CHAPTER X

THE two boys flew on and on, toward the
village, speechless with horror. They
glanced backward over their shoulders
from time to time, apprehensively, as
if they feared they might be followed.
Every stump that started up in their path
seemed a man and an enemy, and made them catch
their breath; and as they sped by some outlying cot-
tages that lay near the village, the barking of the
aroused watch-dogs seemed to give wings to their feet.

"If we can only get to the old tannery before we
break down!" whispered Tom, in short catches be-
tween breaths. "I can't stand it much longer."

Huckleberry's hard pantings were his only reply,
and the boys fixed their eyes on the goal of their hopes
and bent to their work to win it. They gained steadily
on it, and at last, breast to breast, they burst through
the open door and fell grateful and exhausted in the
sheltering shadows beyond. By and by their pulses
slowed down, and Tom whispered:

"Huckleberry, what do you reckon'll come of this?"

"If Doctor Robinson dies, I reckon hanging'll come
of it."

"Do you though?"

"Why, I KNOW it, Tom."

Tom thought a while, then he said:

"Who'll tell? We?"

"What are you talking about? S'pose something
happened and Injun Joe DIDN'T hang? Why, he'd
kill us some time or other, just as dead sure as we're
a laying here."

"That's just what I was thinking to myself, Huck."

"If anybody tells, let Muff Potter do it, if he's fool
enough. He's generally drunk enough."

Tom said nothing -- went on thinking. Presently
he whispered:

"Huck, Muff Potter don't know it. How can he
tell?"

"What's the reason he don't know it?"

"Because he'd just got that whack when Injun
Joe done it. D'you reckon he could see anything?
D'you reckon he knowed anything?"

"By hokey, that's so, Tom!"

"And besides, look-a-here -- maybe that whack done
for HIM!"

"No, 'taint likely, Tom. He had liquor in him;
I could see that; and besides, he always has. Well,
when pap's full, you might take and belt him over
the head with a church and you couldn't phase him.
He says so, his own self. So it's the same with Muff
Potter, of course. But if a man was dead sober,
I reckon maybe that whack might fetch him; I
dono."

After another reflective silence, Tom said:

"Hucky, you sure you can keep mum?"

"Tom, we GOT to keep mum. You know that.
That Injun devil wouldn't make any more of drownd-
ing us than a couple of cats, if we was to squeak 'bout
this and they didn't hang him. Now, look-a-here,
Tom, less take and swear to one another -- that's what
we got to do -- swear to keep mum."

"I'm agreed. It's the best thing. Would you
just hold hands and swear that we --"

"Oh no, that wouldn't do for this. That's good
enough for little rubbishy common things -- specially
with gals, cuz THEY go back on you anyway, and blab
if they get in a huff -- but there orter be writing 'bout
a big thing like this. And blood."

Tom's whole being applauded this idea. It was
deep, and dark, and awful; the hour, the circum-
stances, the surroundings, were in keeping with it.
He picked up a clean pine shingle that lay in the moon-
light, took a little fragment of "red keel" out of his
pocket, got the moon on his work, and painfully scrawl-
ed these lines, emphasizing each slow down-stroke by
clamping his tongue between his teeth, and letting up
the pressure on the up-strokes. [See next page.]

   "Huck Finn and
    Tom Sawyer swears
    they will keep mum
    about This and They
    wish They may Drop
    down dead in Their
    Tracks if They ever
    Tell and Rot.

Huckleberry was filled with admiration of Tom's
facility in writing, and the sublimity of his language.
He at once took a pin from his lapel and was going
to prick his flesh, but Tom said:

"Hold on! Don't do that. A pin's brass. It
might have verdigrease on it."

"What's verdigrease?"

"It's p'ison. That's what it is. You just swaller
some of it once -- you'll see."

So Tom unwound the thread from one of his needles,
and each boy pricked the ball of his thumb and squeezed
out a drop of blood. In time, after many squeezes,
Tom managed to sign his initials, using the ball of his
little finger for a pen. Then he showed Huckleberry
how to make an H and an F, and the oath was com-
plete. They buried the shingle close to the wall, with
some dismal ceremonies and incantations, and the
fetters that bound their tongues were considered to be
locked and the key thrown away.

A figure crept stealthily through a break in the
other end of the ruined building, now, but they did
not notice it.

"Tom," whispered Huckleberry, "does this keep
us from EVER telling -- ALWAYS?"

"Of course it does. It don't make any difference
WHAT happens, we got to keep mum. We'd drop
down dead -- don't YOU know that?"

"Yes, I reckon that's so."

They continued to whisper for some little time.
Presently a dog set up a long, lugubrious howl just
outside -- within ten feet of them. The boys clasped
each other suddenly, in an agony of fright.

"Which of us does he mean?" gasped Huckle-
berry.

"I dono -- peep through the crack. Quick!"

"No, YOU, Tom!"

"I can't -- I can't DO it, Huck!"

"Please, Tom. There 'tis again!"

"Oh, lordy, I'm thankful!" whispered Tom. "I
know his voice. It's Bull Harbison." *

[* If Mr. Harbison owned a slave named Bull, Tom
would have spoken of him as "Harbison's Bull," but
a son or a dog of that name was "Bull Harbison."]

"Oh, that's good -- I tell you, Tom, I was most
scared to death; I'd a bet anything it was a STRAY dog."

The dog howled again. The boys' hearts sank
once more.

"Oh, my! that ain't no Bull Harbison!" whispered
Huckleberry. "DO, Tom!"

Tom, quaking with fear, yielded, and put his eye
to the crack. His whisper was hardly audible when
he said:

"Oh, Huck, IT S A STRAY DOG!"

"Quick, Tom, quick! Who does he mean?"

"Huck, he must mean us both -- we're right to-
gether."

"Oh, Tom, I reckon we're goners. I reckon there
ain't no mistake 'bout where I'LL go to. I been so
wicked."

"Dad fetch it! This comes of playing hookey and
doing everything a feller's told NOT to do. I might a
been good, like Sid, if I'd a tried -- but no, I wouldn't,
of course. But if ever I get off this time, I lay I'll just
WALLER in Sunday-schools!" And Tom began to snuffle
a little.

"YOU bad!" and Huckleberry began to snuffle too.
"Consound it, Tom Sawyer, you're just old pie, 'long-
side o' what I am. Oh, LORDY, lordy, lordy, I wisht I
only had half your chance."

Tom choked off and whispered:

"Look, Hucky, look! He's got his BACK to us!"

Hucky looked, with joy in his heart.

"Well, he has, by jingoes! Did he before?"

"Yes, he did. But I, like a fool, never thought.
Oh, this is bully, you know. NOW who can he mean?"

The howling stopped. Tom pricked up his ears.

"Sh! What's that?" he whispered.

"Sounds like -- like hogs grunting. No -- it's some-
body snoring, Tom."

"That IS it! Where 'bouts is it, Huck?"

"I bleeve it's down at 'tother end. Sounds so,
anyway. Pap used to sleep there, sometimes, 'long
with the hogs, but laws bless you, he just lifts things
when HE snores. Besides, I reckon he ain't ever com-
ing back to this town any more."

The spirit of adventure rose in the boys' souls once
more.

"Hucky, do you das't to go if I lead?"

"I don't like to, much. Tom, s'pose it's Injun Joe!"

Tom quailed. But presently the temptation rose
up strong again and the boys agreed to try, with the
understanding that they would take to their heels if
the snoring stopped. So they went tiptoeing stealth-
ily down, the one behind the other. When they had
got to within five steps of the snorer, Tom stepped on
a stick, and it broke with a sharp snap. The man
moaned, writhed a little, and his face came into the
moonlight. It was Muff Potter. The boys' hearts
had stood still, and their hopes too, when the man
moved, but their fears passed away now. They tip-
toed out, through the broken weather-boarding, and
stopped at a little distance to exchange a parting word.
That long, lugubrious howl rose on the night air again!
They turned and saw the strange dog standing within
a few feet of where Potter was lying, and FACING Potter,
with his nose pointing heavenward.

"Oh, geeminy, it's HIM!" exclaimed both boys, in a
breath.

"Say, Tom -- they say a stray dog come howling
around Johnny Miller's house, 'bout midnight, as
much as two weeks ago; and a whippoorwill come
in and lit on the banisters and sung, the very same
evening; and there ain't anybody dead there yet."

"Well, I know that. And suppose there ain't.
Didn't Gracie Miller fall in the kitchen fire and burn
herself terrible the very next Saturday?"

"Yes, but she ain't DEAD. And what's more, she's
getting better, too."

"All right, you wait and see. She's a goner, just
as dead sure as Muff Potter's a goner. That's what
the niggers say, and they know all about these kind
of things, Huck."

Then they separated, cogitating. When Tom crept
in at his bedroom window the night was almost spent.
He undressed with excessive caution, and fell asleep
congratulating himself that nobody knew of his esca-
pade. He was not aware that the gently-snoring Sid
was awake, and had been so for an hour.

When Tom awoke, Sid was dressed and gone.
There was a late look in the light, a late sense in the
atmosphere. He was startled. Why had he not been
called -- persecuted till he was up, as usual? The
thought filled him with bodings. Within five minutes
he was dressed and down-stairs, feeling sore and
drowsy. The family were still at table, but they had
finished breakfast. There was no voice of rebuke;
but there were averted eyes; there was a silence and an
air of solemnity that struck a chill to the culprit's heart.
He sat down and tried to seem gay, but it was up-hill
work; it roused no smile, no response, and he lapsed
into silence and let his heart sink down to the depths.

After breakfast his aunt took him aside, and Tom
almost brightened in the hope that he was going to
be flogged; but it was not so. His aunt wept over
him and asked him how he could go and break her
old heart so; and finally told him to go on, and ruin
himself and bring her gray hairs with sorrow to the
grave, for it was no use for her to try any more. This
was worse than a thousand whippings, and Tom's
heart was sorer now than his body. He cried, he
pleaded for forgiveness, promised to reform over and
over again, and then received his dismissal, feeling that
he had won but an imperfect forgiveness and established
but a feeble confidence.

He left the presence too miserable to even feel re-
vengeful toward Sid; and so the latter's prompt retreat
through the back gate was unnecessary. He moped
to school gloomy and sad, and took his flogging, along
with Joe Harper, for playing hookey the day before,
with the air of one whose heart was busy with heavier
woes and wholly dead to trifles. Then he betook him-
self to his seat, rested his elbows on his desk and his
jaws in his hands, and stared at the wall with the stony
stare of suffering that has reached the limit and can
no further go. His elbow was pressing against some
hard substance. After a long time he slowly and
sadly changed his position, and took up this object
with a sigh. It was in a paper. He unrolled it. A
long, lingering, colossal sigh followed, and his heart
broke. It was his brass andiron knob!

This final feather broke the camel's back.
<--split-->
CHAPTER XI

CLOSE upon the hour of noon the whole
village was suddenly electrified with the
ghastly news. No need of the as yet un-
dreamed-of telegraph; the tale flew from
man to man, from group to group, from
house to house, with little less than tele-
graphic speed. Of course the schoolmaster gave holi-
day for that afternoon; the town would have thought
strangely of him if he had not.

A gory knife had been found close to the murdered
man, and it had been recognized by somebody as be-
longing to Muff Potter -- so the story ran. And it was
said that a belated citizen had come upon Potter wash-
ing himself in the "branch" about one or two o'clock
in the morning, and that Potter had at once sneaked
off -- suspicious circumstances, especially the washing
which was not a habit with Potter. It was also said
that the town had been ransacked for this "murderer"
(the public are not slow in the matter of sifting evidence
and arriving at a verdict), but that he could not be
found. Horsemen had departed down all the roads
in every direction, and the Sheriff "was confident"
that he would be captured before night.

All the town was drifting toward the graveyard.
Tom's heartbreak vanished and he joined the pro-
cession, not because he would not a thousand times
rather go anywhere else, but because an awful, un-
accountable fascination drew him on. Arrived at the
dreadful place, he wormed his small body through
the crowd and saw the dismal spectacle. It seemed
to him an age since he was there before. Somebody
pinched his arm. He turned, and his eyes met Huckle-
berry's. Then both looked elsewhere at once, and
wondered if anybody had noticed anything in their
mutual glance. But everybody was talking, and intent
upon the grisly spectacle before them.

"Poor fellow!" "Poor young fellow!" "This ought
to be a lesson to grave robbers!" "Muff Potter'll hang
for this if they catch him!" This was the drift of re-
mark; and the minister said, "It was a judgment; His
hand is here."

Now Tom shivered from head to heel; for his eye
fell upon the stolid face of Injun Joe. At this moment
the crowd began to sway and struggle, and voices
shouted, "It's him! it's him! he's coming himself!"

"Who? Who?" from twenty voices.

"Muff Potter!"

"Hallo, he's stopped! -- Look out, he's turning!
Don't let him get away!"

People in the branches of the trees over Tom's head
said he wasn't trying to get away -- he only looked
doubtful and perplexed.

"Infernal impudence!" said a bystander; "wanted
to come and take a quiet look at his work, I reckon --
didn't expect any company."

The crowd fell apart, now, and the Sheriff came
through, ostentatiously leading Potter by the arm.
The poor fellow's face was haggard, and his eyes
showed the fear that was upon him. When he stood
before the murdered man, he shook as with a palsy,
and he put his face in his hands and burst into tears.

"I didn't do it, friends," he sobbed; "'pon my word
and honor I never done it."

"Who's accused you?" shouted a voice.

This shot seemed to carry home. Potter lifted his
face and looked around him with a pathetic hope-
lessness in his eyes. He saw Injun Joe, and exclaimed:

"Oh, Injun Joe, you promised me you'd never --"

"Is that your knife?" and it was thrust before him
by the Sheriff.

Potter would have fallen if they had not caught him
and eased him to the ground. Then he said:

"Something told me 't if I didn't come back and
get --" He shuddered; then waved his nerveless hand
with a vanquished gesture and said, "Tell 'em, Joe,
tell 'em -- it ain't any use any more."

Then Huckleberry and Tom stood dumb and star-
ing, and heard the stony-hearted liar reel off his se-
rene statement, they expecting every moment that the
clear sky would deliver God's lightnings upon his head,
and wondering to see how long the stroke was delayed.
And when he had finished and still stood alive and
whole, their wavering impulse to break their oath and
save the poor betrayed prisoner's life faded and vanished
away, for plainly this miscreant had sold himself to
Satan and it would be fatal to meddle with the property
of such a power as that.

"Why didn't you leave? What did you want to
come here for?" somebody said.

"I couldn't help it -- I couldn't help it," Potter
moaned. "I wanted to run away, but I couldn't seem
to come anywhere but here." And he fell to sobbing
again.

Injun Joe repeated his statement, just as calmly,
a few minutes afterward on the inquest, under oath;
and the boys, seeing that the lightnings were still
withheld, were confirmed in their belief that Joe had
sold himself to the devil. He was now become, to
them, the most balefully interesting object they had
ever looked upon, and they could not take their fas-
cinated eyes from his face.

They inwardly resolved to watch him nights, when
opportunity should offer, in the hope of getting a glimpse
of his dread master.

Injun Joe helped to raise the body of the murdered
man and put it in a wagon for removal; and it was
whispered through the shuddering crowd that the
wound bled a little! The boys thought that this happy
circumstance would turn suspicion in the right direction;
but they were disappointed, for more than one villager
remarked:

"It was within three feet of Muff Potter when it
done it."

Tom's fearful secret and gnawing conscience dis-
turbed his sleep for as much as a week after this; and
at breakfast one morning Sid said:

"Tom, you pitch around and talk in your sleep so
much that you keep me awake half the time."

Tom blanched and dropped his eyes.

"It's a bad sign," said Aunt Polly, gravely. "What
you got on your mind, Tom?"

"Nothing. Nothing 't I know of." But the boy's
hand shook so that he spilled his coffee.

"And you do talk such stuff," Sid said. "Last
night you said, 'It's blood, it's blood, that's what it is!'
You said that over and over. And you said, 'Don't
torment me so -- I'll tell!' Tell WHAT? What is it you'll
tell?"

Everything was swimming before Tom. There is
no telling what might have happened, now, but luckily
the concern passed out of Aunt Polly's face and she
came to Tom's relief without knowing it. She said:

"Sho! It's that dreadful murder. I dream about
it most every night myself. Sometimes I dream it's
me that done it."

Mary said she had been affected much the same
way. Sid seemed satisfied. Tom got out of the
presence as quick as he plausibly could, and after that
he complained of toothache for a week, and tied up
his jaws every night. He never knew that Sid lay
nightly watching, and frequently slipped the bandage
free and then leaned on his elbow listening a good while
at a time, and afterward slipped the bandage back to
its place again. Tom's distress of mind wore off
gradually and the toothache grew irksome and was
discarded. If Sid really managed to make anything
out of Tom's disjointed mutterings, he kept it to him-
self.

It seemed to Tom that his schoolmates never would
get done holding inquests on dead cats, and thus
keeping his trouble present to his mind. Sid noticed
that Tom never was coroner at one of these inquiries,
though it had been his habit to take the lead in all
new enterprises; he noticed, too, that Tom never acted
as a witness -- and that was strange; and Sid did not
overlook the fact that Tom even showed a marked
aversion to these inquests, and always avoided them
when he could. Sid marvelled, but said nothing. How-
ever, even inquests went out of vogue at last, and ceased
to torture Tom's conscience.

Every day or two, during this time of sorrow, Tom
watched his opportunity and went to the little grated
jail-window and smuggled such small comforts through
to the "murderer" as he could get hold of. The jail
was a trifling little brick den that stood in a marsh at
the edge of the village, and no guards were afforded for
it; indeed, it was seldom occupied. These offerings
greatly helped to ease Tom's conscience.

The villagers had a strong desire to tar-and-feather
Injun Joe and ride him on a rail, for body-snatching,
but so formidable was his character that nobody could
be found who was willing to take the lead in the matter,
so it was dropped. He had been careful to begin both
of his inquest-statements with the fight, without con-
fessing the grave-robbery that preceded it; therefore
it was deemed wisest not to try the case in the courts
at present.
<--split-->
CHAPTER XII

ONE of the reasons why Tom's mind had
drifted away from its secret troubles was,
that it had found a new and weighty
matter to interest itself about. Becky
Thatcher had stopped coming to school.
Tom had struggled with his pride a few
days, and tried to "whistle her down the wind," but
failed. He began to find himself hanging around her
father's house, nights, and feeling very miserable. She
was ill. What if she should die! There was dis-
traction in the thought. He no longer took an interest
in war, nor even in piracy. The charm of life was
gone; there was nothing but dreariness left. He put
his hoop away, and his bat; there was no joy in them
any more. His aunt was concerned. She began to try
all manner of remedies on him. She was one of those
people who are infatuated with patent medicines and
all new-fangled methods of producing health or mending
it. She was an inveterate experimenter in these things.
When something fresh in this line came out she was in a
fever, right away, to try it; not on herself, for she was
never ailing, but on anybody else that came handy.
She was a subscriber for all the "Health" periodicals
and phrenological frauds; and the solemn ignorance
they were inflated with was breath to her nostrils.
All the "rot" they contained about ventilation, and
how to go to bed, and how to get up, and what to
eat, and what to drink, and how much exercise to
take, and what frame of mind to keep one's self in,
and what sort of clothing to wear, was all gospel to
her, and she never observed that her health-journals
of the current month customarily upset everything
they had recommended the month before. She was
as simple-hearted and honest as the day was long,
and so she was an easy victim. She gathered together
her quack periodicals and her quack medicines, and
thus armed with death, went about on her pale horse,
metaphorically speaking, with "hell following after."
But she never suspected that she was not an angel of
healing and the balm of Gilead in disguise, to the
suffering neighbors.

The water treatment was new, now, and Tom's low
condition was a windfall to her. She had him out at
daylight every morning, stood him up in the wood-
shed and drowned him with a deluge of cold water;
then she scrubbed him down with a towel like a
file, and so brought him to; then she rolled him
up in a wet sheet and put him away under blank-
ets till she sweated his soul clean and "the yel-
low stains of it came through his pores" -- as Tom
said.

Yet notwithstanding all this, the boy grew more
and more melancholy and pale and dejected. She
added hot baths, sitz baths, shower baths, and plunges.
The boy remained as dismal as a hearse. She began
to assist the water with a slim oatmeal diet and blister-
plasters. She calculated his capacity as she would a
jug's, and filled him up every day with quack cure-alls.

Tom had become indifferent to persecution by this
time. This phase filled the old lady's heart with
consternation. This indifference must be broken up
at any cost. Now she heard of Pain-killer for the
first time. She ordered a lot at once. She tasted it
and was filled with gratitude. It was simply fire in a
liquid form. She dropped the water treatment and
everything else, and pinned her faith to Pain-killer.
She gave Tom a teaspoonful and watched with the
deepest anxiety for the result. Her troubles were in-
stantly at rest, her soul at peace again; for the "in-
difference" was broken up. The boy could not have
shown a wilder, heartier interest, if she had built a fire
under him.

Tom felt that it was time to wake up; this sort of
life might be romantic enough, in his blighted con-
dition, but it was getting to have too little sentiment
and too much distracting variety about it. So he
thought over various plans for relief, and finally hit
pon that of professing to be fond of Pain-killer. He
asked for it so often that he became a nuisance, and
his aunt ended by telling him to help himself and quit
bothering her. If it had been Sid, she would have had
no misgivings to alloy her delight; but since it was Tom,
she watched the bottle clandestinely. She found that
the medicine did really diminish, but it did not occur
to her that the boy was mending the health of a crack
in the sitting-room floor with it.

One day Tom was in the act of dosing the crack
when his aunt's yellow cat came along, purring, ey-
ing the teaspoon avariciously, and begging for a taste.
Tom said:

"Don't ask for it unless you want it, Peter."

But Peter signified that he did want it.

"You better make sure."

Peter was sure.

"Now you've asked for it, and I'll give it to you,
because there ain't anything mean about me; but
if you find you don't like it, you mustn't blame any-
body but your own self."

Peter was agreeable. So Tom pried his mouth
open and poured down the Pain-killer. Peter sprang
a couple of yards in the air, and then delivered a
war-whoop and set off round and round the room,
banging against furniture, upsetting flower-pots, and
making general havoc. Next he rose on his hind
feet and pranced around, in a frenzy of enjoyment,
with his head over his shoulder and his voice pro-
claiming his unappeasable happiness. Then he went
tearing around the house again spreading chaos and
destruction in his path. Aunt Polly entered in time
to see him throw a few double summersets, deliver a
final mighty hurrah, and sail through the open window,
carrying the rest of the flower-pots with him. The
old lady stood petrified with astonishment, peering
over her glasses; Tom lay on the floor expiring with
laughter.

"Tom, what on earth ails that cat?"

"I don't know, aunt," gasped the boy.

"Why, I never see anything like it. What did make
him act so?"

"Deed I don't know, Aunt Polly; cats always act
so when they're having a good time."

"They do, do they?" There was something in the
tone that made Tom apprehensive.

"Yes'm. That is, I believe they do."

"You DO?"

"Yes'm."

The old lady was bending down, Tom watching,
with interest emphasized by anxiety. Too late he
divined her "drift." The handle of the telltale tea-
spoon was visible under the bed-valance. Aunt Polly
took it, held it up. Tom winced, and dropped his eyes.
Aunt Polly raised him by the usual handle -- his ear --
and cracked his head soundly with her thimble.

"Now, sir, what did you want to treat that poor
dumb beast so, for?"

"I done it out of pity for him -- because he hadn't
any aunt."

"Hadn't any aunt! -- you numskull. What has that
got to do with it?"

"Heaps. Because if he'd had one she'd a burnt
him out herself! She'd a roasted his bowels out of him
'thout any more feeling than if he was a human!"

Aunt Polly felt a sudden pang of remorse. This
was putting the thing in a new light; what was cruelty
to a cat MIGHT be cruelty to a boy, too. She began to
soften; she felt sorry. Her eyes watered a little, and
she put her hand on Tom's head and said gently:

"I was meaning for the best, Tom. And, Tom, it
DID do you good."

Tom looked up in her face with just a perceptible
twinkle peeping through his gravity.

"I know you was meaning for the best, aunty, and
so was I with Peter. It done HIM good, too. I never
see him get around so since --"

"Oh, go 'long with you, Tom, before you aggravate
me again. And you try and see if you can't be a good
boy, for once, and you needn't take any more medicine."

Tom reached school ahead of time. It was noticed
that this strange thing had been occurring every day
latterly. And now, as usual of late, he hung about
the gate of the schoolyard instead of playing with his
comrades. He was sick, he said, and he looked it.
He tried to seem to be looking everywhere but whither
he really was looking -- down the road. Presently
Jeff Thatcher hove in sight, and Tom's face lighted;
he gazed a moment, and then turned sorrowfully away.
When Jeff arrived, Tom accosted him; and "led up"
warily to opportunities for remark about Becky, but
the giddy lad never could see the bait. Tom watched
and watched, hoping whenever a frisking frock came in
sight, and hating the owner of it as soon as he saw she
was not the right one. At last frocks ceased to appear,
and he dropped hopelessly into the dumps; he entered
the empty schoolhouse and sat down to suffer. Then
one more frock passed in at the gate, and Tom's heart
gave a great bound. The next instant he was out,
and "going on" like an Indian; yelling, laughing,
chasing boys, jumping over the fence at risk of life and
limb, throwing handsprings, standing on his head --
doing all the heroic things he could conceive of, and
keeping a furtive eye out, all the while, to see if Becky
Thatcher was noticing. But she seemed to be un-
conscious of it all; she never looked. Could it be
possible that she was not aware that he was there?
He carried his exploits to her immediate vicinity; came
war-whooping around, snatched a boy's cap, hurled it
to the roof of the schoolhouse, broke through a group
of boys, tumbling them in every direction, and fell
sprawling, himself, under Becky's nose, almost upsetting
her -- and she turned, with her nose in the air, and he
heard her say: "Mf! some people think they're mighty
smart -- always showing off!"

Tom's cheeks burned. He gathered himself up and
sneaked off, crushed and crestfallen.
<--split-->
CHAPTER XIII

TOM'S mind was made up now. He was
gloomy and desperate. He was a for-
saken, friendless boy, he said; nobody
loved him; when they found out what they
had driven him to, perhaps they would
be sorry; he had tried to do right and get
along, but they would not let him; since nothing would
do them but to be rid of him, let it be so; and let them
blame HIM for the consequences -- why shouldn't they?
What right had the friendless to complain? Yes, they
had forced him to it at last: he would lead a life of crime.
There was no choice.

By this time he was far down Meadow Lane, and
the bell for school to "take up" tinkled faintly upon his
ear. He sobbed, now, to think he should never, never
hear that old familiar sound any more -- it was very
hard, but it was forced on him; since he was driven out
into the cold world, he must submit -- but he forgave
them. Then the sobs came thick and fast.

Just at this point he met his soul's sworn comrade,
Joe Harper -- hard-eyed, and with evidently a great
and dismal purpose in his heart. Plainly here were
"two souls with but a single thought." Tom, wiping
his eyes with his sleeve, began to blubber out something
about a resolution to escape from hard usage and lack
of sympathy at home by roaming abroad into the great
world never to return; and ended by hoping that Joe
would not forget him.

But it transpired that this was a request which Joe
had just been going to make of Tom, and had come
to hunt him up for that purpose. His mother had
whipped him for drinking some cream which he had
never tasted and knew nothing about; it was plain
that she was tired of him and wished him to go; if
she felt that way, there was nothing for him to do but
succumb; he hoped she would be happy, and never
regret having driven her poor boy out into the unfeeling
world to suffer and die.

As the two boys walked sorrowing along, they
made a new compact to stand by each other and be
brothers and never separate till death relieved them
of their troubles. Then they began to lay their plans.
Joe was for being a hermit, and living on crusts in a
remote cave, and dying, some time, of cold and want
and grief; but after listening to Tom, he conceded that
there were some conspicuous advantages about a life
of crime, and so he consented to be a pirate.

Three miles below St. Petersburg, at a point where
the Mississippi River was a trifle over a mile wide,
there was a long, narrow, wooded island, with a shallow
bar at the head of it, and this offered well as a ren-
dezvous. It was not inhabited; it lay far over toward
the further shore, abreast a dense and almost wholly
unpeopled forest. So Jackson's Island was chosen.
Who were to be the subjects of their piracies was a
matter that did not occur to them. Then they hunted
up Huckleberry Finn, and he joined them promptly,
for all careers were one to him; he was indifferent.
They presently separated to meet at a lonely spot on
the river-bank two miles above the village at the favorite
hour -- which was midnight. There was a small log
raft there which they meant to capture. Each would
bring hooks and lines, and such provision as he could
steal in the most dark and mysterious way -- as became
outlaws. And before the afternoon was done, they
had all managed to enjoy the sweet glory of spreading
the fact that pretty soon the town would "hear some-
thing." All who got this vague hint were cautioned to
"be mum and wait."

About midnight Tom arrived with a boiled ham
and a few trifles, and stopped in a dense undergrowth
on a small bluff overlooking the meeting-place. It
was starlight, and very still. The mighty river lay
like an ocean at rest. Tom listened a moment, but no
sound disturbed the quiet. Then he gave a low,
distinct whistle. It was answered from under the
bluff. Tom whistled twice more; these signals were
answered in the same way. Then a guarded voice
said:

"Who goes there?"

"Tom Sawyer, the Black Avenger of the Spanish
Main. Name your names."

"Huck Finn the Red-Handed, and Joe Harper the
Terror of the Seas." Tom had furnished these titles,
from his favorite literature.

"'Tis well. Give the countersign."

Two hoarse whispers delivered the same awful word
simultaneously to the brooding night:

"BLOOD!"

Then Tom tumbled his ham over the bluff and let
himself down after it, tearing both skin and clothes
to some extent in the effort. There was an easy, com-
fortable path along the shore under the bluff, but it
lacked the advantages of difficulty and danger so val-
ued by a pirate.

The Terror of the Seas had brought a side of bacon,
and had about worn himself out with getting it there.
Finn the Red-Handed had stolen a skillet and a quan-
tity of half-cured leaf tobacco, and had also brought a
few corn-cobs to make pipes with. But none of the
pirates smoked or "chewed" but himself. The Black
Avenger of the Spanish Main said it would never do to
start without some fire. That was a wise thought;
matches were hardly known there in that day. They
saw a fire smouldering upon a great raft a hundred
yards above, and they went stealthily thither and helped
themselves to a chunk. They made an imposing ad-
venture of it, saying, "Hist!" every now and then, and
suddenly halting with finger on lip; moving with hands
on imaginary dagger-hilts; and giving orders in dismal
whispers that if "the foe" stirred, to "let him have it
to the hilt," because "dead men tell no tales." They
knew well enough that the raftsmen were all down at
the village laying in stores or having a spree, but still
that was no excuse for their conducting this thing in an
unpiratical way.

They shoved off, presently, Tom in command, Huck
at the after oar and Joe at the forward. Tom stood
amidships, gloomy-browed, and with folded arms, and
gave his orders in a low, stern whisper:

"Luff, and bring her to the wind!"

"Aye-aye, sir!"

"Steady, steady-y-y-y!"

"Steady it is, sir!"

"Let her go off a point!"

"Point it is, sir!"

As the boys steadily and monotonously drove the
raft toward mid-stream it was no doubt under-
stood that these orders were given only for "style,"
and were not intended to mean anything in par-
ticular.

"What sail's she carrying?"

"Courses, tops'ls, and flying-jib, sir."

"Send the r'yals up! Lay out aloft, there, half a
dozen of ye -- foretopmaststuns'l! Lively, now!"

"Aye-aye, sir!"

"Shake out that maintogalans'l! Sheets and braces!
NOW my hearties!"

"Aye-aye, sir!"

"Hellum-a-lee -- hard a port! Stand by to meet
her when she comes! Port, port! NOW, men! With
a will! Stead-y-y-y!"

"Steady it is, sir!"

The raft drew beyond the middle of the river; the
boys pointed her head right, and then lay on their
oars. The river was not high, so there was not more
than a two or three mile current. Hardly a word was
said during the next three-quarters of an hour. Now
the raft was passing before the distant town. Two or
three glimmering lights showed where it lay, peacefully
sleeping, beyond the vague vast sweep of star-gemmed
water, unconscious of the tremendous event that was
happening. The Black Avenger stood still with folded
arms, "looking his last" upon the scene of his former
joys and his later sufferings, and wishing "she" could
see him now, abroad on the wild sea, facing peril and
death with dauntless heart, going to his doom with a
grim smile on his lips. It was but a small strain on his
imagination to remove Jackson's Island beyond eye-
shot of the village, and so he "looked his last" with a
broken and satisfied heart. The other pirates were
looking their last, too; and they all looked so long
that they came near letting the current drift them out
of the range of the island. But they discovered the
danger in time, and made shift to avert it. About two
o'clock in the morning the raft grounded on the bar
two hundred yards above the head of the island, and
they waded back and forth until they had landed their
freight. Part of the little raft's belongings consisted
of an old sail, and this they spread over a nook in the
bushes for a tent to shelter their provisions; but they
themselves would sleep in the open air in good weather,
as became outlaws.

They built a fire against the side of a great log twenty
or thirty steps within the sombre depths of the forest,
and then cooked some bacon in the frying-pan for sup-
per, and used up half of the corn "pone" stock they had
brought. It seemed glorious sport to be feasting in
that wild, free way in the virgin forest of an unex-
plored and uninhabited island, far from the haunts of
men, and they said they never would return to civiliza-
tion. The climbing fire lit up their faces and threw its
ruddy glare upon the pillared tree-trunks of their forest
temple, and upon the varnished foliage and festooning
vines.

When the last crisp slice of bacon was gone, and the
last allowance of corn pone devoured, the boys stretched
themselves out on the grass, filled with contentment.
They could have found a cooler place, but they would
not deny themselves such a romantic feature as the
roasting camp-fire.

"AIN'T it gay?" said Joe.

"It's NUTS!" said Tom. "What would the boys say
if they could see us?"

"Say? Well, they'd just die to be here -- hey,
Hucky!"

"I reckon so," said Huckleberry; "anyways, I'm
suited. I don't want nothing better'n this. I don't
ever get enough to eat, gen'ally -- and here they can't
come and pick at a feller and bullyrag him so."

"It's just the life for me," said Tom. "You don't
have to get up, mornings, and you don't have to go to
school, and wash, and all that blame foolishness. You
see a pirate don't have to do ANYTHING, Joe, when he's
ashore, but a hermit HE has to be praying considerable,
and then he don't have any fun, anyway, all by himself
that way."

"Oh yes, that's so," said Joe, "but I hadn't thought
much about it, you know. I'd a good deal rather be a
pirate, now that I've tried it."

"You see," said Tom, "people don't go much on
hermits, nowadays, like they used to in old times, but
a pirate's always respected. And a hermit's got to
sleep on the hardest place he can find, and put sackcloth
and ashes on his head, and stand out in the rain, and --"

"What does he put sackcloth and ashes on his head
for?" inquired Huck.

"I dono. But they've GOT to do it. Hermits always
do. You'd have to do that if you was a hermit."

"Dern'd if I would," said Huck.

"Well, what would you do?"

"I dono. But I wouldn't do that."

"Why, Huck, you'd HAVE to. How'd you get around
it?"

"Why, I just wouldn't stand it. I'd run away."

"Run away! Well, you WOULD be a nice old slouch
of a hermit. You'd be a disgrace."

The Red-Handed made no response, being better
employed. He had finished gouging out a cob, and
now he fitted a weed stem to it, loaded it with tobacco,
and was pressing a coal to the charge and blowing a
cloud of fragrant smoke -- he was in the full bloom of
luxurious contentment. The other pirates envied him
this majestic vice, and secretly resolved to acquire it
shortly. Presently Huck said:

"What does pirates have to do?"

Tom said:

"Oh, they have just a bully time -- take ships and
burn them, and get the money and bury it in awful
places in their island where there's ghosts and things to
watch it, and kill everybody in the ships -- make 'em
walk a plank."

"And they carry the women to the island," said Joe;
"they don't kill the women."

"No," assented Tom, "they don't kill the women --
they're too noble. And the women's always beautiful,
too.

"And don't they wear the bulliest clothes! Oh no!
All gold and silver and di'monds," said Joe, with
enthusiasm.

"Who?" said Huck.

"Why, the pirates."

Huck scanned his own clothing forlornly.

"I reckon I ain't dressed fitten for a pirate," said
he, with a regretful pathos in his voice; "but I ain't
got none but these."

But the other boys told him the fine clothes would
come fast enough, after they should have begun their
adventures. They made him understand that his poor
rags would do to begin with, though it was customary
for wealthy pirates to start with a proper wardrobe.

Gradually their talk died out and drowsiness began
to steal upon the eyelids of the little waifs. The pipe
dropped from the fingers of the Red-Handed, and he
slept the sleep of the conscience-free and the weary.
The Terror of the Seas and the Black Avenger of the
Spanish Main had more difficulty in getting to sleep.
They said their prayers inwardly, and lying down, since
there was nobody there with authority to make them
kneel and recite aloud; in truth, they had a mind not
to say them at all, but they were afraid to proceed to
such lengths as that, lest they might call down a sudden
and special thunderbolt from heaven. Then at once
they reached and hovered upon the imminent verge of
sleep -- but an intruder came, now, that would not
"down." It was conscience. They began to feel a
vague fear that they had been doing wrong to run
away; and next they thought of the stolen meat, and
then the real torture came. They tried to argue it
away by reminding conscience that they had purloined
sweetmeats and apples scores of times; but conscience
was not to be appeased by such thin plausibilities;
it seemed to them, in the end, that there was no getting
around the stubborn fact that taking sweetmeats was
only "hooking," while taking bacon and hams and
such valuables was plain simple stealing -- and there was
a command against that in the Bible. So they inwardly
resolved that so long as they remained in the business,
their piracies should not again be sullied with the crime
of stealing. Then conscience granted a truce, and
these curiously inconsistent pirates fell peacefully to
sleep.
<--split-->
CHAPTER XIV

WHEN Tom awoke in the morning, he
wondered where he was. He sat up and
rubbed his eyes and looked around. Then
he comprehended. It was the cool gray
dawn, and there was a delicious sense of
repose and peace in the deep pervading
calm and silence of the woods. Not a leaf stirred; not a
sound obtruded upon great Nature's meditation. Bead-
ed dewdrops stood upon the leaves and grasses. A
white layer of ashes covered the fire, and a thin blue
breath of smoke rose straight into the air. Joe and
Huck still slept.

Now, far away in the woods a bird called; another
answered; presently the hammering of a woodpecker
was heard. Gradually the cool dim gray of the morn-
ing whitened, and as gradually sounds multiplied and
life manifested itself. The marvel of Nature shaking
off sleep and going to work unfolded itself to the musing
boy. A little green worm came crawling over a dewy
leaf, lifting two-thirds of his body into the air from time
to time and "sniffing around," then proceeding again --
for he was measuring, Tom said; and when the worm
approached him, of its own accord, he sat as still as a
stone, with his hopes rising and falling, by turns, as the
creature still came toward him or seemed inclined to
go elsewhere; and when at last it considered a painful
moment with its curved body in the air and then came
decisively down upon Tom's leg and began a journey
over him, his whole heart was glad -- for that meant
that he was going to have a new suit of clothes -- without
the shadow of a doubt a gaudy piratical uniform. Now
a procession of ants appeared, from nowhere in par-
ticular, and went about their labors; one struggled man-
fully by with a dead spider five times as big as itself in
its arms, and lugged it straight up a tree-trunk. A
brown spotted lady-bug climbed the dizzy height of a
grass blade, and Tom bent down close to it and said,
"Lady-bug, lady-bug, fly away home, your house is on
fire, your children's alone," and she took wing and went
off to see about it -- which did not surprise the boy, for
he knew of old that this insect was credulous about
conflagrations, and he had practised upon its simplicity
more than once. A tumblebug came next, heaving
sturdily at its ball, and Tom touched the creature, to
see it shut its legs against its body and pretend to be
dead. The birds were fairly rioting by this time. A
catbird, the Northern mocker, lit in a tree over Tom's
head, and trilled out her imitations of her neighbors in
a rapture of enjoyment; then a shrill jay swept down,
a flash of blue flame, and stopped on a twig almost
within the boy's reach, cocked his head to one side and
eyed the strangers with a consuming curiosity; a gray
squirrel and a big fellow of the "fox" kind came
skurrying along, sitting up at intervals to inspect and
chatter at the boys, for the wild things had probably
never seen a human being before and scarcely knew
whether to be afraid or not. All Nature was wide
awake and stirring, now; long lances of sunlight pierced
down through the dense foliage far and near, and a
few butterflies came fluttering upon the scene.

Tom stirred up the other pirates and they all clattered
away with a shout, and in a minute or two were stripped
and chasing after and tumbling over each other in the
shallow limpid water of the white sandbar. They felt
no longing for the little village sleeping in the distance
beyond the majestic waste of water. A vagrant cur-
rent or a slight rise in the river had carried off their
raft, but this only gratified them, since its going was
something like burning the bridge between them and
civilization.

They came back to camp wonderfully refreshed,
glad-hearted, and ravenous; and they soon had the
camp-fire blazing up again. Huck found a spring of
clear cold water close by, and the boys made cups of
broad oak or hickory leaves, and felt that water, sweet-
ened with such a wildwood charm as that, would be a
good enough substitute for coffee. While Joe was
slicing bacon for breakfast, Tom and Huck asked him
to hold on a minute; they stepped to a promising nook
in the river-bank and threw in their lines; almost im-
mediately they had reward. Joe had not had time to
get impatient before they were back again with some
handsome bass, a couple of sun-perch and a small
catfish -- provisions enough for quite a family. They
fried the fish with the bacon, and were astonished; for no
fish had ever seemed so delicious before. They did not
know that the quicker a fresh-water fish is on the fire
after he is caught the better he is; and they reflected
little upon what a sauce open-air sleeping, open-air
exercise, bathing, and a large ingredient of hunger
make, too.

They lay around in the shade, after breakfast, while
Huck had a smoke, and then went off through the woods
on an exploring expedition. They tramped gayly along,
over decaying logs, through tangled underbrush, among
solemn monarchs of the forest, hung from their crowns
to the ground with a drooping regalia of grape-vines.
Now and then they came upon snug nooks carpeted
with grass and jeweled with flowers.

They found plenty of things to be delighted with, but
nothing to be astonished at. They discovered that the
island was about three miles long and a quarter of a
mile wide, and that the shore it lay closest to was only
separated from it by a narrow channel hardly two hun-
dred yards wide. They took a swim about every hour,
so it was close upon the middle of the afternoon when
they got back to camp. They were too hungry to stop
to fish, but they fared sumptuously upon cold ham, and
then threw themselves down in the shade to talk. But
the talk soon began to drag, and then died. The
stillness, the solemnity that brooded in the woods, and
the sense of loneliness, began to tell upon the spirits
of the boys. They fell to thinking. A sort of unde-
fined longing crept upon them. This took dim shape,
presently -- it was budding homesickness. Even Finn
the Red-Handed was dreaming of his doorsteps and
empty hogsheads. But they were all ashamed of their
weakness, and none was brave enough to speak his
thought.

For some time, now, the boys had been dully con-
scious of a peculiar sound in the distance, just as one
sometimes is of the ticking of a clock which he takes no
distinct note of. But now this mysterious sound be-
came more pronounced, and forced a recognition. The
boys started, glanced at each other, and then each as-
sumed a listening attitude. There was a long silence,
profound and unbroken; then a deep, sullen boom
came floating down out of the distance.

"What is it!" exclaimed Joe, under his breath.

"I wonder," said Tom in a whisper.

"'Tain't thunder," said Huckleberry, in an awed
tone, "becuz thunder --"

"Hark!" said Tom. "Listen -- don't talk."

They waited a time that seemed an age, and then the
same muffled boom troubled the solemn hush.

"Let's go and see."

They sprang to their feet and hurried to the shore
toward the town. They parted the bushes on the bank
and peered out over the water. The little steam ferry-
boat was about a mile below the village, drifting with the
current. Her broad deck seemed crowded with people.
There were a great many skiffs rowing about or floating
with the stream in the neighborhood of the ferryboat,
but the boys could not determine what the men in them
were doing. Presently a great jet of white smoke burst
from the ferryboat's side, and as it expanded and rose
in a lazy cloud, that same dull throb of sound was borne
to the listeners again.

"I know now!" exclaimed Tom; "somebody's
drownded!"

"That's it!" said Huck; "they done that last summer,
when Bill Turner got drownded; they shoot a cannon
over the water, and that makes him come up to the top.
Yes, and they take loaves of bread and put quicksilver
in 'em and set 'em afloat, and wherever there's anybody
that's drownded, they'll float right there and stop."

"Yes, I've heard about that," said Joe. "I wonder
what makes the bread do that."

"Oh, it ain't the bread, so much," said Tom; "I
reckon it's mostly what they SAY over it before they start
it out."

"But they don't say anything over it," said Huck.
"I've seen 'em and they don't."

"Well, that's funny," said Tom. "But maybe
they say it to themselves. Of COURSE they do. Any-
body might know that."

The other boys agreed that there was reason in what
Tom said, because an ignorant lump of bread, un-
instructed by an incantation, could not be expected to
act very intelligently when set upon an errand of such
gravity.

"By jings, I wish I was over there, now," said Joe.

"I do too" said Huck "I'd give heaps to know
who it is."

The boys still listened and watched. Presently a
revealing thought flashed through Tom's mind, and
he exclaimed:

"Boys, I know who's drownded -- it's us!"

They felt like heroes in an instant. Here was a
gorgeous triumph; they were missed; they were mourned;
hearts were breaking on their account; tears were being
shed; accusing memories of unkindness to these poor
lost lads were rising up, and unavailing regrets and re-
morse were being indulged; and best of all, the depart-
ed were the talk of the whole town, and the envy of
all the boys, as far as this dazzling notoriety was con-
cerned. This was fine. It was worth while to be a
pirate, after all.

As twilight drew on, the ferryboat went back to her
accustomed business and the skiffs disappeared. The
pirates returned to camp. They were jubilant with
vanity over their new grandeur and the illustrious
trouble they were making. They caught fish, cooked
supper and ate it, and then fell to guessing at what the
village was thinking and saying about them; and the
pictures they drew of the public distress on their ac-
count were gratifying to look upon -- from their point
of view. But when the shadows of night closed them
in, they gradually ceased to talk, and sat gazing into the
fire, with their minds evidently wandering elsewhere.
The excitement was gone, now, and Tom and Joe could
not keep back thoughts of certain persons at home who
were not enjoying this fine frolic as much as they were.
Misgivings came; they grew troubled and unhappy;
a sigh or two escaped, unawares. By and by Joe
timidly ventured upon a roundabout "feeler" as to
how the others might look upon a return to civilization
-- not right now, but --

Tom withered him with derision! Huck, being un-
committed as yet, joined in with Tom, and the waverer
quickly "explained," and was glad to get out of the
scrape with as little taint of chicken-hearted home-
sickness clinging to his garments as he could. Mutiny
was effectually laid to rest for the moment.

As the night deepened, Huck began to nod, and
presently to snore. Joe followed next. Tom lay
upon his elbow motionless, for some time, watching
the two intently. At last he got up cautiously, on
his knees, and went searching among the grass and
the flickering reflections flung by the camp-fire. He
picked up and inspected several large semi-cylinders
of the thin white bark of a sycamore, and finally chose
two which seemed to suit him. Then he knelt by the
fire and painfully wrote something upon each of these
with his "red keel"; one he rolled up and put in his
jacket pocket, and the other he put in Joe's hat and
removed it to a little distance from the owner. And
he also put into the hat certain schoolboy treasures of
almost inestimable value -- among them a lump of
chalk, an India-rubber ball, three fishhooks, and one of
that kind of marbles known as a "sure 'nough crystal."
Then he tiptoed his way cautiously among the trees
till he felt that he was out of hearing, and straightway
broke into a keen run in the direction of the sandbar.
<--split-->
CHAPTER XV

A FEW minutes later Tom was in the shoal
water of the bar, wading toward the
Illinois shore. Before the depth reached
his middle he was half-way over; the cur-
rent would permit no more wading, now,
so he struck out confidently to swim the
remaining hundred yards. He swam quartering up-
stream, but still was swept downward rather faster
than he had expected. However, he reached the shore
finally, and drifted along till he found a low place and
drew himself out. He put his hand on his jacket pocket,
found his piece of bark safe, and then struck through
the woods, following the shore, with streaming garments.
Shortly before ten o'clock he came out into an open
place opposite the village, and saw the ferryboat lying
in the shadow of the trees and the high bank. Every-
thing was quiet under the blinking stars. He crept
down the bank, watching with all his eyes, slipped into
the water, swam three or four strokes and climbed into
the skiff that did "yawl" duty at the boat's stern. He
laid himself down under the thwarts and waited, panting.

Presently the cracked bell tapped and a voice gave
the order to "cast off." A minute or two later the
skiff's head was standing high up, against the boat's
swell, and the voyage was begun. Tom felt happy in
his success, for he knew it was the boat's last trip for
the night. At the end of a long twelve or fifteen minutes
the wheels stopped, and Tom slipped overboard and
swam ashore in the dusk, landing fifty yards down-
stream, out of danger of possible stragglers.

He flew along unfrequented alleys, and shortly found
himself at his aunt's back fence. He climbed over,
approached the "ell," and looked in at the sitting-room
window, for a light was burning there. There sat
Aunt Polly, Sid, Mary, and Joe Harper's mother,
grouped together, talking. They were by the bed, and
the bed was between them and the door. Tom went
to the door and began to softly lift the latch; then he
pressed gently and the door yielded a crack; he con-
tinued pushing cautiously, and quaking every time it
creaked, till he judged he might squeeze through on his
knees; so he put his head through and began, warily.

"What makes the candle blow so?" said Aunt
Polly. Tom hurried up. "Why, that door's open,
I believe. Why, of course it is. No end of strange
things now. Go 'long and shut it, Sid."

Tom disappeared under the bed just in time. He
lay and "breathed" himself for a time, and then crept
to where he could almost touch his aunt's foot.

"But as I was saying," said Aunt Polly, "he warn't
BAD, so to say -- only mischEEvous. Only just giddy,
and harum-scarum, you know. He warn't any more
responsible than a colt. HE never meant any harm,
and he was the best-hearted boy that ever was" -- and
she began to cry.

"It was just so with my Joe -- always full of his
devilment, and up to every kind of mischief, but he
was just as unselfish and kind as he could be -- and
laws bless me, to think I went and whipped him for
taking that cream, never once recollecting that I
throwed it out myself because it was sour, and I never
to see him again in this world, never, never, never, poor
abused boy!" And Mrs. Harper sobbed as if her
heart would break.

"I hope Tom's better off where he is," said Sid,
"but if he'd been better in some ways --"

"SID!" Tom felt the glare of the old lady's eye,
though he could not see it. "Not a word against my
Tom, now that he's gone! God'll take care of HIM --
never you trouble YOURself, sir! Oh, Mrs. Harper, I
don't know how to give him up! I don't know how to
give him up! He was such a comfort to me, although
he tormented my old heart out of me, 'most."

"The Lord giveth and the Lord hath taken away
-- Blessed be the name of the Lord! But it's so hard
-- Oh, it's so hard! Only last Saturday my Joe busted
a firecracker right under my nose and I knocked him
sprawling. Little did I know then, how soon -- Oh,
if it was to do over again I'd hug him and bless him
for it."

"Yes, yes, yes, I know just how you feel, Mrs.
Harper, I know just exactly how you feel. No longer
ago than yesterday noon, my Tom took and filled the
cat full of Pain-killer, and I did think the cretur would
tear the house down. And God forgive me, I cracked
Tom's head with my thimble, poor boy, poor dead boy.
But he's out of all his troubles now. And the last words
I ever heard him say was to reproach --"

But this memory was too much for the old lady,
and she broke entirely down. Tom was snuffling, now,
himself -- and more in pity of himself than anybody
else. He could hear Mary crying, and putting in a
kindly word for him from time to time. He began to
have a nobler opinion of himself than ever before.
Still, he was sufficiently touched by his aunt's grief to
long to rush out from under the bed and overwhelm
her with joy -- and the theatrical gorgeousness of the
thing appealed strongly to his nature, too, but he re-
sisted and lay still.

He went on listening, and gathered by odds and ends
that it was conjectured at first that the boys had got
drowned while taking a swim; then the small raft had
been missed; next, certain boys said the missing lads
had promised that the village should "hear some-
thing" soon; the wise-heads had "put this and that
together" and decided that the lads had gone off on
that raft and would turn up at the next town below,
presently; but toward noon the raft had been found,
lodged against the Missouri shore some five or six miles
below the village -- and then hope perished; they must
be drowned, else hunger would have driven them home
by nightfall if not sooner. It was believed that the
search for the bodies had been a fruitless effort merely
because the drowning must have occurred in mid-
channel, since the boys, being good swimmers, would
otherwise have escaped to shore. This was Wednesday
night. If the bodies continued missing until Sunday,
all hope would be given over, and the funerals would
be preached on that morning. Tom shuddered.

Mrs. Harper gave a sobbing good-night and turned
to go. Then with a mutual impulse the two bereaved
women flung themselves into each other's arms and had
a good, consoling cry, and then parted. Aunt Polly
was tender far beyond her wont, in her good-night to
Sid and Mary. Sid snuffled a bit and Mary went off
crying with all her heart.

Aunt Polly knelt down and prayed for Tom so touch-
ingly, so appealingly, and with such measureless love
in her words and her old trembling voice, that he was
weltering in tears again, long before she was through.

He had to keep still long after she went to bed, for
she kept making broken-hearted ejaculations from time
to time, tossing unrestfully, and turning over. But at
last she was still, only moaning a little in her sleep.
Now the boy stole out, rose gradually by the bedside,
shaded the candle-light with his hand, and stood re-
garding her. His heart was full of pity for her. He
took out his sycamore scroll and placed it by the candle.
But something occurred to him, and he lingered con-
sidering. His face lighted with a happy solution of his
thought; he put the bark hastily in his pocket. Then
he bent over and kissed the faded lips, and straightway
made his stealthy exit, latching the door behind him.

He threaded his way back to the ferry landing, found
nobody at large there, and walked boldly on board the
boat, for he knew she was tenantless except that there
was a watchman, who always turned in and slept like
a graven image. He untied the skiff at the stern,
slipped into it, and was soon rowing cautiously up-
stream. When he had pulled a mile above the village,
he started quartering across and bent himself stoutly to
his work. He hit the landing on the other side neatly,
for this was a familiar bit of work to him. He was
moved to capture the skiff, arguing that it might be
considered a ship and therefore legitimate prey for a
pirate, but he knew a thorough search would be made
for it and that might end in revelations. So he stepped
ashore and entered the woods.

He sat down and took a long rest, torturing him-
self meanwhile to keep awake, and then started warily
down the home-stretch. The night was far spent.
It was broad daylight before he found himself fairly
abreast the island bar. He rested again until the sun
was well up and gilding the great river with its splendor,
and then he plunged into the stream. A little later he
paused, dripping, upon the threshold of the camp,
and heard Joe say:

"No, Tom's true-blue, Huck, and he'll come back.
He won't desert. He knows that would be a disgrace
to a pirate, and Tom's too proud for that sort of thing.
He's up to something or other. Now I wonder what?"

"Well, the things is ours, anyway, ain't they?"

Pretty near, but not yet, Huck. The writing says
they are if he ain't back here to breakfast."

"Which he is!" exclaimed Tom, with fine dramatic
effect, stepping grandly into camp.

A sumptuous breakfast of bacon and fish was shortly
provided, and as the boys set to work upon it, Tom
recounted (and adorned) his adventures. They were
a vain and boastful company of heroes when the tale
was done. Then Tom hid himself away in a shady
nook to sleep till noon, and the other pirates got ready
to fish and explore.
<--split-->
CHAPTER XVI

AFTER dinner all the gang turned out to
hunt for turtle eggs on the bar. They
went about poking sticks into the sand,
and when they found a soft place they
went down on their knees and dug with
their hands. Sometimes they would take
fifty or sixty eggs out of one hole. They were perfectly
round white things a trifle smaller than an English
walnut. They had a famous fried-egg feast that night,
and another on Friday morning.

After breakfast they went whooping and prancing
out on the bar, and chased each other round and
round, shedding clothes as they went, until they were
naked, and then continued the frolic far away up the
shoal water of the bar, against the stiff current, which
latter tripped their legs from under them from time
to time and greatly increased the fun. And now and
then they stooped in a group and splashed water in
each other's faces with their palms, gradually approach-
ing each other, with averted faces to avoid the stran-
gling sprays, and finally gripping and struggling till the
best man ducked his neighbor, and then they all went
under in a tangle of white legs and arms and came up
blowing, sputtering, laughing, and gasping for breath
at one and the same time.

When they were well exhausted, they would run
out and sprawl on the dry, hot sand, and lie there and
cover themselves up with it, and by and by break for
the water again and go through the original perform-
ance once more. Finally it occurred to them that their
naked skin represented flesh-colored "tights" very
fairly; so they drew a ring in the sand and had a
circus -- with three clowns in it, for none would yield
this proudest post to his neighbor.

Next they got their marbles and played "knucks"
and "ring-taw" and "keeps" till that amusement
grew stale. Then Joe and Huck had another swim,
but Tom would not venture, because he found that
in kicking off his trousers he had kicked his string
of rattlesnake rattles off his ankle, and he wondered
how he had escaped cramp so long without the pro-
tection of this mysterious charm. He did not vent-
ure again until he had found it, and by that time
the other boys were tired and ready to rest. They
gradually wandered apart, dropped into the "dumps,"
and fell to gazing longingly across the wide river to
where the village lay drowsing in the sun. Tom found
himself writing "BECKY" in the sand with his big toe;
he scratched it out, and was angry with himself for his
weakness. But he wrote it again, nevertheless; he
could not help it. He erased it once more and then took
himself out of temptation by driving the other boys
together and joining them.

But Joe's spirits had gone down almost beyond
resurrection. He was so homesick that he could hardly
endure the misery of it. The tears lay very near the
surface. Huck was melancholy, too. Tom was down-
hearted, but tried hard not to show it. He had a secret
which he was not ready to tell, yet, but if this mutinous
depression was not broken up soon, he would have to
bring it out. He said, with a great show of cheerfulness:

"I bet there's been pirates on this island before,
boys. We'll explore it again. They've hid treasures
here somewhere. How'd you feel to light on a rotten
chest full of gold and silver -- hey?"

But it roused only faint enthusiasm, which faded
out, with no reply. Tom tried one or two other
seductions; but they failed, too. It was discouraging
work. Joe sat poking up the sand with a stick and
looking very gloomy. Finally he said:

"Oh, boys, let's give it up. I want to go home.
It's so lonesome."

"Oh no, Joe, you'll feel better by and by," said
Tom. "Just think of the fishing that's here."

"I don't care for fishing. I want to go home."

"But, Joe, there ain't such another swimming-place
anywhere."

"Swimming's no good. I don't seem to care for
it, somehow, when there ain't anybody to say I sha'n't
go in. I mean to go home."

"Oh, shucks! Baby! You want to see your mother,
I reckon."

"Yes, I DO want to see my mother -- and you would,
too, if you had one. I ain't any more baby than you
are." And Joe snuffled a little.

"Well, we'll let the cry-baby go home to his mother,
won't we, Huck? Poor thing -- does it want to see its
mother? And so it shall. You like it here, don't you,
Huck? We'll stay, won't we?"

Huck said, "Y-e-s" -- without any heart in it.

"I'll never speak to you again as long as I live,"
said Joe, rising. "There now!" And he moved
moodily away and began to dress himself.

"Who cares!" said Tom. "Nobody wants you to.
Go 'long home and get laughed at. Oh, you're a nice
pirate. Huck and me ain't cry-babies. We'll stay,
won't we, Huck? Let him go if he wants to. I reckon
we can get along without him, per'aps."

But Tom was uneasy, nevertheless, and was alarmed
to see Joe go sullenly on with his dressing. And then
it was discomforting to see Huck eying Joe's prepara-
tions so wistfully, and keeping up such an ominous
silence. Presently, without a parting word, Joe began
to wade off toward the Illinois shore. Tom's heart
began to sink. He glanced at Huck. Huck could
not bear the look, and dropped his eyes. Then he
said:

"I want to go, too, Tom. It was getting so lone-
some anyway, and now it'll be worse. Let's us go,
too, Tom."

"I won't! You can all go, if you want to. I mean
to stay."

"Tom, I better go."

"Well, go 'long -- who's hendering you."

Huck began to pick up his scattered clothes. He
said:

"Tom, I wisht you'd come, too. Now you think it
over. We'll wait for you when we get to shore."

"Well, you'll wait a blame long time, that's all."

Huck started sorrowfully away, and Tom stood
looking after him, with a strong desire tugging at his
heart to yield his pride and go along too. He hoped
the boys would stop, but they still waded slowly on.
It suddenly dawned on Tom that it was become very
lonely and still. He made one final struggle with his
pride, and then darted after his comrades, yelling:

"Wait! Wait! I want to tell you something!"

They presently stopped and turned around. When
he got to where they were, he began unfolding his
secret, and they listened moodily till at last they saw
the "point" he was driving at, and then they set
up a war-whoop of applause and said it was "splen-
did!" and said if he had told them at first, they wouldn't
have started away. He made a plausible excuse; but
his real reason had been the fear that not even the
secret would keep them with him any very great length
of time, and so he had meant to hold it in reserve as a
last seduction.

The lads came gayly back and went at their sports
again with a will, chattering all the time about Tom's
stupendous plan and admiring the genius of it. After
a dainty egg and fish dinner, Tom said he wanted to
learn to smoke, now. Joe caught at the idea and said
he would like to try, too. So Huck made pipes and
filled them. These novices had never smoked anything
before but cigars made of grape-vine, and they "bit"
the tongue, and were not considered manly anyway.

Now they stretched themselves out on their elbows
and began to puff, charily, and with slender confi-
dence. The smoke had an unpleasant taste, and
they gagged a little, but Tom said:

"Why, it's just as easy! If I'd a knowed this was
all, I'd a learnt long ago."

"So would I," said Joe. "It's just nothing."

"Why, many a time I've looked at people smoking,
and thought well I wish I could do that; but I never
thought I could," said Tom.

"That's just the way with me, hain't it, Huck?
You've heard me talk just that way -- haven't you,
Huck? I'll leave it to Huck if I haven't."

"Yes -- heaps of times," said Huck.

"Well, I have too," said Tom; "oh, hundreds of
times. Once down by the slaughter-house. Don't
you remember, Huck? Bob Tanner was there, and
Johnny Miller, and Jeff Thatcher, when I said it.
Don't you remember, Huck, 'bout me saying that?"

"Yes, that's so," said Huck. "That was the day
after I lost a white alley. No, 'twas the day before."

"There -- I told you so," said Tom. "Huck rec-
ollects it."

"I bleeve I could smoke this pipe all day," said Joe.
"I don't feel sick."

"Neither do I," said Tom. "I could smoke it all
day. But I bet you Jeff Thatcher couldn't."

"Jeff Thatcher! Why, he'd keel over just with two
draws. Just let him try it once. HE'D see!"

"I bet he would. And Johnny Miller -- I wish
could see Johnny Miller tackle it once."

"Oh, don't I!" said Joe. "Why, I bet you Johnny
Miller couldn't any more do this than nothing. Just
one little snifter would fetch HIM."

"'Deed it would, Joe. Say -- I wish the boys could
see us now."

"So do I."

"Say -- boys, don't say anything about it, and some
time when they're around, I'll come up to you and
say, 'Joe, got a pipe? I want a smoke.' And you'll
say, kind of careless like, as if it warn't anything, you'll
say, 'Yes, I got my OLD pipe, and another one, but my
tobacker ain't very good.' And I'll say, 'Oh, that's all
right, if it's STRONG enough.' And then you'll out with
the pipes, and we'll light up just as ca'm, and then just
see 'em look!"

"By jings, that'll be gay, Tom! I wish it was
NOW!"

"So do I! And when we tell 'em we learned when
we was off pirating, won't they wish they'd been
along?"

"Oh, I reckon not! I'll just BET they will!"

So the talk ran on. But presently it began to flag
a trifle, and grow disjointed. The silences widened;
the expectoration marvellously increased. Every pore
inside the boys' cheeks became a spouting fountain;
they could scarcely bail out the cellars under their
tongues fast enough to prevent an inundation; little
overflowings down their throats occurred in spite of all
they could do, and sudden retchings followed every
time. Both boys were looking very pale and miserable,
now. Joe's pipe dropped from his nerveless fingers.
Tom's followed. Both fountains were going furiously
and both pumps bailing with might and main. Joe
said feebly:

"I've lost my knife. I reckon I better go and find it."

Tom said, with quivering lips and halting utterance:

"I'll help you. You go over that way and I'll hunt
around by the spring. No, you needn't come, Huck --
we can find it."

So Huck sat down again, and waited an hour. Then
he found it lonesome, and went to find his comrades.
They were wide apart in the woods, both very pale, both
fast asleep. But something informed him that if they
had had any trouble they had got rid of it.

They were not talkative at supper that night. They
had a humble look, and when Huck prepared his pipe
after the meal and was going to prepare theirs, they
said no, they were not feeling very well -- something they
ate at dinner had disagreed with them.

About midnight Joe awoke, and called the boys.
There was a brooding oppressiveness in the air that
seemed to bode something. The boys huddled them-
selves together and sought the friendly companionship
of the fire, though the dull dead heat of the breathless
atmosphere was stifling. They sat still, intent and
waiting. The solemn hush continued. Beyond the
light of the fire everything was swallowed up in the
blackness of darkness. Presently there came a quiver-
ing glow that vaguely revealed the foliage for a moment
and then vanished. By and by another came, a little
stronger. Then another. Then a faint moan came
sighing through the branches of the forest and the boys
felt a fleeting breath upon their cheeks, and shuddered
with the fancy that the Spirit of the Night had gone by.
There was a pause. Now a weird flash turned night
into day and showed every little grass-blade, separate
and distinct, that grew about their feet. And it showed
three white, startled faces, too. A deep peal of thunder
went rolling and tumbling down the heavens and lost
itself in sullen rumblings in the distance. A sweep of
chilly air passed by, rustling all the leaves and snow-
ing the flaky ashes broadcast about the fire. Another
fierce glare lit up the forest and an instant crash followed
that seemed to rend the tree-tops right over the boys'
heads. They clung together in terror, in the thick
gloom that followed. A few big rain-drops fell patter-
ing upon the leaves.

"Quick! boys, go for the tent!" exclaimed Tom.

They sprang away, stumbling over roots and among
vines in the dark, no two plunging in the same direction.
A furious blast roared through the trees, making every-
thing sing as it went. One blinding flash after another
came, and peal on peal of deafening thunder. And now
a drenching rain poured down and the rising hurricane
drove it in sheets along the ground. The boys cried
out to each other, but the roaring wind and the boom-
ing thunder-blasts drowned their voices utterly. How-
ever, one by one they straggled in at last and took
shelter under the tent, cold, scared, and streaming
with water; but to have company in misery seemed
something to be grateful for. They could not talk, the
old sail flapped so furiously, even if the other noises
would have allowed them. The tempest rose higher
and higher, and presently the sail tore loose from its
fastenings and went winging away on the blast. The
boys seized each others' hands and fled, with many
tumblings and bruises, to the shelter of a great oak that
stood upon the river-bank. Now the battle was at its
highest. Under the ceaseless conflagration of lightning
that flamed in the skies, everything below stood out in
clean-cut and shadowless distinctness: the bending
trees, the billowy river, white with foam, the driving
spray of spume-flakes, the dim outlines of the high
bluffs on the other side, glimpsed through the drifting
cloud-rack and the slanting veil of rain. Every little
while some giant tree yielded the fight and fell crashing
through the younger growth; and the unflagging thunder-
peals came now in ear-splitting explosive bursts, keen
and sharp, and unspeakably appalling. The storm
culminated in one matchless effort that seemed likely
to tear the island to pieces, burn it up, drown it to the
tree-tops, blow it away, and deafen every creature in it,
all at one and the same moment. It was a wild night
for homeless young heads to be out in.

But at last the battle was done, and the forces re-
tired with weaker and weaker threatenings and grum-
blings, and peace resumed her sway. The boys went
back to camp, a good deal awed; but they found there
was still something to be thankful for, because the great
sycamore, the shelter of their beds, was a ruin, now,
blasted by the lightnings, and they were not under it
when the catastrophe happened.

Everything in camp was drenched, the camp-fire
as well; for they were but heedless lads, like their
generation, and had made no provision against rain.
Here was matter for dismay, for they were soaked
through and chilled. They were eloquent in their dis-
tress; but they presently discovered that the fire had
eaten so far up under the great log it had been built
against (where it curved upward and separated itself
from the ground), that a handbreadth or so of it had
escaped wetting; so they patiently wrought until, with
shreds and bark gathered from the under sides of shel-
tered logs, they coaxed the fire to burn again. Then
they piled on great dead boughs till they had a roar-
ing furnace, and were glad-hearted once more. They
dried their boiled ham and had a feast, and after that
they sat by the fire and expanded and glorified their
midnight adventure until morning, for there was not a
dry spot to sleep on, anywhere around.

As the sun began to steal in upon the boys, drowsiness
came over them, and they went out on the sandbar and
lay down to sleep. They got scorched out by and by,
and drearily set about getting breakfast. After the
meal they felt rusty, and stiff-jointed, and a little home-
sick once more. Tom saw the signs, and fell to cheer-
ing up the pirates as well as he could. But they cared
nothing for marbles, or circus, or swimming, or any-
thing. He reminded them of the imposing secret, and
raised a ray of cheer. While it lasted, he got them in-
terested in a new device. This was to knock off being
pirates, for a while, and be Indians for a change. They
were attracted by this idea; so it was not long before
they were stripped, and striped from head to heel with
black mud, like so many zebras -- all of them chiefs,
of course -- and then they went tearing through the
woods to attack an English settlement.

By and by they separated into three hostile tribes,
and darted upon each other from ambush with dread-
ful war-whoops, and killed and scalped each other by
thousands. It was a gory day. Consequently it was
an extremely satisfactory one.

They assembled in camp toward supper-time, hungry
and happy; but now a difficulty arose -- hostile Indians
could not break the bread of hospitality together with-
out first making peace, and this was a simple im-
possibility without smoking a pipe of peace. There
was no other process that ever they had heard of. Two
of the savages almost wished they had remained pirates.
However, there was no other way; so with such show of
cheerfulness as they could muster they called for the
pipe and took their whiff as it passed, in due form.

And behold, they were glad they had gone into
savagery, for they had gained something; they found
that they could now smoke a little without having to go
and hunt for a lost knife; they did not get sick enough
to be seriously uncomfortable. They were not likely
to fool away this high promise for lack of effort. No,
they practised cautiously, after supper, with right fair
success, and so they spent a jubilant evening. They
were prouder and happier in their new acquirement than
they would have been in the scalping and skinning of the
Six Nations. We will leave them to smoke and chat-
ter and brag, since we have no further use for them at
present.
<--split-->
CHAPTER XVII

BUT there was no hilarity in the little town
that same tranquil Saturday afternoon.
The Harpers, and Aunt Polly's family,
were being put into mourning, with great
grief and many tears. An unusual quiet
possessed the village, although it was or-
dinarily quiet enough, in all conscience. The villagers
conducted their concerns with an absent air, and
talked little; but they sighed often. The Saturday
holiday seemed a burden to the children. They had
no heart in their sports, and gradually gave them up.

In the afternoon Becky Thatcher found herself
moping about the deserted schoolhouse yard, and
feeling very melancholy. But she found nothing there
to comfort her. She soliloquized:

"Oh, if I only had a brass andiron-knob again! But
I haven't got anything now to remember him by."
And she choked back a little sob.

Presently she stopped, and said to herself:

"It was right here. Oh, if it was to do over again,
I wouldn't say that -- I wouldn't say it for the whole
world. But he's gone now; I'll never, never, never see
him any more."

This thought broke her down, and she wandered
away, with tears rolling down her cheeks. Then quite
a group of boys and girls -- playmates of Tom's and Joe's
-- came by, and stood looking over the paling fence
and talking in reverent tones of how Tom did so-and-so
the last time they saw him, and how Joe said this and
that small trifle (pregnant with awful prophecy, as they
could easily see now!) -- and each speaker pointed out
the exact spot where the lost lads stood at the time, and
then added something like "and I was a-standing just
so -- just as I am now, and as if you was him -- I was as
close as that -- and he smiled, just this way -- and then
something seemed to go all over me, like -- awful, you
know -- and I never thought what it meant, of course,
but I can see now!"

Then there was a dispute about who saw the dead
boys last in life, and many claimed that dismal dis-
tinction, and offered evidences, more or less tampered
with by the witness; and when it was ultimately decided
who DID see the departed last, and exchanged the last
words with them, the lucky parties took upon them-
selves a sort of sacred importance, and were gaped at
and envied by all the rest. One poor chap, who had no
other grandeur to offer, said with tolerably manifest
pride in the remembrance:

"Well, Tom Sawyer he licked me once."

But that bid for glory was a failure. Most of the
boys could say that, and so that cheapened the dis-
tinction too much. The group loitered away, still re-
calling memories of the lost heroes, in awed voices.

When the Sunday-school hour was finished, the next
morning, the bell began to toll, instead of ringing in
the usual way. It was a very still Sabbath, and the
mournful sound seemed in keeping with the musing
hush that lay upon nature. The villagers began to
gather, loitering a moment in the vestibule to converse
in whispers about the sad event. But there was no
whispering in the house; only the funereal rustling of
dresses as the women gathered to their seats disturbed
the silence there. None could remember when the
little church had been so full before. There was finally
a waiting pause, an expectant dumbness, and then Aunt
Polly entered, followed by Sid and Mary, and they by
the Harper family, all in deep black, and the whole
congregation, the old minister as well, rose reverently
and stood until the mourners were seated in the front
pew. There was another communing silence, broken
at intervals by muffled sobs, and then the minister
spread his hands abroad and prayed. A moving hymn
was sung, and the text followed: "I am the Resurrection
and the Life."

As the service proceeded, the clergyman drew such
pictures of the graces, the winning ways, and the rare
promise of the lost lads that every soul there, thinking
he recognized these pictures, felt a pang in remembering
that he had persistently blinded himself to them always
before, and had as persistently seen only faults and
flaws in the poor boys. The minister related many a
touching incident in the lives of the departed, too, which
illustrated their sweet, generous natures, and the people
could easily see, now, how noble and beautiful those
episodes were, and remembered with grief that at the
time they occurred they had seemed rank rascalities,
well deserving of the cowhide. The congregation be-
came more and more moved, as the pathetic tale went
on, till at last the whole company broke down and joined
the weeping mourners in a chorus of anguished sobs,
the preacher himself giving way to his feelings, and
crying in the pulpit.

There was a rustle in the gallery, which nobody
noticed; a moment later the church door creaked; the
minister raised his streaming eyes above his hand-
kerchief, and stood transfixed! First one and then
another pair of eyes followed the minister's, and then
almost with one impulse the congregation rose and
stared while the three dead boys came marching up
the aisle, Tom in the lead, Joe next, and Huck, a ruin
of drooping rags, sneaking sheepishly in the rear!
They had been hid in the unused gallery listening to
their own funeral sermon!

Aunt Polly, Mary, and the Harpers threw themselves
upon their restored ones, smothered them with kisses
and poured out thanksgivings, while poor Huck stood
abashed and uncomfortable, not knowing exactly what
to do or where to hide from so many unwelcoming eyes.
He wavered, and started to slink away, but Tom seized
him and said:

"Aunt Polly, it ain't fair. Somebody's got to be glad
to see Huck."

"And so they shall. I'm glad to see him, poor
motherless thing!" And the loving attentions Aunt
Polly lavished upon him were the one thing capable of
making him more uncomfortable than he was before.

Suddenly the minister shouted at the top of his voice:
"Praise God from whom all blessings flow -- SING! --
and put your hearts in it!"

And they did. Old Hundred swelled up with a
triumphant burst, and while it shook the rafters Tom
Sawyer the Pirate looked around upon the envying
juveniles about him and confessed in his heart that this
was the proudest moment of his life.

As the "sold" congregation trooped out they said
they would almost be willing to be made ridiculous
again to hear Old Hundred sung like that once more.

Tom got more cuffs and kisses that day -- according
to Aunt Polly's varying moods -- than he had earned
before in a year; and he hardly knew which expressed
the most gratefulness to God and affection for himself.
<--split-->
CHAPTER XVIII

THAT was Tom's great secret -- the scheme
to return home with his brother pirates
and attend their own funerals. They had
paddled over to the Missouri shore on
a log, at dusk on Saturday, landing five
or six miles below the village; they had
slept in the woods at the edge of the town till nearly day-
light, and had then crept through back lanes and alleys
and finished their sleep in the gallery of the church
among a chaos of invalided benches.

At breakfast, Monday morning, Aunt Polly and
Mary were very loving to Tom, and very attentive to
his wants. There was an unusual amount of talk. In
the course of it Aunt Polly said:

"Well, I don't say it wasn't a fine joke, Tom, to keep
everybody suffering 'most a week so you boys had a
good time, but it is a pity you could be so hard-hearted
as to let me suffer so. If you could come over on a log
to go to your funeral, you could have come over and
give me a hint some way that you warn't dead, but only
run off."

"Yes, you could have done that, Tom," said Mary;
"and I believe you would if you had thought of it."

"Would you, Tom?" said Aunt Polly, her face light-
ing wistfully. "Say, now, would you, if you'd thought
of it?"

"I -- well, I don't know. 'Twould 'a' spoiled every-
thing."

"Tom, I hoped you loved me that much," said Aunt
Polly, with a grieved tone that discomforted the boy.
"It would have been something if you'd cared enough
to THINK of it, even if you didn't DO it."

"Now, auntie, that ain't any harm," pleaded Mary;
"it's only Tom's giddy way -- he is always in such a rush
that he never thinks of anything."

"More's the pity. Sid would have thought. And
Sid would have come and DONE it, too. Tom, you'll
look back, some day, when it's too late, and wish you'd
cared a little more for me when it would have cost you
so little."

"Now, auntie, you know I do care for you," said
Tom.

"I'd know it better if you acted more like it."

"I wish now I'd thought," said Tom, with a re-
pentant tone; "but I dreamt about you, anyway.
That's something, ain't it?"

"It ain't much -- a cat does that much -- but it's bet-
ter than nothing. What did you dream?"

"Why, Wednesday night I dreamt that you was
sitting over there by the bed, and Sid was sitting by
the woodbox, and Mary next to him."

"Well, so we did. So we always do. I'm glad
your dreams could take even that much trouble about
us."

"And I dreamt that Joe Harper's mother was here."

"Why, she was here! Did you dream any more?"

"Oh, lots. But it's so dim, now."

"Well, try to recollect -- can't you?"

"Somehow it seems to me that the wind -- the wind
blowed the -- the --"

"Try harder, Tom! The wind did blow something.
Come!"

Tom pressed his fingers on his forehead an anxious
minute, and then said:

"I've got it now! I've got it now! It blowed the
candle!"

"Mercy on us! Go on, Tom -- go on!"

"And it seems to me that you said, 'Why, I believe
that that door --'"

"Go ON, Tom!"

"Just let me study a moment -- just a moment. Oh,
yes -- you said you believed the door was open."

"As I'm sitting here, I did! Didn't I, Mary! Go on!"

"And then -- and then -- well I won't be certain, but
it seems like as if you made Sid go and -- and --"

"Well? Well? What did I make him do, Tom?
What did I make him do?"

"You made him -- you -- Oh, you made him shut it."

"Well, for the land's sake! I never heard the beat
of that in all my days! Don't tell ME there ain't
anything in dreams, any more. Sereny Harper shall
know of this before I'm an hour older. I'd like to see
her get around THIS with her rubbage 'bout superstition.
Go on, Tom!"

"Oh, it's all getting just as bright as day, now.
Next you said I warn't BAD, only mischeevous and
harum-scarum, and not any more responsible than --
than -- I think it was a colt, or something."

"And so it was! Well, goodness gracious! Go on,
Tom!"

"And then you began to cry."

"So I did. So I did. Not the first time, neither.
And then --"

"Then Mrs. Harper she began to cry, and said Joe
was just the same, and she wished she hadn't whipped
him for taking cream when she'd throwed it out her
own self --"

"Tom! The sperrit was upon you! You was a
prophesying -- that's what you was doing! Land alive,
go on, Tom!"

"Then Sid he said -- he said --"

"I don't think I said anything," said Sid.

"Yes you did, Sid," said Mary.

"Shut your heads and let Tom go on! What did
he say, Tom?"

"He said -- I THINK he said he hoped I was better
off where I was gone to, but if I'd been better some-
times --"

"THERE, d'you hear that! It was his very words!"

"And you shut him up sharp."

"I lay I did! There must 'a' been an angel there.
There WAS an angel there, somewheres!"

"And Mrs. Harper told about Joe scaring her with
a firecracker, and you told about Peter and the Pain-
killer --"

"Just as true as I live!"

"And then there was a whole lot of talk 'bout drag-
ging the river for us, and 'bout having the funeral
Sunday, and then you and old Miss Harper hugged
and cried, and she went."

"It happened just so! It happened just so, as sure
as I'm a-sitting in these very tracks. Tom, you couldn't
told it more like if you'd 'a' seen it! And then what?
Go on, Tom!"

"Then I thought you prayed for me -- and I could
see you and hear every word you said. And you went
to bed, and I was so sorry that I took and wrote on a
piece of sycamore bark, 'We ain't dead -- we are only
off being pirates,' and put it on the table by the candle;
and then you looked so good, laying there asleep, that
I thought I went and leaned over and kissed you on
the lips."

"Did you, Tom, DID you! I just forgive you every-
thing for that!" And she seized the boy in a crushing
embrace that made him feel like the guiltiest of villains.

"It was very kind, even though it was only a --
dream," Sid soliloquized just audibly.

"Shut up, Sid! A body does just the same in a
dream as he'd do if he was awake. Here's a big
Milum apple I've been saving for you, Tom, if you
was ever found again -- now go 'long to school. I'm
thankful to the good God and Father of us all I've got
you back, that's long-suffering and merciful to them
that believe on Him and keep His word, though good-
ness knows I'm unworthy of it, but if only the worthy
ones got His blessings and had His hand to help them
over the rough places, there's few enough would smile
here or ever enter into His rest when the long night
comes. Go 'long Sid, Mary, Tom -- take yourselves
off -- you've hendered me long enough."

The children left for school, and the old lady to call
on Mrs. Harper and vanquish her realism with Tom's
marvellous dream. Sid had better judgment than to
utter the thought that was in his mind as he left the
house. It was this: "Pretty thin -- as long a dream as
that, without any mistakes in it!"

What a hero Tom was become, now! He did not
go skipping and prancing, but moved with a dignified
swagger as became a pirate who felt that the public
eye was on him. And indeed it was; he tried not to
seem to see the looks or hear the remarks as he passed
along, but they were food and drink to him. Smaller
boys than himself flocked at his heels, as proud to be
seen with him, and tolerated by him, as if he had been
the drummer at the head of a procession or the elephant
leading a menagerie into town. Boys of his own size
pretended not to know he had been away at all; but
they were consuming with envy, nevertheless. They
would have given anything to have that swarthy sun-
tanned skin of his, and his glittering notoriety; and
Tom would not have parted with either for a circus.

At school the children made so much of him and of
Joe, and delivered such eloquent admiration from their
eyes, that the two heroes were not long in becoming in-
sufferably "stuck-up." They began to tell their ad-
ventures to hungry listeners -- but they only began; it
was not a thing likely to have an end, with imaginations
like theirs to furnish material. And finally, when they
got out their pipes and went serenely puffing around,
the very summit of glory was reached.

Tom decided that he could be independent of Becky
Thatcher now. Glory was sufficient. He would live
for glory. Now that he was distinguished, maybe she
would be wanting to "make up." Well, let her -- she
should see that he could be as indifferent as some other
people. Presently she arrived. Tom pretended not to
see her. He moved away and joined a group of boys
and girls and began to talk. Soon he observed that she
was tripping gayly back and forth with flushed face and
dancing eyes, pretending to be busy chasing school-
mates, and screaming with laughter when she made a
capture; but he noticed that she always made her capt-
ures in his vicinity, and that she seemed to cast a con-
scious eye in his direction at such times, too. It grati-
fied all the vicious vanity that was in him; and so,
instead of winning him, it only "set him up" the more
and made him the more diligent to avoid betraying that
he knew she was about. Presently she gave over sky-
larking, and moved irresolutely about, sighing once or
twice and glancing furtively and wistfully toward Tom.
Then she observed that now Tom was talking more
particularly to Amy Lawrence than to any one else.
She felt a sharp pang and grew disturbed and uneasy
at once. She tried to go away, but her feet were
treacherous, and carried her to the group instead. She
said to a girl almost at Tom's elbow -- with sham
vivacity:

"Why, Mary Austin! you bad girl, why didn't you
come to Sunday-school?"

"I did come -- didn't you see me?"

"Why, no! Did you? Where did you sit?"

"I was in Miss Peters' class, where I always go.
I saw YOU."

"Did you? Why, it's funny I didn't see you. I
wanted to tell you about the picnic."

"Oh, that's jolly. Who's going to give it?"

"My ma's going to let me have one."

"Oh, goody; I hope she'll let ME come."

"Well, she will. The picnic's for me. She'll let any-
body come that I want, and I want you."

"That's ever so nice. When is it going to be?"

"By and by. Maybe about vacation."

"Oh, won't it be fun! You going to have all the
girls and boys?"

"Yes, every one that's friends to me -- or wants to
be"; and she glanced ever so furtively at Tom, but he
talked right along to Amy Lawrence about the terrible
storm on the island, and how the lightning tore the great
sycamore tree "all to flinders" while he was "standing
within three feet of it."

"Oh, may I come?" said Grace Miller.

"Yes."

"And me?" said Sally Rogers.

"Yes."

"And me, too?" said Susy Harper. "And Joe?"

"Yes."

And so on, with clapping of joyful hands till all the
group had begged for invitations but Tom and Amy.
Then Tom turned coolly away, still talking, and took
Amy with him. Becky's lips trembled and the tears
came to her eyes; she hid these signs with a forced gayety
and went on chattering, but the life had gone out of the
picnic, now, and out of everything else; she got away as
soon as she could and hid herself and had what her sex
call "a good cry." Then she sat moody, with wounded
pride, till the bell rang. She roused up, now, with a
vindictive cast in her eye, and gave her plaited tails a
shake and said she knew what SHE'D do.

At recess Tom continued his flirtation with Amy
with jubilant self-satisfaction. And he kept drifting
about to find Becky and lacerate her with the per-
formance. At last he spied her, but there was a
sudden falling of his mercury. She was sitting cosily
on a little bench behind the schoolhouse looking at a
picture-book with Alfred Temple -- and so absorbed
were they, and their heads so close together over
the book, that they did not seem to be conscious of
anything in the world besides. Jealousy ran red-hot
through Tom's veins. He began to hate himself for
throwing away the chance Becky had offered for a
reconciliation. He called himself a fool, and all the
hard names he could think of. He wanted to cry with
vexation. Amy chatted happily along, as they walked,
for her heart was singing, but Tom's tongue had lost
its function. He did not hear what Amy was saying, and
whenever she paused expectantly he could only stammer
an awkward assent, which was as often misplaced as
otherwise. He kept drifting to the rear of the school-
house, again and again, to sear his eyeballs with the
hateful spectacle there. He could not help it. And
it maddened him to see, as he thought he saw, that
Becky Thatcher never once suspected that he was even
in the land of the living. But she did see, nevertheless;
and she knew she was winning her fight, too, and was
glad to see him suffer as she had suffered.

Amy's happy prattle became intolerable. Tom hint-
ed at things he had to attend to; things that must
be done; and time was fleeting. But in vain -- the
girl chirped on. Tom thought, "Oh, hang her, ain't
I ever going to get rid of her?" At last he must be
attending to those things -- and she said artlessly that
she would be "around" when school let out. And he
hastened away, hating her for it.

"Any other boy!" Tom thought, grating his teeth.
"Any boy in the whole town but that Saint Louis
smarty that thinks he dresses so fine and is aristocracy!
Oh, all right, I licked you the first day you ever saw this
town, mister, and I'll lick you again! You just wait
till I catch you out! I'll just take and --"

And he went through the motions of thrashing an
imaginary boy -- pummelling the air, and kicking and
gouging. "Oh, you do, do you? You holler 'nough,
do you? Now, then, let that learn you!" And so the
imaginary flogging was finished to his satisfaction.

Tom fled home at noon. His conscience could
not endure any more of Amy's grateful happiness, and
his jealousy could bear no more of the other distress.
Becky resumed her picture inspections with Alfred,
but as the minutes dragged along and no Tom came to
suffer, her triumph began to cloud and she lost inter-
est; gravity and absent-mindedness followed, and then
melancholy; two or three times she pricked up her ear
at a footstep, but it was a false hope; no Tom came.
At last she grew entirely miserable and wished she
hadn't carried it so far. When poor Alfred, seeing
that he was losing her, he did not know how, kept ex-
claiming: "Oh, here's a jolly one! look at this!" she lost
patience at last, and said, "Oh, don't bother me! I
don't care for them!" and burst into tears, and got up
and walked away.

Alfred dropped alongside and was going to try to
comfort her, but she said:

"Go away and leave me alone, can't you! I hate
you!"

So the boy halted, wondering what he could have
done -- for she had said she would look at pictures all
through the nooning -- and she walked on, crying.
Then Alfred went musing into the deserted school-
house. He was humiliated and angry. He easily
guessed his way to the truth -- the girl had simply made
a convenience of him to vent her spite upon Tom
Sawyer. He was far from hating Tom the less when
this thought occurred to him. He wished there was
some way to get that boy into trouble without much
risk to himself. Tom's spelling-book fell under his
eye. Here was his opportunity. He gratefully opened
to the lesson for the afternoon and poured ink upon the
page.

Becky, glancing in at a window behind him at the
moment, saw the act, and moved on, without discover-
ing herself. She started homeward, now, intending to
find Tom and tell him; Tom would be thankful and
their troubles would be healed. Before she was half
way home, however, she had changed her mind. The
thought of Tom's treatment of her when she was talking
about her picnic came scorching back and filled her
with shame. She resolved to let him get whipped on
the damaged spelling-book's account, and to hate him
forever, into the bargain.
<--split-->
CHAPTER XIX

TOM arrived at home in a dreary mood,
and the first thing his aunt said to him
showed him that he had brought his
sorrows to an unpromising market:

"Tom, I've a notion to skin you alive!"

"Auntie, what have I done?"

"Well, you've done enough. Here I go over to Se-
reny Harper, like an old softy, expecting I'm going to
make her believe all that rubbage about that dream,
when lo and behold you she'd found out from Joe that
you was over here and heard all the talk we had that
night. Tom, I don't know what is to become of a boy
that will act like that. It makes me feel so bad to think
you could let me go to Sereny Harper and make such a
fool of myself and never say a word."

This was a new aspect of the thing. His smartness
of the morning had seemed to Tom a good joke be-
fore, and very ingenious. It merely looked mean and
shabby now. He hung his head and could not think
of anything to say for a moment. Then he said:

"Auntie, I wish I hadn't done it -- but I didn't think."

"Oh, child, you never think. You never think of
anything but your own selfishness. You could think
to come all the way over here from Jackson's Island in
the night to laugh at our troubles, and you could think
to fool me with a lie about a dream; but you couldn't
ever think to pity us and save us from sorrow."

"Auntie, I know now it was mean, but I didn't
mean to be mean. I didn't, honest. And besides, I
didn't come over here to laugh at you that night."

"What did you come for, then?"

"It was to tell you not to be uneasy about us, be-
cause we hadn't got drownded."

"Tom, Tom, I would be the thankfullest soul in this
world if I could believe you ever had as good a thought
as that, but you know you never did -- and I know it,
Tom."

"Indeed and 'deed I did, auntie -- I wish I may never
stir if I didn't."

"Oh, Tom, don't lie -- don't do it. It only makes
things a hundred times worse."

"It ain't a lie, auntie; it's the truth. I wanted to
keep you from grieving -- that was all that made me
come."

"I'd give the whole world to believe that -- it would
cover up a power of sins, Tom. I'd 'most be glad you'd
run off and acted so bad. But it ain't reasonable; be-
cause, why didn't you tell me, child?"

"Why, you see, when you got to talking about the
funeral, I just got all full of the idea of our coming and
hiding in the church, and I couldn't somehow bear to
spoil it. So I just put the bark back in my pocket and
kept mum."

"What bark?"

"The bark I had wrote on to tell you we'd gone
pirating. I wish, now, you'd waked up when I kissed
you -- I do, honest."

The hard lines in his aunt's face relaxed and a sud-
den tenderness dawned in her eyes.

"DID you kiss me, Tom?"

"Why, yes, I did."

"Are you sure you did, Tom?"

"Why, yes, I did, auntie -- certain sure."

"What did you kiss me for, Tom?"

"Because I loved you so, and you laid there moaning
and I was so sorry."

The words sounded like truth. The old lady could
not hide a tremor in her voice when she said:

"Kiss me again, Tom! -- and be off with you to
school, now, and don't bother me any more."

The moment he was gone, she ran to a closet and
got out the ruin of a jacket which Tom had gone
pirating in. Then she stopped, with it in her hand,
and said to herself:

"No, I don't dare. Poor boy, I reckon he's lied
about it -- but it's a blessed, blessed lie, there's such a
comfort come from it. I hope the Lord -- I KNOW the
Lord will forgive him, because it was such good-
heartedness in him to tell it. But I don't want to find
out it's a lie. I won't look."

She put the jacket away, and stood by musing a
minute. Twice she put out her hand to take the
garment again, and twice she refrained. Once more
she ventured, and this time she fortified herself with
the thought: "It's a good lie -- it's a good lie -- I won't
let it grieve me." So she sought the jacket pocket. A
moment later she was reading Tom's piece of bark
through flowing tears and saying: "I could forgive the
boy, now, if he'd committed a million sins!"
<--split-->
CHAPTER XX

THERE was something about Aunt Polly's
manner, when she kissed Tom, that swept
away his low spirits and made him light-
hearted and happy again. He started to
school and had the luck of coming upon
Becky Thatcher at the head of Meadow
Lane. His mood always determined his manner.
Without a moment's hesitation he ran to her and said:

"I acted mighty mean to-day, Becky, and I'm so
sorry. I won't ever, ever do that way again, as long
as ever I live -- please make up, won't you?"

The girl stopped and looked him scornfully in the
face:

"I'll thank you to keep yourself TO yourself, Mr.
Thomas Sawyer. I'll never speak to you again."

She tossed her head and passed on. Tom was so
stunned that he had not even presence of mind enough
to say "Who cares, Miss Smarty?" until the right time
to say it had gone by. So he said nothing. But he
was in a fine rage, nevertheless. He moped into the
schoolyard wishing she were a boy, and imagining
how he would trounce her if she were. He presently
encountered her and delivered a stinging remark as he
passed. She hurled one in return, and the angry
breach was complete. It seemed to Becky, in her hot
resentment, that she could hardly wait for school to
"take in," she was so impatient to see Tom flogged for
the injured spelling-book. If she had had any linger-
ing notion of exposing Alfred Temple, Tom's offensive
fling had driven it entirely away.

Poor girl, she did not know how fast she was near-
ing trouble herself. The master, Mr. Dobbins, had
reached middle age with an unsatisfied ambition. The
darling of his desires was, to be a doctor, but poverty
had decreed that he should be nothing higher than a
village schoolmaster. Every day he took a mysterious
book out of his desk and absorbed himself in it at times
when no classes were reciting. He kept that book un-
der lock and key. There was not an urchin in school
but was perishing to have a glimpse of it, but the chance
never came. Every boy and girl had a theory about
the nature of that book; but no two theories were alike,
and there was no way of getting at the facts in the case.
Now, as Becky was passing by the desk, which stood
near the door, she noticed that the key was in the lock!
It was a precious moment. She glanced around;
found herself alone, and the next instant she had the
book in her hands. The title-page -- Professor Some-
body's ANATOMY -- carried no information to her mind;
so she began to turn the leaves. She came at once upon
a handsomely engraved and colored frontispiece -- a hu-
man figure, stark naked. At that moment a shadow
fell on the page and Tom Sawyer stepped in at the
door and caught a glimpse of the picture. Becky
snatched at the book to close it, and had the hard luck
to tear the pictured page half down the middle. She
thrust the volume into the desk, turned the key, and
burst out crying with shame and vexation.

"Tom Sawyer, you are just as mean as you can
be, to sneak up on a person and look at what they're
looking at."

"How could I know you was looking at anything?"

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Tom Sawyer;
you know you're going to tell on me, and oh, what shall
I do, what shall I do! I'll be whipped, and I never was
whipped in school."

Then she stamped her little foot and said:

"BE so mean if you want to! I know something
that's going to happen. You just wait and you'll see!
Hateful, hateful, hateful!" -- and she flung out of the
house with a new explosion of crying.

Tom stood still, rather flustered by this onslaught.
Presently he said to himself:

"What a curious kind of a fool a girl is! Never
been licked in school! Shucks! What's a licking!
That's just like a girl -- they're so thin-skinned and
chicken-hearted. Well, of course I ain't going to tell
old Dobbins on this little fool, because there's other
ways of getting even on her, that ain't so mean; but
what of it? Old Dobbins will ask who it was tore his
book. Nobody'll answer. Then he'll do just the way
he always does -- ask first one and then t'other, and
when he comes to the right girl he'll know it, without
any telling. Girls' faces always tell on them. They
ain't got any backbone. She'll get licked. Well, it's
a kind of a tight place for Becky Thatcher, because there
ain't any way out of it." Tom conned the thing a
moment longer, and then added: "All right, though;
she'd like to see me in just such a fix -- let her sweat it
out!"

Tom joined the mob of skylarking scholars outside.
In a few moments the master arrived and school "took
in." Tom did not feel a strong interest in his studies.
Every time he stole a glance at the girls' side of the
room Becky's face troubled him. Considering all
things, he did not want to pity her, and yet it was all
he could do to help it. He could get up no exultation
that was really worthy the name. Presently the spell-
ing-book discovery was made, and Tom's mind was en-
tirely full of his own matters for a while after that.
Becky roused up from her lethargy of distress and
showed good interest in the proceedings. She did not
expect that Tom could get out of his trouble by denying
that he spilt the ink on the book himself; and she was
right. The denial only seemed to make the thing worse
for Tom. Becky supposed she would be glad of that,
and she tried to believe she was glad of it, but she found
she was not certain. When the worst came to the
worst, she had an impulse to get up and tell on Alfred
Temple, but she made an effort and forced herself to
keep still -- because, said she to herself, "he'll tell about
me tearing the picture sure. I wouldn't say a word,
not to save his life!"

Tom took his whipping and went back to his seat
not at all broken-hearted, for he thought it was possible
that he had unknowingly upset the ink on the spelling-
book himself, in some skylarking bout -- he had denied
it for form's sake and because it was custom, and had
stuck to the denial from principle.

A whole hour drifted by, the master sat nodding in
his throne, the air was drowsy with the hum of study.
By and by, Mr. Dobbins straightened himself up, yawn-
ed, then unlocked his desk, and reached for his book,
but seemed undecided whether to take it out or leave it.
Most of the pupils glanced up languidly, but there were
two among them that watched his movements with in-
tent eyes. Mr. Dobbins fingered his book absently for
a while, then took it out and settled himself in his chair
to read! Tom shot a glance at Becky. He had seen a
hunted and helpless rabbit look as she did, with a gun
levelled at its head. Instantly he forgot his quarrel
with her. Quick -- something must be done! done in a
flash, too! But the very imminence of the emergency
paralyzed his invention. Good! -- he had an inspira-
tion! He would run and snatch the book, spring
through the door and fly. But his resolution shook
for one little instant, and the chance was lost -- the
master opened the volume. If Tom only had the
wasted opportunity back again! Too late. There was
no help for Becky now, he said. The next moment the
master faced the school. Every eye sank under his gaze.
There was that in it which smote even the innocent
with fear. There was silence while one might count ten
-- the master was gathering his wrath. Then he spoke:
"Who tore this book?"

There was not a sound. One could have heard a
pin drop. The stillness continued; the master searched
face after face for signs of guilt.

"Benjamin Rogers, did you tear this book?"

A denial. Another pause.

"Joseph Harper, did you?"

Another denial. Tom's uneasiness grew more and
more intense under the slow torture of these proceedings.
The master scanned the ranks of boys -- considered a
while, then turned to the girls:

"Amy Lawrence?"

A shake of the head.

"Gracie Miller?"

The same sign.

"Susan Harper, did you do this?"

Another negative. The next girl was Becky Thatcher.
Tom was trembling from head to foot with excitement
and a sense of the hopelessness of the situation.

"Rebecca Thatcher" [Tom glanced at her face -- it
was white with terror] -- "did you tear -- no, look me
in the face" [her hands rose in appeal] -- "did you tear
this book?"

A thought shot like lightning through Tom's brain.
He sprang to his feet and shouted -- "I done it!"

The school stared in perplexity at this incredible
folly. Tom stood a moment, to gather his dismem-
bered faculties; and when he stepped forward to go
to his punishment the surprise, the gratitude, the
adoration that shone upon him out of poor Becky's
eyes seemed pay enough for a hundred floggings.
Inspired by the splendor of his own act, he took without
an outcry the most merciless flaying that even Mr.
Dobbins had ever administered; and also received with
indifference the added cruelty of a command to remain
two hours after school should be dismissed -- for he
knew who would wait for him outside till his captivity
was done, and not count the tedious time as loss, either.

Tom went to bed that night planning vengeance
against Alfred Temple; for with shame and repentance
Becky had told him all, not forgetting her own treachery;
but even the longing for vengeance had to give way,
soon, to pleasanter musings, and he fell asleep at last
with Becky's latest words lingering dreamily in his ear --

"Tom, how COULD you be so noble!"