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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Complete by
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

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Title: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Complete

Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

Release Date: August 20, 2006 [EBook #74]
Last Updated: February 23, 2018

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TOM SAWYER ***

Produced by David Widger





THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER

By Mark Twain

(Samuel Langhorne Clemens)




CONTENTS

CHAPTER I. Y-o-u-u Tom-Aunt Polly Decides Upon her Duty--Tom Practices
Music--The Challenge--A Private Entrance

CHAPTER II. Strong Temptations--Strategic Movements--The Innocents
Beguiled

CHAPTER III. Tom as a General--Triumph and Reward--Dismal
Felicity--Commission and Omission

CHAPTER IV. Mental Acrobatics--Attending Sunday--School--The
Superintendent--“Showing off”--Tom Lionized

CHAPTER V. A Useful Minister--In Church--The Climax

CHAPTER VI. Self-Examination--Dentistry--The Midnight Charm--Witches and
Devils--Cautious Approaches--Happy Hours

CHAPTER VII. A Treaty Entered Into--Early Lessons--A Mistake Made

CHAPTER VIII. Tom Decides on his Course--Old Scenes Re-enacted

CHAPTER IX. A Solemn Situation--Grave Subjects Introduced--Injun Joe
Explains

CHAPTER X. The Solemn Oath--Terror Brings Repentance--Mental Punishment

CHAPTER XI. Muff Potter Comes Himself--Tom's Conscience at Work

CHAPTER XII. Tom Shows his Generosity--Aunt Polly Weakens

CHAPTER XIII. The Young Pirates--Going to the Rendezvous--The Camp--Fire
Talk

CHAPTER XIV. Camp-Life--A Sensation--Tom Steals Away from Camp

CHAPTER XV. Tom Reconnoiters--Learns the Situation--Reports at Camp

CHAPTER XVI. A Day's Amusements--Tom Reveals a Secret--The Pirates take a
Lesson--A Night Surprise--An Indian War

CHAPTER XVII. Memories of the Lost Heroes--The Point in Tom's Secret

CHAPTER XVIII. Tom's Feelings Investigated--Wonderful Dream--Becky
Thatcher Overshadowed--Tom Becomes Jealous--Black Revenge

CHAPTER XIX. Tom Tells the Truth

CHAPTER XX. Becky in a Dilemma--Tom's Nobility Asserts Itself

CHAPTER XXI. Youthful Eloquence--Compositions by the Young Ladies--A
Lengthy Vision--The Boy's Vengeance Satisfied

CHAPTER XXII. Tom's Confidence Betrayed--Expects Signal Punishment

CHAPTER XXIII. Old Muff's Friends--Muff Potter in Court--Muff Potter
Saved

CHAPTER XXIV. Tom as the Village Hero--Days of Splendor and Nights of
Horror--Pursuit of Injun Joe

CHAPTER XXV. About Kings and Diamonds--Search for the Treasure--Dead
People and Ghosts

CHAPTER XXVI. The Haunted House--Sleepy Ghosts--A Box of Gold--Bitter Luck

CHAPTER XXVII. Doubts to be Settled--The Young Detectives

CHAPTER XXVIII. An Attempt at No. Two--Huck Mounts Guard

CHAPTER XXIX. The Pic-nic--Huck on Injun Joe's Track--The “Revenge”
 Job--Aid for the Widow

CHAPTER XXX. The Welchman Reports--Huck Under Fire--The Story Circulated
--A New Sensation--Hope Giving Way to Despair

CHAPTER XXXI. An Exploring Expedition--Trouble Commences--Lost in the
Cave--Total Darkness--Found but not Saved

CHAPTER XXXII. Tom tells the Story of their Escape--Tom's Enemy in Safe
Quarters

CHAPTER XXXIII. The Fate of Injun Joe--Huck and Tom Compare Notes
--An Expedition to the Cave--Protection Against Ghosts--“An Awful Snug
Place”--A Reception at the Widow Douglas's

CHAPTER XXXIV. Springing a Secret--Mr. Jones' Surprise a Failure

CHAPTER XXXV. A New Order of Things--Poor Huck--New Adventures Planned




ILLUSTRATIONS

Tom Sawyer

Tom at Home

Aunt Polly Beguiled

A Good Opportunity

Who's Afraid

Late Home

Jim

'Tendin' to Business

Ain't that Work?

Cat and Toys

Amusement

Becky Thatcher

Paying Off

After the Battle

“Showing Off”

Not Amiss

Mary

Tom Contemplating

Dampened Ardor

Youth

Boyhood

Using the “Barlow”

The Church

Necessities

Tom as a Sunday-School Hero    

The Prize

At Church

The Model Boy

The Church Choir

A Side Show

Result of Playing in Church

The Pinch-Bug

Sid

Dentistry

Huckleberry Finn

Mother Hopkins

Result of Tom's Truthfulness

Tom as an Artist

Interrupted Courtship

The Master

Vain Pleading

Tail Piece

The Grave in the Woods

Tom Meditates

Robin Hood and his Foe

Death of Robin Hood

Midnight

Tom's Mode of Egress

Tom's Effort at Prayer

Muff Potter Outwitted

The Graveyard

Forewarnings

Disturbing Muff's Sleep

Tom's Talk with his Aunt

Muff Potter

A Suspicious Incident

Injun Joe's two Victims

In the Coils

Peter

Aunt Polly seeks Information

A General Good Time

Demoralized

Joe Harper

On Board Their First Prize

The Pirates Ashore

Wild Life

The Pirate's Bath

The Pleasant Stroll

The Search for the Drowned

The Mysterious Writing

River View

What Tom Saw

Tom Swims the River

Taking Lessons

The Pirates' Egg Market

Tom Looking for Joe's Knife    

The Thunder Storm

Terrible Slaughter

The Mourner

Tom's Proudest Moment

Amy Lawrence

Tom tries to Remember

The Hero

A Flirtation

Becky Retaliates

A Sudden Frost

Counter-irritation

Aunt Polly

Tom justified

The Discovery

Caught in the Act

Tom Astonishes the School

Literature

Tom Declaims

Examination Evening

On Exhibition

Prize Authors

The Master's Dilemma

The School House

The Cadet

Happy for Two Days

Enjoying the Vacation

The Stolen Melons

The Judge

Visiting the Prisoner

Tom Swears

The Court Room

The Detective

Tom Dreams

The Treasure

The Private Conference

A King; Poor Fellow!

Business

The Ha'nted House

Injun Joe

The Greatest and Best

Hidden Treasures Unearthed

The Boy's Salvation

Room No. 2

The Next Day's Conference

Treasures

Uncle Jake

Buck at Home

The Haunted Room

“Run for Your Life”

McDougal's Cave

Inside the Cave

Huck on Duty

A Rousing Act

Tail Piece

The Welchman

Result of a Sneeze

Cornered

Alarming Discoveries

Tom and Becky stir up the Town

Tom's Marks

Huck Questions the Widow

Vampires

Wonders of the Cave

Attacked by Natives

Despair

The Wedding Cake

A New Terror

Daylight

“Turn Out” to Receive Tom and Becky

The Escape from the Cave

Fate of the Ragged Man

The Treasures Found

Caught at Last

Drop after Drop

Having a Good Time

A Business Trip

“Got it at Last!”

Tail Piece

Widow Douglas

Tom Backs his Statement

Tail Piece

Huck Transformed

Comfortable Once More

High up in Society

Contentment




PREFACE

Most of the adventures recorded in this book really occurred; one or two
were experiences of my own, the rest those of boys who were schoolmates
of mine. Huck Finn is drawn from life; Tom Sawyer also, but not from an
individual--he is a combination of the characteristics of three boys whom
I knew, and therefore belongs to the composite order of architecture.

The odd superstitions touched upon were all prevalent among children and
slaves in the West at the period of this story--that is to say, thirty or
forty years ago.

Although my book is intended mainly for the entertainment of boys and
girls, I hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that account,
for part of my plan has been to try to pleasantly remind adults of what
they once were themselves, and of how they felt and thought and talked,
and what queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in.

THE AUTHOR.

HARTFORD, 1876.




CHAPTER I

“TOM!”

No answer.

“TOM!”

No answer.

“What's gone with that boy,  I wonder? You TOM!”

No answer.

The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them about the
room; then she put them up and looked out under them. She seldom or
never looked _through_ them for so small a thing as a boy; they were
her state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for “style,” not
service--she could have seen through a pair of stove-lids just as well.
She looked perplexed for a moment, and then said, not fiercely, but
still loud enough for the furniture to hear:

“Well, I lay if I get hold of you I'll--”

She did not finish, for by this time she was bending down and punching
under the bed with the broom, and so she needed breath to punctuate the
punches with. She resurrected nothing but the cat.

“I never did see the beat of that boy!”

She went to the open door and stood in it and looked out among the
tomato vines and “jimpson” weeds that constituted the garden. No Tom. So
she lifted up her voice at an angle calculated for distance and shouted:

“Y-o-u-u TOM!”

There was a slight noise behind her and she turned just in time to seize
a small boy by the slack of his roundabout and arrest his flight.

“There! I might 'a' thought of that closet. What you been doing in
there?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing! Look at your hands. And look at your mouth. What _is_ that
truck?”

“I don't know, aunt.”

“Well, I know. It's jam--that's what it is. Forty times I've said if you
didn't let that jam alone I'd skin you. Hand me that switch.”

The switch hovered in the air--the peril was desperate--

“My! Look behind you, aunt!”

The old lady whirled round, and snatched her skirts out of danger.
The lad fled on the instant, scrambled up the high board-fence, and
disappeared over it.

His aunt Polly stood surprised a moment, and then broke into a gentle
laugh.

“Hang the boy, can't I never learn anything? Ain't he played me tricks
enough like that for me to be looking out for him by this time? But old
fools is the biggest fools there is. Can't learn an old dog new tricks,
as the saying is. But my goodness, he never plays them alike, two days,
and how is a body to know what's coming? He 'pears to know just how long
he can torment me before I get my dander up, and he knows if he can make
out to put me off for a minute or make me laugh, it's all down again and
I can't hit him a lick. I ain't doing my duty by that boy, and that's
the Lord's truth, goodness knows. Spare the rod and spile the child,
as the Good Book says. I'm a laying up sin and suffering for us both,
I know. He's full of the Old Scratch, but laws-a-me! he's my own
dead sister's boy, poor thing, and I ain't got the heart to lash him,
somehow. Every time I let him off, my conscience does hurt me so, and
every time I hit him my old heart most breaks. Well-a-well, man that is
born of woman is of few days and full of trouble, as the Scripture
says, and I reckon it's so. He'll play hookey this evening, * and [*
Southwestern for “afternoon”] I'll just be obleeged to make him work,
tomorrow, to punish him. It's mighty hard to make him work Saturdays,
when all the boys is having holiday, but he hates work more than he
hates anything else, and I've _got_ to do some of my duty by him, or
I'll be the ruination of the child.”

Tom did play hookey, and he had a very good time. He got back home
barely in season to help Jim, the small colored boy, saw next-day's wood
and split the kindlings before supper--at least he was there in time
to tell his adventures to Jim while Jim did three-fourths of the work.
Tom's younger brother (or rather half-brother) Sid was already through
with his part of the work (picking up chips), for he was a quiet boy,
and had no adventurous, trouble-some ways.

While Tom was eating his supper, and stealing sugar as opportunity
offered, Aunt Polly asked him questions that were full of guile, and
very deep--for she wanted to trap him into damaging revealments. Like
many other simple-hearted souls, it was her pet vanity to believe she
was endowed with a talent for dark and mysterious diplomacy, and she
loved to contemplate her most transparent devices as marvels of low
cunning. Said she:

“Tom, it was middling warm in school, warn't it?”

“Yes'm.”

“Powerful warm, warn't it?”

“Yes'm.”

“Didn't you want to go in a-swimming, Tom?”

A bit of a scare shot through Tom--a touch of uncomfortable suspicion. He
searched Aunt Polly's face, but it told him nothing. So he said:

“No'm--well, not very much.”

The old lady reached out her hand and felt Tom's shirt, and said:

“But you ain't too warm now, though.” And it flattered her to reflect
that she had discovered that the shirt was dry without anybody knowing
that that was what she had in her mind. But in spite of her, Tom knew
where the wind lay, now. So he forestalled what might be the next move:

“Some of us pumped on our heads--mine's damp yet. See?”

Aunt Polly was vexed to think she had overlooked that bit of
circumstantial evidence, and missed a trick. Then she had a new
inspiration:

“Tom, you didn't have to undo your shirt collar where I sewed it, to
pump on your head, did you? Unbutton your jacket!”

The trouble vanished out of Tom's face. He opened his jacket. His shirt
collar was securely sewed.

“Bother! Well, go 'long with you. I'd made sure you'd played hookey
and been a-swimming. But I forgive ye, Tom. I reckon you're a kind of a
singed cat, as the saying is--better'n you look. _This_ time.”

She was half sorry her sagacity had miscarried, and half glad that Tom
had stumbled into obedient conduct for once.

But Sidney said:

“Well, now, if I didn't think you sewed his collar with white thread,
but it's black.”

“Why, I did sew it with white! Tom!”

But Tom did not wait for the rest. As he went out at the door he said:

“Siddy, I'll lick you for that.”

In a safe place Tom examined two large needles which were thrust into
the lapels of his jacket, and had thread bound about them--one needle
carried white thread and the other black. He said:

“She'd never noticed if it hadn't been for Sid. Confound it! sometimes
she sews it with white, and sometimes she sews it with black. I wish to
gee-miny she'd stick to one or t'other--I can't keep the run of 'em. But
I bet you I'll lam Sid for that. I'll learn him!”

He was not the Model Boy of the village. He knew the model boy very well
though--and loathed him.

Within two minutes, or even less, he had forgotten all his troubles. Not
because his troubles were one whit less heavy and bitter to him than a
man's are to a man, but because a new and powerful interest bore
them down and drove them out of his mind for the time--just as men's
misfortunes are forgotten in the excitement of new enterprises. This new
interest was a valued novelty in whistling, which he had just acquired
from a negro, and he was suffering to practise it un-disturbed. It
consisted in a peculiar bird-like turn, a sort of liquid warble,
produced by touching the tongue to the roof of the mouth at short
intervals in the midst of the music--the reader probably remembers how to
do it, if he has ever been a boy. Diligence and attention soon gave him
the knack of it, and he strode down the street with his mouth full of
harmony and his soul full of gratitude. He felt much as an astronomer
feels who has discovered a new planet--no doubt, as far as strong, deep,
unalloyed pleasure is concerned, the advantage was with the boy, not the
astronomer.

The summer evenings were long. It was not dark, yet. Presently Tom
checked his whistle. A stranger was before him--a boy a shade larger
than himself. A new-comer of any age or either sex was an im-pressive
curiosity in the poor little shabby village of St. Petersburg. This boy
was well dressed, too--well dressed on a week-day. This was simply as
astounding. His cap was a dainty thing, his close-buttoned blue cloth
roundabout was new and natty, and so were his pantaloons. He had shoes
on--and it was only Friday. He even wore a necktie, a bright bit of
ribbon. He had a citified air about him that ate into Tom's vitals. The
more Tom stared at the splendid marvel, the higher he turned up his nose
at his finery and the shabbier and shabbier his own outfit seemed to
him to grow. Neither boy spoke. If one moved, the other moved--but only
sidewise, in a circle; they kept face to face and eye to eye all the
time. Finally Tom said:

“I can lick you!”

“I'd like to see you try it.”

“Well, I can do it.”

“No you can't, either.”

“Yes I can.”

“No you can't.”

“I can.”

“You can't.”

“Can!”

“Can't!”

An uncomfortable pause. Then Tom said:

“What's your name?”

“'Tisn't any of your business, maybe.”

“Well I 'low I'll _make_ it my business.”

“Well why don't you?”

“If you say much, I will.”

“Much--much--_much_. There now.”

“Oh, you think you're mighty smart, _don't_ you? I could lick you with
one hand tied behind me, if I wanted to.”

“Well why don't you _do_ it? You _say_ you can do it.”

“Well I _will_, if you fool with me.”

“Oh yes--I've seen whole families in the same fix.”

“Smarty! You think you're _some_, now, _don't_ you? Oh, what a hat!”

“You can lump that hat if you don't like it. I dare you to knock it
off--and anybody that'll take a dare will suck eggs.”

“You're a liar!”

“You're another.”

“You're a fighting liar and dasn't take it up.”

“Aw--take a walk!”

“Say--if you give me much more of your sass I'll take and bounce a rock
off'n your head.”

“Oh, of _course_ you will.”

“Well I _will_.”

“Well why don't you _do_ it then? What do you keep _saying_ you will
for? Why don't you _do_ it? It's because you're afraid.”

“I _ain't_ afraid.”

“You are.”

“I ain't.”

“You are.”

Another pause, and more eying and sidling around each other. Presently
they were shoulder to shoulder. Tom said:

“Get away from here!”

“Go away yourself!”

“I won't.”

“I won't either.”

So they stood, each with a foot placed at an angle as a brace, and both
shoving with might and main, and glowering at each other with hate. But
neither could get an advantage. After struggling till both were hot and
flushed, each relaxed his strain with watchful caution, and Tom said:

“You're a coward and a pup. I'll tell my big brother on you, and he can
thrash you with his little finger, and I'll make him do it, too.”

“What do I care for your big brother? I've got a brother that's bigger
than he is--and what's more, he can throw him over that fence, too.”
 [Both brothers were imaginary.]

“That's a lie.”

“_Your_ saying so don't make it so.”

Tom drew a line in the dust with his big toe, and said:

“I dare you to step over that, and I'll lick you till you can't stand
up. Anybody that'll take a dare will steal sheep.”

The new boy stepped over promptly, and said:

“Now you said you'd do it, now let's see you do it.”

“Don't you crowd me now; you better look out.”

“Well, you _said_ you'd do it--why don't you do it?”

“By jingo! for two cents I _will_ do it.”

The new boy took two broad coppers out of his pocket and held them out
with derision. Tom struck them to the ground. In an instant both boys
were rolling and tumbling in the dirt, gripped together like cats; and
for the space of a minute they tugged and tore at each other's hair and
clothes, punched and scratched each other's nose, and covered themselves
with dust and glory. Presently the confusion took form, and through the
fog of battle Tom appeared, seated astride the new boy, and pounding him
with his fists. “Holler 'nuff!” said he.

The boy only struggled to free himself. He was crying--mainly from rage.

“Holler 'nuff!”--and the pounding went on.

At last the stranger got out a smothered “'Nuff!” and Tom let him up and
said:

“Now that'll learn you. Better look out who you're fooling with next
time.”

The new boy went off brushing the dust from his clothes, sobbing,
snuffling, and occasionally looking back and shaking his head and
threatening what he would do to Tom the “next time he caught him out.”
 To which Tom responded with jeers, and started off in high feather, and
as soon as his back was turned the new boy snatched up a stone, threw it
and hit him between the shoulders and then turned tail and ran like
an antelope. Tom chased the traitor home, and thus found out where he
lived. He then held a position at the gate for some time, daring the
enemy to come outside, but the enemy only made faces at him through the
window and declined. At last the enemy's mother appeared, and called Tom
a bad, vicious, vulgar child, and ordered him away. So he went away; but
he said he “'lowed” to “lay” for that boy.

He got home pretty late that night, and when he climbed cautiously in
at the window, he uncovered an ambuscade, in the person of his aunt; and
when she saw the state his clothes were in her resolution to turn his
Saturday holiday into captivity at hard labor became adamantine in its
firmness.




CHAPTER II

SATURDAY morning was come, and all the summer world was bright and
fresh, and brimming with life. There was a song in every heart; and if
the heart was young the music issued at the lips. There was cheer in
every face and a spring in every step. The locust-trees were in bloom
and the fragrance of the blossoms filled the air. Cardiff Hill, beyond
the village and above it, was green with vegetation and it lay just far
enough away to seem a Delectable Land, dreamy, reposeful, and inviting.

Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a
long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and
a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board
fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a
burden. Sighing, he dipped his brush and passed it along the topmost
plank; repeated the operation; did it again; compared the insignificant
whitewashed streak with the far-reaching continent of unwhitewashed
fence, and sat down on a tree-box discouraged. Jim came skipping out at
the gate with a tin pail, and singing Buffalo Gals. Bringing water from
the town pump had always been hateful work in Tom's eyes, before, but
now it did not strike him so. He remembered that there was company at
the pump. White, mulatto, and negro boys and girls were always there
waiting their turns, resting, trading playthings, quarrelling, fighting,
skylarking. And he remembered that although the pump was only a hundred
and fifty yards off, Jim never got back with a bucket of water under an
hour--and even then somebody generally had to go after him. Tom said:

“Say, Jim, I'll fetch the water if you'll whitewash some.”

Jim shook his head and said:

“Can't, Mars Tom. Ole missis, she tole me I got to go an' git dis water
an' not stop foolin' roun' wid anybody. She say she spec' Mars Tom gwine
to ax me to whitewash, an' so she tole me go 'long an' 'tend to my own
business--she 'lowed _she'd_ 'tend to de whitewashin'.”

“Oh, never you mind what she said, Jim. That's the way she always talks.
Gimme the bucket--I won't be gone only a a minute. _She_ won't ever
know.”

“Oh, I dasn't, Mars Tom. Ole missis she'd take an' tar de head off'n me.
'Deed she would.”

“_She_! She never licks anybody--whacks 'em over the head with her
thimble--and who cares for that, I'd like to know. She talks awful, but
talk don't hurt--anyways it don't if she don't cry. Jim, I'll give you a
marvel. I'll give you a white alley!”

Jim began to waver.

“White alley, Jim! And it's a bully taw.”

“My! Dat's a mighty gay marvel, I tell you! But Mars Tom I's powerful
'fraid ole missis--”

“And besides, if you will I'll show you my sore toe.”

Jim was only human--this attraction was too much for him. He put down
his pail, took the white alley, and bent over the toe with absorbing
interest while the bandage was being unwound. In another moment he
was flying down the street with his pail and a tingling rear, Tom was
whitewashing with vigor, and Aunt Polly was retiring from the field with
a slipper in her hand and triumph in her eye.

But Tom's energy did not last. He began to think of the fun he had
planned for this day, and his sorrows multiplied. Soon the free boys
would come tripping along on all sorts of delicious expeditions, and
they would make a world of fun of him for having to work--the very
thought of it burnt him like fire. He got out his worldly wealth and
examined it--bits of toys, marbles, and trash; enough to buy an exchange
of _work_, maybe, but not half enough to buy so much as half an hour
of pure freedom. So he returned his straitened means to his pocket, and
gave up the idea of trying to buy the boys. At this dark and hopeless
moment an inspiration burst upon him! Nothing less than a great,
magnificent inspiration.

He took up his brush and went tranquilly to work. Ben Rogers hove in
sight presently--the very boy, of all boys, whose ridicule he had been
dreading. Ben's gait was the hop-skip-and-jump--proof enough that his
heart was light and his anticipations high. He was eating an apple, and
giving a long, melodious whoop, at intervals, followed by a deep-toned
ding-dong-dong, ding-dong-dong, for he was personating a steamboat. As
he drew near, he slackened speed, took the middle of the street, leaned
far over to starboard and rounded to ponderously and with laborious pomp
and circumstance--for he was personating the Big Missouri, and considered
himself to be drawing nine feet of water. He was boat and captain and
engine-bells combined, so he had to imagine himself standing on his own
hurricane-deck giving the orders and executing them:

“Stop her, sir! Ting-a-ling-ling!” The headway ran almost out, and he
drew up slowly toward the sidewalk.

“Ship up to back! Ting-a-ling-ling!” His arms straightened and stiffened
down his sides.

“Set her back on the stabboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow! ch-chow-wow!
Chow!” His right hand, mean-time, describing stately circles--for it was
representing a forty-foot wheel.

“Let her go back on the labboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow-ch-chow-chow!”
 The left hand began to describe circles.

“Stop the stabboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Stop the labboard! Come ahead on
the stabboard! Stop her! Let your outside turn over slow! Ting-a-ling-ling!
Chow-ow-ow! Get out that head-line! _lively_ now! Come--out with
your spring-line--what're you about there! Take a turn round that stump
with the bight of it! Stand by that stage, now--let her go! Done with
the engines, sir! Ting-a-ling-ling! SH'T! S'H'T! SH'T!” (trying the
gauge-cocks).

Tom went on whitewashing--paid no attention to the steamboat. Ben stared
a moment and then said: “_Hi-Yi! You're_ up a stump, ain't you!”

No answer. Tom surveyed his last touch with the eye of an artist, then
he gave his brush another gentle sweep and surveyed the result, as
before. Ben ranged up alongside of him. Tom's mouth watered for the
apple, but he stuck to his work. Ben said:

“Hello, old chap, you got to work, hey?”

Tom wheeled suddenly and said:

“Why, it's you, Ben! I warn't noticing.”

“Say--I'm going in a-swimming, I am. Don't you wish you could? But of
course you'd druther _work_--wouldn't you? Course you would!”

Tom contemplated the boy a bit, and said:

“What do you call work?”

“Why, ain't _that_ work?”

Tom resumed his whitewashing, and answered carelessly:

“Well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain't. All I know, is, it suits Tom
Sawyer.”

“Oh come, now, you don't mean to let on that you _like_ it?”

The brush continued to move.

“Like it? Well, I don't see why I oughtn't to like it. Does a boy get a
chance to whitewash a fence every day?”

That put the thing in a new light. Ben stopped nibbling his apple.
Tom swept his brush daintily back and forth--stepped back to note the
effect--added a touch here and there--criticised the effect again--Ben
watching every move and getting more and more interested, more and more
absorbed. Presently he said:

“Say, Tom, let _me_ whitewash a little.”

Tom considered, was about to consent; but he altered his mind:

“No--no--I reckon it wouldn't hardly do, Ben. You see, Aunt Polly's awful
particular about this fence--right here on the street, you know--but if it
was the back fence I wouldn't mind and _she_ wouldn't. Yes, she's awful
particular about this fence; it's got to be done very careful; I reckon
there ain't one boy in a thousand, maybe two thousand, that can do it
the way it's got to be done.”

“No--is that so? Oh come, now--lemme just try. Only just a little--I'd let
_you_, if you was me, Tom.”

“Ben, I'd like to, honest injun; but Aunt Polly--well, Jim wanted to do
it, but she wouldn't let him; Sid wanted to do it, and she wouldn't let
Sid. Now don't you see how I'm fixed? If you was to tackle this fence
and anything was to happen to it--”

“Oh, shucks, I'll be just as careful. Now lemme try. Say--I'll give you
the core of my apple.”

“Well, here--No, Ben, now don't. I'm afeard--”

“I'll give you _all_ of it!”

Tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his
heart. And while the late steamer Big Missouri worked and sweated in the
sun, the retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by,
dangled his legs, munched his apple, and planned the slaughter of more
innocents. There was no lack of material; boys happened along every
little while; they came to jeer, but remained to whitewash. By the time
Ben was fagged out, Tom had traded the next chance to Billy Fisher for
a kite, in good repair; and when he played out, Johnny Miller bought in
for a dead rat and a string to swing it with--and so on, and so on, hour
after hour. And when the middle of the afternoon came, from being a
poor poverty-stricken boy in the morning, Tom was literally rolling in
wealth. He had besides the things before mentioned, twelve marbles, part
of a jews-harp, a piece of blue bottle-glass to look through, a spool
cannon, a key that wouldn't unlock anything, a fragment of chalk, a
glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles,
six fire-crackers, a kitten with only one eye, a brass door-knob, a
dog-collar--but no dog--the handle of a knife, four pieces of orange-peel,
and a dilapidated old window sash.

He had had a nice, good, idle time all the while--plenty of company--and
the fence had three coats of whitewash on it! If he hadn't run out of
whitewash he would have bankrupted every boy in the village.

Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He
had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it--namely,
that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary
to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and
wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have
comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is _obliged_ to do,
and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And
this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or
performing on a tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing
Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in England
who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a
daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable
money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn
it into work and then they would resign.

The boy mused awhile over the substantial change which had taken place
in his worldly circumstances, and then wended toward headquarters to
report.




CHAPTER III

TOM presented himself before Aunt Polly, who was sitting by an
open window in a pleasant rearward apartment, which was bedroom,
breakfast-room, dining-room, and library, combined. The balmy summer
air, the restful quiet, the odor of the flowers, and the drowsing
murmur of the bees had had their effect, and she was nodding over her
knitting--for she had no company but the cat, and it was asleep in her
lap. Her spectacles were propped up on her gray head for safety. She had
thought that of course Tom had deserted long ago, and she wondered at
seeing him place himself in her power again in this intrepid way. He
said: “Mayn't I go and play now, aunt?”

“What, a'ready? How much have you done?”

“It's all done, aunt.”

“Tom, don't lie to me--I can't bear it.”

“I ain't, aunt; it _is_ all done.”

Aunt Polly placed small trust in such evidence. She went out to see for
herself; and she would have been content to find twenty per cent. of
Tom's statement true. When she found the entire fence white-washed, and
not only whitewashed but elaborately coated and recoated, and even a
streak added to the ground, her astonishment was almost unspeakable. She
said:

“Well, I never! There's no getting round it, you can work when you're a
mind to, Tom.” And then she diluted the compliment by adding, “But it's
powerful seldom you're a mind to, I'm bound to say. Well, go 'long and
play; but mind you get back some time in a week, or I'll tan you.”

She was so overcome by the splendor of his achievement that she took
him into the closet and selected a choice apple and delivered it to him,
along with an improving lecture upon the added value and flavor a treat
took to itself when it came without sin through virtuous effort.
And while she closed with a happy Scriptural flourish, he “hooked” a
doughnut.

Then he skipped out, and saw Sid just starting up the outside stairway
that led to the back rooms on the second floor. Clods were handy and
the air was full of them in a twinkling. They raged around Sid like a
hail-storm; and before Aunt Polly could collect her surprised faculties
and sally to the rescue, six or seven clods had taken personal effect,
and Tom was over the fence and gone. There was a gate, but as a general
thing he was too crowded for time to make use of it. His soul was at
peace, now that he had settled with Sid for calling attention to his
black thread and getting him into trouble.

Tom skirted the block, and came round into a muddy alley that led by the
back of his aunt's cow-stable. He presently got safely beyond the reach
of capture and punishment, and hastened toward the public square of the
village, where two “military” companies of boys had met for conflict,
according to previous appointment. Tom was General of one of these
armies, Joe Harper (a bosom friend) General of the other. These two
great commanders did not condescend to fight in person--that being better
suited to the still smaller fry--but sat together on an eminence
and conducted the field operations by orders delivered through
aides-de-camp. Tom's army won a great victory, after a long and
hard-fought battle. Then the dead were counted, prisoners exchanged,
the terms of the next disagreement agreed upon, and the day for the
necessary battle appointed; after which the armies fell into line and
marched away, and Tom turned homeward alone.

As he was passing by the house where Jeff Thatcher lived, he saw a new
girl in the garden--a lovely little blue-eyed creature with yellow
hair plaited into two long-tails, white summer frock and embroidered
pan-talettes. The fresh-crowned hero fell without firing a shot. A
certain Amy Lawrence vanished out of his heart and left not even a
memory of herself behind. He had thought he loved her to distraction;
he had regarded his passion as adoration; and behold it was only a poor
little evanescent partiality. He had been months winning her; she had
confessed hardly a week ago; he had been the happiest and the proudest
boy in the world only seven short days, and here in one instant of time
she had gone out of his heart like a casual stranger whose visit is
done.

He worshipped this new angel with furtive eye, till he saw that she had
discovered him; then he pretended he did not know she was present, and
began to “show off” in all sorts of absurd boyish ways, in order to win
her admiration. He kept up this grotesque foolishness for some time;
but by-and-by, while he was in the midst of some dangerous gymnastic
performances, he glanced aside and saw that the little girl was wending
her way toward the house. Tom came up to the fence and leaned on it,
grieving, and hoping she would tarry yet awhile longer. She halted a
moment on the steps and then moved toward the door. Tom heaved a great
sigh as she put her foot on the threshold. But his face lit up,
right away, for she tossed a pansy over the fence a moment before she
disappeared.

The boy ran around and stopped within a foot or two of the flower, and
then shaded his eyes with his hand and began to look down street as
if he had discovered something of interest going on in that direction.
Presently he picked up a straw and began trying to balance it on his
nose, with his head tilted far back; and as he moved from side to side,
in his efforts, he edged nearer and nearer toward the pansy; finally his
bare foot rested upon it, his pliant toes closed upon it, and he hopped
away with the treasure and disappeared round the corner. But only for a
minute--only while he could button the flower inside his jacket, next
his heart--or next his stomach, possibly, for he was not much posted in
anatomy, and not hypercritical, anyway.

He returned, now, and hung about the fence till nightfall, “showing
off,” as before; but the girl never exhibited herself again, though Tom
comforted himself a little with the hope that she had been near some
window, meantime, and been aware of his attentions. Finally he strode
home reluctantly, with his poor head full of visions.

All through supper his spirits were so high that his aunt wondered “what
had got into the child.” He took a good scolding about clodding Sid, and
did not seem to mind it in the least. He tried to steal sugar under his
aunt's very nose, and got his knuckles rapped for it. He said:

“Aunt, you don't whack Sid when he takes it.”

“Well, Sid don't torment a body the way you do. You'd be always into
that sugar if I warn't watching you.”

Presently she stepped into the kitchen, and Sid, happy in his immunity,
reached for the sugar-bowl--a sort of glorying over Tom which was
wellnigh unbearable. But Sid's fingers slipped and the bowl dropped and
broke. Tom was in ecstasies. In such ecstasies that he even controlled
his tongue and was silent. He said to himself that he would not speak a
word, even when his aunt came in, but would sit perfectly still till she
asked who did the mischief; and then he would tell, and there would be
nothing so good in the world as to see that pet model “catch it.” He was
so brimful of exultation that he could hardly hold himself when the old
lady came back and stood above the wreck discharging lightnings of wrath
from over her spectacles. He said to himself, “Now it's coming!” And the
next instant he was sprawling on the floor! The potent palm was uplifted
to strike again when Tom cried out:

“Hold on, now, what 'er you belting _me_ for?--Sid broke it!”

Aunt Polly paused, perplexed, and Tom looked for healing pity. But when
she got her tongue again, she only said:

“Umf! Well, you didn't get a lick amiss, I reckon. You been into some
other audacious mischief when I wasn't around, like enough.”

Then her conscience reproached her, and she yearned to say something
kind and loving; but she judged that this would be construed into a
confession that she had been in the wrong, and discipline forbade that.
So she kept silence, and went about her affairs with a troubled heart.
Tom sulked in a corner and exalted his woes. He knew that in her heart
his aunt was on her knees to him, and he was morosely gratified by the
consciousness of it. He would hang out no signals, he would take notice
of none. He knew that a yearning glance fell upon him, now and then,
through a film of tears, but he refused recognition of it. He pictured
himself lying sick unto death and his aunt bending over him beseeching
one little forgiving word, but he would turn his face to the wall, and
die with that word unsaid. Ah, how would she feel then? And he pictured
himself brought home from the river, dead, with his curls all wet, and
his sore heart at rest. How she would throw herself upon him, and how
her tears would fall like rain, and her lips pray God to give her back
her boy and she would never, never abuse him any more! But he would
lie there cold and white and make no sign--a poor little sufferer, whose
griefs were at an end. He so worked upon his feelings with the pathos of
these dreams, that he had to keep swallowing, he was so like to choke;
and his eyes swam in a blur of water, which overflowed when he winked,
and ran down and trickled from the end of his nose. And such a luxury to
him was this petting of his sorrows, that he could not bear to have any
worldly cheeriness or any grating delight intrude upon it; it was too
sacred for such contact; and so, presently, when his cousin Mary danced
in, all alive with the joy of seeing home again after an age-long visit
of one week to the country, he got up and moved in clouds and darkness
out at one door as she brought song and sunshine in at the other.

He wandered far from the accustomed haunts of boys, and sought desolate
places that were in harmony with his spirit. A log raft in the river
invited him, and he seated himself on its outer edge and contemplated
the dreary vastness of the stream, wishing, the while, that he could
only be drowned, all at once and unconsciously, without undergoing the
uncomfortable routine devised by nature. Then he thought of his flower.
He got it out, rumpled and wilted, and it mightily increased his dismal
felicity. He wondered if she would pity him if she knew? Would she
cry, and wish that she had a right to put her arms around his neck and
comfort him? Or would she turn coldly away like all the hollow world?
This picture brought such an agony of pleasurable suffering that he
worked it over and over again in his mind and set it up in new and
varied lights, till he wore it threadbare. At last he rose up sighing
and departed in the darkness.

About half-past nine or ten o'clock he came along the deserted street to
where the Adored Unknown lived; he paused a moment; no sound fell upon
his listening ear; a candle was casting a dull glow upon the curtain
of a second-story window. Was the sacred presence there? He climbed the
fence, threaded his stealthy way through the plants, till he stood under
that window; he looked up at it long, and with emotion; then he laid him
down on the ground under it, disposing himself upon his back, with his
hands clasped upon his breast and holding his poor wilted flower.
And thus he would die--out in the cold world, with no shelter over his
homeless head, no friendly hand to wipe the death-damps from his brow,
no loving face to bend pityingly over him when the great agony came. And
thus _she_ would see him when she looked out upon the glad morning, and
oh! would she drop one little tear upon his poor, lifeless form, would
she heave one little sigh to see a bright young life so rudely blighted,
so untimely cut down?

The window went up, a maid-servant's discordant voice profaned the holy
calm, and a deluge of water drenched the prone martyr's remains!

The strangling hero sprang up with a relieving snort. There was a whiz
as of a missile in the air, mingled with the murmur of a curse, a sound
as of shivering glass followed, and a small, vague form went over the
fence and shot away in the gloom.

Not long after, as Tom, all undressed for bed, was surveying his
drenched garments by the light of a tallow dip, Sid woke up; but if he
had any dim idea of making any “references to allusions,” he thought
better of it and held his peace, for there was danger in Tom's eye.

Tom turned in without the added vexation of prayers, and Sid made mental
note of the omission.




CHAPTER IV

THE sun rose upon a tranquil world, and beamed down upon the peaceful
village like a benediction. Breakfast over, Aunt Polly had family
worship: it began with a prayer built from the ground up of solid
courses of Scriptural quotations, welded together with a thin mortar of
originality; and from the summit of this she delivered a grim chapter of
the Mosaic Law, as from Sinai.

Then Tom girded up his loins, so to speak, and went to work to “get
his verses.” Sid had learned his lesson days before. Tom bent all his
energies to the memorizing of five verses, and he chose part of the
Sermon on the Mount, because he could find no verses that were shorter.
At the end of half an hour Tom had a vague general idea of his lesson,
but no more, for his mind was traversing the whole field of human
thought, and his hands were busy with distracting recreations. Mary took
his book to hear him recite, and he tried to find his way through the
fog:

“Blessed are the--a--a--”

“Poor”--

“Yes--poor; blessed are the poor--a--a--”

“In spirit--”

“In spirit; blessed are the poor in spirit, for they--they--”

“_Theirs_--”

“For _theirs_. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom
of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn, for they--they--”

“Sh--”

“For they--a--”

“S, H, A--”

“For they S, H--Oh, I don't know what it is!”

“_Shall_!”

“Oh, _shall_! for they shall--for they shall--a--a--shall mourn--a--a--blessed
are they that shall--they that--a--they that shall mourn, for they
shall--a--shall _what_? Why don't you tell me, Mary?--what do you want to
be so mean for?”

“Oh, Tom, you poor thick-headed thing, I'm not teasing you. I wouldn't
do that. You must go and learn it again. Don't you be discouraged, Tom,
you'll manage it--and if you do, I'll give you something ever so nice.
There, now, that's a good boy.”

“All right! What is it, Mary, tell me what it is.”

“Never you mind, Tom. You know if I say it's nice, it is nice.”

“You bet you that's so, Mary. All right, I'll tackle it again.”

And he did “tackle it again”--and under the double pressure of curiosity
and prospective gain he did it with such spirit that he accomplished a
shining success. Mary gave him a brand-new “Barlow” knife worth twelve
and a half cents; and the convulsion of delight that swept his system
shook him to his foundations. True, the knife would not cut anything,
but it was a “sure-enough” Barlow, and there was inconceivable grandeur
in that--though where the Western boys ever got the idea that such a
weapon could possibly be counterfeited to its injury is an imposing
mystery and will always remain so, perhaps. Tom contrived to scarify the
cupboard with it, and was arranging to begin on the bureau, when he was
called off to dress for Sunday-school.

Mary gave him a tin basin of water and a piece of soap, and he went
outside the door and set the basin on a little bench there; then he
dipped the soap in the water and laid it down; turned up his sleeves;
poured out the water on the ground, gently, and then entered the kitchen
and began to wipe his face diligently on the towel behind the door. But
Mary removed the towel and said:

“Now ain't you ashamed, Tom. You mustn't be so bad. Water won't hurt
you.”

Tom was a trifle disconcerted. The basin was refilled, and this time he
stood over it a little while, gathering resolution; took in a big breath
and began. When he entered the kitchen presently, with both eyes shut
and groping for the towel with his hands, an honorable testimony of
suds and water was dripping from his face. But when he emerged from
the towel, he was not yet satisfactory, for the clean territory stopped
short at his chin and his jaws, like a mask; below and beyond this line
there was a dark expanse of unirrigated soil that spread downward in
front and backward around his neck. Mary took him in hand, and when she
was done with him he was a man and a brother, without distinction of
color, and his saturated hair was neatly brushed, and its short curls
wrought into a dainty and symmetrical general effect. [He privately
smoothed out the curls, with labor and difficulty, and plastered his
hair close down to his head; for he held curls to be effeminate, and his
own filled his life with bitterness.] Then Mary got out a suit of his
clothing that had been used only on Sundays during two years--they were
simply called his “other clothes”--and so by that we know the size of his
wardrobe. The girl “put him to rights” after he had dressed himself;
she buttoned his neat roundabout up to his chin, turned his vast shirt
collar down over his shoulders, brushed him off and crowned him with
his speckled straw hat. He now looked exceedingly improved and
uncomfortable. He was fully as uncomfortable as he looked; for there
was a restraint about whole clothes and cleanliness that galled him. He
hoped that Mary would forget his shoes, but the hope was blighted; she
coated them thoroughly with tallow, as was the custom, and brought
them out. He lost his temper and said he was always being made to do
everything he didn't want to do. But Mary said, persuasively:

“Please, Tom--that's a good boy.”

So he got into the shoes snarling. Mary was soon ready, and the three
children set out for Sunday-school--a place that Tom hated with his whole
heart; but Sid and Mary were fond of it.

Sabbath-school hours were from nine to half-past ten; and then church
service. Two of the children always remained for the sermon voluntarily,
and the other always remained too--for stronger reasons. The church's
high-backed, uncushioned pews would seat about three hundred persons;
the edifice was but a small, plain affair, with a sort of pine board
tree-box on top of it for a steeple. At the door Tom dropped back a step
and accosted a Sunday-dressed comrade:

“Say, Billy, got a yaller ticket?”

“Yes.”

“What'll you take for her?”

“What'll you give?”

“Piece of lickrish and a fish-hook.”

“Less see 'em.”

Tom exhibited. They were satisfactory, and the property changed hands.
Then Tom traded a couple of white alleys for three red tickets, and some
small trifle or other for a couple of blue ones. He waylaid other
boys as they came, and went on buying tickets of various colors ten
or fifteen minutes longer. He entered the church, now, with a swarm
of clean and noisy boys and girls, proceeded to his seat and started
a quarrel with the first boy that came handy. The teacher, a grave,
elderly man, interfered; then turned his back a moment and Tom pulled a
boy's hair in the next bench, and was absorbed in his book when the boy
turned around; stuck a pin in another boy, presently, in order to hear
him say “Ouch!” and got a new reprimand from his teacher. Tom's whole
class were of a pattern--restless, noisy, and troublesome. When they came
to recite their lessons, not one of them knew his verses perfectly, but
had to be prompted all along. However, they worried through, and each
got his reward--in small blue tickets, each with a passage of Scripture
on it; each blue ticket was pay for two verses of the recitation. Ten
blue tickets equalled a red one, and could be exchanged for it; ten red
tickets equalled a yellow one; for ten yellow tickets the superintendent
gave a very plainly bound Bible (worth forty cents in those easy
times) to the pupil. How many of my readers would have the industry and
application to memorize two thousand verses, even for a Dore Bible? And
yet Mary had acquired two Bibles in this way--it was the patient work of
two years--and a boy of German parentage had won four or five. He once
recited three thousand verses without stopping; but the strain upon his
mental faculties was too great, and he was little better than an idiot
from that day forth--a grievous misfortune for the school, for on great
occasions, before company, the superintendent (as Tom expressed it)
had always made this boy come out and “spread himself.” Only the older
pupils managed to keep their tickets and stick to their tedious work
long enough to get a Bible, and so the delivery of one of these prizes
was a rare and noteworthy circumstance; the successful pupil was so
great and conspicuous for that day that on the spot every scholar's
heart was fired with a fresh ambition that often lasted a couple
of weeks. It is possible that Tom's mental stomach had never really
hungered for one of those prizes, but unquestionably his entire being
had for many a day longed for the glory and the eclat that came with it.

In due course the superintendent stood up in front of the pulpit, with
a closed hymn-book in his hand and his forefinger inserted between its
leaves, and commanded attention. When a Sunday-school superintendent
makes his customary little speech, a hymn-book in the hand is as
necessary as is the inevitable sheet of music in the hand of a singer
who stands forward on the platform and sings a solo at a concert--though
why, is a mystery: for neither the hymn-book nor the sheet of music
is ever referred to by the sufferer. This superintendent was a slim
creature of thirty-five, with a sandy goatee and short sandy hair; he
wore a stiff standing-collar whose upper edge almost reached his ears
and whose sharp points curved forward abreast the corners of his mouth--a
fence that compelled a straight lookout ahead, and a turning of the
whole body when a side view was required; his chin was propped on a
spreading cravat which was as broad and as long as a bank-note, and had
fringed ends; his boot toes were turned sharply up, in the fashion
of the day, like sleigh-runners--an effect patiently and laboriously
produced by the young men by sitting with their toes pressed against a
wall for hours together. Mr. Walters was very earnest of mien, and very
sincere and honest at heart; and he held sacred things and places
in such reverence, and so separated them from worldly matters, that
unconsciously to himself his Sunday-school voice had acquired a peculiar
intonation which was wholly absent on week-days. He began after this
fashion:

“Now, children, I want you all to sit up just as straight and pretty as
you can and give me all your attention for a minute or two. There--that
is it. That is the way good little boys and girls should do. I see one
little girl who is looking out of the window--I am afraid she thinks I
am out there somewhere--perhaps up in one of the trees making a speech
to the little birds. [Applausive titter.] I want to tell you how good it
makes me feel to see so many bright, clean little faces assembled in a
place like this, learning to do right and be good.” And so forth and so
on. It is not necessary to set down the rest of the oration. It was of a
pattern which does not vary, and so it is familiar to us all.

The latter third of the speech was marred by the resumption of fights
and other recreations among certain of the bad boys, and by fidgetings
and whisperings that extended far and wide, washing even to the bases of
isolated and incorruptible rocks like Sid and Mary. But now every sound
ceased suddenly, with the subsidence of Mr. Walters' voice, and the
conclusion of the speech was received with a burst of silent gratitude.

A good part of the whispering had been occasioned by an event which was
more or less rare--the entrance of visitors: lawyer Thatcher, accompanied
by a very feeble and aged man; a fine, portly, middle-aged gentleman
with iron-gray hair; and a dignified lady who was doubtless the latter's
wife. The lady was leading a child. Tom had been restless and full of
chafings and repinings; conscience-smitten, too--he could not meet Amy
Lawrence's eye, he could not brook her loving gaze. But when he saw this
small newcomer his soul was all ablaze with bliss in a moment. The next
moment he was “showing off” with all his might--cuffing boys, pulling
hair, making faces--in a word, using every art that seemed likely to
fascinate a girl and win her applause. His exaltation had but one
alloy--the memory of his humiliation in this angel's garden--and that
record in sand was fast washing out, under the waves of happiness that
were sweeping over it now.

The visitors were given the highest seat of honor, and as soon as Mr.
Walters' speech was finished, he introduced them to the school. The
middle-aged man turned out to be a prodigious personage--no less a one
than the county judge--altogether the most august creation these children
had ever looked upon--and they wondered what kind of material he was made
of--and they half wanted to hear him roar, and were half afraid he might,
too. He was from Constantinople, twelve miles away--so he had travelled,
and seen the world--these very eyes had looked upon the county
court-house--which was said to have a tin roof. The awe which these
reflections inspired was attested by the impressive silence and the
ranks of staring eyes. This was the great Judge Thatcher, brother of
their own lawyer. Jeff Thatcher immediately went forward, to be familiar
with the great man and be envied by the school. It would have been music
to his soul to hear the whisperings:

“Look at him, Jim! He's a going up there. Say--look! he's a going to
shake hands with him--he _is_ shaking hands with him! By jings, don't you
wish you was Jeff?”

Mr. Walters fell to “showing off,” with all sorts of official bustlings
and activities, giving orders, delivering judgments, discharging
directions here, there, everywhere that he could find a target. The
librarian “showed off”--running hither and thither with his arms full of
books and making a deal of the splutter and fuss that insect authority
delights in. The young lady teachers “showed off”--bending sweetly over
pupils that were lately being boxed, lifting pretty warning fingers
at bad little boys and patting good ones lovingly. The young gentlemen
teachers “showed off” with small scoldings and other little displays of
authority and fine attention to discipline--and most of the teachers, of
both sexes, found business up at the library, by the pulpit; and it was
business that frequently had to be done over again two or three times
(with much seeming vexation). The little girls “showed off” in various
ways, and the little boys “showed off” with such diligence that the air
was thick with paper wads and the murmur of scufflings. And above it
all the great man sat and beamed a majestic judicial smile upon all
the house, and warmed himself in the sun of his own grandeur--for he was
“showing off,” too.

There was only one thing wanting to make Mr. Walters' ecstasy complete,
and that was a chance to deliver a Bible-prize and exhibit a prodigy.
Several pupils had a few yellow tickets, but none had enough--he had been
around among the star pupils inquiring. He would have given worlds, now,
to have that German lad back again with a sound mind.

And now at this moment, when hope was dead, Tom Sawyer came forward with
nine yellow tickets, nine red tickets, and ten blue ones, and demanded
a Bible. This was a thunderbolt out of a clear sky. Walters was not
expecting an application from this source for the next ten years. But
there was no getting around it--here were the certified checks, and they
were good for their face. Tom was therefore elevated to a place with
the Judge and the other elect, and the great news was announced from
headquarters. It was the most stunning surprise of the decade, and
so profound was the sensation that it lifted the new hero up to the
judicial one's altitude, and the school had two marvels to gaze upon
in place of one. The boys were all eaten up with envy--but those that
suffered the bitterest pangs were those who perceived too late that they
themselves had contributed to this hated splendor by trading tickets to
Tom for the wealth he had amassed in selling whitewashing privileges.
These despised themselves, as being the dupes of a wily fraud, a
guileful snake in the grass.

The prize was delivered to Tom with as much effusion as the
superintendent could pump up under the circumstances; but it lacked
somewhat of the true gush, for the poor fellow's instinct taught him
that there was a mystery here that could not well bear the light,
perhaps; it was simply preposterous that this boy had warehoused two
thousand sheaves of Scriptural wisdom on his premises--a dozen would
strain his capacity, without a doubt.

Amy Lawrence was proud and glad, and she tried to make Tom see it in
her face--but he wouldn't look. She wondered; then she was just a grain
troubled; next a dim suspicion came and went--came again; she watched;
a furtive glance told her worlds--and then her heart broke, and she was
jealous, and angry, and the tears came and she hated everybody. Tom most
of all (she thought).

Tom was introduced to the Judge; but his tongue was tied, his breath
would hardly come, his heart quaked--partly because of the awful
greatness of the man, but mainly because he was her parent. He would
have liked to fall down and worship him, if it were in the dark. The
Judge put his hand on Tom's head and called him a fine little man, and
asked him what his name was. The boy stammered, gasped, and got it out:

“Tom.”

“Oh, no, not Tom--it is--”

“Thomas.”

“Ah, that's it. I thought there was more to it, maybe. That's very well.
But you've another one I daresay, and you'll tell it to me, won't you?”

“Tell the gentleman your other name, Thomas,” said Walters, “and say
sir. You mustn't forget your manners.”

“Thomas Sawyer--sir.”

“That's it! That's a good boy. Fine boy. Fine, manly little fellow. Two
thousand verses is a great many--very, very great many. And you never can
be sorry for the trouble you took to learn them; for knowledge is worth
more than anything there is in the world; it's what makes great men
and good men; you'll be a great man and a good man yourself, some
day, Thomas, and then you'll look back and say, It's all owing to the
precious Sunday-school privileges of my boyhood--it's all owing to
my dear teachers that taught me to learn--it's all owing to the good
superintendent, who encouraged me, and watched over me, and gave me a
beautiful Bible--a splendid elegant Bible--to keep and have it all for my
own, always--it's all owing to right bringing up! That is what you will
say, Thomas--and you wouldn't take any money for those two thousand
verses--no indeed you wouldn't. And now you wouldn't mind telling me and
this lady some of the things you've learned--no, I know you wouldn't--for
we are proud of little boys that learn. Now, no doubt you know the names
of all the twelve disciples. Won't you tell us the names of the first
two that were appointed?”

Tom was tugging at a button-hole and looking sheepish. He blushed,
now, and his eyes fell. Mr. Walters' heart sank within him. He said
to himself, it is not possible that the boy can answer the simplest
question--why _did_ the Judge ask him? Yet he felt obliged to speak up
and say:

“Answer the gentleman, Thomas--don't be afraid.”

Tom still hung fire.

“Now I know you'll tell me,” said the lady. “The names of the first two
disciples were--”

“_David And Goliah!_”

Let us draw the curtain of charity over the rest of the scene.




CHAPTER V

ABOUT half-past ten the cracked bell of the small church began to ring,
and presently the people began to gather for the morning sermon. The
Sunday-school children distributed themselves about the house and
occupied pews with their parents, so as to be under supervision. Aunt
Polly came, and Tom and Sid and Mary sat with her--Tom being placed next
the aisle, in order that he might be as far away from the open window
and the seductive outside summer scenes as possible. The crowd filed up
the aisles: the aged and needy postmaster, who had seen better days;
the mayor and his wife--for they had a mayor there, among other
unnecessaries; the justice of the peace; the widow Douglass, fair,
smart, and forty, a generous, good-hearted soul and well-to-do, her hill
mansion the only palace in the town, and the most hospitable and much
the most lavish in the matter of festivities that St. Petersburg could
boast; the bent and venerable Major and Mrs. Ward; lawyer Riverson, the
new notable from a distance; next the belle of the village, followed by
a troop of lawn-clad and ribbon-decked young heart-breakers; then all
the young clerks in town in a body--for they had stood in the vestibule
sucking their cane-heads, a circling wall of oiled and simpering
admirers, till the last girl had run their gantlet; and last of all came
the Model Boy, Willie Mufferson, taking as heedful care of his mother as
if she were cut glass. He always brought his mother to church, and was
the pride of all the matrons. The boys all hated him, he was so
good. And besides, he had been “thrown up to them” so much. His
white handkerchief was hanging out of his pocket behind, as usual on
Sundays--accidentally. Tom had no handkerchief, and he looked upon boys
who had as snobs.

The congregation being fully assembled, now, the bell rang once more,
to warn laggards and stragglers, and then a solemn hush fell upon the
church which was only broken by the tittering and whispering of the
choir in the gallery. The choir always tittered and whispered all
through service. There was once a church choir that was not ill-bred,
but I have forgotten where it was, now. It was a great many years ago,
and I can scarcely remember anything about it, but I think it was in
some foreign country.

The minister gave out the hymn, and read it through with a relish, in a
peculiar style which was much admired in that part of the country. His
voice began on a medium key and climbed steadily up till it reached a
certain point, where it bore with strong emphasis upon the topmost word
and then plunged down as if from a spring-board:

Shall I be car-ri-ed toe the skies, on flow'ry _beds_ of ease,

Whilst others fight to win the prize, and sail thro' _blood_-y seas?

He was regarded as a wonderful reader. At church “sociables” he was
always called upon to read poetry; and when he was through, the ladies
would lift up their hands and let them fall helplessly in their laps,
and “wall” their eyes, and shake their heads, as much as to say, “Words
cannot express it; it is too beautiful, TOO beautiful for this mortal
earth.”

After the hymn had been sung, the Rev. Mr. Sprague turned himself into
a bulletin-board, and read off “notices” of meetings and societies and
things till it seemed that the list would stretch out to the crack of
doom--a queer custom which is still kept up in America, even in cities,
away here in this age of abundant newspapers. Often, the less there is
to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.

And now the minister prayed. A good, generous prayer it was, and went
into details: it pleaded for the church, and the little children of the
church; for the other churches of the village; for the village itself;
for the county; for the State; for the State officers; for the United
States; for the churches of the United States; for Congress; for the
President; for the officers of the Government; for poor sailors, tossed
by stormy seas; for the oppressed millions groaning under the heel of
European monarchies and Oriental despotisms; for such as have the light
and the good tidings, and yet have not eyes to see nor ears to hear
withal; for the heathen in the far islands of the sea; and closed with
a supplication that the words he was about to speak might find grace
and favor, and be as seed sown in fertile ground, yielding in time a
grateful harvest of good. Amen.

There was a rustling of dresses, and the standing congregation sat down.
The boy whose history this book relates did not enjoy the prayer, he
only endured it--if he even did that much. He was restive all through it;
he kept tally of the details of the prayer, unconsciously--for he was not
listening, but he knew the ground of old, and the clergyman's regular
route over it--and when a little trifle of new matter was interlarded,
his ear detected it and his whole nature resented it; he considered
additions unfair, and scoundrelly. In the midst of the prayer a fly had
lit on the back of the pew in front of him and tortured his spirit by
calmly rubbing its hands together, embracing its head with its arms, and
polishing it so vigorously that it seemed to almost part company with
the body, and the slender thread of a neck was exposed to view; scraping
its wings with its hind legs and smoothing them to its body as if they
had been coat-tails; going through its whole toilet as tranquilly as if
it knew it was perfectly safe. As indeed it was; for as sorely as Tom's
hands itched to grab for it they did not dare--he believed his soul would
be instantly destroyed if he did such a thing while the prayer was going
on. But with the closing sentence his hand began to curve and steal
forward; and the instant the “Amen” was out the fly was a prisoner of
war. His aunt detected the act and made him let it go.

The minister gave out his text and droned along monotonously through an
argument that was so prosy that many a head by and by began to nod--and
yet it was an argument that dealt in limitless fire and brimstone and
thinned the predestined elect down to a company so small as to be hardly
worth the saving. Tom counted the pages of the sermon; after church he
always knew how many pages there had been, but he seldom knew anything
else about the discourse. However, this time he was really interested
for a little while. The minister made a grand and moving picture of the
assembling together of the world's hosts at the millennium when the lion
and the lamb should lie down together and a little child should lead
them. But the pathos, the lesson, the moral of the great spectacle
were lost upon the boy; he only thought of the conspicuousness of the
principal character before the on-looking nations; his face lit with the
thought, and he said to himself that he wished he could be that child,
if it was a tame lion.

Now he lapsed into suffering again, as the dry argument was resumed.
Presently he bethought him of a treasure he had and got it out. It was
a large black beetle with formidable jaws--a “pinchbug,” he called it. It
was in a percussion-cap box. The first thing the beetle did was to
take him by the finger. A natural fillip followed, the beetle went
floundering into the aisle and lit on its back, and the hurt finger went
into the boy's mouth. The beetle lay there working its helpless legs,
unable to turn over. Tom eyed it, and longed for it; but it was safe out
of his reach. Other people uninterested in the sermon found relief in
the beetle, and they eyed it too. Presently a vagrant poodle dog came
idling along, sad at heart, lazy with the summer softness and the
quiet, weary of captivity, sighing for change. He spied the beetle; the
drooping tail lifted and wagged. He surveyed the prize; walked around
it; smelt at it from a safe distance; walked around it again; grew
bolder, and took a closer smell; then lifted his lip and made a gingerly
snatch at it, just missing it; made another, and another; began to enjoy
the diversion; subsided to his stomach with the beetle between his paws,
and continued his experiments; grew weary at last, and then indifferent
and absent-minded. His head nodded, and little by little his chin
descended and touched the enemy, who seized it. There was a sharp yelp,
a flirt of the poodle's head, and the beetle fell a couple of yards
away, and lit on its back once more. The neighboring spectators
shook with a gentle inward joy, several faces went behind fans and
hand-kerchiefs, and Tom was entirely happy. The dog looked foolish,
and probably felt so; but there was resentment in his heart, too, and a
craving for revenge. So he went to the beetle and began a wary attack on
it again; jumping at it from every point of a circle, lighting with his
fore-paws within an inch of the creature, making even closer snatches at
it with his teeth, and jerking his head till his ears flapped again. But
he grew tired once more, after a while; tried to amuse himself with a
fly but found no relief; followed an ant around, with his nose close
to the floor, and quickly wearied of that; yawned, sighed, forgot the
beetle entirely, and sat down on it. Then there was a wild yelp of agony
and the poodle went sailing up the aisle; the yelps continued, and so
did the dog; he crossed the house in front of the altar; he flew
down the other aisle; he crossed before the doors; he clamored up the
home-stretch; his anguish grew with his progress, till presently he was
but a woolly comet moving in its orbit with the gleam and the speed of
light. At last the frantic sufferer sheered from its course, and sprang
into its master's lap; he flung it out of the window, and the voice of
distress quickly thinned away and died in the distance.

By this time the whole church was red-faced and suffocating with
suppressed laughter, and the sermon had come to a dead standstill.
The discourse was resumed presently, but it went lame and halting, all
possibility of impressiveness being at an end; for even the gravest
sentiments were constantly being received with a smothered burst of
unholy mirth, under cover of some remote pew-back, as if the poor parson
had said a rarely facetious thing. It was a genuine relief to the whole
congregation when the ordeal was over and the benediction pronounced.

Tom Sawyer went home quite cheerful, thinking to himself that there was
some satisfaction about divine service when there was a bit of variety
in it. He had but one marring thought; he was willing that the dog
should play with his pinchbug, but he did not think it was upright in
him to carry it off.




CHAPTER VI

MONDAY morning found Tom Sawyer miserable. Monday morning always found
him so--because it began another week's slow suffering in school. He
generally began that day with wishing he had had no intervening holiday,
it made the going into captivity and fetters again so much more odious.

Tom lay thinking. Presently it occurred to him that he wished he was
sick; then he could stay home from school. Here was a vague possibility.
He canvassed his system. No ailment was found, and he investigated
again. This time he thought he could detect colicky symptoms, and he
began to encourage them with considerable hope. But they soon grew
feeble, and presently died wholly away. He reflected further. Suddenly
he discovered something. One of his upper front teeth was loose. This
was lucky; he was about to begin to groan, as a “starter,” as he
called it, when it occurred to him that if he came into court with that
argument, his aunt would pull it out, and that would hurt. So he thought
he would hold the tooth in reserve for the present, and seek further.
Nothing offered for some little time, and then he remembered hearing
the doctor tell about a certain thing that laid up a patient for two or
three weeks and threatened to make him lose a finger. So the boy eagerly
drew his sore toe from under the sheet and held it up for inspection.
But now he did not know the necessary symptoms. However, it seemed
well worth while to chance it, so he fell to groaning with considerable
spirit.

But Sid slept on unconscious.

Tom groaned louder, and fancied that he began to feel pain in the toe.

No result from Sid.

Tom was panting with his exertions by this time. He took a rest and then
swelled himself up and fetched a succession of admirable groans.

Sid snored on.

Tom was aggravated. He said, “Sid, Sid!” and shook him. This course
worked well, and Tom began to groan again. Sid yawned, stretched, then
brought himself up on his elbow with a snort, and began to stare at Tom.
Tom went on groaning. Sid said:

“Tom! Say, Tom!” [No response.] “Here, Tom! TOM! What is the matter,
Tom?” And he shook him and looked in his face anxiously.

Tom moaned out:

“Oh, don't, Sid. Don't joggle me.”

“Why, what's the matter, Tom? I must call auntie.”

“No--never mind. It'll be over by and by, maybe. Don't call anybody.”

“But I must! _Don't_ groan so, Tom, it's awful. How long you been this
way?”

“Hours. Ouch! Oh, don't stir so, Sid, you'll kill me.”

“Tom, why didn't you wake me sooner? Oh, Tom, _don't!_ It makes my flesh
crawl to hear you. Tom, what is the matter?”

“I forgive you everything, Sid. [Groan.] Everything you've ever done to
me. When I'm gone--”

“Oh, Tom, you ain't dying, are you? Don't, Tom--oh, don't. Maybe--”

“I forgive everybody, Sid. [Groan.] Tell 'em so, Sid. And Sid, you give
my window-sash and my cat with one eye to that new girl that's come to
town, and tell her--”

But Sid had snatched his clothes and gone. Tom was suffering in reality,
now, so handsomely was his imagination working, and so his groans had
gathered quite a genuine tone.

Sid flew downstairs and said:

“Oh, Aunt Polly, come! Tom's dying!”

“Dying!”

“Yes'm. Don't wait--come quick!”

“Rubbage! I don't believe it!”

But she fled upstairs, nevertheless, with Sid and Mary at her heels.
And her face grew white, too, and her lip trembled. When she reached the
bedside she gasped out:

“You, Tom! Tom, what's the matter with you?”

“Oh, auntie, I'm--”

“What's the matter with you--what is the matter with you, child?”

“Oh, auntie, my sore toe's mortified!”

The old lady sank down into a chair and laughed a little, then cried a
little, then did both together. This restored her and she said:

“Tom, what a turn you did give me. Now you shut up that nonsense and
climb out of this.”

The groans ceased and the pain vanished from the toe. The boy felt a
little foolish, and he said:

“Aunt Polly, it _seemed_ mortified, and it hurt so I never minded my
tooth at all.”

“Your tooth, indeed! What's the matter with your tooth?”

“One of them's loose, and it aches perfectly awful.”

“There, there, now, don't begin that groaning again. Open your mouth.
Well--your tooth _is_ loose, but you're not going to die about that.
Mary, get me a silk thread, and a chunk of fire out of the kitchen.”

Tom said:

“Oh, please, auntie, don't pull it out. It don't hurt any more. I wish
I may never stir if it does. Please don't, auntie. I don't want to stay
home from school.”

“Oh, you don't, don't you? So all this row was because you thought you'd
get to stay home from school and go a-fishing? Tom, Tom, I love you so,
and you seem to try every way you can to break my old heart with your
outrageousness.” By this time the dental instruments were ready. The old
lady made one end of the silk thread fast to Tom's tooth with a loop
and tied the other to the bedpost. Then she seized the chunk of fire and
suddenly thrust it almost into the boy's face. The tooth hung dangling
by the bedpost, now.

But all trials bring their compensations. As Tom wended to school after
breakfast, he was the envy of every boy he met because the gap in his
upper row of teeth enabled him to expectorate in a new and admirable
way. He gathered quite a following of lads interested in the exhibition;
and one that had cut his finger and had been a centre of fascination and
homage up to this time, now found himself suddenly without an adherent,
and shorn of his glory. His heart was heavy, and he said with a disdain
which he did not feel that it wasn't anything to spit like Tom Sawyer;
but another boy said, “Sour grapes!” and he wandered away a dismantled
hero.

Shortly Tom came upon the juvenile pariah of the village, Huckleberry
Finn, son of the town drunkard. Huckleberry was cordially hated and
dreaded by all the mothers of the town, because he was idle and lawless
and vulgar and bad--and because all their children admired him so, and
delighted in his forbidden society, and wished they dared to be like
him. Tom was like the rest of the respectable boys, in that he envied
Huckleberry his gaudy outcast condition, and was under strict orders
not to play with him. So he played with him every time he got a chance.
Huckleberry was always dressed in the cast-off clothes of full-grown
men, and they were in perennial bloom and fluttering with rags. His hat
was a vast ruin with a wide crescent lopped out of its brim; his coat,
when he wore one, hung nearly to his heels and had the rearward buttons
far down the back; but one suspender supported his trousers; the seat of
the trousers bagged low and contained nothing, the fringed legs dragged
in the dirt when not rolled up.

Huckleberry came and went, at his own free will. He slept on doorsteps
in fine weather and in empty hogsheads in wet; he did not have to go to
school or to church, or call any being master or obey anybody; he could
go fishing or swimming when and where he chose, and stay as long as it
suited him; nobody forbade him to fight; he could sit up as late as he
pleased; he was always the first boy that went barefoot in the spring
and the last to resume leather in the fall; he never had to wash, nor
put on clean clothes; he could swear wonderfully. In a word, everything
that goes to make life precious that boy had. So thought every harassed,
hampered, respectable boy in St. Petersburg.

Tom hailed the romantic outcast:

“Hello, Huckleberry!”

“Hello yourself, and see how you like it.”

“What's that you got?”

“Dead cat.”

“Lemme see him, Huck. My, he's pretty stiff. Where'd you get him?”

“Bought him off'n a boy.”

“What did you give?”

“I give a blue ticket and a bladder that I got at the slaughter-house.”

“Where'd you get the blue ticket?”

“Bought it off'n Ben Rogers two weeks ago for a hoop-stick.”

“Say--what is dead cats good for, Huck?”

“Good for? Cure warts with.”

“No! Is that so? I know something that's better.”

“I bet you don't. What is it?”

“Why, spunk-water.”

“Spunk-water! I wouldn't give a dern for spunk-water.”

“You wouldn't, wouldn't you? D'you ever try it?”

“No, I hain't. But Bob Tanner did.”

“Who told you so!”

“Why, he told Jeff Thatcher, and Jeff told Johnny Baker, and Johnny
told Jim Hollis, and Jim told Ben Rogers, and Ben told a nigger, and the
nigger told me. There now!”

“Well, what of it? They'll all lie. Leastways all but the nigger. I
don't know _him_. But I never see a nigger that _wouldn't_ lie. Shucks!
Now you tell me how Bob Tanner done it, Huck.”

“Why, he took and dipped his hand in a rotten stump where the rain-water
was.”

“In the daytime?”

“Certainly.”

“With his face to the stump?”

“Yes. Least I reckon so.”

“Did he say anything?”

“I don't reckon he did. I don't know.”

“Aha! Talk about trying to cure warts with spunk-water such a blame fool
way as that! Why, that ain't a-going to do any good. You got to go all
by yourself, to the middle of the woods, where you know there's a
spunk-water stump, and just as it's midnight you back up against the stump
and jam your hand in and say:

'Barley-corn, barley-corn, injun-meal shorts, Spunk-water, spunk-water,
swaller these warts,'

and then walk away quick, eleven steps, with your eyes shut, and then
turn around three times and walk home without speaking to anybody.
Because if you speak the charm's busted.”

“Well, that sounds like a good way; but that ain't the way Bob Tanner
done.”

“No, sir, you can bet he didn't, becuz he's the wartiest boy in this
town; and he wouldn't have a wart on him if he'd knowed how to work
spunk-water. I've took off thousands of warts off of my hands that way,
Huck. I play with frogs so much that I've always got considerable many
warts. Sometimes I take 'em off with a bean.”

“Yes, bean's good. I've done that.”

“Have you? What's your way?”

“You take and split the bean, and cut the wart so as to get some blood,
and then you put the blood on one piece of the bean and take and dig
a hole and bury it 'bout midnight at the crossroads in the dark of the
moon, and then you burn up the rest of the bean. You see that piece
that's got the blood on it will keep drawing and drawing, trying to
fetch the other piece to it, and so that helps the blood to draw the
wart, and pretty soon off she comes.”

“Yes, that's it, Huck--that's it; though when you're burying it if you
say 'Down bean; off wart; come no more to bother me!' it's better.
That's the way Joe Harper does, and he's been nearly to Coonville and
most everywheres. But say--how do you cure 'em with dead cats?”

“Why, you take your cat and go and get in the grave-yard 'long about
midnight when somebody that was wicked has been buried; and when it's
midnight a devil will come, or maybe two or three, but you can't see
'em, you can only hear something like the wind, or maybe hear 'em talk;
and when they're taking that feller away, you heave your cat after 'em
and say, 'Devil follow corpse, cat follow devil, warts follow cat, I'm
done with ye!' That'll fetch _any_ wart.”

“Sounds right. D'you ever try it, Huck?”

“No, but old Mother Hopkins told me.”

“Well, I reckon it's so, then. Becuz they say she's a witch.”

“Say! Why, Tom, I _know_ she is. She witched pap. Pap says so his own
self. He come along one day, and he see she was a-witching him, so he
took up a rock, and if she hadn't dodged, he'd a got her. Well, that
very night he rolled off'n a shed wher' he was a layin drunk, and broke
his arm.”

“Why, that's awful. How did he know she was a-witching him?”

“Lord, pap can tell, easy. Pap says when they keep looking at you right
stiddy, they're a-witching you. Specially if they mumble. Becuz when
they mumble they're saying the Lord's Prayer backards.”

“Say, Hucky, when you going to try the cat?”

“To-night. I reckon they'll come after old Hoss Williams to-night.”

“But they buried him Saturday. Didn't they get him Saturday night?”

“Why, how you talk! How could their charms work till midnight?--and
_then_ it's Sunday. Devils don't slosh around much of a Sunday, I don't
reckon.”

“I never thought of that. That's so. Lemme go with you?”

“Of course--if you ain't afeard.”

“Afeard! 'Tain't likely. Will you meow?”

“Yes--and you meow back, if you get a chance. Last time, you kep' me
a-meowing around till old Hays went to throwing rocks at me and says
'Dern that cat!' and so I hove a brick through his window--but don't you
tell.”

“I won't. I couldn't meow that night, becuz auntie was watching me, but
I'll meow this time. Say--what's that?”

“Nothing but a tick.”

“Where'd you get him?”

“Out in the woods.”

“What'll you take for him?”

“I don't know. I don't want to sell him.”

“All right. It's a mighty small tick, anyway.”

“Oh, anybody can run a tick down that don't belong to them. I'm
satisfied with it. It's a good enough tick for me.”

“Sho, there's ticks a plenty. I could have a thousand of 'em if I wanted
to.”

“Well, why don't you? Becuz you know mighty well you can't. This is a
pretty early tick, I reckon. It's the first one I've seen this year.”

“Say, Huck--I'll give you my tooth for him.”

“Less see it.”

Tom got out a bit of paper and carefully unrolled it. Huckleberry viewed
it wistfully. The temptation was very strong. At last he said:

“Is it genuwyne?”

Tom lifted his lip and showed the vacancy.

“Well, all right,” said Huckleberry, “it's a trade.”

Tom enclosed the tick in the percussion-cap box that had lately been the
pinchbug's prison, and the boys separated, each feeling wealthier than
before.

When Tom reached the little isolated frame school-house, he strode in
briskly, with the manner of one who had come with all honest speed. He
hung his hat on a peg and flung himself into his seat with business-like
alacrity. The master, throned on high in his great splint-bottom
arm-chair, was dozing, lulled by the drowsy hum of study. The
interruption roused him.

“Thomas Sawyer!”

Tom knew that when his name was pronounced in full, it meant trouble.

“Sir!”

“Come up here. Now, sir, why are you late again, as usual?”

Tom was about to take refuge in a lie, when he saw two long tails of
yellow hair hanging down a back that he recognized by the electric
sympathy of love; and by that form was _the only vacant place_ on the
girls' side of the school-house. He instantly said:

“_I stopped to talk with Huckleberry Finn!_”

The master's pulse stood still, and he stared helplessly. The buzz of
study ceased. The pupils wondered if this foolhardy boy had lost his
mind. The master said:

“You--you did what?”

“Stopped to talk with Huckleberry Finn.”

There was no mistaking the words.

“Thomas Sawyer, this is the most astounding confession I have ever
listened to. No mere ferule will answer for this offence. Take off your
jacket.”

The master's arm performed until it was tired and the stock of switches
notably diminished. Then the order followed:

“Now, sir, go and sit with the girls! And let this be a warning to you.”

The titter that rippled around the room appeared to abash the boy, but
in reality that result was caused rather more by his worshipful awe
of his unknown idol and the dread pleasure that lay in his high good
fortune. He sat down upon the end of the pine bench and the girl hitched
herself away from him with a toss of her head. Nudges and winks and
whispers traversed the room, but Tom sat still, with his arms upon the
long, low desk before him, and seemed to study his book.

By and by attention ceased from him, and the accustomed school murmur
rose upon the dull air once more. Presently the boy began to steal
furtive glances at the girl. She observed it, “made a mouth” at him
and gave him the back of her head for the space of a minute. When she
cautiously faced around again, a peach lay before her. She thrust it
away. Tom gently put it back. She thrust it away again, but with less
animosity. Tom patiently returned it to its place. Then she let it
remain. Tom scrawled on his slate, “Please take it--I got more.” The
girl glanced at the words, but made no sign. Now the boy began to draw
something on the slate, hiding his work with his left hand. For a time
the girl refused to notice; but her human curiosity presently began
to manifest itself by hardly perceptible signs. The boy worked on,
apparently unconscious. The girl made a sort of non-committal attempt
to see, but the boy did not betray that he was aware of it. At last she
gave in and hesitatingly whispered:

“Let me see it.”

Tom partly uncovered a dismal caricature of a house with two gable ends
to it and a corkscrew of smoke issuing from the chimney. Then the girl's
interest began to fasten itself upon the work and she forgot everything
else. When it was finished, she gazed a moment, then whispered:

“It's nice--make a man.”

The artist erected a man in the front yard, that resembled a derrick. He
could have stepped over the house; but the girl was not hypercritical;
she was satisfied with the monster, and whispered:

“It's a beautiful man--now make me coming along.”

Tom drew an hour-glass with a full moon and straw limbs to it and armed
the spreading fingers with a portentous fan. The girl said:

“It's ever so nice--I wish I could draw.”

“It's easy,” whispered Tom, “I'll learn you.”

“Oh, will you? When?”

“At noon. Do you go home to dinner?”

“I'll stay if you will.”

“Good--that's a whack. What's your name?”

“Becky Thatcher. What's yours? Oh, I know. It's Thomas Sawyer.”

“That's the name they lick me by. I'm Tom when I'm good. You call me
Tom, will you?”

“Yes.”

Now Tom began to scrawl something on the slate, hiding the words from
the girl. But she was not backward this time. She begged to see. Tom
said:

“Oh, it ain't anything.”

“Yes it is.”

“No it ain't. You don't want to see.”

“Yes I do, indeed I do. Please let me.”

“You'll tell.”

“No I won't--deed and deed and double deed won't.”

“You won't tell anybody at all? Ever, as long as you live?”

“No, I won't ever tell _any_body. Now let me.”

“Oh, _you_ don't want to see!”

“Now that you treat me so, I _will_ see.” And she put her small hand
upon his and a little scuffle ensued, Tom pretending to resist in
earnest but letting his hand slip by degrees till these words were
revealed: “_I love you_.”

“Oh, you bad thing!” And she hit his hand a smart rap, but reddened and
looked pleased, nevertheless.

Just at this juncture the boy felt a slow, fateful grip closing on his
ear, and a steady lifting impulse. In that wise he was borne across the
house and deposited in his own seat, under a peppering fire of giggles
from the whole school. Then the master stood over him during a few awful
moments, and finally moved away to his throne without saying a word. But
although Tom's ear tingled, his heart was jubilant.

As the school quieted down Tom made an honest effort to study, but
the turmoil within him was too great. In turn he took his place in the
reading class and made a botch of it; then in the geography class and
turned lakes into mountains, mountains into rivers, and rivers into
continents, till chaos was come again; then in the spelling class, and
got “turned down,” by a succession of mere baby words, till he brought
up at the foot and yielded up the pewter medal which he had worn with
ostentation for months.




CHAPTER VII

THE harder Tom tried to fasten his mind on his book, the more his ideas
wandered. So at last, with a sigh and a yawn, he gave it up. It seemed
to him that the noon recess would never come. The air was utterly dead.
There was not a breath stirring. It was the sleepiest of sleepy days.
The drowsing murmur of the five and twenty studying scholars soothed
the soul like the spell that is in the murmur of bees. Away off in the
flaming sunshine, Cardiff Hill lifted its soft green sides through a
shimmering veil of heat, tinted with the purple of distance; a few birds
floated on lazy wing high in the air; no other living thing was visible
but some cows, and they were asleep. Tom's heart ached to be free, or
else to have something of interest to do to pass the dreary time.
His hand wandered into his pocket and his face lit up with a glow of
gratitude that was prayer, though he did not know it. Then furtively
the percussion-cap box came out. He released the tick and put him on
the long flat desk. The creature probably glowed with a gratitude that
amounted to prayer, too, at this moment, but it was premature: for when
he started thankfully to travel off, Tom turned him aside with a pin and
made him take a new direction.

Tom's bosom friend sat next him, suffering just as Tom had been, and
now he was deeply and gratefully interested in this entertainment in
an instant. This bosom friend was Joe Harper. The two boys were sworn
friends all the week, and embattled enemies on Saturdays. Joe took a
pin out of his lapel and began to assist in exercising the prisoner.
The sport grew in interest momently. Soon Tom said that they were
interfering with each other, and neither getting the fullest benefit
of the tick. So he put Joe's slate on the desk and drew a line down the
middle of it from top to bottom.

“Now,” said he, “as long as he is on your side you can stir him up and
I'll let him alone; but if you let him get away and get on my side,
you're to leave him alone as long as I can keep him from crossing over.”

“All right, go ahead; start him up.”

The tick escaped from Tom, presently, and crossed the equator. Joe
harassed him awhile, and then he got away and crossed back again. This
change of base occurred often. While one boy was worrying the tick with
absorbing interest, the other would look on with interest as strong, the
two heads bowed together over the slate, and the two souls dead to all
things else. At last luck seemed to settle and abide with Joe. The
tick tried this, that, and the other course, and got as excited and as
anxious as the boys themselves, but time and again just as he would
have victory in his very grasp, so to speak, and Tom's fingers would
be twitching to begin, Joe's pin would deftly head him off, and keep
possession. At last Tom could stand it no longer. The temptation was too
strong. So he reached out and lent a hand with his pin. Joe was angry in
a moment. Said he:

“Tom, you let him alone.”

“I only just want to stir him up a little, Joe.”

“No, sir, it ain't fair; you just let him alone.”

“Blame it, I ain't going to stir him much.”

“Let him alone, I tell you.”

“I won't!”

“You shall--he's on my side of the line.”

“Look here, Joe Harper, whose is that tick?”

“I don't care whose tick he is--he's on my side of the line, and you
sha'n't touch him.”

“Well, I'll just bet I will, though. He's my tick and I'll do what I
blame please with him, or die!”

A tremendous whack came down on Tom's shoulders, and its duplicate on
Joe's; and for the space of two minutes the dust continued to fly from
the two jackets and the whole school to enjoy it. The boys had been
too absorbed to notice the hush that had stolen upon the school awhile
before when the master came tiptoeing down the room and stood over them.
He had contemplated a good part of the performance before he contributed
his bit of variety to it.

When school broke up at noon, Tom flew to Becky Thatcher, and whispered
in her ear:

“Put on your bonnet and let on you're going home; and when you get to
the corner, give the rest of 'em the slip, and turn down through the
lane and come back. I'll go the other way and come it over 'em the same
way.”

So the one went off with one group of scholars, and the other with
another. In a little while the two met at the bottom of the lane, and
when they reached the school they had it all to themselves. Then they
sat together, with a slate before them, and Tom gave Becky the pencil
and held her hand in his, guiding it, and so created another surprising
house. When the interest in art began to wane, the two fell to talking.
Tom was swimming in bliss. He said:

“Do you love rats?”

“No! I hate them!”

“Well, I do, too--_live_ ones. But I mean dead ones, to swing round your
head with a string.”

“No, I don't care for rats much, anyway. What I like is chewing-gum.”

“Oh, I should say so! I wish I had some now.”

“Do you? I've got some. I'll let you chew it awhile, but you must give
it back to me.”

That was agreeable, so they chewed it turn about, and dangled their legs
against the bench in excess of contentment.

“Was you ever at a circus?” said Tom.

“Yes, and my pa's going to take me again some time, if I'm good.”

“I been to the circus three or four times--lots of times. Church ain't
shucks to a circus. There's things going on at a circus all the time.
I'm going to be a clown in a circus when I grow up.”

“Oh, are you! That will be nice. They're so lovely, all spotted up.”

“Yes, that's so. And they get slathers of money--most a dollar a day, Ben
Rogers says. Say, Becky, was you ever engaged?”

“What's that?”

“Why, engaged to be married.”

“No.”

“Would you like to?”

“I reckon so. I don't know. What is it like?”

“Like? Why it ain't like anything. You only just tell a boy you won't
ever have anybody but him, ever ever ever, and then you kiss and that's
all. Anybody can do it.”

“Kiss? What do you kiss for?”

“Why, that, you know, is to--well, they always do that.”

“Everybody?”

“Why, yes, everybody that's in love with each other. Do you remember
what I wrote on the slate?”

“Ye--yes.”

“What was it?”

“I sha'n't tell you.”

“Shall I tell _you_?”

“Ye--yes--but some other time.”

“No, now.”

“No, not now--to-morrow.”

“Oh, no, _now_. Please, Becky--I'll whisper it, I'll whisper it ever so
easy.”

Becky hesitating, Tom took silence for consent, and passed his arm about
her waist and whispered the tale ever so softly, with his mouth close to
her ear. And then he added:

“Now you whisper it to me--just the same.”

She resisted, for a while, and then said:

“You turn your face away so you can't see, and then I will. But you
mustn't ever tell anybody--_will_ you, Tom? Now you won't, _will_ you?”

“No, indeed, indeed I won't. Now, Becky.”

He turned his face away. She bent timidly around till her breath stirred
his curls and whispered, “I--love--you!”

Then she sprang away and ran around and around the desks and benches,
with Tom after her, and took refuge in a corner at last, with her little
white apron to her face. Tom clasped her about her neck and pleaded:

“Now, Becky, it's all done--all over but the kiss. Don't you be afraid
of that--it ain't anything at all. Please, Becky.” And he tugged at her
apron and the hands.

By and by she gave up, and let her hands drop; her face, all glowing
with the struggle, came up and submitted. Tom kissed the red lips and
said:

“Now it's all done, Becky. And always after this, you know, you ain't
ever to love anybody but me, and you ain't ever to marry anybody but me,
ever never and forever. Will you?”

“No, I'll never love anybody but you, Tom, and I'll never marry anybody
but you--and you ain't to ever marry anybody but me, either.”

“Certainly. Of course. That's _part_ of it. And always coming to school
or when we're going home, you're to walk with me, when there ain't
anybody looking--and you choose me and I choose you at parties, because
that's the way you do when you're engaged.”

“It's so nice. I never heard of it before.”

“Oh, it's ever so gay! Why, me and Amy Lawrence--”

The big eyes told Tom his blunder and he stopped, confused.

“Oh, Tom! Then I ain't the first you've ever been engaged to!”

The child began to cry. Tom said:

“Oh, don't cry, Becky, I don't care for her any more.”

“Yes, you do, Tom--you know you do.”

Tom tried to put his arm about her neck, but she pushed him away and
turned her face to the wall, and went on crying. Tom tried again, with
soothing words in his mouth, and was repulsed again. Then his pride was
up, and he strode away and went outside. He stood about, restless and
uneasy, for a while, glancing at the door, every now and then, hoping
she would repent and come to find him. But she did not. Then he began
to feel badly and fear that he was in the wrong. It was a hard struggle
with him to make new advances, now, but he nerved himself to it and
entered. She was still standing back there in the corner, sobbing, with
her face to the wall. Tom's heart smote him. He went to her and stood a
moment, not knowing exactly how to proceed. Then he said hesitatingly:

“Becky, I--I don't care for anybody but you.”

No reply--but sobs.

“Becky”--pleadingly. “Becky, won't you say something?”

More sobs.

Tom got out his chiefest jewel, a brass knob from the top of an andiron,
and passed it around her so that she could see it, and said:

“Please, Becky, won't you take it?”

She struck it to the floor. Then Tom marched out of the house and over
the hills and far away, to return to school no more that day. Presently
Becky began to suspect. She ran to the door; he was not in sight; she
flew around to the play-yard; he was not there. Then she called:

“Tom! Come back, Tom!”

She listened intently, but there was no answer. She had no companions
but silence and loneliness. So she sat down to cry again and upbraid
herself; and by this time the scholars began to gather again, and she
had to hide her griefs and still her broken heart and take up the cross
of a long, dreary, aching afternoon, with none among the strangers about
her to exchange sorrows with.




CHAPTER VIII

TOM dodged hither and thither through lanes until he was well out of the
track of returning scholars, and then fell into a moody jog. He crossed
a small “branch” two or three times, because of a prevailing juvenile
superstition that to cross water baffled pursuit. Half an hour later
he was disappearing behind the Douglas mansion on the summit of Cardiff
Hill, and the school-house was hardly distinguishable away off in the
valley behind him. He entered a dense wood, picked his pathless way to
the centre of it, and sat down on a mossy spot under a spreading oak.
There was not even a zephyr stirring; the dead noonday heat had even
stilled the songs of the birds; nature lay in a trance that was broken
by no sound but the occasional far-off hammering of a wood-pecker, and
this seemed to render the pervading silence and sense of loneliness the
more profound. The boy's soul was steeped in melancholy; his feelings
were in happy accord with his surroundings. He sat long with his elbows
on his knees and his chin in his hands, meditating. It seemed to him
that life was but a trouble, at best, and he more than half envied Jimmy
Hodges, so lately released; it must be very peaceful, he thought, to lie
and slumber and dream forever and ever, with the wind whispering through
the trees and caressing the grass and the flowers over the grave, and
nothing to bother and grieve about, ever any more. If he only had a
clean Sunday-school record he could be willing to go, and be done with
it all. Now as to this girl. What had he done? Nothing. He had meant
the best in the world, and been treated like a dog--like a very dog. She
would be sorry some day--maybe when it was too late. Ah, if he could only
die _temporarily_!

But the elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrained
shape long at a time. Tom presently began to drift insensibly back into
the concerns of this life again. What if he turned his back, now, and
disappeared mysteriously? What if he went away--ever so far away, into
unknown countries beyond the seas--and never came back any more! How
would she feel then! The idea of being a clown recurred to him now, only
to fill him with disgust. For frivolity and jokes and spotted tights
were an offense, when they intruded themselves upon a spirit that was
exalted into the vague august realm of the romantic. No, he would be
a soldier, and return after long years, all war-worn and illustrious.
No--better still, he would join the Indians, and hunt buffaloes and go on
the warpath in the mountain ranges and the trackless great plains of the
Far West, and away in the future come back a great chief, bristling with
feathers, hideous with paint, and prance into Sunday-school, some drowsy
summer morning, with a blood-curdling war-whoop, and sear the eyeballs
of all his companions with unappeasable envy. But no, there was
something gaudier even than this. He would be a pirate! That was it!
_now_ his future lay plain before him, and glowing with unimaginable
splendor. How his name would fill the world, and make people shudder!
How gloriously he would go plowing the dancing seas, in his long, low,
black-hulled racer, the Spirit of the Storm, with his grisly flag flying
at the fore! And at the zenith of his fame, how he would suddenly appear
at the old village and stalk into church, brown and weather-beaten, in
his black velvet doublet and trunks, his great jack-boots, his crimson
sash, his belt bristling with horse-pistols, his crime-rusted cutlass
at his side, his slouch hat with waving plumes, his black flag unfurled,
with the skull and crossbones on it, and hear with swelling ecstasy
the whisperings, “It's Tom Sawyer the Pirate!--the Black Avenger of the
Spanish Main!”

Yes, it was settled; his career was determined. He would run away from
home and enter upon it. He would start the very next morning. Therefore
he must now begin to get ready. He would collect his resources together.
He went to a rotten log near at hand and began to dig under one end of
it with his Barlow knife. He soon struck wood that sounded hollow. He
put his hand there and uttered this incantation impressively:

“What hasn't come here, come! What's here, stay here!”

Then he scraped away the dirt, and exposed a pine shingle. He took it
up and disclosed a shapely little treasure-house whose bottom and sides
were of shingles. In it lay a marble. Tom's astonishment was bound-less!
He scratched his head with a perplexed air, and said:

“Well, that beats anything!”

Then he tossed the marble away pettishly, and stood cogitating. The
truth was, that a superstition of his had failed, here, which he and
all his comrades had always looked upon as infallible. If you buried
a marble with certain necessary incantations, and left it alone a
fortnight, and then opened the place with the incantation he had just
used, you would find that all the marbles you had ever lost had gathered
themselves together there, meantime, no matter how widely they had been
separated. But now, this thing had actually and unquestionably failed.
Tom's whole structure of faith was shaken to its foundations. He had
many a time heard of this thing succeeding but never of its failing
before. It did not occur to him that he had tried it several times
before, himself, but could never find the hiding-places afterward. He
puzzled over the matter some time, and finally decided that some witch
had interfered and broken the charm. He thought he would satisfy himself
on that point; so he searched around till he found a small sandy spot
with a little funnel-shaped depression in it. He laid himself down and
put his mouth close to this depression and called--

“Doodle-bug, doodle-bug, tell me what I want to know! Doodle-bug,
doodle-bug, tell me what I want to know!”

The sand began to work, and presently a small black bug appeared for a
second and then darted under again in a fright.

“He dasn't tell! So it _was_ a witch that done it. I just knowed it.”

He well knew the futility of trying to contend against witches, so he
gave up discouraged. But it occurred to him that he might as well have
the marble he had just thrown away, and therefore he went and made a
patient search for it. But he could not find it. Now he went back to his
treasure-house and carefully placed himself just as he had been standing
when he tossed the marble away; then he took another marble from his
pocket and tossed it in the same way, saying:

“Brother, go find your brother!”

He watched where it stopped, and went there and looked. But it must
have fallen short or gone too far; so he tried twice more. The last
repetition was successful. The two marbles lay within a foot of each
other.

Just here the blast of a toy tin trumpet came faintly down the green
aisles of the forest. Tom flung off his jacket and trousers, turned
a suspender into a belt, raked away some brush behind the rotten log,
disclosing a rude bow and arrow, a lath sword and a tin trumpet, and
in a moment had seized these things and bounded away, barelegged,
with fluttering shirt. He presently halted under a great elm, blew an
answering blast, and then began to tiptoe and look warily out, this way
and that. He said cautiously--to an imaginary company:

“Hold, my merry men! Keep hid till I blow.”

Now appeared Joe Harper, as airily clad and elaborately armed as Tom.
Tom called:

“Hold! Who comes here into Sherwood Forest without my pass?”

“Guy of Guisborne wants no man's pass. Who art thou that--that--”

“Dares to hold such language,” said Tom, prompting--for they talked “by
the book,” from memory.

“Who art thou that dares to hold such language?”

“I, indeed! I am Robin Hood, as thy caitiff carcase soon shall know.”

“Then art thou indeed that famous outlaw? Right gladly will I dispute
with thee the passes of the merry wood. Have at thee!”

They took their lath swords, dumped their other traps on the ground,
struck a fencing attitude, foot to foot, and began a grave, careful
combat, “two up and two down.” Presently Tom said:

“Now, if you've got the hang, go it lively!”

So they “went it lively,” panting and perspiring with the work. By and
by Tom shouted:

“Fall! fall! Why don't you fall?”

“I sha'n't! Why don't you fall yourself? You're getting the worst of
it.”

“Why, that ain't anything. I can't fall; that ain't the way it is in the
book. The book says, 'Then with one back-handed stroke he slew poor Guy
of Guisborne.' You're to turn around and let me hit you in the back.”

There was no getting around the authorities, so Joe turned, received the
whack and fell.

“Now,” said Joe, getting up, “you got to let me kill _you_. That's
fair.”

“Why, I can't do that, it ain't in the book.”

“Well, it's blamed mean--that's all.”

“Well, say, Joe, you can be Friar Tuck or Much the miller's son, and lam
me with a quarter-staff; or I'll be the Sheriff of Nottingham and you be
Robin Hood a little while and kill me.”

This was satisfactory, and so these adventures were carried out. Then
Tom became Robin Hood again, and was allowed by the treacherous nun to
bleed his strength away through his neglected wound. And at last Joe,
representing a whole tribe of weeping outlaws, dragged him sadly forth,
gave his bow into his feeble hands, and Tom said, “Where this arrow
falls, there bury poor Robin Hood under the greenwood tree.” Then he
shot the arrow and fell back and would have died, but he lit on a nettle
and sprang up too gaily for a corpse.

The boys dressed themselves, hid their accoutrements, and went off
grieving that there were no outlaws any more, and wondering what modern
civilization could claim to have done to compensate for their loss.
They said they would rather be outlaws a year in Sherwood Forest than
President of the United States forever.




CHAPTER IX

AT half-past nine, that night, Tom and Sid were sent to bed, as usual.
They said their prayers, and Sid was soon asleep. Tom lay awake and
waited, in restless impatience. When it seemed to him that it must be
nearly daylight, he heard the clock strike ten! This was despair. He
would have tossed and fidgeted, as his nerves demanded, but he was
afraid he might wake Sid. So he lay still, and stared up into the dark.
Everything was dismally still. By and by, out of the stillness, little,
scarcely perceptible noises began to emphasize themselves. The ticking
of the clock began to bring itself into notice. Old beams began to crack
mysteriously. The stairs creaked faintly. Evidently spirits were abroad.
A measured, muffled snore issued from Aunt Polly's chamber. And now the
tiresome chirping of a cricket that no human ingenuity could locate,
began. Next the ghastly ticking of a death-watch in the wall at the
bed's head made Tom shudder--it meant that somebody's days were numbered.
Then the howl of a far-off dog rose on the night air, and was answered
by a fainter howl from a remoter distance. Tom was in an agony. At last
he was satisfied that time had ceased and eternity begun; he began to
doze, in spite of himself; the clock chimed eleven, but he did not hear
it. And then there came, mingling with his half-formed dreams, a most
melancholy caterwauling. The raising of a neighboring window disturbed
him. A cry of “Scat! you devil!” and the crash of an empty bottle
against the back of his aunt's woodshed brought him wide awake, and a
single minute later he was dressed and out of the window and creeping
along the roof of the “ell” on all fours. He “meow'd” with caution once
or twice, as he went; then jumped to the roof of the woodshed and thence
to the ground. Huckleberry Finn was there, with his dead cat. The boys
moved off and disappeared in the gloom. At the end of half an hour they
were wading through the tall grass of the graveyard.

It was a graveyard of the old-fashioned Western kind. It was on a hill,
about a mile and a half from the village. It had a crazy board fence
around it, which leaned inward in places, and outward the rest of the
time, but stood upright nowhere. Grass and weeds grew rank over the
whole cemetery. All the old graves were sunken in, there was not a
tombstone on the place; round-topped, worm-eaten boards staggered over
the graves, leaning for support and finding none. “Sacred to the memory
of” So-and-So had been painted on them once, but it could no longer have
been read, on the most of them, now, even if there had been light.

A faint wind moaned through the trees, and Tom feared it might be the
spirits of the dead, complaining at being disturbed. The boys talked
little, and only under their breath, for the time and the place and the
pervading solemnity and silence oppressed their spirits. They found the
sharp new heap they were seeking, and ensconced themselves within the
protection of three great elms that grew in a bunch within a few feet of
the grave.

Then they waited in silence for what seemed a long time. The hooting of
a distant owl was all the sound that troubled the dead stillness. Tom's
reflections grew oppressive. He must force some talk. So he said in a
whisper:

“Hucky, do you believe the dead people like it for us to be here?”

Huckleberry whispered:

“I wisht I knowed. It's awful solemn like, _ain't_ it?”

“I bet it is.”

There was a considerable pause, while the boys canvassed this matter
inwardly. Then Tom whispered:

“Say, Hucky--do you reckon Hoss Williams hears us talking?”

“O' course he does. Least his sperrit does.”

Tom, after a pause:

“I wish I'd said Mister Williams. But I never meant any harm. Everybody
calls him Hoss.”

“A body can't be too partic'lar how they talk 'bout these-yer dead
people, Tom.”

This was a damper, and conversation died again.

Presently Tom seized his comrade's arm and said:

“Sh!”

“What is it, Tom?” And the two clung together with beating hearts.

“Sh! There 'tis again! Didn't you hear it?”

“I--”

“There! Now you hear it.”

“Lord, Tom, they're coming! They're coming, sure. What'll we do?”

“I dono. Think they'll see us?”

“Oh, Tom, they can see in the dark, same as cats. I wisht I hadn't
come.”

“Oh, don't be afeard. I don't believe they'll bother us. We ain't doing
any harm. If we keep perfectly still, maybe they won't notice us at
all.”

“I'll try to, Tom, but, Lord, I'm all of a shiver.”

“Listen!”

The boys bent their heads together and scarcely breathed. A muffled
sound of voices floated up from the far end of the graveyard.

“Look! See there!” whispered Tom. “What is it?”

“It's devil-fire. Oh, Tom, this is awful.”

Some vague figures approached through the gloom, swinging an
old-fashioned tin lantern that freckled the ground with innumerable
little spangles of light. Presently Huckleberry whispered with a
shudder:

“It's the devils sure enough. Three of 'em! Lordy, Tom, we're goners!
Can you pray?”

“I'll try, but don't you be afeard. They ain't going to hurt us. 'Now I
lay me down to sleep, I--'”

“Sh!”

“What is it, Huck?”

“They're _humans_! One of 'em is, anyway. One of 'em's old Muff Potter's
voice.”

“No--'tain't so, is it?”

“I bet I know it. Don't you stir nor budge. He ain't sharp enough to
notice us. Drunk, the same as usual, likely--blamed old rip!”

“All right, I'll keep still. Now they're stuck. Can't find it. Here they
come again. Now they're hot. Cold again. Hot again. Red hot! They're
p'inted right, this time. Say, Huck, I know another o' them voices; it's
Injun Joe.”

“That's so--that murderin' half-breed! I'd druther they was devils a dern
sight. What kin they be up to?”

The whisper died wholly out, now, for the three men had reached the
grave and stood within a few feet of the boys' hiding-place.

“Here it is,” said the third voice; and the owner of it held the lantern
up and revealed the face of young Doctor Robinson.

Potter and Injun Joe were carrying a handbarrow with a rope and a couple
of shovels on it. They cast down their load and began to open the grave.
The doctor put the lantern at the head of the grave and came and sat
down with his back against one of the elm trees. He was so close the
boys could have touched him.

“Hurry, men!” he said, in a low voice; “the moon might come out at any
moment.”

They growled a response and went on digging. For some time there was no
noise but the grating sound of the spades discharging their freight of
mould and gravel. It was very monotonous. Finally a spade struck upon
the coffin with a dull woody accent, and within another minute or two
the men had hoisted it out on the ground. They pried off the lid with
their shovels, got out the body and dumped it rudely on the ground. The
moon drifted from behind the clouds and exposed the pallid face.
The barrow was got ready and the corpse placed on it, covered with a
blanket, and bound to its place with the rope. Potter took out a large
spring-knife and cut off the dangling end of the rope and then said:

“Now the cussed thing's ready, Sawbones, and you'll just out with
another five, or here she stays.”

“That's the talk!” said Injun Joe.

“Look here, what does this mean?” said the doctor. “You required your
pay in advance, and I've paid you.”

“Yes, and you done more than that,” said Injun Joe, approaching the
doctor, who was now standing. “Five years ago you drove me away from
your father's kitchen one night, when I come to ask for something to
eat, and you said I warn't there for any good; and when I swore I'd get
even with you if it took a hundred years, your father had me jailed for
a vagrant. Did you think I'd forget? The Injun blood ain't in me for
nothing. And now I've _got_ you, and you got to _settle_, you know!”

He was threatening the doctor, with his fist in his face, by this time.
The doctor struck out suddenly and stretched the ruffian on the ground.
Potter dropped his knife, and exclaimed:

“Here, now, don't you hit my pard!” and the next moment he had grappled
with the doctor and the two were struggling with might and main,
trampling the grass and tearing the ground with their heels. Injun Joe
sprang to his feet, his eyes flaming with passion, snatched up Potter's
knife, and went creeping, catlike and stooping, round and round about
the combatants, seeking an opportunity. All at once the doctor flung
himself free, seized the heavy headboard of Williams' grave and felled
Potter to the earth with it--and in the same instant the half-breed saw
his chance and drove the knife to the hilt in the young man's breast. He
reeled and fell partly upon Potter, flooding him with his blood, and in
the same moment the clouds blotted out the dreadful spectacle and the
two frightened boys went speeding away in the dark.

Presently, when the moon emerged again, Injun Joe was standing over the
two forms, contemplating them. The doctor murmured inarticulately, gave
a long gasp or two and was still. The half-breed muttered:

“_That_ score is settled--damn you.”

Then he robbed the body. After which he put the fatal knife in Potter's
open right hand, and sat down on the dismantled coffin. Three--four--five
minutes passed, and then Potter began to stir and moan. His hand closed
upon the knife; he raised it, glanced at it, and let it fall, with a
shudder. Then he sat up, pushing the body from him, and gazed at it, and
then around him, confusedly. His eyes met Joe's.

“Lord, how is this, Joe?” he said.

“It's a dirty business,” said Joe, without moving.

“What did you do it for?”

“I! I never done it!”

“Look here! That kind of talk won't wash.”

Potter trembled and grew white.

“I thought I'd got sober. I'd no business to drink to-night. But it's
in my head yet--worse'n when we started here. I'm all in a muddle;
can't recollect anything of it, hardly. Tell me, Joe--_honest_, now,
old feller--did I do it? Joe, I never meant to--'pon my soul and honor, I
never meant to, Joe. Tell me how it was, Joe. Oh, it's awful--and him so
young and promising.”

“Why, you two was scuffling, and he fetched you one with the headboard
and you fell flat; and then up you come, all r