The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Part 3.
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
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Title: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Part 3.
Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
Release Date: June 29, 2004 [EBook #7195]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TOM SAWYER, PART 3. ***
Produced by David Widger
THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER
BY
MARK TWAIN
(Samuel Langhorne Clemens)
Part 3
CHAPTER VIII
TOM dodged hither and thither through lanes until he was well out of
the track of returning scholars, and then fell into a moody jog. He
crossed a small "branch" two or three times, because of a prevailing
juvenile superstition that to cross water baffled pursuit. Half an hour
later he was disappearing behind the Douglas mansion on the summit of
Cardiff Hill, and the schoolhouse was hardly distinguishable away off
in the valley behind him. He entered a dense wood, picked his pathless
way to the centre of it, and sat down on a mossy spot under a spreading
oak. There was not even a zephyr stirring; the dead noonday heat had
even stilled the songs of the birds; nature lay in a trance that was
broken by no sound but the occasional far-off hammering of a
woodpecker, and this seemed to render the pervading silence and sense
of loneliness the more profound. The boy's soul was steeped in
melancholy; his feelings were in happy accord with his surroundings. He
sat long with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands,
meditating. It seemed to him that life was but a trouble, at best, and
he more than half envied Jimmy Hodges, so lately released; it must be
very peaceful, he thought, to lie and slumber and dream forever and
ever, with the wind whispering through the trees and caressing the
grass and the flowers over the grave, and nothing to bother and grieve
about, ever any more. If he only had a clean Sunday-school record he
could be willing to go, and be done with it all. Now as to this girl.
What had he done? Nothing. He had meant the best in the world, and been
treated like a dog--like a very dog. She would be sorry some day--maybe
when it was too late. Ah, if he could only die TEMPORARILY!
But the elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one
constrained shape long at a time. Tom presently began to drift
insensibly back into the concerns of this life again. What if he turned
his back, now, and disappeared mysteriously? What if he went away--ever
so far away, into unknown countries beyond the seas--and never came
back any more! How would she feel then! The idea of being a clown
recurred to him now, only to fill him with disgust. For frivolity and
jokes and spotted tights were an offense, when they intruded themselves
upon a spirit that was exalted into the vague august realm of the
romantic. No, he would be a soldier, and return after long years, all
war-worn and illustrious. No--better still, he would join the Indians,
and hunt buffaloes and go on the warpath in the mountain ranges and the
trackless great plains of the Far West, and away in the future come
back a great chief, bristling with feathers, hideous with paint, and
prance into Sunday-school, some drowsy summer morning, with a
bloodcurdling war-whoop, and sear the eyeballs of all his companions
with unappeasable envy. But no, there was something gaudier even than
this. He would be a pirate! That was it! NOW his future lay plain
before him, and glowing with unimaginable splendor. How his name would
fill the world, and make people shudder! How gloriously he would go
plowing the dancing seas, in his long, low, black-hulled racer, the
Spirit of the Storm, with his grisly flag flying at the fore! And at
the zenith of his fame, how he would suddenly appear at the old village
and stalk into church, brown and weather-beaten, in his black velvet
doublet and trunks, his great jack-boots, his crimson sash, his belt
bristling with horse-pistols, his crime-rusted cutlass at his side, his
slouch hat with waving plumes, his black flag unfurled, with the skull
and crossbones on it, and hear with swelling ecstasy the whisperings,
"It's Tom Sawyer the Pirate!--the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main!"
Yes, it was settled; his career was determined. He would run away from
home and enter upon it. He would start the very next morning. Therefore
he must now begin to get ready. He would collect his resources
together. He went to a rotten log near at hand and began to dig under
one end of it with his Barlow knife. He soon struck wood that sounded
hollow. He put his hand there and uttered this incantation impressively:
"What hasn't come here, come! What's here, stay here!"
Then he scraped away the dirt, and exposed a pine shingle. He took it
up and disclosed a shapely little treasure-house whose bottom and sides
were of shingles. In it lay a marble. Tom's astonishment was boundless!
He scratched his head with a perplexed air, and said:
"Well, that beats anything!"
Then he tossed the marble away pettishly, and stood cogitating. The
truth was, that a superstition of his had failed, here, which he and
all his comrades had always looked upon as infallible. If you buried a
marble with certain necessary incantations, and left it alone a
fortnight, and then opened the place with the incantation he had just
used, you would find that all the marbles you had ever lost had
gathered themselves together there, meantime, no matter how widely they
had been separated. But now, this thing had actually and unquestionably
failed. Tom's whole structure of faith was shaken to its foundations.
He had many a time heard of this thing succeeding but never of its
failing before. It did not occur to him that he had tried it several
times before, himself, but could never find the hiding-places
afterward. He puzzled over the matter some time, and finally decided
that some witch had interfered and broken the charm. He thought he
would satisfy himself on that point; so he searched around till he
found a small sandy spot with a little funnel-shaped depression in it.
He laid himself down and put his mouth close to this depression and
called--
"Doodle-bug, doodle-bug, tell me what I want to know! Doodle-bug,
doodle-bug, tell me what I want to know!"
The sand began to work, and presently a small black bug appeared for a
second and then darted under again in a fright.
"He dasn't tell! So it WAS a witch that done it. I just knowed it."
He well knew the futility of trying to contend against witches, so he
gave up discouraged. But it occurred to him that he might as well have
the marble he had just thrown away, and therefore he went and made a
patient search for it. But he could not find it. Now he went back to
his treasure-house and carefully placed himself just as he had been
standing when he tossed the marble away; then he took another marble
from his pocket and tossed it in the same way, saying:
"Brother, go find your brother!"
He watched where it stopped, and went there and looked. But it must
have fallen short or gone too far; so he tried twice more. The last
repetition was successful. The two marbles lay within a foot of each
other.
Just here the blast of a toy tin trumpet came faintly down the green
aisles of the forest. Tom flung off his jacket and trousers, turned a
suspender into a belt, raked away some brush behind the rotten log,
disclosing a rude bow and arrow, a lath sword and a tin trumpet, and in
a moment had seized these things and bounded away, barelegged, with
fluttering shirt. He presently halted under a great elm, blew an
answering blast, and then began to tiptoe and look warily out, this way
and that. He said cautiously--to an imaginary company:
"Hold, my merry men! Keep hid till I blow."
Now appeared Joe Harper, as airily clad and elaborately armed as Tom.
Tom called:
"Hold! Who comes here into Sherwood Forest without my pass?"
"Guy of Guisborne wants no man's pass. Who art thou that--that--"
"Dares to hold such language," said Tom, prompting--for they talked
"by the book," from memory.
"Who art thou that dares to hold such language?"
"I, indeed! I am Robin Hood, as thy caitiff carcase soon shall know."
"Then art thou indeed that famous outlaw? Right gladly will I dispute
with thee the passes of the merry wood. Have at thee!"
They took their lath swords, dumped their other traps on the ground,
struck a fencing attitude, foot to foot, and began a grave, careful
combat, "two up and two down." Presently Tom said:
"Now, if you've got the hang, go it lively!"
So they "went it lively," panting and perspiring with the work. By and
by Tom shouted:
"Fall! fall! Why don't you fall?"
"I sha'n't! Why don't you fall yourself? You're getting the worst of
it."
"Why, that ain't anything. I can't fall; that ain't the way it is in
the book. The book says, 'Then with one back-handed stroke he slew poor
Guy of Guisborne.' You're to turn around and let me hit you in the
back."
There was no getting around the authorities, so Joe turned, received
the whack and fell.
"Now," said Joe, getting up, "you got to let me kill YOU. That's fair."
"Why, I can't do that, it ain't in the book."
"Well, it's blamed mean--that's all."
"Well, say, Joe, you can be Friar Tuck or Much the miller's son, and
lam me with a quarter-staff; or I'll be the Sheriff of Nottingham and
you be Robin Hood a little while and kill me."
This was satisfactory, and so these adventures were carried out. Then
Tom became Robin Hood again, and was allowed by the treacherous nun to
bleed his strength away through his neglected wound. And at last Joe,
representing a whole tribe of weeping outlaws, dragged him sadly forth,
gave his bow into his feeble hands, and Tom said, "Where this arrow
falls, there bury poor Robin Hood under the greenwood tree." Then he
shot the arrow and fell back and would have died, but he lit on a
nettle and sprang up too gaily for a corpse.
The boys dressed themselves, hid their accoutrements, and went off
grieving that there were no outlaws any more, and wondering what modern
civilization could claim to have done to compensate for their loss.
They said they would rather be outlaws a year in Sherwood Forest than
President of the United States forever.
CHAPTER IX
AT half-past nine, that night, Tom and Sid were sent to bed, as usual.
They said their prayers, and Sid was soon asleep. Tom lay awake and
waited, in restless impatience. When it seemed to him that it must be
nearly daylight, he heard the clock strike ten! This was despair. He
would have tossed and fidgeted, as his nerves demanded, but he was
afraid he might wake Sid. So he lay still, and stared up into the dark.
Everything was dismally still. By and by, out of the stillness, little,
scarcely perceptible noises began to emphasize themselves. The ticking
of the clock began to bring itself into notice. Old beams began to
crack mysteriously. The stairs creaked faintly. Evidently spirits were
abroad. A measured, muffled snore issued from Aunt Polly's chamber. And
now the tiresome chirping of a cricket that no human ingenuity could
locate, began. Next the ghastly ticking of a deathwatch in the wall at
the bed's head made Tom shudder--it meant that somebody's days were
numbered. Then the howl of a far-off dog rose on the night air, and was
answered by a fainter howl from a remoter distance. Tom was in an
agony. At last he was satisfied that time had ceased and eternity
begun; he began to doze, in spite of himself; the clock chimed eleven,
but he did not hear it. And then there came, mingling with his
half-formed dreams, a most melancholy caterwauling. The raising of a
neighboring window disturbed him. A cry of "Scat! you devil!" and the
crash of an empty bottle against the back of his aunt's woodshed
brought him wide awake, and a single minute later he was dressed and
out of the window and creeping along the roof of the "ell" on all
fours. He "meow'd" with caution once or twice, as he went; then jumped
to the roof of the woodshed and thence to the ground. Huckleberry Finn
was there, with his dead cat. The boys moved off and disappeared in the
gloom. At the end of half an hour they were wading through the tall
grass of the graveyard.
It was a graveyard of the old-fashioned Western kind. It was on a
hill, about a mile and a half from the village. It had a crazy board
fence around it, which leaned inward in places, and outward the rest of
the time, but stood upright nowhere. Grass and weeds grew rank over the
whole cemetery. All the old graves were sunken in, there was not a
tombstone on the place; round-topped, worm-eaten boards staggered over
the graves, leaning for support and finding none. "Sacred to the memory
of" So-and-So had been painted on them once, but it could no longer
have been read, on the most of them, now, even if there had been light.
A faint wind moaned through the trees, and Tom feared it might be the
spirits of the dead, complaining at being disturbed. The boys talked
little, and only under their breath, for the time and the place and the
pervading solemnity and silence oppressed their spirits. They found the
sharp new heap they were seeking, and ensconced themselves within the
protection of three great elms that grew in a bunch within a few feet
of the grave.
Then they waited in silence for what seemed a long time. The hooting
of a distant owl was all the sound that troubled the dead stillness.
Tom's reflections grew oppressive. He must force some talk. So he said
in a whisper:
"Hucky, do you believe the dead people like it for us to be here?"
Huckleberry whispered:
"I wisht I knowed. It's awful solemn like, AIN'T it?"
"I bet it is."
There was a considerable pause, while the boys canvassed this matter
inwardly. Then Tom whispered:
"Say, Hucky--do you reckon Hoss Williams hears us talking?"
"O' course he does. Least his sperrit does."
Tom, after a pause:
"I wish I'd said Mister Williams. But I never meant any harm.
Everybody calls him Hoss."
"A body can't be too partic'lar how they talk 'bout these-yer dead
people, Tom."
This was a damper, and conversation died again.
Presently Tom seized his comrade's arm and said:
"Sh!"
"What is it, Tom?" And the two clung together with beating hearts.
"Sh! There 'tis again! Didn't you hear it?"
"I--"
"There! Now you hear it."
"Lord, Tom, they're coming! They're coming, sure. What'll we do?"
"I dono. Think they'll see us?"
"Oh, Tom, they can see in the dark, same as cats. I wisht I hadn't
come."
"Oh, don't be afeard. I don't believe they'll bother us. We ain't
doing any harm. If we keep perfectly still, maybe they won't notice us
at all."
"I'll try to, Tom, but, Lord, I'm all of a shiver."
"Listen!"
The boys bent their heads together and scarcely breathed. A muffled
sound of voices floated up from the far end of the graveyard.
"Look! See there!" whispered Tom. "What is it?"
"It's devil-fire. Oh, Tom, this is awful."
Some vague figures approached through the gloom, swinging an
old-fashioned tin lantern that freckled the ground with innumerable
little spangles of light. Presently Huckleberry whispered with a
shudder:
"It's the devils sure enough. Three of 'em! Lordy, Tom, we're goners!
Can you pray?"
"I'll try, but don't you be afeard. They ain't going to hurt us. 'Now
I lay me down to sleep, I--'"
"Sh!"
"What is it, Huck?"
"They're HUMANS! One of 'em is, anyway. One of 'em's old Muff Potter's
voice."
"No--'tain't so, is it?"
"I bet I know it. Don't you stir nor budge. He ain't sharp enough to
notice us. Drunk, the same as usual, likely--blamed old rip!"
"All right, I'll keep still. Now they're stuck. Can't find it. Here
they come again. Now they're hot. Cold again. Hot again. Red hot!
They're p'inted right, this time. Say, Huck, I know another o' them
voices; it's Injun Joe."
"That's so--that murderin' half-breed! I'd druther they was devils a
dern sight. What kin they be up to?"
The whisper died wholly out, now, for the three men had reached the
grave and stood within a few feet of the boys' hiding-place.
"Here it is," said the third voice; and the owner of it held the
lantern up and revealed the face of young Doctor Robinson.
Potter and Injun Joe were carrying a handbarrow with a rope and a
couple of shovels on it. They cast down their load and began to open
the grave. The doctor put the lantern at the head of the grave and came
and sat down with his back against one of the elm trees. He was so
close the boys could have touched him.
"Hurry, men!" he said, in a low voice; "the moon might come out at any
moment."
They growled a response and went on digging. For some time there was
no noise but the grating sound of the spades discharging their freight
of mould and gravel. It was very monotonous. Finally a spade struck
upon the coffin with a dull woody accent, and within another minute or
two the men had hoisted it out on the ground. They pried off the lid
with their shovels, got out the body and dumped it rudely on the
ground. The moon drifted from behind the clouds and exposed the pallid
face. The barrow was got ready and the corpse placed on it, covered
with a blanket, and bound to its place with the rope. Potter took out a
large spring-knife and cut off the dangling end of the rope and then
said:
"Now the cussed thing's ready, Sawbones, and you'll just out with
another five, or here she stays."
"That's the talk!" said Injun Joe.
"Look here, what does this mean?" said the doctor. "You required your
pay in advance, and I've paid you."
"Yes, and you done more than that," said Injun Joe, approaching the
doctor, who was now standing. "Five years ago you drove me away from
your father's kitchen one night, when I come to ask for something to
eat, and you said I warn't there for any good; and when I swore I'd get
even with you if it took a hundred years, your father had me jailed for
a vagrant. Did you think I'd forget? The Injun blood ain't in me for
nothing. And now I've GOT you, and you got to SETTLE, you know!"
He was threatening the doctor, with his fist in his face, by this
time. The doctor struck out suddenly and stretched the ruffian on the
ground. Potter dropped his knife, and exclaimed:
"Here, now, don't you hit my pard!" and the next moment he had
grappled with the doctor and the two were struggling with might and
main, trampling the grass and tearing the ground with their heels.
Injun Joe sprang to his feet, his eyes flaming with passion, snatched
up Potter's knife, and went creeping, catlike and stooping, round and
round about the combatants, seeking an opportunity. All at once the
doctor flung himself free, seized the heavy headboard of Williams'
grave and felled Potter to the earth with it--and in the same instant
the half-breed saw his chance and drove the knife to the hilt in the
young man's breast. He reeled and fell partly upon Potter, flooding him
with his blood, and in the same moment the clouds blotted out the
dreadful spectacle and the two frightened boys went speeding away in
the dark.
Presently, when the moon emerged again, Injun Joe was standing over
the two forms, contemplating them. The doctor murmured inarticulately,
gave a long gasp or two and was still. The half-breed muttered:
"THAT score is settled--damn you."
Then he robbed the body. After which he put the fatal knife in
Potter's open right hand, and sat down on the dismantled coffin. Three
--four--five minutes passed, and then Potter began to stir and moan. His
hand closed upon the knife; he raised it, glanced at it, and let it
fall, with a shudder. Then he sat up, pushing the body from him, and
gazed at it, and then around him, confusedly. His eyes met Joe's.
"Lord, how is this, Joe?" he said.
"It's a dirty business," said Joe, without moving.
"What did you do it for?"
"I! I never done it!"
"Look here! That kind of talk won't wash."
Potter trembled and grew white.
"I thought I'd got sober. I'd no business to drink to-night. But it's
in my head yet--worse'n when we started here. I'm all in a muddle;
can't recollect anything of it, hardly. Tell me, Joe--HONEST, now, old
feller--did I do it? Joe, I never meant to--'pon my soul and honor, I
never meant to, Joe. Tell me how it was, Joe. Oh, it's awful--and him
so young and promising."
"Why, you two was scuffling, and he fetched you one with the headboard
and you fell flat; and then up you come, all reeling and staggering
like, and snatched the knife and jammed it into him, just as he fetched
you another awful clip--and here you've laid, as dead as a wedge til
now."
"Oh, I didn't know what I was a-doing. I wish I may die this minute if
I did. It was all on account of the whiskey and the excitement, I
reckon. I never used a weepon in my life before, Joe. I've fought, but
never with weepons. They'll all say that. Joe, don't tell! Say you
won't tell, Joe--that's a good feller. I always liked you, Joe, and
stood up for you, too. Don't you remember? You WON'T tell, WILL you,
Joe?" And the poor creature dropped on his knees before the stolid
murderer, and clasped his appealing hands.
"No, you've always been fair and square with me, Muff Potter, and I
won't go back on you. There, now, that's as fair as a man can say."
"Oh, Joe, you're an angel. I'll bless you for this the longest day I
live." And Potter began to cry.
"Come, now, that's enough of that. This ain't any time for blubbering.
You be off yonder way and I'll go this. Move, now, and don't leave any
tracks behind you."
Potter started on a trot that quickly increased to a run. The
half-breed stood looking after him. He muttered:
"If he's as much stunned with the lick and fuddled with the rum as he
had the look of being, he won't think of the knife till he's gone so
far he'll be afraid to come back after it to such a place by himself
--chicken-heart!"
Two or three minutes later the murdered man, the blanketed corpse, the
lidless coffin, and the open grave were under no inspection but the
moon's. The stillness was complete again, too.
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 cottages 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 between 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 drownding 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 circumstances, the surroundings, were in keeping
with it. He picked up a clean pine shingle that lay in the moonlight,
took a little fragment of "red keel" out of his pocket, got the moon on
his work, and painfully scrawled 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 complete. 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 Huckleberry.
"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 together."
"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, 'longside 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 somebody 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
coming 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 stealthily
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 tiptoed
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
escapade. 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 revengeful 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 himself 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.
CHAPTER XI
CLOSE upon the hour of noon the whole village was suddenly electrified
with the ghastly news. No need of the as yet undreamed-of telegraph;
the tale flew from man to man, from group to group, from house to
house, with little less than telegraphic speed. Of course the
schoolmaster gave holiday 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 belonging to Muff Potter--so the story ran.
And it was said that a belated citizen had come upon Potter washing
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 procession, not because he would not a
thousand times rather go anywhere else, but because an awful,
unaccountable 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 Huckleberry'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 remark; 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 hopelessness 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 staring, and heard the
stony-hearted liar reel off his serene 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 fascinated 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 disturbed 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 himself.
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. However, 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 confessing the
grave-robbery that preceded it; therefore it was deemed wisest not
to try the case in the courts at present.
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 distraction 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 woodshed 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 blankets
till she sweated his soul clean and "the yellow 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 instantly at rest, her soul at peace again;
for the "indifference" 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 condition, 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, eying 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 anybody 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 proclaiming
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
teaspoon 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 unconscious 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.
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by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
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