![[Illustration]](images/cover.jpg)
![[Illustration]](images/0181.jpg)
I reckon I got to be excused
“You’ll be excused! you will! Well, I never heard the like
of it in all my days! The idea of you talking like that to me! Now take
yourself off and pack your traps; and if I hear another word out of you about
what you’ll be excused from and what you won’t, I lay
I’ll excuse you—with a hickory!”
She hit his head a thump with her thimble as we dodged by, and he let on to be
whimpering as we struck for the stairs. Up in his room he hugged me, he was so
out of his head for gladness because he was going traveling. And he says:
“Before we get away she’ll wish she hadn’t let me go, but she
won’t know any way to get around it now. After what she’s said, her
pride won’t let her take it back.”
Tom was packed in ten minutes, all except what his aunt and Mary would finish
up for him; then we waited ten more for her to get cooled down and sweet and
gentle again; for Tom said it took her ten minutes to unruffle in times when
half of her feathers was up, but twenty when they was all up, and this was one
of the times when they was all up. Then we went down, being in a sweat to know
what the letter said.
She was setting there in a brown study, with it laying in her lap. We set down,
and she says:
“They’re in considerable trouble down there, and they think you and
Huck’ll be a kind of diversion for them—’comfort,’ they
say. Much of that they’ll get out of you and Huck Finn, I reckon.
There’s a neighbor named Brace Dunlap that’s been wanting to marry
their Benny for three months, and at last they told him point blank and once
for all, he could’t; so he has soured on them, and they’re
worried about it. I reckon he’s somebody they think they better be on the
good side of, for they’ve tried to please him by hiring his no-account
brother to help on the farm when they can’t hardly afford it, and
don’t want him around anyhow. Who are the Dunlaps?”
“They live about a mile from Uncle Silas’s place, Aunt
Polly—all the farmers live about a mile apart down there—and Brace
Dunlap is a long sight richer than any of the others, and owns a whole grist of
niggers. He’s a widower, thirty-six years old, without any children, and
is proud of his money and overbearing, and everybody is a little afraid of him.
I judge he thought he could have any girl he wanted, just for the asking, and
it must have set him back a good deal when he found he couldn’t get
Benny. Why, Benny’s only half as old as he is, and just as sweet and
lovely as—well, you’ve seen her. Poor old Uncle Silas—why,
it’s pitiful, him trying to curry favor that way—so hard pushed and
poor, and yet hiring that useless Jubiter Dunlap to please his ornery
brother.”
“What a name—Jubiter! Where’d he get it?”
“It’s only just a nickname. I reckon they’ve forgot his real
name long before this. He’s twenty-seven, now, and has had it ever since
the first time he ever went in swimming. The school teacher seen a round brown
mole the size of a dime on his left leg above his knee, and four little bits of
moles around it, when he was naked, and he said it minded him of Jubiter and
his moons; and the children thought it was funny, and so they got to calling
him Jubiter, and he’s Jubiter yet. He’s tall, and lazy, and sly,
and sneaky, and ruther cowardly, too, but kind of good-natured, and wears long
brown hair and no beard, and hasn’t got a cent, and Brace boards him for
nothing, and gives him his old clothes to wear, and despises him. Jubiter is a
twin.”
“What’s t’other twin like?”
“Just exactly like Jubiter—so they say; used to was, anyway, but he
hain’t been seen for seven years. He got to robbing when he was nineteen
or twenty, and they jailed him; but he broke jail and got away—up North
here, somers. They used to hear about him robbing and burglaring now and then,
but that was years ago. He’s dead, now. At least that’s what they
say. They don’t hear about him any more.”
“What was his name?”
“Jake.”
There wasn’t anything more said for a considerable while; the old lady
was thinking. At last she says:
“The thing that is mostly worrying your aunt Sally is the tempers that
that man Jubiter gets your uncle into.”
Tom was astonished, and so was I. Tom says:
“Tempers? Uncle Silas? Land, you must be joking! I didn’t know he
had any temper.”
“Works him up into perfect rages, your aunt Sally says; says he acts as
if he would really hit the man, sometimes.”
“Aunt Polly, it beats anything I ever heard of. Why, he’s just as
gentle as mush.”
“Well, she’s worried, anyway. Says your uncle Silas is like a
changed man, on account of all this quarreling. And the neighbors talk about
it, and lay all the blame on your uncle, of course, because he’s a
preacher and hain’t got any business to quarrel. Your aunt Sally says he
hates to go into the pulpit he’s so ashamed; and the people have begun to
cool toward him, and he ain’t as popular now as he used to was.”
“Well, ain’t it strange? Why, Aunt Polly, he was always so good and
kind and moony and absent-minded and chuckle-headed and lovable—why, he
was just an angel! What can be the matter of him, do you reckon?”
![[Illustration]](images/0189.jpg)
Swear you’ll be good to me and help me save my life.
We’d a swore it if he’d been a dog; and so we done it. Well, he
couldn’t love us enough for it or be grateful enough, poor cuss; it was
all he could do to keep from hugging us.
We talked along, and he got out a little hand-bag and begun to open it, and
told us to turn our backs. We done it, and when he told us to turn again he was
perfectly different to what he was before. He had on blue goggles and the
naturalest-looking long brown whiskers and mustashes you ever see. His own
mother wouldn’t ’a’ knowed him. He asked us if he looked like
his brother Jubiter, now.
“No,” Tom said; “there ain’t anything left that’s
like him except the long hair.”
“All right, I’ll get that cropped close to my head before I get
there; then him and Brace will keep my secret, and I’ll live with them as
being a stranger, and the neighbors won’t ever guess me out. What do you
think?”
Tom he studied awhile, then he says:
“Well, of course me and Huck are going to keep mum there, but if you
don’t keep mum yourself there’s going to be a little bit of a
risk—it ain’t much, maybe, but it’s a little. I mean, if you
talk, won’t people notice that your voice is just like Jubiter’s;
and mightn’t it make them think of the twin they reckoned was dead, but
maybe after all was hid all this time under another name?”
“By George,” he says, “you’re a sharp one! You’re
perfectly right. I’ve got to play deef and dumb when there’s a
neighbor around. If I’d a struck for home and forgot that little
detail—However, I wasn’t striking for home. I was breaking for any
place where I could get away from these fellows that are after me; then I was
going to put on this disguise and get some different clothes, and—”
He jumped for the outside door and laid his ear against it and listened, pale
and kind of panting. Presently he whispers:
“Sounded like cocking a gun! Lord, what a life to lead!”
![[Illustration]](images/0193.jpg)
Sounded like a cocking gun!
Then he sunk down in a chair all limp and sick like, and wiped the sweat off of
his face.
![[Illustration]](images/0199.jpg)
We stood up and waited perfectly still.
“There warn’t nobody stirring anywhere, and the boat was slipping
along, swift and steady, through the big water in the smoky moonlight. We never
said a word, but went straight up onto the hurricane-deck and plumb back aft,
and set down on the end of the sky-light. Both of us knowed what that meant,
without having to explain to one another. Bud Dixon would wake up and miss the
swag, and would come straight for us, for he ain’t afeard of anything or
anybody, that man ain’t. He would come, and we would heave him overboard,
or get killed trying. It made me shiver, because I ain’t as brave as some
people, but if I showed the white feather—well, I knowed better than do
that. I kind of hoped the boat would land somers, and we could skip ashore and
not have to run the risk of this row, I was so scared of Bud Dixon, but she was
an upper-river tub and there warn’t no real chance of that.
“Well, the time strung along and along, and that fellow never come! Why,
it strung along till dawn begun to break, and still he never come.
‘Thunder,’ I says, ‘what do you make out of
this?—ain’t it suspicious?’ ‘Land!’ Hal says,
‘do you reckon he’s playing us?—open the paper!’ I done
it, and by gracious there warn’t anything in it but a couple of little
pieces of loaf-sugar! that’s the reason he could set there and
snooze all night so comfortable. Smart? Well, I reckon! He had had them two
papers all fixed and ready, and he had put one of them in place of
t’other right under our noses.
“We felt pretty cheap. But the thing to do, straight off, was to make a
plan; and we done it. We would do up the paper again, just as it was, and slip
in, very elaborate and soft, and lay it on the bunk again, and let on we
didn’t know about any trick, and hadn’t any idea he was a-laughing
at us behind them bogus snores of his’n; and we would stick by him, and
the first night we was ashore we would get him drunk and search him, and get
the di’monds; and dofor him, too, if it warn’t too risky.
If we got the swag, we’dgot to do for him, or he would hunt us
down and do for us, sure. But I didn’t have no real hope. I knowed we
could get him drunk—he was always ready for that—but what’s
the good of it? You might search him a year and never find—Well, right
there I catched my breath and broke off my thought! For an idea went ripping
through my head that tore my brains to rags—and land, but I felt gay and
good! You see, I had had my boots off, to unswell my feet, and just then I took
up one of them to put it on, and I catched a glimpse of the heel-bottom, and it
just took my breath away. You remember about that puzzlesome little
screwdriver?”
“You bet I do,” says Tom, all excited.
“Well, when I catched that glimpse of that boot heel, the idea that went
smashing through my head was, I know where he’s hid the di’monds!
You look at this boot heel, now. See, it’s bottomed with a steel plate,
and the plate is fastened on with little screws. Now there wasn’t a screw
about that feller anywhere but in his boot heels; so, if he needed a
screwdriver, I reckoned I knowed why.”
“Huck, ain’t it bully!” says Tom.
“Well, I got my boots on, and we went down and slipped in and laid the
paper of sugar on the berth, and sat down soft and sheepish and went to
listening to Bud Dixon snore. Hal Clayton dropped off pretty soon, but I
didn’t; I wasn’t ever so wide awake in my life. I was spying out
from under the shade of my hat brim, searching the floor for leather. It took
me a long time, and I begun to think maybe my guess was wrong, but at last I
struck it. It laid over by the bulkhead, and was nearly the color of the
carpet. It was a little round plug about as thick as the end of your little
finger, and I says to myself there’s a di’mond in the nest
you’ve come from. Before long I spied out the plug’s mate.
“Think of the smartness and coolness of that blatherskite! He put up that
scheme on us and reasoned out what we would do, and we went ahead and done it
perfectly exact, like a couple of pudd’nheads. He set there and took his
own time to unscrew his heelplates and cut out his plugs and stick in the
di’monds and screw on his plates again. He allowed we would steal the
bogus swag and wait all night for him to come up and get drownded, and by
George it’s just what we done! I think it was powerful smart.”
“You bet your life it was!” says Tom, just full of admiration.
![[Illustration]](images/0209.jpg)
Walked ashore.
“Well, to cut the tale short, we never left there till plumb noon; and
long before that I was hid in this stateroom; for before breakfast I see a man
coming, away off, that had a gait like Hal Clayton’s, and it made me just
sick. I says to myself, if he finds out I’m aboard this boat, he’s
got me like a rat in a trap. All he’s got to do is to have me watched,
and wait—wait till I slip ashore, thinking he is a thousand miles away,
then slip after me and dog me to a good place and make me give up the
di’monds, and then he’ll—oh, I know what he’ll do!
Ain’t it awful—awful! And now to think the other one’s
aboard, too! Oh, ain’t it hard luck, boys—ain’t it hard! But
you’ll help save me, won’t you?—oh, boys, be good to a
poor devil that’s being hunted to death, and save me—I’ll
worship the very ground you walk on!”
We turned in and soothed him down and told him we would plan for him and help
him, and he needn’t be so afeard; and so by and by he got to feeling kind
of comfortable again, and unscrewed his heelplates and held up his
di’monds this way and that, admiring them and loving them; and when the
light struck into them they was beautiful, sure; why, they seemed to
kind of bust, and snap fire out all around. But all the same I judged he was a
fool. If I had been him I would a handed the di’monds to them pals and
got them to go ashore and leave me alone. But he was made different. He said it
was a whole fortune and he couldn’t bear the idea.
Twice we stopped to fix the machinery and laid a good while, once in the night;
but it wasn’t dark enough, and he was afeard to skip. But the third time
we had to fix it there was a better chance. We laid up at a country woodyard
about forty mile above Uncle Silas’s place a little after one at night,
and it was thickening up and going to storm. So Jake he laid for a chance to
slide. We begun to take in wood. Pretty soon the rain come a-drenching down,
and the wind blowed hard. Of course every boat-hand fixed a gunny sack and put
it on like a bonnet, the way they do when they are toting wood, and we got one
for Jake, and he slipped down aft with his hand-bag and come tramping forrard
just like the rest, and walked ashore with them, and when we see him pass out
of the light of the torch-basket and get swallowed up in the dark, we got our
breath again and just felt grateful and splendid. But it wasn’t for long.
Somebody told, I reckon; for in about eight or ten minutes them two pals come
tearing forrard as tight as they could jump and darted ashore and was gone. We
waited plumb till dawn for them to come back, and kept hoping they would, but
they never did. We was awful sorry and low-spirited. All the hope we had was
that Jake had got such a start that they couldn’t get on his track, and
he would get to his brother’s and hide there and be safe.
He was going to take the river road, and told us to find out if Brace and
Jubiter was to home and no strangers there, and then slip out about sundown and
tell him. Said he would wait for us in a little bunch of sycamores right back
of Tom’s uncle Silas’s tobacker field on the river road, a lonesome
place.
We set and talked a long time about his chances, and Tom said he was all right
if the pals struck up the river instead of down, but it wasn’t likely,
because maybe they knowed where he was from; more likely they would go right,
and dog him all day, him not suspecting, and kill him when it come dark, and
take the boots. So we was pretty sorrowful.
![[Illustration]](images/0216.jpg)
It was Jake Dunlap’s ghost.
We couldn’t stir for a minute or two; then it was gone. We talked about
it in low voices. Tom says:
“They’re mostly dim and smoky, or like they’re made out of
fog, but this one wasn’t.”
“No,” I says; “I seen the goggles and the whiskers perfectly
plain.”
“Yes, and the very colors in them loud countrified Sunday
clothes—plaid breeches, green and black—”
“Cotton velvet westcot, fire-red and yaller squares—”
“Leather straps to the bottoms of the breeches legs and one of them
hanging unbottoned—”
“Yes, and that hat—”
“What a hat for a ghost to wear!”
You see it was the first season anybody wore that kind—a black stiff-brim
stove-pipe, very high, and not smooth, with a round top—just like a
sugar-loaf.
“Did you notice if its hair was the same, Huck?”
“No—seems to me I did, then again it seems to me I
didn’t.”
“I didn’t either; but it had its bag along, I noticed that.”
“So did I. How can there be a ghost-bag, Tom?”
“Sho! I wouldn’t be as ignorant as that if I was you, Huck Finn.
Whatever a ghost has, turns to ghost-stuff. They’ve got to have their
things, like anybody else. You see, yourself, that its clothes was turned to
ghost-stuff. Well, then, what’s to hender its bag from turning, too? Of
course it done it.”
That was reasonable. I couldn’t find no fault with it. Bill Withers and
his brother Jack come along by, talking, and Jack says:
“What do you reckon he was toting?”
“I dunno; but it was pretty heavy.”
“Yes, all he could lug. Nigger stealing corn from old Parson Silas, I
judged.”
“So did I. And so I allowed I wouldn’t let on to see him.”
“That’s me, too.”
Then they both laughed, and went on out of hearing. It showed how unpopular old
Uncle Silas had got to be now. They wouldn’t ’a’ let a nigger
steal anybody else’s corn and never done anything to him.
We heard some more voices mumbling along towards us and getting louder, and
sometimes a cackle of a laugh. It was Lem Beebe and Jim Lane. Jim Lane says:
“Who?—Jubiter Dunlap?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I reckon so. I seen him spading up some ground
along about an hour ago, just before sundown—him and the parson. Said he
guessed he wouldn’t go to-night, but we could have his dog if we wanted
him.”
“Too tired, I reckon.”
“Yes—works so hard!”
“Oh, you bet!”
They cackled at that, and went on by. Tom said we better jump out and tag along
after them, because they was going our way and it wouldn’t be comfortable
to run across the ghost all by ourselves. So we done it, and got home all
right.
That night was the second of September—a Saturday. I sha’n’t
ever forget it. You’ll see why, pretty soon.
![[Illustration]](images/0221.jpg)
Was the ghost barefooted?
“No, it wasn’t. What of it?”
“You wait—I’ll show you what. Did it have its boots
on?”
“Yes. I seen them plain.”
“Swear it?”
“Yes, I swear it.”
“So do I. Now do you know what that means?”
“No. What does it mean?”
“Means that them thieves didn’t get the
di’monds.”
“Jimminy! What makes you think that?”
“I don’t only think it, I know it. Didn’t the breeches and
goggles and whiskers and hand-bag and every blessed thing turn to ghost-stuff?
Everything it had on turned, didn’t it? It shows that the reason its
boots turned too was because it still had them on after it started to go
ha’nting around, and if that ain’t proof that them blatherskites
didn’t get the boots, I’d like to know what you’dcall
proof.”
Think of that now. I never see such a head as that boy had. Why, I had eyes and
I could see things, but they never meant nothing to me. But Tom Sawyer was
different. When Tom Sawyer seen a thing it just got up on its hind legs and
talked to him—told him everything it knowed. I never see such a
head.
“Tom Sawyer,” I says, “I’ll say it again as I’ve
said it a many a time before: I ain’t fitten to black your boots. But
that’s all right—that’s neither here nor there. God Almighty
made us all, and some He gives eyes that’s blind, and some He gives eyes
that can see, and I reckon it ain’t none of our lookout what He done it
for; it’s all right, or He’d ’a’ fixed it some other
way. Go on—I see plenty plain enough, now, that them thieves didn’t
get way with the di’monds. Why didn’t they, do you reckon?”
“Because they got chased away by them other two men before they could
pull the boots off of the corpse.”
“That’s so! I see it now. But looky here, Tom, why ain’t we
to go and tell about it?”
“Oh, shucks, Huck Finn, can’t you see? Look at it. What’s
a-going to happen? There’s going to be an inquest in the morning. Them
two men will tell how they heard the yells and rushed there just in time to not
save the stranger. Then the jury’ll twaddle and twaddle and twaddle, and
finally they’ll fetch in a verdict that he got shot or stuck or busted
over the head with something, and come to his death by the inspiration of God.
And after they’ve buried him they’ll auction off his things for to
pay the expenses, and then’sour chance.” “How,
Tom?”
“Buy the boots for two dollars!”
Well, it ’most took my breath.
“My land! Why, Tom, we’ll get the di’monds!”
“You bet. Some day there’ll be a big reward offered for
them—a thousand dollars, sure. That’s our money! Now we’ll
trot in and see the folks. And mind you we don’t know anything about any
murder, or any di’monds, or any thieves—don’t you forget
that.”
I had to sigh a little over the way he had got it fixed. I’d
’a’ sold them di’monds—yes, sir—for twelve
thousand dollars; but I didn’t say anything. It wouldn’t done any
good. I says:
“But what are we going to tell your aunt Sally has made us so long
getting down here from the village, Tom?”
“Oh, I’ll leave that to you,” he says. “I reckon you
can explain it somehow.”
He was always just that strict and delicate. He never would tell a lie himself.
We struck across the big yard, noticing this, that, and t’other thing
that was so familiar, and we so glad to see it again, and when we got to the
roofed big passageway betwixt the double log house and the kitchen part, there
was everything hanging on the wall just as it used to was, even to Uncle
Silas’s old faded green baize working-gown with the hood to it, and
raggedy white patch between the shoulders that always looked like somebody had
hit him with a snowball; and then we lifted the latch and walked in. Aunt Sally
she was just a-ripping and a-tearing around, and the children was huddled in
one corner, and the old man he was huddled in the other and praying for help in
time of need. She jumped for us with joy and tears running down her face and
give us a whacking box on the ear, and then hugged us and kissed us and boxed
us again, and just couldn’t seem to get enough of it, she was so glad to
see us; and she says:
“Where have you been a-loafing to, you good-for-nothing trash!
I’ve been that worried about you I didn’t know what to do. Your
traps has been here ever so long, and I’ve had supper cooked fresh about
four times so as to have it hot and good when you come, till at last my
patience is just plumb wore out, and I declare I—I—why I could skin
you alive! You must be starving, poor things!—set down, set down,
everybody; don’t lose no more time.”
It was good to be there again behind all that noble corn-pone and spareribs,
and everything that you could ever want in this world. Old Uncle Silas he
peeled off one of his bulliest old-time blessings, with as many layers to it as
an onion, and whilst the angels was hauling in the slack of it I was trying to
study up what to say about what kept us so long. When our plates was all
loadened and we’d got a-going, she asked me, and I says:
“Well, you see,—er—Mizzes—”
“Huck Finn! Since when am I Mizzes to you? Have I ever been stingy of
cuffs or kisses for you since the day you stood in this room and I took you for
Tom Sawyer and blessed God for sending you to me, though you told me four
thousand lies and I believed every one of them like a simpleton? Call me Aunt
Sally—like you always done.”
So I done it. And I says:
“Well, me and Tom allowed we would come along afoot and take a smell of
the woods, and we run across Lem Beebe and Jim Lane, and they asked us to go
with them blackberrying to-night, and said they could borrow Jubiter
Dunlap’s dog, because he had told them just that minute—”
“Where did they see him?” says the old man; and when I looked up to
see how hecome to take an intrust in a little thing like that, his eyes
was just burning into me, he was that eager. It surprised me so it kind of
throwed me off, but I pulled myself together again and says:
“It was when he was spading up some ground along with you, towards
sundown or along there.”
He only said, “Um,” in a kind of a disappointed way, and
didn’t take no more intrust. So I went on. I says:
“Well, then, as I was a-saying—”
“That’ll do, you needn’t go no furder.” It was Aunt
Sally. She was boring right into me with her eyes, and very indignant.
“Huck Finn,” she says, “how’d them men come to talk
about going a-black-berrying in September—inthis region?”
I see I had slipped up, and I couldn’t say a word. She waited, still
a-gazing at me, then she says:
“And how’d they come to strike that idiot idea of going
a-blackberrying in the night?”
“Well, m’m, they—er—they told us they had a lantern,
and—”
“Oh, shet up—do! Looky here; what was they going to do with
a dog?—hunt blackberries with it?”
“I think, m’m, they—”
“Now, Tom Sawyer, what kind of a lie are you fixing your mouth to
contribit to this mess of rubbage? Speak out—and I warn you before you
begin, that I don’t believe a word of it. You and Huck’s been up to
something you no business to—I know it perfectly well; I know you,
both of you. Now you explain that dog, and them blackberries, and the
lantern, and the rest of that rot—and mind you talk as straight as a
string—do you hear?”
Tom he looked considerable hurt, and says, very dignified:
“It is a pity if Huck is to be talked to that way, just for making a
little bit of a mistake that anybody could make.”
“What mistake has he made?”
“Why, only the mistake of saying blackberries when of course he meant
strawberries.”
“Tom Sawyer, I lay if you aggravate me a little more,
I’ll—”
“Aunt Sally, without knowing it—and of course without intending
it—you are in the wrong. If you’d ’a’ studied natural
history the way you ought, you would know that all over the world except just
here in Arkansaw they always hunt strawberries with a dog—and a
lantern—”
But she busted in on him there and just piled into him and snowed him under.
She was so mad she couldn’t get the words out fast enough, and she gushed
them out in one everlasting freshet. That was what Tom Sawyer was after. He
allowed to work her up and get her started and then leave her alone and let her
burn herself out. Then she would be so aggravated with that subject that she
wouldn’t say another word about it, nor let anybody else. Well, it
happened just so. When she was tuckered out and had to hold up, he says, quite
ca’m:
“And yet, all the same, Aunt Sally—”
“Shet up!” she says, “I don’t want to hear another word
out of you.”
So we was perfectly safe, then, and didn’t have no more trouble about
that delay. Tom done it elegant.
![[Illustration]](images/0229.jpg)
Smoked and stuffed watermelon
Tom he always seen everything, and now he see that the old green baize
work-gown was gone, and said it wasn’t gone when he went out; so he
allowed it was curious, and then we went up to bed.
We could hear Benny stirring around in her room, which was next to ourn, and
judged she was worried a good deal about her father and couldn’t sleep.
We found we couldn’t, neither. So we set up a long time, and smoked and
talked in a low voice, and felt pretty dull and down-hearted. We talked the
murder and the ghost over and over again, and got so creepy and crawly we
couldn’t get sleepy nohow and noway.
By and by, when it was away late in the night and all the sounds was late
sounds and solemn, Tom nudged me and whispers to me to look, and I done it, and
there we see a man poking around in the yard like he didn’t know just
what he wanted to do, but it was pretty dim and we couldn’t see him good.
Then he started for the stile, and as he went over it the moon came out strong,
and he had a long-handled shovel over his shoulder, and we see the white patch
on the old work-gown. So Tom says:
“He’s a-walking in his sleep. I wish we was allowed to follow him
and see where he’s going to. There, he’s turned down by the
tobacker-field. Out of sight now. It’s a dreadful pity he can’t
rest no better.”
We waited a long time, but he didn’t come back any more, or if he did he
come around the other way; so at last we was tuckered out and went to sleep and
had nightmares, a million of them. But before dawn we was awake again, because
meantime a storm had come up and been raging, and the thunder and lightning was
awful, and the wind was a-thrashing the trees around, and the rain was driving
down in slanting sheets, and the gullies was running rivers. Tom says:
“Looky here, Huck, I’ll tell you one thing that’s mighty
curious. Up to the time we went out last night the family hadn’t heard
about Jake Dunlap being murdered. Now the men that chased Hal Clayton and Bud
Dixon away would spread the thing around in a half an hour, and every neighbor
that heard it would shin out and fly around from one farm to t’other and
try to be the first to tell the news. Land, they don’t have such a big
thing as that to tell twice in thirty year! Huck, it’s mighty strange; I
don’t understand it.”
So then he was in a fidget for the rain to let up, so we could turn out and run
across some of the people and see if they would say anything about it to us.
And he said if they did we must be horribly surprised and shocked.
We was out and gone the minute the rain stopped. It was just broad day then. We
loafed along up the road, and now and then met a person and stopped and said
howdy, and told them when we come, and how we left the folks at home, and how
long we was going to stay, and all that, but none of them said a word about
that thing; which was just astonishing, and no mistake. Tom said he believed if
we went to the sycamores we would find that body laying there solitary and
alone, and not a soul around. Said he believed the men chased the thieves so
far into the woods that the thieves prob’ly seen a good chance and turned
on them at last, and maybe they all killed each other, and so there
wasn’t anybody left to tell.
First we knowed, gabbling along that away, we was right at the sycamores. The
cold chills trickled down my back and I wouldn’t budge another step, for
all Tom’s persuading. But he couldn’t hold in; he’dgot to see if the boots was safe on that body yet. So he crope
in—and the next minute out he come again with his eyes bulging he was so
excited, and says:
![[Illustration]](images/0233.jpg)
Huck, it’s gone!
“Huck, it’s gone!”
Iwas astonished! I says:
“Tom, you don’t mean it.”
“It’s gone, sure. There ain’t a sign of it. The ground is
trampled some, but if there was any blood it’s all washed away by the
storm, for it’s all puddles and slush in there.”
At last I give in, and went and took a look myself; and it was just as Tom
said—there wasn’t a sign of a corpse.
“Dern it,” I says, “the di’monds is gone. Don’t
you reckon the thieves slunk back and lugged him off, Tom?”
“Looks like it. It just does. Now where’d they hide him, do you
reckon?”
“I don’t know,” I says, disgusted, “and what’s
more I don’t care. They’ve got the boots, and that’s all I
cared about. He’ll lay around these woods a long time before I hunt him
up.”
Tom didn’t feel no more intrust in him neither, only curiosity to know
what come of him; but he said we’d lay low and keep dark and it
wouldn’t be long till the dogs or somebody rousted him out.
We went back home to breakfast ever so bothered and put out and disappointed
and swindled. I warn’t ever so down on a corpse before.
![[Illustration]](images/0237.jpg)
What does he think?
“Does he—does he—think—what does he think! Tell
him—tell him—” Then he sunk down in his chair limp and weak,
and says, so as you could hardly hear him: “Go away—go away!”
The nigger looked scared and cleared out, and we all felt—well, I
don’t know how we felt, but it was awful, with the old man panting there,
and his eyes set and looking like a person that was dying. None of us could
budge; but Benny she slid around soft, with her tears running down, and stood
by his side, and nestled his old gray head up against her and begun to stroke
it and pet it with her hands, and nodded to us to go away, and we done it,
going out very quiet, like the dead was there.
Me and Tom struck out for the woods mighty solemn, and saying how different it
was now to what it was last summer when we was here and everything was so
peaceful and happy and everybody thought so much of Uncle Silas, and he was so
cheerful and simple-hearted and pudd’n-headed and good—and now look
at him. If he hadn’t lost his mind he wasn’t much short of it. That
was what we allowed.
It was a most lovely day now, and bright and sunshiny; and the further and
further we went over the hills towards the prairie the lovelier and lovelier
the trees and flowers got to be and the more it seemed strange and somehow
wrong that there had to be trouble in such a world as this. And then all of a
sudden I catched my breath and grabbed Tom’s arm, and all my livers and
lungs and things fell down into my legs.
“There it is!” I says. We jumped back behind a bush shivering, and
Tom says:
“’Sh!—don’t make a noise.”
It was setting on a log right in the edge of a little prairie, thinking. I
tried to get Tom to come away, but he wouldn’t, and I dasn’t budge
by myself. He said we mightn’t ever get another chance to see one, and he
was going to look his fill at this one if he died for it. So I looked too,
though it give me the fan-tods to do it. Tom he had to talk, but he
talked low. He says:
“Poor Jakey, it’s got all its things on, just as he said he would.
Now you see what we wasn’t certain about—its hair.
It’s not long now the way it was: it’s got it cropped close to its
head, the way he said he would. Huck, I never see anything look any more
naturaler than what It does.”
“Nor I neither,” I says; “I’d recognize it
anywheres.”
“So would I. It looks perfectly solid and genuwyne, just the way it done
before it died.”
So we kept a-gazing. Pretty soon Tom says:
“Huck, there’s something mighty curious about this one, don’t
you know? IT oughtn’t to be going around in the daytime.”
“That’s so, Tom—I never heard the like of it before.”
“No, sir, they don’t ever come out only at night—and then not
till after twelve. There’s something wrong about this one, now you mark
my words. I don’t believe it’s got any right to be around in the
daytime. But don’t it look natural! Jake was going to play deef and dumb
here, so the neighbors wouldn’t know his voice. Do you reckon it would do
that if we was to holler at it?”
“Lordy, Tom, don’t talk so! If you was to holler at it I’d
die in my tracks.”
“Don’t you worry, I ain’t going to holler at it. Look, Huck,
it’s a-scratching its head—don’t you see?”
“Well, what of it?”
“Why, this. What’s the sense of it scratching its head? There
ain’t anything there to itch; its head is made out of fog or something
like that, and can’t itch. A fog can’t itch; any fool knows
that.”
“Well, then, if it don’t itch and can’t itch, what in the
nation is it scratching it for? Ain’t it just habit, don’t you
reckon?”
“No, sir, I don’t. I ain’t a bit satisfied about the way this
one acts. I’ve a blame good notion it’s a bogus one—I have,
as sure as I’m a-sitting here. Because, if it—Huck!”
“Well, what’s the matter now?”
“You can’t see the bushes through it!”
“Why, Tom, it’s so, sure! It’s as solid as a cow. I sort of
begin to think—”
“Huck, it’s biting off a chaw of tobacker! By George, they
don’t chaw—they hain’t got anything to chaw with.
Huck!”
“I’m a-listening.”
“It ain’t a ghost at all. It’s Jake Dunlap his own
self!”
“Oh your granny!” I says.
“Huck Finn, did we find any corpse in the sycamores?”
“No.”
“Or any sign of one?”
“No.”
“Mighty good reason. Hadn’t ever been any corpse there.”
“Why, Tom, you know we heard—”
“Yes, we did—heard a howl or two. Does that prove anybody was
killed? Course it don’t. And we seen four men run, then this one come
walking out and we took it for a ghost. No more ghost than you are. It was Jake
Dunlap his own self, and it’s Jake Dunlap now. He’s been and got
his hair cropped, the way he said he would, and he’s playing himself for
a stranger, just the same as he said he would. Ghost? Hum!—he’s as
sound as a nut.”
Then I see it all, and how we had took too much for granted. I was powerful
glad he didn’t get killed, and so was Tom, and we wondered which he would
like the best—for us to never let on to know him, or how? Tom reckoned
the best way would be to go and ask him. So he started; but I kept a little
behind, because I didn’t know but it might be a ghost, after all. When
Tom got to where he was, he says:
“Me and Huck’s mighty glad to see you again, and you needn’t
be afeared we’ll tell. And if you think it’ll be safer for you if
we don’t let on to know you when we run across you, say the word and
you’ll see you can depend on us, and would ruther cut our hands off than
get you into the least little bit of danger.”
First off he looked surprised to see us, and not very glad, either; but as Tom
went on he looked pleasanter, and when he was done he smiled, and nodded his
head several times, and made signs with his hands, and says:
![[Illustration]](images/0243.jpg)
Goo-goo—goo-goo
“Goo-goo—goo-goo,” the way deef and dummies does.
Just then we see some of Steve Nickerson’s people coming that lived
t’other side of the prairie, so Tom says:
“You do it elegant; I never see anybody do it better. You’re right;
play it on us, too; play it on us same as the others; it’ll keep you in
practice and prevent you making blunders. We’ll keep away from you and
let on we don’t know you, but any time we can be any help, you just let
us know.”
Then we loafed along past the Nickersons, and of course they asked if that was
the new stranger yonder, and where’d he come from, and what was his name,
and which communion was he, Babtis’ or Methodis’, and which
politics, Whig or Democrat, and how long is he staying, and all them other
questions that humans always asks when a stranger comes, and animals does, too.
But Tom said he warn’t able to make anything out of deef and dumb signs,
and the same with goo-gooing. Then we watched them go and bullyrag Jake;
because we was pretty uneasy for him. Tom said it would take him days to get so
he wouldn’t forget he was a deef and dummy sometimes, and speak out
before he thought. When we had watched long enough to see that Jake was getting
along all right and working his signs very good, we loafed along again,
allowing to strike the schoolhouse about recess time, which was a three-mile
tramp.
I was so disappointed not to hear Jake tell about the row in the sycamores, and
how near he come to getting killed, that I couldn’t seem to get over it,
and Tom he felt the same, but said if we was in Jake’s fix we would want
to go careful and keep still and not take any chances.
The boys and girls was all glad to see us again, and we had a real good time
all through recess. Coming to school the Henderson boys had come across the new
deef and dummy and told the rest; so all the scholars was chuck full of him and
couldn’t talk about anything else, and was in a sweat to get a sight of
him because they hadn’t ever seen a deef and dummy in their lives, and it
made a powerful excitement.
Tom said it was tough to have to keep mum now; said we would be heroes if we
could come out and tell all we knowed; but after all, it was still more heroic
to keep mum, there warn’t two boys in a million could do it. That was Tom
Sawyer’s idea about it, and I reckoned there warn’t anybody could
better it.
![[Illustration]](images/0251.jpg)
Fetching another howl.
It was a long square, the shape of a grave; the rain had made it sink down and
show the shape. The minute we come and stood there we looked at one another and
never said a word. When the dog had dug down only a few inches he grabbed
something and pulled it up, and it was an arm and a sleeve. Tom kind of gasped
out, and says:
“Come away, Huck—it’s found.”
I just felt awful. We struck for the road and fetched the first men that come
along. They got a spade at the crib and dug out the body, and you never see
such an excitement. You couldn’t make anything out of the face, but you
didn’t need to. Everybody said:
“Poor Jubiter; it’s his clothes, to the last rag!”
Some rushed off to spread the news and tell the justice of the peace and have
an inquest, and me and Tom lit out for the house. Tom was all afire and
’most out of breath when we come tearing in where Uncle Silas and Aunt
Sally and Benny was. Tom sung out:
“Me and Huck’s found Jubiter Dunlap’s corpse all by ourselves
with a bloodhound, after everybody else had quit hunting and given it up; and
if it hadn’t a been for us it never would ’a’ been
found; and he was murdered too—they done it with a club or
something like that; and I’m going to start in and find the murderer,
next, and I bet I’ll do it!”
Aunt Sally and Benny sprung up pale and astonished, but Uncle Silas fell right
forward out of his chair on to the floor and groans out:
“Oh, my God, you’ve found him Now!”
![[Illustration]](images/0259.jpg)
Kept me up ’most all night.
Tom Sawyer racked the head off of himself all that month trying to plan some
way out for Uncle Silas, and many’s the night he kept me up ’most
all night with this kind of tiresome work, but he couldn’t seem to get on
the right track no way. As for me, I reckoned a body might as well give it up,
it all looked so blue and I was so downhearted; but he wouldn’t. He stuck
to the business right along, and went on planning and thinking and ransacking
his head.
So at last the trial come on, towards the middle of October, and we was all in
the court. The place was jammed, of course. Poor old Uncle Silas, he looked
more like a dead person than a live one, his eyes was so hollow and he looked
so thin and so mournful. Benny she set on one side of him and Aunt Sally on the
other, and they had veils on, and was full of trouble. But Tom he set by our
lawyer, and had his finger in everywheres, of course. The lawyer let him, and
the judge let him. He ’most took the business out of the lawyer’s
hands sometimes; which was well enough, because that was only a mud-turtle of a
back-settlement lawyer and didn’t know enough to come in when it rains,
as the saying is.
They swore in the jury, and then the lawyer for the prostitution got up and
begun. He made a terrible speech against the old man, that made him moan and
groan, and made Benny and Aunt Sally cry. The way hetold about the
murder kind of knocked us all stupid it was so different from the old
man’s tale. He said he was going to prove that Uncle Silas was
seen to kill Jubiter Dunlap by two good witnesses, and done it
deliberate, and said he was going to kill him the very minute he hit him
with the club; and they seen him hide Jubiter in the bushes, and they seen that
Jubiter was stone-dead. And said Uncle Silas come later and lugged Jubiter down
into the tobacker field, and two men seen him do it. And said Uncle Silas
turned out, away in the night, and buried Jubiter, and a man seen him at it.
I says to myself, poor old Uncle Silas has been lying about it because he
reckoned nobody seen him and he couldn’t bear to break Aunt Sally’s
heart and Benny’s; and right he was: as for me, I would ’a’
lied the same way, and so would anybody that had any feeling, to save them such
misery and sorrow which they warn’t no ways responsible for. Well,
it made our lawyer look pretty sick; and it knocked Tom silly, too, for a
little spell, but then he braced up and let on that he warn’t
worried—but I knowed he was, all the same. And the
people—my, but it made a stir amongst them!
![[Illustration]](images/0263.jpg)
Our lawyer.
And when that lawyer was done telling the jury what he was going to prove, he
set down and begun to work his witnesses.
First, he called a lot of them to show that there was bad blood betwixt Uncle
Silas and the diseased; and they told how they had heard Uncle Silas threaten
the diseased, at one time and another, and how it got worse and worse and
everybody was talking about it, and how diseased got afraid of his life, and
told two or three of them he was certain Uncle Silas would up and kill him some
time or another.
Tom and our lawyer asked them some questions; but it warn’t no use, they
stuck to what they said.
Next, they called up Lem Beebe, and he took the stand. It come into my mind,
then, how Lem and Jim Lane had come along talking, that time, about borrowing a
dog or something from Jubiter Dunlap; and that brought up the blackberries and
the lantern; and that brought up Bill and Jack Withers, and how they passed by,
talking about a nigger stealing Uncle Silas’s corn; and that fetched up
our old ghost that come along about the same time and scared us so—and
here hewas too, and a privileged character, on accounts of his being
deef and dumb and a stranger, and they had fixed him a chair inside the
railing, where he could cross his legs and be comfortable, whilst the other
people was all in a jam so they couldn’t hardly breathe. So it all come
back to me just the way it was that day; and it made me mournful to think how
pleasant it was up to then, and how miserable ever since.
Lem Beebe, sworn, said—“I was a-coming along, that day,
second of September, and Jim Lane was with me, and it was towards sundown, and
we heard loud talk, like quarrelling, and we was very close, only the hazel
bushes between (that’s along the fence); and we heard a voice say,
‘I’ve told you more’n once I’d kill you,’ and
knowed it was this prisoner’s voice; and then we see a club come up above
the bushes and down out of sight again, and heard a smashing thump and then a
groan or two: and then we crope soft to where we could see, and there laid
Jupiter Dunlap dead, and this prisoner standing over him with the club; and the
next he hauled the dead man into a clump of bushes and hid him, and then we
stooped low, to be out of sight, and got away.”
Well, it was awful. It kind of froze everybody’s blood to hear it, and
the house was ’most as still whilst he was telling it as if there
warn’t nobody in it. And when he was done, you could hear them gasp and
sigh, all over the house, and look at one another the same as to say,
“Ain’t it perfectly terrible—ain’t it awful!”
Now happened a thing that astonished me. All the time the first witnesses was
proving the bad blood and the threats and all that, Tom Sawyer was alive and
laying for them; and the minute they was through, he went for them, and done
his level best to catch them in lies and spile their testimony. But now, how
different. When Lem first begun to talk, and never said anything about speaking
to Jubiter or trying to borrow a dog off of him, he was all alive and laying
for Lem, and you could see he was getting ready to cross-question him to death
pretty soon, and then I judged him and me would go on the stand by and by and
tell what we heard him and Jim Lane say. But the next time I looked at Tom I
got the cold shivers. Why, he was in the brownest study you ever
see—miles and miles away. He warn’t hearing a word Lem Beebe was
saying; and when he got through he was still in that brown-study, just the
same. Our lawyer joggled him, and then he looked up startled, and says,
“Take the witness if you want him. Lemme alone—I want to
think.”
Well, that beat me. I couldn’t understand it. And Benny and her
mother—oh, they looked sick, they was so troubled. They shoved their
veils to one side and tried to get his eye, but it warn’t any use, and I
couldn’t get his eye either. So the mud-turtle he tackled the witness,
but it didn’t amount to nothing; and he made a mess of it.
Then they called up Jim Lane, and he told the very same story over again,
exact. Tom never listened to this one at all, but set there thinking and
thinking, miles and miles away. So the mud-turtle went in alone again and come
out just as flat as he done before. The lawyer for the prostitution looked very
comfortable, but the judge looked disgusted. You see, Tom was just the same as
a regular lawyer, nearly, because it was Arkansaw law for a prisoner to choose
anybody he wanted to help his lawyer, and Tom had had Uncle Silas shove him
into the case, and now he was botching it and you could see the judge
didn’t like it much. All that the mud-turtle got out of Lem and Jim was
this: he asked them:
“Why didn’t you go and tell what you saw?”
“We was afraid we would get mixed up in it ourselves. And we was just
starting down the river a-hunting for all the week besides; but as soon as we
come back we found out they’d been searching for the body, so then we
went and told Brace Dunlap all about it.”
“When was that?”
“Saturday night, September 9th.”
The judge he spoke up and says:
“Mr. Sheriff, arrest these two witnesses on suspicions of being
accessionary after the fact to the murder.”
The lawyer for the prostitution jumps up all excited, and says:
“Your honor! I protest against this extraordi—”
![[Illustration]](images/0269.jpg)
“Set down!” says the judge.
“Set down!” says the judge, pulling his bowie and laying it on his
pulpit. “I beg you to respect the Court.”
So he done it. Then he called Bill Withers.
Bill Withers, sworn, said: “I was coming along about sundown,
Saturday, September 2d, by the prisoner’s field, and my brother Jack was
with me and we seen a man toting off something heavy on his back and allowed it
was a nigger stealing corn; we couldn’t see distinct; next we made out
that it was one man carrying another; and the way it hung, so kind of limp, we
judged it was somebody that was drunk; and by the man’s walk we said it
was Parson Silas, and we judged he had found Sam Cooper drunk in the road,
which he was always trying to reform him, and was toting him out of
danger.”
It made the people shiver to think of poor old Uncle Silas toting off the
diseased down to the place in his tobacker field where the dog dug up the body,
but there warn’t much sympathy around amongst the faces, and I heard one
cuss say “’Tis the coldest blooded work I ever struck, lugging a
murdered man around like that, and going to bury him like a animal, and him a
preacher at that.”
Tom he went on thinking, and never took no notice; so our lawyer took the
witness and done the best he could, and it was plenty poor enough.
Then Jack Withers he come on the stand and told the same tale, just like Bill
done.
And after him comes Brace Dunlap, and he was looking very mournful, and most
crying; and there was a rustle and a stir all around, and everybody got ready
to listen, and lots of the women folks said, “Poor cretur, poor
cretur,” and you could see a many of them wiping their eyes.
Brace Dunlap, sworn, said: “I was in considerable trouble a long
time about my poor brother, but I reckoned things warn’t near so bad as
he made out, and I couldn’t make myself believe anybody would have the
heart to hurt a poor harmless cretur like that”—[by jings, I was
sure I seen Tom give a kind of a faint little start, and then look disappointed
again]—“and you know I could’t think a preacher would
hurt him—it warn’t natural to think such an onlikely thing—so
I never paid much attention, and now I sha’n’t ever, ever forgive
myself; for if I had a done different, my poor brother would be with me this
day, and not laying yonder murdered, and him so harmless.” He kind of
broke down there and choked up, and waited to get his voice; and people all
around said the most pitiful things, and women cried; and it was very still in
there, and solemn, and old Uncle Silas, poor thing, he give a groan right out
so everybody heard him. Then Brace he went on, “Saturday, September 2d,
he didn’t come home to supper. By-and-by I got a little uneasy, and one
of my niggers went over to this prisoner’s place, but come back and said
he warn’t there. So I got uneasier and uneasier, and couldn’t
rest. I went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep; and turned out, away late in
the night, and went wandering over to this prisoner’s place and all
around about there a good while, hoping I would run across my poor brother, and
never knowing he was out of his troubles and gone to a better
shore—” So he broke down and choked up again, and most all the
women was crying now. Pretty soon he got another start and says: “But it
warn’t no use; so at last I went home and tried to get some sleep, but
couldn’t. Well, in a day or two everybody was uneasy, and they got to
talking about this prisoner’s threats, and took to the idea, which I
didn’t take no stock in, that my brother was murdered so they hunted
around and tried to find his body, but couldn’t and give it up. And so I
reckoned he was gone off somers to have a little peace, and would come back to
us when his troubles was kind of healed. But late Saturday night, the 9th, Lem
Beebe and Jim Lane come to my house and told me all—told me the whole
awful ’sassination, and my heart was broke. And then I remembered
something that hadn’t took no hold of me at the time, because reports
said this prisoner had took to walking in his sleep and doing all kind of
things of no consequence, not knowing what he was about. I will tell you what
that thing was that come back into my memory. Away late that awful Saturday
night when I was wandering around about this prisoner’s place, grieving
and troubled, I was down by the corner of the tobacker-field and I heard a
sound like digging in a gritty soil; and I crope nearer and peeped through the
vines that hung on the rail fence and seen this prisoner
shoveling—shoveling with a long-handled shovel—heaving earth
into a big hole that was most filled up; his back was to me, but it was bright
moonlight and I knowed him by his old green baize work-gown with a splattery
white patch in the middle of the back like somebody had hit him with a
snowball. He was burying the man he’d murdered!”
And he slumped down in his chair crying and sobbing, and ’most everybody
in the house busted out wailing, and crying, and saying, “Oh, it’s
awful—awful—horrible!” and there was a most tremendous
excitement, and you couldn’t hear yourself think; and right in the midst
of it up jumps old Uncle Silas, white as a sheet, and sings out:
“It’s true, every word—I murdered him in cold
blood!”
By Jackson, it petrified them! People rose up wild all over the house,
straining and staring for a better look at him, and the judge was hammering
with his mallet and the sheriff yelling “Order—order in the
court—order!”
And all the while the old man stood there a-quaking and his eyes a-burning, and
not looking at his wife and daughter, which was clinging to him and begging him
to keep still, but pawing them off with his hands and saying he would
clear his black soul from crime, he would heave off this load that was
more than he could bear, and he wouldn’t bear it another hour! And
then he raged right along with his awful tale, everybody a-staring and gasping,
judge, jury, lawyers, and everybody, and Benny and Aunt Sally crying their
hearts out. And by George, Tom Sawyer never looked at him once! Never
once—just set there gazing with all his eyes at something else, I
couldn’t tell what. And so the old man raged right along, pouring his
words out like a stream of fire:
![[Illustration]](images/0273.jpg)
I struck to kill.
“I killed him! I am guilty! But I never had the notion in my life to hurt
him or harm him, spite of all them lies about my threatening him, till the very
minute I raised the club—then my heart went cold!—then the pity all
went out of it, and I struck to kill! In that one moment all my wrongs come
into my mind; all the insults that that man and the scoundrel his brother,
there, had put upon me, and how they laid in together to ruin me with the
people, and take away my good name, and drive me to some deed that would
destroy me and my family that hadn’t ever done them no harm, so
help me God! And they done it in a mean revenge—for why? Because my
innocent pure girl here at my side wouldn’t marry that rich, insolent,
ignorant coward, Brace Dunlap, who’s been sniveling here over a brother
he never cared a brass farthing for—” [I see Tom give a jump and
look glad this time, to a dead certainty] “—and in that
moment I’ve told you about, I forgot my God and remembered only my
heart’s bitterness, God forgive me, and I struck to kill. In one second I
was miserably sorry—oh, filled with remorse; but I thought of my poor
family, and I must hide what I’d done for their sakes; and I did
hide that corpse in the bushes; and presently I carried it to the tobacker
field; and in the deep night I went with my shovel and buried it
where—”
Up jumps Tom and shouts:
“Now, I’ve got it!” and waves his hand, oh, ever so
fine and starchy, towards the old man, and says:
“Set down! A murder was done, but you never had no hand in
it!”
![[Illustration]](images/0275.jpg)
A murder was done.
Well, sir, you could a heard a pin drop. And the old man he sunk down kind of
bewildered in his seat and Aunt Sally and Benny didn’t know it, because
they was so astonished and staring at Tom with their mouths open and not
knowing what they was about. And the whole house the same. I never seen people
look so helpless and tangled up, and I hain’t ever seen eyes bug out and
gaze without a blink the way theirn did. Tom says, perfectly ca’m:
“Your honor, may I speak?”
“For God’s sake, yes—go on!” says the judge, so
astonished and mixed up he didn’t know what he was about hardly.
Then Tom he stood there and waited a second or two—that was for to work
up an “effect,” as he calls it—then he started in just as
ca’m as ever, and says:
“For about two weeks now there’s been a little bill sticking on the
front of this courthouse offering two thousand dollars reward for a couple of
big di’monds—stole at St. Louis. Them di’monds is worth
twelve thousand dollars. But never mind about that till I get to it. Now about
this murder. I will tell you all about it—how it happened—who done
it—every detail.”
You could see everybody nestle now, and begin to listen for all they was worth.
“This man here, Brace Dunlap, that’s been sniveling so about his
dead brother that you know he never cared a straw for, wanted to marry
that young girl there, and she wouldn’t have him. So he told Uncle Silas
he would make him sorry. Uncle Silas knowed how powerful he was, and how little
chance he had against such a man, and he was scared and worried, and done
everything he could think of to smooth him over and get him to be good to him:
he even took his no-account brother Jubiter on the farm and give him wages and
stinted his own family to pay them; and Jubiter done everything his brother
could contrive to insult Uncle Silas, and fret and worry him, and try to drive
Uncle Silas into doing him a hurt, so as to injure Uncle Silas with the people.
And it done it. Everybody turned against him and said the meanest kind of
things about him, and it graduly broke his heart—yes, and he was so
worried and distressed that often he warn’t hardly in his right mind.
“Well, on that Saturday that we’ve had so much trouble about, two
of these witnesses here, Lem Beebe and Jim Lane, come along by where Uncle
Silas and Jubiter Dunlap was at work—and that much of what they’ve
said is true, the rest is lies. They didn’t hear Uncle Silas say he would
kill Jubiter; they didn’t hear no blow struck; they didn’t see no
dead man, and they didn’t see Uncle Silas hide anything in the bushes.
Look at them now—how they set there, wishing they hadn’t been so
handy with their tongues; anyway, they’ll wish it before I get done.
“That same Saturday evening Bill and Jack Withers did see one man
lugging off another one. That much of what they said is true, and the rest is
lies. First off they thought it was a nigger stealing Uncle Silas’s
corn—you notice it makes them look silly, now, to find out somebody
overheard them say that. That’s because they found out by and by who it
was that was doing the lugging, and they know best why they swore here
that they took it for Uncle Silas by the gait—which it
wasn’t, and they knowed it when they swore to that lie.
“A man out in the moonlight did see a murdered person put under
ground in the tobacker field—but it wasn’t Uncle Silas that done
the burying. He was in his bed at that very time.
“Now, then, before I go on, I want to ask you if you’ve ever
noticed this: that people, when they’re thinking deep, or when
they’re worried, are most always doing something with their hands, and
they don’t know it, and don’t notice what it is their hands are
doing, some stroke their chins; some stroke their noses; some stroke up
under their chin with their hand; some twirl a chain, some fumble a
button, then there’s some that draws a figure or a letter with their
finger on their cheek, or under their chin or on their under lip. That’smy way. When I’m restless, or worried, or thinking hard, I draw
capital V’s on my cheek or on my under lip or under my chin, and never
anything but capital V’s—and half the time I don’t
notice it and don’t know I’m doing it.”
That was odd. That is just what I do; only I make an O. And I could see people
nodding to one another, same as they do when they mean
“that’ so.”
“Now, then, I’ll go on. That same Saturday—no, it was the
night before—there was a steamboat laying at Flagler’s Landing,
forty miles above here, and it was raining and storming like the nation. And
there was a thief aboard, and he had them two big di’monds that’s
advertised out here on this courthouse door; and he slipped ashore with his
hand-bag and struck out into the dark and the storm, and he was a-hoping he
could get to this town all right and be safe. But he had two pals aboard the
boat, hiding, and he knowed they was going to kill him the first chance they
got and take the di’monds; because all three stole them, and then this
fellow he got hold of them and skipped.
“Well, he hadn’t been gone more’n ten minutes before his pals
found it out, and they jumped ashore and lit out after him. Prob’ly they
burnt matches and found his tracks. Anyway, they dogged along after him all day
Saturday and kept out of his sight; and towards sundown he come to the bunch of
sycamores down by Uncle Silas’s field, and he went in there to get a
disguise out of his hand-bag and put it on before he showed himself here in the
town—and mind you he done that just a little after the time that Uncle
Silas was hitting Jubiter Dunlap over the head with a club—for he
did hit him.
“But the minute the pals see that thief slide into the bunch of
sycamores, they jumped out of the bushes and slid in after him.
“They fell on him and clubbed him to death.
“Yes, for all he screamed and howled so, they never had no mercy on him,
but clubbed him to death. And two men that was running along the road heard him
yelling that way, and they made a rush into the sycamore bunch—which was
where they was bound for, anyway—and when the pals saw them they lit out
and the two new men after them a-chasing them as tight as they could go. But
only a minute or two—then these two new men slipped back very quiet into
the sycamores.
“Then what did they do? I will tell you what they done. They found
where the thief had got his disguise out of his carpet-sack to put on; so one
of them strips and puts on that disguise.”
Tom waited a little here, for some more “effect”—then he
says, very deliberate:
“The man that put on that dead man’s disguise was—Jubiter
Dunlap!”
“Great Scott!” everybody shouted, all over the house, and old Uncle
Silas he looked perfectly astonished.
“Yes, it was Jubiter Dunlap. Not dead, you see. Then they pulled off the
dead man’s boots and put Jubiter Dunlap’s old ragged shoes on the
corpse and put the corpse’s boots on Jubiter Dunlap. Then Jubiter Dunlap
stayed where he was, and the other man lugged the dead body off in the
twilight; and after midnight he went to Uncle Silas’s house, and took his
old green work-robe off of the peg where it always hangs in the passage betwixt
the house and the kitchen and put it on, and stole the long-handled shovel and
went off down into the tobacker field and buried the murdered man.”
He stopped, and stood half a minute. Then—“And who do you reckon
the murdered man was? It was—Jake Dunlap, the long-lost
burglar!”
“Great Scott!”
“And the man that buried him was—Brace Dunlap, his
brother!”
“Great Scott!”
“And who do you reckon is this mowing idiot here that’s letting on
all these weeks to be a deef and dumb stranger? It’s—Jubiter
Dunlap!”
![[Illustration]](images/0281.jpg)
And there was the murdered man.
My land, they all busted out in a howl, and you never see the like of that
excitement since the day you was born. And Tom he made a jump for Jubiter and
snaked off his goggles and his false whiskers, and there was the murdered man,
sure enough, just as alive as anybody! And Aunt Sally and Benny they went to
hugging and crying and kissing and smothering old Uncle Silas to that degree he
was more muddled and confused and mushed up in his mind than he ever was
before, and that is saying considerable. And next, people begun to yell:
“Tom Sawyer! Tom Sawyer! Shut up everybody, and let him go on! Go on, Tom
Sawyer!”
![[Illustration]](images/0285.jpg)
Which made him feel uncommon bully.
Which made him feel uncommon bully, for it was nuts for Tom Sawyer to be a
public character that-away, and a hero, as he calls it. So when it was all
quiet, he says:
“There ain’t much left, only this. When that man there, Bruce
Dunlap, had most worried the life and sense out of Uncle Silas till at last he
plumb lost his mind and hit this other blatherskite, his brother, with a club,
I reckon he seen his chance. Jubiter broke for the woods to hide, and I reckon
the game was for him to slide out, in the night, and leave the country. Then
Brace would make everybody believe Uncle Silas killed him and hid his body
somers; and that would ruin Uncle Silas and drive him out of the
country—hang him, maybe; I dunno. But when they found their dead brother
in the sycamores without knowing him, because he was so battered up, they see
they had a better thing; disguise both and bury Jake and dig him up
presently all dressed up in Jubiter’s clothes, and hire Jim Lane and Bill
Withers and the others to swear to some handy lies—which they done. And
there they set, now, and I told them they would be looking sick before I got
done, and that is the way they’re looking now.
“Well, me and Huck Finn here, we come down on the boat with the thieves,
and the dead one told us all about the di’monds, and said the others
would murder him if they got the chance; and we was going to help him all we
could. We was bound for the sycamores when we heard them killing him in there;
but we was in there in the early morning after the storm and allowed nobody
hadn’t been killed, after all. And when we see Jubiter Dunlap here
spreading around in the very same disguise Jake told us hewas going to
wear, we thought it was Jake his own self—and he was goo-gooing deef and
dumb, and that was according to agreement.
“Well, me and Huck went on hunting for the corpse after the others quit,
and we found it. And was proud, too; but Uncle Silas he knocked us crazy by
telling us hekilled the man. So we was mighty sorry we found the body,
and was bound to save Uncle Silas’s neck if we could; and it was going to
be tough work, too, because he wouldn’t let us break him out of prison
the way we done with our old nigger Jim.
“I done everything I could the whole month to think up some way to save
Uncle Silas, but I couldn’t strike a thing. So when we come into court
to-day I come empty, and couldn’t see no chance anywheres. But by and by
I had a glimpse of something that set me thinking—just a little wee
glimpse—only that, and not enough to make sure; but it set me thinking
hard—and watching, when I was only letting on to think; and by and
by, sure enough, when Uncle Silas was piling out that stuff about him
killing Jubiter Dunlap, I catched that glimpse again, and this time I jumped up
and shut down the proceedings, because I knowed Jubiter Dunlap was
a-setting here before me. I knowed him by a thing which I seen him do—and
I remembered it. I’d seen him do it when I was here a year ago.”
He stopped then, and studied a minute—laying for an
“effect”—I knowed it perfectly well. Then he turned off like
he was going to leave the platform, and says, kind of lazy and indifferent:
“Well, I believe that is all.”
Why, you never heard such a howl!—and it come from the whole house:
“What was it you seen him do? Stay where you are, you little
devil! You think you are going to work a body up till his mouth’s
a-watering and stop there? What was it he done?”
That was it, you see—he just done it to get an “effect”; you
couldn’t ’a’ pulled him off of that platform with a yoke of
oxen.
“Oh, it wasn’t anything much,” he says. “I seen him
looking a little excited when he found Uncle Silas was actually fixing to hang
himself for a murder that warn’t ever done; and he got more and more
nervous and worried, I a-watching him sharp but not seeming to look at
him—and all of a sudden his hands begun to work and fidget, and pretty
soon his left crept up and his finger drawed a cross on his cheek, and
then I had him!”
Well, then they ripped and howled and stomped and clapped their hands till Tom
Sawyer was that proud and happy he didn’t know what to do with himself.
And then the judge he looked down over his pulpit and says:
“My boy, did you see all the various details of this strange
conspiracy and tragedy that you’ve been describing?”
“No, your honor, I didn’t see any of them.”
“Didn’t see any of them! Why, you’ve told the whole history
straight through, just the same as if you’d seen it with your eyes. How
did you manage that?”
Tom says, kind of easy and comfortable:
“Oh, just noticing the evidence and piecing this and that together, your
honor; just an ordinary little bit of detective work; anybody could
’a’ done it.”
“Nothing of the kind! Not two in a million could ’a’ done it.
You are a very remarkable boy.”
Then they let go and give Tom another smashing round, and he—well, he
wouldn’t ’a’ sold out for a silver mine. Then the judge says:
“But are you certain you’ve got this curious history
straight?”
“Perfectly, your honor. Here is Brace Dunlap—let him deny his share
of it if he wants to take the chance; I’ll engage to make him wish he
hadn’t said anything...... Well, you see he’s pretty quiet.
And his brother’s pretty quiet, and them four witnesses that lied so and
got paid for it, they’re pretty quiet. And as for Uncle Silas, it
ain’t any use for him to put in his oar, I wouldn’t believe him
under oath!”
Well, sir, that fairly made them shout; and even the judge he let go and
laughed. Tom he was just feeling like a rainbow. When they was done laughing he
looks up at the judge and says:
“Your honor, there’s a thief in this house.”
“A thief?”
“Yes, sir. And he’s got them twelve-thousand-dollar di’monds
on him.”
By gracious, but it made a stir! Everybody went shouting:
“Which is him? which is him? p’int him out!”
And the judge says:
“Point him out, my lad. Sheriff, you will arrest him. Which one is
it?”
Tom says:
“This late dead man here—Jubiter Dunlap.”
Then there was another thundering let-go of astonishment and excitement; but
Jubiter, which was astonished enough before, was just fairly putrified with
astonishment this time. And he spoke up, about half crying, and says:
“Now that’s a lie. Your honor, it ain’t fair;
I’m plenty bad enough without that. I done the other things—Brace
he put me up to it, and persuaded me, and promised he’d make me rich,
some day, and I done it, and I’m sorry I done it, and I wisht I
hadn’t; but I hain’t stole no di’monds, and I hain’tgot no di’monds; I wisht I may never stir if it ain’t so.
The sheriff can search me and see.”
Tom says:
“Your honor, it wasn’t right to call him a thief, and I’ll
let up on that a little. He did steal the di’monds, but he didn’t
know it. He stole them from his brother Jake when he was laying dead, after
Jake had stole them from the other thieves; but Jubiter didn’t know he
was stealing them; and he’s been swelling around here with them a month;
yes, sir, twelve thousand dollars’ worth of di’monds on
him—all that riches, and going around here every day just like a poor
man. Yes, your honor, he’s got them on him now.”
The judge spoke up and says:
“Search him, sheriff.”
![[Illustration]](images/0205.jpg)
Searched his seams and his pockets and his socks.
Well, sir, the sheriff he ransacked him high and low, and everywhere: searched
his hat, socks, seams, boots, everything—and Tom he stood there quiet,
laying for another of them effects of hisn. Finally the sheriff he give it up,
and everybody looked disappointed, and Jubiter says:
“There, now! what’d I tell you?”
And the judge says:
“It appears you were mistaken this time, my boy.”
Then Tom took an attitude and let on to be studying with all his might, and
scratching his head. Then all of a sudden he glanced up chipper, and says:
“Oh, now I’ve got it! I’d forgot.”
Which was a lie, and I knowed it. Then he says:
“Will somebody be good enough to lend me a little small screwdriver?
There was one in your brother’s hand-bag that you smouched, Jubiter, but
I reckon you didn’t fetch it with you.”
“No, I didn’t. I didn’t want it, and I give it away.”
“That’s because you didn’t know what it was for.”
Jubiter had his boots on again, by now, and when the thing Tom wanted was
passed over the people’s heads till it got to him, he says to Jubiter:
“Put up your foot on this chair.” And he kneeled down and begun to
unscrew the heel-plate, everybody watching; and when he got that big
di’mond out of that boot-heel and held it up and let it flash and blaze
and squirt sunlight everwhichaway, it just took everybody’s breath; and
Jubiter he looked so sick and sorry you never see the like of it. And when Tom
held up the other di’mond he looked sorrier than ever. Land! he was
thinking how he would ’a’ skipped out and been rich and independent
in a foreign land if he’d only had the luck to guess what the screwdriver
was in the carpet-bag for.
Well, it was a most exciting time, take it all around, and Tom got cords of
glory. The judge took the di’monds, and stood up in his pulpit, and
cleared his throat, and shoved his spectacles back on his head, and says:
“I’ll keep them and notify the owners; and when they send for them
it will be a real pleasure to me to hand you the two thousand dollars, for
you’ve earned the money—yes, and you’ve earned the deepest
and most sincerest thanks of this community besides, for lifting a wronged and
innocent family out of ruin and shame, and saving a good and honorable man from
a felon’s death, and for exposing to infamy and the punishment of the law
a cruel and odious scoundrel and his miserable creatures!”
Well, sir, if there’d been a brass band to bust out some music, then, it
would ’a’ been just the perfectest thing I ever see, and Tom Sawyer
he said the same.
Then the sheriff he nabbed Brace Dunlap and his crowd, and by and by next month
the judge had them up for trial and jailed the whole lot. And everybody crowded
back to Uncle Silas’s little old church, and was ever so loving and kind
to him and the family and couldn’t do enough for them; and Uncle Silas he
preached them the blamedest jumbledest idiotic sermons you ever struck, and
would tangle you up so you couldn’t find your way home in daylight; but
the people never let on but what they thought it was the clearest and brightest
and elegantest sermons that ever was; and they would set there and cry, for
love and pity; but, by George, they give me the jim-jams and the fan-tods and
caked up what brains I had, and turned them solid; but by and by they loved the
old man’s intellects back into him again, and he was as sound in his
skull as ever he was, which ain’t no flattery, I reckon. And so the whole
family was as happy as birds, and nobody could be gratefuler and lovinger than
what they was to Tom Sawyer; and the same to me, though I hadn’t done
nothing. And when the two thousand dollars come, Tom give half of it to me, and
never told anybody so, which didn’t surprise me, because I knowed him.
![[Illustration]](images/0291.jpg)
Tom, give half of it to me.
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