of
one?
No.
Mighty good
reason. Hadn't ever been any corpse there.
Why, Tom, you
know we heard
Yes, we
didheard a howl or two. Does that prove anybody was killed? Course it don't.
And we seen four men run, then this one come walking out and we took it for a
ghost. No more ghost than you are. It was Jake Dunlap his own self, and it's
Jake Dunlap now. He's been and got his hair cropped, the way he said he would,
and he's playing himself for a stranger, just the same as he said he would.
Ghost? Hum!he's as sound as a nut.
Then I see it
all, and how we had took too much for granted. I was powerful glad he didn't
get killed, and so was Tom, and we wondered which he would like the bestfor us
to never let on to know him, or how? Tom reckoned the best way would be to go
and ask him. So he started; but I kept a little behind, because I didn't know
but it might be a ghost, after all. When Tom got to where he was, he says:
Me and Huck's
mighty glad to see you again, and you needn't be afeared we'll tell. And if you
think it'll be safer for you if we don't let on to know you when we run across
you, say the word and you'll see you can depend on us, and would ruther cut our
hands off than get you into the least little bit of danger.
First off he
looked surprised to see us, and not very glad, either; but as Tom went on he
looked pleasanter, and when he was done he smiled, and nodded his head several
times, and made signs with his hands, and says:
Goo-googoo-goo,
the way deef and dummies does.
Just then we see
some of Steve Nickerson's people coming that lived t'other side of the prairie,
so Tom says:
You do it elegant;
I never see anybody do it better. You're right; play it on us, too; play it on
us same as the others; it'll keep you in practice and prevent you making
blunders. We'll keep away from you and let on we don't know you, but any time
we can be any help, you just let us know.
Then we loafed
along past the Nickersons, and of course they asked if that was the new
stranger yonder, and where'd he come from, and what was his name, and which
communion was he, Babtis' or Methodis', and which politics, Whig or Democrat,
and how long is he staying, and all them other questions that humans always
asks when a stranger comes, and animals does, too. But Tom said he warn't able
to make anything out of deef and dumb signs, and the same with goo-gooing. Then
we watched them go and bullyrag Jake; because we was pretty uneasy for him. Tom
said it would take him days to get so he wouldn't forget he was a deef and
dummy sometimes, and speak out before he thought. When we had watched long
enough to see that Jake was getting along all right and working his signs very
good, we loafed along again, allowing to strike the schoolhouse about recess
time, which was a three-mile tramp.
I was so
disappointed not to hear Jake tell about the row in the sycamores, and how near
he come to getting killed, that I couldn't seem to get over it, and Tom he felt
the same, but said if we was in Jake's fix we would want to go careful and keep
still and not take any chances.
The boys and
girls was all glad to see us again, and we had a real good time all through
recess. Coming to school the Henderson boys had come across the new deef and
dummy and told the rest; so all the scholars was chuck full of him and couldn't
talk about anything else, and was in a sweat to get a sight of him because they
hadn't ever seen a deef and dummy in their lives, and it made a powerful
excitement.
Tom said it was
tough to have to keep mum now; said we would be heroes if we could come out and
tell all we knowed; but after all, it was still more heroic to keep mum, there
warn't two boys in a million could do it. That was Tom Sawyer's idea about it,
and reckoned there warn't anybody could better it.
Chapter IX.
FINDING OF
JUBITER DUNLAP
IN the next two
or three days Dummy he got to be powerful popular. He went associating around
with the neighbors, and they made much of him, and was proud to have such a
rattling curiosity among them. They had him to breakfast, they had him to
dinner, they had him to supper; they kept him loaded up with hog and hominy,
and warn't ever tired staring at him and wondering over him, and wishing they
knowed more about him, he was so uncommon and romantic. His signs warn't no
good; people couldn't understand them and he prob'ly couldn't himself, but he
done a sight of goo-gooing, and so everybody was satisfied, and admired to hear
him go it. He toted a piece of slate around, and a pencil; and people wrote
questions on it and he wrote answers; but there warn't anybody could read his
writing but Brace Dunlap. Brace said he couldn't read it very good, but he
could manage to dig out the meaning most of the time. He said Dummy said he
belonged away off somers and used to be well off, but got busted by swindlers
which he had trusted, and was poor now, and hadn't any way to make a living.
Everybody praised
Brace Dunlap for being so good to that stranger. He let him have a little
log-cabin all to himself, and had his niggers take care of it, and fetch him
all the vittles he wanted.
Dummy was at our
house some, because old Uncle Silas was so afflicted himself, these days, that
anybody else that was afflicted was a comfort to him. Me and Tom didn't let on
that we had knowed him before, and he didn't let on that he had knowed us
before. The family talked their troubles out before him the same as if he
wasn't there, but we reckoned it wasn't any harm for him to hear what they
said. Generly he didn't seem to notice, but sometimes he did.
Well, two or
three days went along, and everybody got to getting uneasy about Jubiter
Dunlap. Everybody was asking everybody if they had any idea what had become of
him. No, they hadn't, they said: and they shook their heads and said there was
something powerful strange about it. Another and another day went by; then
there was a report got around that praps he was murdered. You bet it made a big
stir! Everybody's tongue was clacking away after that. Saturday two or three
gangs turned out and hunted the woods to see if they could run across his
remainders. Me and Tom helped, and it was noble good times and exciting. Tom he
was so brimful of it he couldn't eat nor rest. He said if we could find that
corpse we would be celebrated, and more talked about than if we got drownded.
The others got
tired and give it up; but not Tom Sawyerthat warn't his style. Saturday night
he didn't sleep any, hardly, trying to think up a plan; and towards daylight in
the morning he struck it. He snaked me out of bed and was all excited, and
says:
Quick, Huck,
snatch on your clothesI've got it! Bloodhound!
In two minutes we
was tearing up the river road in the dark towards the village. Old Jeff Hooker
had a bloodhound, and Tom was going to borrow him. I says:
The trail's too
old, Tomand besides, it's rained, you know.
It don't make
any difference, Huck. If the body's hid in the woods anywhere around the hound
will find it. If he's been murdered and buried, they wouldn't bury him deep, it
ain't likely, and if the dog goes over the spot he'll scent him, sure. Huck,
we're going to be celebrated, sure as you're born!
He was just
a-blazing; and whenever he got afire he was most likely to get afire all over.
That was the way this time. In two minutes he had got it all ciphered out, and
wasn't only just going to find the corpseno, he was going to get on the track
of that murderer and hunt HIM down, too; and not only that, but he was going to
stick to him till Well, I says, you better find the corpse first; I reckon
that's a-plenty for to-day. For all we know, there AIN'T any corpse and nobody
hain't been murdered. That cuss could 'a' gone off somers and not been killed
at all.
That graveled
him, and he says:
Huck Finn, I
never see such a person as you to want to spoil everything. As long as YOU
can't see anything hopeful in a thing, you won't let anybody else. What good
can it do you to throw cold water on that corpse and get up that selfish theory
that there ain't been any murder? None in the world. I don't see how you can
act so. I wouldn't treat you like that, and you know it. Here we've got a noble
good opportunity to make a ruputation, and
Oh, go ahead, I
says. I'm sorry, and I take it all back. I didn't mean nothing. Fix it any way
you want it. HE ain't any consequence to me. If he's killed, I'm as glad of it
as you are; and if he
I never said
anything about being glad; I only
Well, then, I'm
as SORRY as you are. Any way you druther have it, that is the way I druther
have it. He
There ain't any
druthers ABOUT it, Huck Finn; nobody said anything about druthers. And as for
He forgot he was
talking, and went tramping along, studying. He begun to get excited again, and
pretty soon he says:
Huck, it'll be
the bulliest thing that ever happened if we find the body after everybody else
has quit looking, and then go ahead and hunt up the murderer. It won't only be
an honor to us, but it'll be an honor to Uncle Silas because it was us that
done it. It'll set him up again, you see if it don't.
But Old Jeff
Hooker he throwed cold water on the whole business when we got to his
blacksmith shop and told him what we come for.
You can take the
dog, he says, but you ain't a-going to find any corpse, because there ain't
any corpse to find. Everybody's quit looking, and they're right. Soon as they
come to think, they knowed there warn't no corpse. And I'll tell you for why.
What does a person kill another person for, Tom Sawyer?answer me that.
Why, heer
Answer up! You
ain't no fool. What does he kill him FOR?
Well, sometimes
it's for revenge, and
Wait. One thing
at a time. Revenge, says you; and right you are. Now who ever had anything agin
that poor trifling no-account? Who do you reckon would want to kill HIM? that
rabbit!
Tom was stuck. I
reckon he hadn't thought of a person having to have a REASON for killing a
person before, and now he sees it warn't likely anybody would have that much of
a grudge against a lamb like Jubiter Dunlap. The blacksmith says, by and by:
The revenge idea
won't work, you see. Well, then, what's next? Robbery? B'gosh, that must 'a'
been it, Tom! Yes, sirree, I reckon we've struck it this time. Some feller
wanted his gallus-buckles, and so he
But it was so
funny he busted out laughing, and just went on laughing and laughing and
laughing till he was 'most dead, and Tom looked so put out and cheap that I
knowed he was ashamed he had come, and he wished he hadn't. But old Hooker
never let up on him. He raked up everything a person ever could want to kill
another person about, and any fool could see they didn't any of them fit this
case, and he just made no end of fun of the whole business and of the people that
had been hunting the body; and he said:
If they'd had
any sense they'd 'a' knowed the lazy cuss slid out because he wanted a loafing
spell after all this work. He'll come pottering back in a couple of weeks, and
then how'll you fellers feel? But, laws bless you, take the dog, and go and
hunt his remainders. Do, Tom.
Then he busted
out, and had another of them forty-rod laughs of hisn. Tom couldn't back down
after all this, so he said, All right, unchain him; and the blacksmith done
it, and we started home and left that old man laughing yet.
It was a lovely
dog. There ain't any dog that's got a lovelier disposition than a bloodhound,
and this one knowed us and liked us. He capered and raced around ever so
friendly, and powerful glad to be free and have a holiday; but Tom was so cut
up he couldn't take any intrust in him, and said he wished he'd stopped and
thought a minute before he ever started on such a fool errand. He said old Jeff
Hooker would tell everybody, and we'd never hear the last of it.
So we loafed
along home down the back lanes, feeling pretty glum and not talking. When we
was passing the far corner of our tobacker field we heard the dog set up a long
howl in there, and we went to the place and he was scratching the ground with
all his might, and every now and then canting up his head sideways and fetching
another howl.
It was a long
square, the shape of a grave; the rain had made it sink down and show the
shape. The minute we come and stood there we looked at one another and never
said a word. When the dog had dug down only a few inches he grabbed something
and pulled it up, and it was an arm and a sleeve. Tom kind of gasped out, and
says:
Come away,
Huckit's found.
I just felt
awful. We struck for the road and fetched the first men that come along. They
got a spade at the crib and dug out the body, and you never see such an
excitement. You couldn't make anything out of the face, but you didn't need to.
Everybody said:
Poor Jubiter;
it's his clothes, to the last rag!
Some rushed off
to spread the news and tell the justice of the peace and have an inquest, and
me and Tom lit out for the house. Tom was all afire and 'most out of breath
when we come tearing in where Uncle Silas and Aunt Sally and Benny was. Tom
sung out:
Me and Huck's
found Jubiter Dunlap's corpse all by ourselves with a bloodhound, after
everybody else had quit hunting and given it up; and if it hadn't a been for us
it never WOULD 'a' been found; and he WAS murdered toothey done it with a club
or something like that; and I'm going to start in and find the murderer, next,
and I bet I'll do it!
Aunt Sally and
Benny sprung up pale and astonished, but Uncle Silas fell right forward out of
his chair on to the floor and groans out:
Oh, my God,
you've found him NOW!
Chapter X.
THE ARREST OF
UNCLE SILAS
THEM awful words
froze us solid. We couldn't move hand or foot for as much as half a minute.
Then we kind of come to, and lifted the old man up and got him into his chair,
and Benny petted him and kissed him and tried to comfort him, and poor old Aunt
Sally she done the same; but, poor things, they was so broke up and scared and
knocked out of their right minds that they didn't hardly know what they was
about. With Tom it was awful; it 'most petrified him to think maybe he had got
his uncle into a thousand times more trouble than ever, and maybe it wouldn't
ever happened if he hadn't been so ambitious to get celebrated, and let the
corpse alone the way the others done. But pretty soon he sort of come to
himself again and says:
Uncle Silas,
don't you say another word like that. It's dangerous, and there ain't a shadder
of truth in it.
Aunt Sally and
Benny was thankful to hear him say that, and they said the same; but the old man
he wagged his head sorrowful and hopeless, and the tears run down his face, and
he says;
NoI done it;
poor Jubiter, I done it!
It was dreadful
to hear him say it. Then he went on and told about it, and said it happened the
day me and Tom comealong about sundown. He said Jubiter pestered him and
aggravated him till he was so mad he just sort of lost his mind and grabbed up
a stick and hit him over the head with all his might, and Jubiter dropped in
his tracks. Then he was scared and sorry, and got down on his knees and lifted
his head up, and begged him to speak and say he wasn't dead; and before long he
come to, and when he see who it was holding his head, he jumped like he was
'most scared to death, and cleared the fence and tore into the woods, and was
gone. So he hoped he wasn't hurt bad.
But laws, he
says, it was only just fear that gave him that last little spurt of strength,
and of course it soon played out and he laid down in the bush, and there wasn't
anybody to help him, and he died.
Then the old man
cried and grieved, and said he was a murderer and the mark of Cain was on him,
and he had disgraced his family and was going to be found out and hung. But Tom
said:
No, you ain't
going to be found out. You DIDN'T kill him. ONE lick wouldn't kill him.
Somebody else done it.
Oh, yes, he
says, I done itnobody else. Who else had anything against him? Who else COULD
have anything against him?
He looked up kind
of like he hoped some of us could mention somebody that could have a grudge
against that harmless no-account, but of course it warn't no usehe HAD us; we
couldn't say a word. He noticed that, and he saddened down again, and I never
see a face so miserable and so pitiful to see. Tom had a sudden idea, and says:
But hold
on!somebody BURIED him. Now who
He shut off
sudden. I knowed the reason. It give me the cold shudders when he said them
words, because right away I remembered about us seeing Uncle Silas prowling
around with a long-handled shovel away in the night that night. And I knowed
Benny seen him, too, because she was talking about it one day. The minute Tom
shut off he changed the subject and went to begging Uncle Silas to keep mum,
and the rest of us done the same, and said he MUST, and said it wasn't his
business to tell on himself, and if he kept mum nobody would ever know; but if
it was found out and any harm come to him it would break the family's hearts
and kill them, and yet never do anybody any good. So at last he promised. We
was all of us more comfortable, then, and went to work to cheer up the old man.
We told him all he'd got to do was to keep still, and it wouldn't be long till
the whole thing would blow over and be forgot. We all said there wouldn't
anybody ever suspect Uncle Silas, nor ever dream of such a thing, he being so
good and kind, and having such a good character; and Tom says, cordial and
hearty, he says:
Why, just look
at it a minute; just consider. Here is Uncle Silas, all these years a
preacherat his own expense; all these years doing good with all his might and
every way he can think ofat his own expense, all the time; always been loved
by everybody, and respected; always been peaceable and minding his own
business, the very last man in this whole deestrict to touch a person, and
everybody knows it. Suspect HIM? Why, it ain't any more possible than
By authority of
the State of Arkansaw, I arrest you for the murder of Jubiter Dunlap! shouts
the sheriff at the door.
It was awful.
Aunt Sally and Benny flung themselves at Uncle Silas, screaming and crying, and
hugged him and hung to him, and Aunt Sally said go away, she wouldn't ever give
him up, they shouldn't have him, and the niggers they come crowding and crying
to the door andwell, I couldn't stand it; it was enough to break a person's
heart; so I got out.
They took him up
to the little one-horse jail in the village, and we all went along to tell him
good-bye; and Tom was feeling elegant, and says to me, We'll have a most noble
good time and heaps of danger some dark night getting him out of there, Huck,
and it'll be talked about everywheres and we will be celebrated; but the old
man busted that scheme up the minute he whispered to him about it. He said no,
it was his duty to stand whatever the law done to him, and he would stick to
the jail plumb through to the end, even if there warn't no door to it. It
disappointed Tom and graveled him a good deal, but he had to put up with it.
But he felt
responsible and bound to get his uncle Silas free; and he told Aunt Sally, the
last thing, not to worry, because he was going to turn in and work night and
day and beat this game and fetch Uncle Silas out innocent; and she was very
loving to him and thanked him and said she knowed he would do his very best.
And she told us to help Benny take care of the house and the children, and then
we had a good-bye cry all around and went back to the farm, and left her there
to live with the jailer's wife a month till the trial in October.
Chapter XI.
TOM SAWYER
DISCOVERS THE MURDERERS
WELL, that was a
hard month on us all. Poor Benny, she kept up the best she could, and me and
Tom tried to keep things cheerful there at the house, but it kind of went for
nothing, as you may say. It was the same up at the jail. We went up every day
to see the old people, but it was awful dreary, because the old man warn't
sleeping much, and was walking in his sleep considerable and so he got to
looking fagged and miserable, and his mind got shaky, and we all got afraid his
troubles would break him down and kill him. And whenever we tried to persuade
him to feel cheerfuler, he only shook his head and said if we only knowed what
it was to carry around a murderer's load in your heart we wouldn't talk that
way. Tom and all of us kept telling him it WASN'T murder, but just accidental
killing! but it never made any differenceit was murder, and he wouldn't have
it any other way. He actu'ly begun to come out plain and square towards trial
time and acknowledge that he TRIED to kill the man. Why, that was awful, you
know. It made things seem fifty times as dreadful, and there warn't no more
comfort for Aunt Sally and Benny. But he promised he wouldn't say a word about
his murder when others was around, and we was glad of that.
Tom Sawyer racked
the head off of himself all that month trying to plan some way out for Uncle
Silas, and many's the night he kept me up 'most all night with this kind of
tiresome work, but he couldn't seem to get on the right track no way. As for
me, I reckoned a body might as well give it up, it all looked so blue and I was
so downhearted; but he wouldn't. He stuck to the business right along, and went
on planning and thinking and ransacking his head.
So at last the
trial come on, towards the middle of October, and we was all in the court. The
place was jammed, of course. Poor old Uncle Silas, he looked more like a dead
person than a live one, his eyes was so hollow and he looked so thin and so
mournful. Benny she set on one side of him and Aunt Sally on the other, and
they had veils on, and was full of trouble. But Tom he set by our lawyer, and
had his finger in everywheres, of course. The lawyer let him, and the judge let
him. He 'most took the business out of the lawyer's hands sometimes; which was
well enough, because that was only a mud-turtle of a back-settlement lawyer and
didn't know enough to come in when it rains, as the saying is.
They swore in the
jury, and then the lawyer for the prostitution got up and begun. He made a
terrible speech against the old man, that made him moan and groan, and made
Benny and Aunt Sally cry. The way HE told about the murder kind of knocked us
all stupid it was so different from the old man's tale. He said he was going to
prove that Uncle Silas was SEEN to kill Jubiter Dunlap by two good witnesses,
and done it deliberate, and SAID he was going to kill him the very minute he
hit him with the club; and they seen him hide Jubiter in the bushes, and they
seen that Jubiter was stone-dead. And said Uncle Silas come later and lugged
Jubiter down into the tobacker field, and two men seen him do it. And said
Uncle Silas turned out, away in the night, and buried Jubiter, and a man seen
him at it.
I says to myself,
poor old Uncle Silas has been lying about it because he reckoned nobody seen
him and he couldn't bear to break Aunt Sally's heart and Benny's; and right he
was: as for me, I would 'a' lied the same way, and so would anybody that had
any feeling, to save them such misery and sorrow which THEY warn't no ways
responsible for. Well, it made our lawyer look pretty sick; and it knocked Tom
silly, too, for a little spell, but then he braced up and let on that he warn't
worriedbut I knowed he WAS, all the same. And the peoplemy, but it made a
stir amongst them!
And when that
lawyer was done telling the jury what he was going to prove, he set down and begun
to work his witnesses.
First, he called
a lot of them to show that there was bad blood betwixt Uncle Silas and the
diseased; and they told how they had heard Uncle Silas threaten the diseased,
at one time and another, and how it got worse and worse and everybody was
talking about it, and how diseased got afraid of his life, and told two or
three of them he was certain Uncle Silas would up and kill him some time or
another.
Tom and our
lawyer asked them some questions; but it warn't no use, they stuck to what they
said.
Next, they called
up Lem Beebe, and he took the stand. It come into my mind, then, how Lem and
Jim Lane had come along talking, that time, about borrowing a dog or something
from Jubiter Dunlap; and that brought up the blackberries and the lantern; and
that brought up Bill and Jack Withers, and how they passed by, talking about a
nigger stealing Uncle Silas's corn; and that fetched up our old ghost that come
along about the same time and scared us soand here HE was too, and a
privileged character, on accounts of his being deef and dumb and a stranger,
and they had fixed him a chair inside the railing, where he could cross his
legs and be comfortable, whilst the other people was all in a jam so they
couldn't hardly breathe. So it all come back to me just the way it was that
day; and it made me mournful to think how pleasant it was up to then, and how
miserable ever since.
LEM BEEBE, sworn,
said"I was a-coming along, that day, second of September, and Jim Lane was
with me, and it was towards sundown, and we heard loud talk, like quarrelling,
and we was very close, only the hazel bushes between (that's along the fence);
and we heard a voice say, 'I've told you more'n once I'd kill you,' and knowed
it was this prisoner's voice; and then we see a club come up above the bushes
and down out of sight again. and heard a smashing thump and then a groan or
two: and then we crope soft to where we could see, and there laid Jupiter
Dunlap dead, and this prisoner standing over him with the club; and the next he
hauled the dead man into a clump of bushes and hid him, and then we stooped
low, to be cut of sight, and got away. Well, it was awful. It kind of froze
everybody's blood to hear it, and the house was 'most as still whilst he was
telling it as if there warn't nobody in it. And when he was done, you could
hear them gasp and sigh, all over the house, and look at one another the same
as to say, Ain't it perfectly terribleain't it awful!
Now happened a
thing that astonished me. All the time the first witnesses was proving the bad
blood and the threats and all that, Tom Sawyer was alive and laying for them;
and the minute they was through, he went for them, and done his level best to
catch them in lies and spile their testimony. But now, how different. When Lem
first begun to talk, and never said anything about speaking to Jubiter or
trying to borrow a dog off of him, he was all alive and laying for Lem, and you
could see he was getting ready to cross-question him to death pretty soon, and
then I judged him and me would go on the stand by and by and tell what we heard
him and Jim Lane say. But the next time I looked at Tom I got the cold shivers.
Why, he was in the brownest study you ever seemiles and miles away. He warn't
hearing a word Lem Beebe was saying; and when he got through he was still in
that brown-study, just the same. Our lawyer joggled him, and then he looked up
startled, and says, Take the witness if you want him. Lemme aloneI want to
think.
Well, that beat me.
I couldn't understand it. And Benny and her motheroh, they looked sick, they
was so troubled. They shoved their veils to one side and tried to get his eye,
but it warn't any use, and I couldn't get his eye either. So the mud-turtle he
tackled the witness, but it didn't amount to nothing; and he made a mess of it.
Then they called
up Jim Lane, and he told the very same story over again, exact. Tom never
listened to this one at all, but set there thinking and thinking, miles and
miles away. So the mud-turtle went in alone again and come out just as flat as
he done before. The lawyer for the prostitution looked very comfortable, but
the judge looked disgusted. You see, Tom was just the same as a regular lawyer,
nearly, because it was Arkansaw law for a prisoner to choose anybody he wanted
to help his lawyer, and Tom had had Uncle Silas shove him into the case, and
now he was botching it and you could see the judge didn't like it much. All
that the mud-turtle got out of Lem and Jim was this: he asked them:
Why didn't you
go and tell what you saw?
We was afraid we
would get mixed up in it ourselves. And we was just starting down the river
a-hunting for all the week besides; but as soon as we come back we found out
they'd been searching for the body, so then we went and told Brace Dunlap all
about it.
When was that?
Saturday night,
September 9th.
The judge he
spoke up and says:
Mr. Sheriff,
arrest these two witnesses on suspicions of being accessionary after the fact
to the murder.
The lawyer for
the prostitution jumps up all excited, and says:
Your honor! I
protest against this extraordi
Set down! says
the judge, pulling his bowie and laying it on his pulpit. I beg you to respect
the Court.
So he done it.
Then he called Bill Withers.
BILL WITHERS,
sworn, said: I was coming along about sundown, Saturday, September 2d, by the
prisoner's field, and my brother Jack was with me and we seen a man toting off
something heavy on his back and allowed it was a nigger stealing corn; we
couldn't see distinct; next we made out that it was one man carrying another;
and the way it hung, so kind of limp, we judged it was somebody that was drunk;
and by the man's walk we said it was Parson Silas, and we judged he had found
Sam Cooper drunk in the road, which he was always trying to reform him, and was
toting him out of danger. It made the people shiver to think of poor old Uncle
Silas toting off the diseased down to the place in his tobacker field where the
dog dug up the body, but there warn't much sympathy around amongst the faces,
and I heard one cuss say 'Tis the coldest blooded work I ever struck, lugging
a murdered man around like that, and going to bury him like a animal, and him a
preacher at that.
Tom he went on
thinking, and never took no notice; so our lawyer took the witness and done the
best he could, and it was plenty poor enough.
Then Jack Withers
he come on the stand and told the same tale, just like Bill done.
And after him
comes Brace Dunlap, and he was looking very mournful, and most crying; and
there was a rustle and a stir all around, and everybody got ready to listen,
and lost of the women folks said, Poor cretur, poor cretur, and you could see
a many of them wip-ing their eyes.
BRACE DUNLAP,
sworn, said: I was in considerable trouble a long time about my poor brother,
but I reckoned things warn't near so bad as he made out, and I couldn't make
myself believe anybody would have the heart to hurt a poor harmless cretur like
that"[by jings, I was sure I seen Tom give a kind of a faint little start,
and then look disappointed again]"and you know I COULDN'T think a
preacher would hurt himit warn't natural to think such an onlikely thingso I
never paid much attention, and now I sha'n't ever, ever forgive myself; for if
I had a done different, my poor brother would be with me this day, and not
laying yonder murdered, and him so harmless. He kind of broke down there and
choked up, and waited to get his voice; and people all around said the most
pitiful things, and women cried; and it was very still in there, and solemn,
and old Uncle Silas, poor thing, he give a groan right out so everybody heard
him. Then Brace he went on, Saturday, September 2d, he didn't come home to
supper. By-and-by I got a little uneasy, and one of my niggers went over to this
prisoner's place, but come back and said he warn't there. So I got uneasier and
uneasier, and couldn't rest. I went to bed, but I couldn't sleep; and turned
out, away late in the night, and went wandering over to this prisoner's place
and all around about there a good while, hoping I would run across my poor
brother, and never knowing he was out of his troubles and gone to a better
shore So he broke down and choked up again, and most all the women was
crying now. Pretty soon he got another start and says: But it warn't no use;
so at last I went home and tried to get some sleep, but couldn't. Well, in a
day or two everybody was uneasy, and they got to talking about this prisoner's
threats, and took to the idea, which I didn't take no stock in, that my brother
was murdered so they hunted around and tried to find his body, but couldn't and
give it up. And so I reckoned he was gone off somers to have a little peace,
and would come back to us when his troubles was kind of healed. But late
Saturday night, the 9th, Lem Beebe and Jim Lane come to my house and told me
alltold me the whole awful 'sassination, and my heart was broke. And THEN I
remembered something that hadn't took no hold of me at the time, because
reports said this prisoner had took to walking in his sleep and doing all kind
of things of no consequence, not knowing what he was about. I will tell you
what that thing was that come back into my memory. Away late that awful
Saturday night when I was wandering around about this prisoner's place, grieving
and troubled, I was down by the corner of the tobacker- field and I heard a
sound like digging in a gritty soil; and I crope nearer and peeped through the
vines that hung on the rail fence and seen this prisoner SHOVELINGshoveling
with a long-handled shovelheaving earth into a big hole that was most filled
up; his back was to me, but it was bright moonlight and I knowed him by his old
green baize work-gown with a splattery white patch in the middle of the back
like somebody had hit him with a snowball. HE WAS BURYING THE MAN HE'D
MURDERED! And he slumped down in his chair crying and sobbing, and 'most
everybody in the house busted out wailing, and crying, and saying, Oh, it's
awfulawful horrible! and there was a most tremendous excitement, and you
couldn't hear yourself think; and right in the midst of it up jumps old Uncle
Silas, white as a sheet, and sings out:
IT'S TRUE, EVERY
WORDI MURDERED HIM IN COLD BLOOD!
By Jackson, it
petrified them! People rose up wild all over the house, straining and staring
for a better look at him, and the judge was hammering with his mallet and the
sheriff yelling Orderorder in the courtorder!
And all the while
the old man stood there a-quaking and his eyes a-burning, and not looking at
his wife and daughter, which was clinging to him and begging him to keep still,
but pawing them off with his hands and saying he WOULD clear his black soul
from crime, he WOULD heave off this load that was more than he could bear, and
he WOULDN'T bear it another hour! And then he raged right along with his awful
tale, everybody a-staring and gasping, judge, jury, lawyers, and everybody, and
Benny and Aunt Sally crying their hearts out. And by George, Tom Sawyer never
looked at him once! Never oncejust set there gazing with all his eyes at
something else, I couldn't tell what. And so the old man raged right along,
pouring his words out like a stream of fire:
I killed him! I
am guilty! But I never had the notion in my life to hurt him or harm him, spite
of all them lies about my threatening him, till the very minute I raised the
clubthen my heart went cold!then the pity all went out of it, and I struck to
kill! In that one moment all my wrongs come into my mind; all the insults that
that man and the scoundrel his brother, there, had put upon me, and how they
laid in together to ruin me with the people, and take away my good name, and
DRIVE me to some deed that would destroy me and my family that hadn't ever done
THEM no harm, so help me God! And they done it in a mean revengefor why?
Because my innocent pure girl here at my side wouldn't marry that rich,
insolent, ignorant coward, Brace Dunlap, who's been sniveling here over a
brother he never cared a brass farthing for"[I see Tom give a jump and
look glad THIS time, to a dead certainty]" and in that moment I've told
you about, I forgot my God and remembered only my heart's bitterness, God
forgive me, and I struck to kill. In one second I was miserably sorryoh,
filled with remorse; but I thought of my poor family, and I MUST hide what I'd
done for their sakes; and I did hide that corpse in the bushes; and presently I
carried it to the tobacker field; and in the deep night I went with my shovel
and buried it where
Up jumps Tom and
shouts:
NOW, I've got
it! and waves his hand, oh, ever so fine and starchy, towards the old man, and
says:
Set down! A
murder WAS done, but you never had no hand in it!
Well, sir, you
could a heard a pin drop. And the old man he sunk down kind of bewildered in
his seat and Aunt Sally and Benny didn't know it, because they was so
astonished and staring at Tom with their mouths open and not knowing what they
was about. And the whole house the same. I never seen people look so helpless
and tangled up, and I hain't ever seen eyes bug out and gaze without a blink
the way theirn did. Tom says, perfectly ca'm:
Your honor, may
I speak?
For God's sake,
yesgo on! says the judge, so astonished and mixed up he didn't know what he
was about hardly.
Then Tom he stood
there and waited a second or two that was for to work up an effect, as he
calls it then he started in just as ca'm as ever, and says:
For about two
weeks now there's been a little bill sticking on the front of this courthouse
offering two thousand dollars reward for a couple of big di'mondsstole at St.
Louis. Them di'monds is worth twelve thousand dollars. But never mind about
that till I get to it. Now about this murder. I will tell you all about ithow
it happenedwho done itevery DEtail.
You could see
everybody nestle now, and begin to listen for all they was worth.
This man here,
Brace Dunlap, that's been sniveling so about his dead brother that YOU know he
never cared a straw for, wanted to marry that young girl there, and she
wouldn't have him. So he told Uncle Silas he would make him sorry. Uncle Silas
knowed how powerful he was, and how little chance he had against such a man,
and he was scared and worried, and done everything he could think of to smooth
him over and get him to be good to him: he even took his no-account brother
Jubiter on the farm and give him wages and stinted his own family to pay them;
and Jubiter done everything his brother could contrive to insult Uncle Silas,
and fret and worry him, and try to drive Uncle Silas into doing him a hurt, so
as to injure Uncle Silas with the people. And it done it. Everybody turned
against him and said the meanest kind of things about him, and it graduly broke
his heartyes, and he was so worried and distressed that often he warn't hardly
in his right mind.
Well, on that
Saturday that we've had so much trouble about, two of these witnesses here, Lem
Beebe and Jim Lane, come along by where Uncle Silas and Jubiter Dunlap was at
workand that much of what they've said is true, the rest is lies. They didn't
hear Uncle Silas say he would kill Jubiter; they didn't hear no blow struck;
they didn't see no dead man, and they didn't see Uncle Silas hide anything in
the bushes. Look at them nowhow they set there, wishing they hadn't been so
handy with their tongues; anyway, they'll wish it before I get done.
That same
Saturday evening Bill and Jack Withers DID see one man lugging off another one.
That much of what they said is true, and the rest is lies. First off they
thought it was a nigger stealing Uncle Silas's cornyou notice it makes them
look silly, now, to find out somebody overheard them say that. That's because
they found out by and by who it was that was doing the lugging, and THEY know
best why they swore here that they took it for Uncle Silas by the gaitwhich it
WASN'T, and they knowed it when they swore to that lie.
A man out in the
moonlight DID see a murdered person put under ground in the tobacker fieldbut
it wasn't Uncle Silas that done the burying. He was in his bed at that very
time.
Now, then,
before I go on, I want to ask you if you've ever noticed this: that people,
when they're thinking deep, or when they're worried, are most always doing
something with their hands, and they don't know it, and don't notice what it is
their hands are doing. some stroke their chins; some stroke their noses; some
stroke up UNDER their chin with their hand; some twirl a chain, some fumble a
button, then there's some that draws a figure or a letter with their finger on
their cheek, or under their chin or on their under lip. That's MY way. When I'm
restless, or worried, or thinking hard, I draw capital V's on my cheek or on my
under lip or under my chin, and never anything BUT capital V'sand half the
time I don't notice it and don't know I'm doing it.
That was odd.
That is just what I do; only I make an O. And I could see people nodding to one
another, same as they do when they mean THAT's so.
Now, then, I'll
go on. That same Saturdayno, it was the night beforethere was a steamboat
laying at Flagler's Landing, forty miles above here, and it was raining and
storming like the nation. And there was a thief aboard, and he had them two big
di'monds that's advertised out here on this courthouse door; and he slipped
ashore with his hand-bag and struck out into the dark and the storm, and he was
a-hoping he could get to this town all right and be safe. But he had two pals
aboard the boat, hiding, and he knowed they was going to kill him the first
chance they got and take the di'monds; because all three stole them, and then
this fellow he got hold of them and skipped.
Well, he hadn't
been gone more'n ten minutes before his pals found it out, and they jumped
ashore and lit out after him. Prob'ly they burnt matches and found his tracks.
Anyway, they dogged along after him all day Saturday and kept out of his sight;
and towards sundown he come to the bunch of sycamores down by Uncle Silas's
field, and he went in there to get a disguise out of his hand-bag and put it on
before he showed himself here in the townand mind you he done that just a
little after the time that Uncle Silas was hitting Jubiter Dunlap over the head
with a clubfor he DID hit him.
But the minute
the pals see that thief slide into the bunch of sycamores, they jumped out of
the bushes and slid in after him.
They fell on him
and clubbed him to death.
Yes, for all he
screamed and howled so, they never had no mercy on him, but clubbed him to
death. And two men that was running along the road heard him yelling that way,
and they made a rush into the syca- i more bunchwhich was where they was bound
for, anywayand when the pals saw them they lit out and the two new men after
them a-chasing them as tight as they could go. But only a minute or twothen
these two new men slipped back very quiet into the sycamores.
THEN what did
they do? I will tell you what they done. They found where the thief had got his
disguise out of his carpet-sack to put on; so one of them strips and puts on
that disguise.
Tom waited a
little here, for some more effect"then he says, very deliberate:
The man that put
on that dead man's disguise was JUBITER DUNLAP!
Great Scott!
everybody shouted, all over the house, and old Uncle Silas he looked perfectly
astonished.
Yes, it was
Jubiter Dunlap. Not dead, you see. Then they pulled off the dead man's boots
and put Jubiter Dunlap's old ragged shoes on the corpse and put the corpse's
boots on Jubiter Dunlap. Then Jubiter Dunlap stayed where he was, and the other
man lugged the dead body off in the twilight; and after midnight he went to
Uncle Silas's house, and took his old green work-robe off of the peg where it
always hangs in the passage betwixt the house and the kitchen and put it on,
and stole the long-handled shovel and went off down into the tobacker field and
buried the murdered man.
He stopped, and
stood half a minute. ThenAnd who do you reckon the murdered man WAS? It
wasJAKE Dunlap, the long-lost burglar!
Great Scott!
And the man that
buried him wasBRACE Dunlap, his brother!
Great Scott!
And who do you reckon
is this mowing idiot here that's letting on all these weeks to be a deef and
dumb stranger? It'sJUBITER Dunlap!
My land, they all
busted out in a howl, and you never see the like of that excitement since the
day you was born. And Tom he made a jump for Jubiter and snaked off his goggles
and his false whiskers, and there was the murdered man, sure enough, just as
alive as anybody! And Aunt Sally and Benny they went to hugging and crying and
kissing and smothering old Uncle Silas to that degree he was more muddled and
confused and mushed up in his mind than he ever was before, and that is saying
considerable. And next, people begun to yell:
Tom Sawyer! Tom
Sawyer! Shut up everybody, and let him go on! Go on, Tom Sawyer!
Which made him
feel uncommon bully, for it was nuts for Tom Sawyer to be a public character
that-away, and a hero, as he calls it. So when it was all quiet, he says:
There ain't much
left, only this. When that man there, Bruce Dunlap, had most worried the life
and sense out of Uncle Silas till at last he plumb lost his mind and hit this
other blatherskite, his brother, with a club, I reckon he seen his chance.
Jubiter broke for the woods to hide, and I reckon the game was for him to slide
out, in the night, and leave the country. Then Brace would make everybody
believe Uncle Silas killed him and hid his body somers; and that would ruin
Uncle Silas and drive HIM out of the countryhang him, maybe; I dunno. But when
they found their dead brother in the sycamores without knowing him, because he
was so battered up, they see they had a better thing; disguise BOTH and bury
Jake and dig him up presently all dressed up in Jubiter's clothes, and hire Jim
Lane and Bill Withers and the others to swear to some handy lieswhich they
done. And there they set, now, and I told them they would be looking sick
before I got done, and that is the way they're looking now.
Well, me and
Huck Finn here, we come down on the boat with the thieves, and the dead one
told us all about the di'monds, and said the others would murder him if they
got the chance; and we was going to help him all we could. We was bound for the
sycamores when we heard them killing him in there; but we was in there in the
early morning after the storm and allowed nobody hadn't been killed, after all.
And when we see Jubiter Dunlap here spreading around in the very same disguise
Jake told us HE was going to wear, we thought it was Jake his own selfand he
was goo-gooing deef and dumb, and THAT was according to agreement.
Well, me and Huck
went on hunting for the corpse after the others quit, and we found it. And was
proud, too; but Uncle Silas he knocked us crazy by telling us HE killed the
man. So we was mighty sorry we found the body, and was bound to save Uncle
Silas's neck if we could; and it was going to be tough work, too, because he
wouldn't let us break him out of prison the way we done with our old nigger
Jim.
I done
everything I could the whole month to think up some way to save Uncle Silas,
but I couldn't strike a thing. So when we come into court to-day I come empty,
and couldn't see no chance anywheres. But by and by I had a glimpse of
something that set me thinkingjust a little wee glimpseonly that, and not
enough to make sure; but it set me thinking hardand WATCHING, when I was only
letting on to think; and by and by, sure enough, when Uncle Silas was piling
out that stuff about HIM killing Jubiter Dunlap, I catched that glimpse again,
and this time I jumped up and shut down the proceedings, because I KNOWED
Jubiter Dunlap was a-setting here before me. I knowed him by a thing which I
seen him doand I remembered it. I'd seen him do it when I was here a year
ago.
He stopped then,
and studied a minutelaying for an effect"I knowed it perfectly well.
Then he turned off like he was going to leave the platform, and says, kind of
lazy and indifferent:
Well, I believe
that is all.
Why, you never
heard such a howl!and it come from the whole house:
What WAS it you
seen him do? Stay where you are, you little devil! You think you are going to
work a body up till his mouth's a-watering and stop there? What WAS it he
done?
That was it, you
seehe just done it to get an effect; you couldn't 'a' pulled him off of that
platform with a yoke of oxen.
Oh, it wasn't
anything much, he says. I seen him looking a little excited when he found
Uncle Silas was actuly fixing to hang himself for a murder that warn't ever
done; and he got more and more nervous and worried, I a-watching him sharp but
not seeming to look at him and all of a sudden his hands begun to work and
fidget, and pretty soon his left crept up and HIS FINGER DRAWED A CROSS ON HIS
CHEEK, and then I HAD him!
Well, then they
ripped and howled and stomped and clapped their hands till Tom Sawyer was that
proud and happy he didn't know what to do with himself.
And then the
judge he looked down over his pulpit and says:
My boy, did you
SEE all the various details of this strange conspiracy and tragedy that you've
been describing?
No, your honor,
I didn't see any of them.
Didn't see any
of them! Why, you've told the whole history straight through, just the same as
if you'd seen it with your eyes. How did you manage that?
Tom says, kind of
easy and comfortable:
Oh, just
noticing the evidence and piecing this and that together, your honor; just an
ordinary little bit of detective work; anybody could 'a' done it.
Nothing of the
kind! Not two in a million could 'a' done it. You are a very remarkable boy.
Then they let go
and give Tom another smashing round, and hewell, he wouldn't 'a' sold out for
a silver mine. Then the judge says:
But are you
certain you've got this curious history straight?
Perfectly, your
honor. Here is Brace Dunlaplet him deny his share of it if he wants to take
the chance; I'll engage to make him wish he hadn't said anything...... Well,
you see HE'S pretty quiet. And his brother's pretty quiet, and them four
witnesses that lied so and got paid for it, they're pretty quiet. And as for
Uncle Silas, it ain't any use for him to put in his oar, I wouldn't believe him
under oath!
Well, sir, that
fairly made them shout; and even the judge he let go and laughed. Tom he was
just feeling like a rainbow. When they was done laughing he looks up at the
judge and says:
Your honor,
there's a thief in this house.
A thief?
Yes, sir. And
he's got them twelve-thousand-dollar di'monds on him.
By gracious, but
it made a stir! Everybody went shouting:
Which is him?
which is him? p'int him out!
And the judge
says:
Point him out,
my lad. Sheriff, you will arrest him. Which one is it?
Tom says:
This late dead
man hereJubiter Dunlap.
Then there was
another thundering let-go of astonishment and excitement; but Jubiter, which
was astonished enough before, was just fairly putrified with astonishment this time.
And he spoke up, about half crying, and says:
Now THAT'S a
lie. Your honor, it ain't fair; I'm plenty bad enough without that. I done the
other thingsBrace he put me up to it, and persuaded me, and promised he'd make
me rich, some day, and I done it, and I'm sorry I done it, and I wisht I
hadn't; but I hain't stole no di'monds, and I hain't GOT no di'monds; I wisht I
may never stir if it ain't so. The sheriff can search me and see.
Tom says:
Your honor, it
wasn't right to call him a thief, and I'll let up on that a little. He did
steal the di'monds, but he didn't know it. He stole them from his brother Jake
when he was laying dead, after Jake had stole them from the other thieves; but
Jubiter didn't know he was stealing them; and he's been swelling around here
with them a month; yes, sir, twelve thousand dollars' worth of di'monds on
himall that riches, and going around here every day just like a poor man. Yes,
your honor, he's got them on him now.
The judge spoke
up and says:
Search him,
sheriff.
Well, sir, the
sheriff he ransacked him high and low, and everywhere: searched his hat, socks,
seams, boots, everythingand Tom he stood there quiet, laying for another of
them effects of hisn. Finally the sheriff he give it up, and everybody looked
disappointed, and Jubiter says:
There, now!
what'd I tell you?
And the judge
says:
It appears you
were mistaken this time, my boy.
Then Tom took an
attitude and let on to be studying with all his might, and scratching his head.
Then all of a sudden he glanced up chipper, and says:
Oh, now I've got
it ! I'd forgot.
Which was a lie,
and I knowed it. Then he says:
Will somebody be
good enough to lend me a little small screwdriver? There was one in your
brother's hand-bag that you smouched, Jubiter. but I reckon you didn't fetch it
with you.
No, I didn't. I
didn't want it, and I give it away.
That's because
you didn't know what it was for.
Jubiter had his
boots on again, by now, and when the thing Tom wanted was passed over the
people's heads till it got to him, he says to Jubiter:
Put up your foot
on this chair. And he kneeled down and begun to unscrew the heel-plate,
everybody watching; and when he got that big di'mond out of that boot-heel and
held it up and let it flash and blaze and squirt sunlight everwhichaway, it
just took everybody's breath; and Jubiter he looked so sick and sorry you never
see the like of it. And when Tom held up the other di'mond he looked sorrier
than ever. Land! he was thinking how he would 'a' skipped out and been rich and
independent in a foreign land if he'd only had the luck to guess what the
screwdriver was in the carpet-bag for.
Well, it was a
most exciting time, take it all around, and Tom got cords of glory. The judge
took the di'monds, and stood up in his pulpit, and cleared his throat, and
shoved his spectacles back on his head, and says:
I'll keep them and notify the owners; and when they send
for them it will be a real pleasure to me to hand you the two thousand dollars,
for you've earned the moneyyes, and you've earned the deepest and most
sincerest thanks of this community besides, for lifting a wronged and innocent
family out of ruin and shame, and saving a good and honorable man from a
felon's death, and for exposing to infamy and the punishment of the law a cruel
and odious scoundrel and his miserable creatures!
Well, sir, if there'd been a brass band to bust out some
music, then, it would 'a' been just the perfectest thing I ever see, and Tom
Sawyer he said the same.
Then the sheriff he nabbed Brace Dunlap and his crowd, and
by and by next month the judge had them up for trial and jailed the whole lot. And everybody
crowded back to Uncle Silas's little old church, and was ever so loving and
kind to him and the family and couldn't do enough for them; and Uncle Silas he
preached them the blamedest jumbledest idiotic sermons you ever struck, and
would tangle you up so you couldn't find your way home in daylight; but the
people never let on but what they thought it was the clearest and brightest and
elegantest sermons that ever was; and they would set there and cry, for love
and pity; but, by George, they give me the jim-jams and the fan-tods and caked
up what brains I had, and turned them solid; but by and by they loved the old
man's intellects back into him again, and he was as sound in his skull as ever
he was, which ain't no flattery, I reckon. And so the whole family was as happy
as birds, and nobody could be gratefuler and lovinger than what they was to Tom
Sawyer; and the same to me, though I hadn't done nothing. And when the two
thousand dollars come, Tom give half of it to me, and never told anybody so,
which didn't surprise me, because I knowed him.
END