«Well, I never heard the likes of it in all my born days! So it was YOU, you little rapscallions, that's been making all this trouble, and turned everybody's wits clean inside out and scared us all most to death. I've as good a notion as ever I had in my life to take it out o' you this very minute. To think, here I've been, night after night, a- YOU just get well once, you young scamp, and I lay I'll tan the Old Harry out o' both o' ye!»
But Tom, he WAS so proud and joyful, he just COULDN'T hold in, and his tongue just WENT it-she a-chipping in, and spitting fire all along, and both of them going it at once, like a cat convention; and she says:
«WELL, you get all the enjoyment you can out of it NOW, for mind I tell you if I catch you meddling with him again-«
«Meddling with WHO?» Tom says, dropping his smile and looking surprised.
«With WHO? Why, the runaway nigger, of course. Who'd you reckon?»
Tom looks at me very grave, and says:
«Tom, didn't you just tell me he was all right? Hasn't he got away?»
«HIM?» says Aunt Sally; «the runaway nigger? 'Deed he hasn't. They've got him back, safe and sound, and he's in that cabin again, on bread and water, and loaded down with chains, till he's claimed or sold!»
Tom rose square up in bed, with his eye hot, and his nostrils opening and shutting like gills, and sings out to me:
«They hain't no RIGHT to shut him up! SHOVE!-and don't you lose a minute. Turn him loose! he ain't no slave; he's as free as any cretur that walks this earth!»
«What DOES the child mean?»
«I mean every word I SAY, Aunt Sally, and if somebody don't go, I'LL go. I've knowed him all his life, and so has Tom, there. Old Miss Watson died two months ago, and she was ashamed she ever was going to sell him down the river, and SAID so; and she set him free in her will.»
«Then what on earth did YOU want to set him free for, seeing he was already free?»
«Well, that IS a question, I must say; and just like women! Why, I wanted the ADVENTURE of it; and I'd a waded neck-deep in blood to
—goodness alive, AUNT POLLY!»
If she warn't standing right there, just inside the door, looking as sweet and contented as an angel half full of pie, I wish I may never!
Aunt Sally jumped for her, and most hugged the head off of her, and cried over her, and I found a good enough place for me under the bed, for it was getting pretty sultry for us, seemed to me. And I peeped out, and in a little while Tom's Aunt Polly shook herself loose and stood there looking across at Tom over her spectacles-kind of grinding him into the earth, you know. And then she says:
«Yes, you BETTER turn y'r head away-I would if I was you, Tom.»
«Oh, deary me!» says Aunt Sally; «IS he changed so? Why, that ain't TOM, it's Sid; Tom's-Tom's-why, where is Tom? He was here a minute ago.»
«You mean where's Huck FINN-that's what you mean! I reckon I hain't raised such a scamp as my Tom all these years not to know him when I SEE him. That WOULD be a pretty howdy-do. Come out from under that bed, Huck Finn.»
So I done it. But not feeling brash.
Aunt Sally she was one of the mixed-upest-looking persons I ever see
—except one, and that was Uncle Silas, when he come in and they told it all to him. It kind of made him drunk, as you may say, and he didn't know nothing at all the rest of the day, and preached a prayer-meeting sermon that night that gave him a rattling ruputation, because the oldest man in the world couldn't a understood it. So Tom's Aunt Polly, she told all about who I was, and what; and I had to up and tell how I was in such a tight place that when Mrs. Phelps took me for Tom Sawyer-she chipped in and says, «Oh, go on and call me Aunt Sally, I'm used to it now, and 'tain't no need to change»-that when Aunt Sally took me for Tom Sawyer I had to stand it-there warn't no other way, and I knowed he wouldn't mind, because it would be nuts for him, being a mystery, and he'd make an adventure out of it, and be perfectly satisfied. And so it turned out, and he let on to be Sid, and made things as soft as he could for me.
And his Aunt Polly she said Tom was right about old Miss Watson setting Jim free in her will; and so, sure enough, Tom Sawyer had gone and took all that trouble and bother to set a free nigger free! and I couldn't ever understand before, until that minute and that talk, how he COULD help a body set a nigger free with his bringing- up.
Well, Aunt Polly she said that when Aunt Sally wrote to her that Tom and SID had come all right and safe, she says to herself:
«Look at that, now! I might have expected it, letting him go off that way without anybody to watch him. So now I got to go and trapse all the way down the river, eleven hundred mile, and find out what that creetur's up to THIS time, as long as I couldn't seem to get any answer out of you about it.»
«Why, I never heard nothing from you,» says Aunt Sally.
«Well, I wonder! Why, I wrote you twice to ask you what you could mean by Sid being here.»
«Well, I never got 'em, Sis.»
Aunt Polly she turns around slow and severe, and says:
«You, Tom!»
«Well-WHAT?» he says, kind of pettish.
«Don t you what ME, you impudent thing-hand out them letters.»
«What letters?»
«THEM letters. I be bound, if I have to take a-holt of you I'll-«
«They're in the trunk. There, now. And they're just the same as they was when I got them out of the office. I hain't looked into them, I hain't touched them. But I knowed they'd make trouble, and I thought if you warn't in no hurry, I'd-«
«Well, you DO need skinning, there ain't no mistake about it. And I wrote another one to tell you I was coming; and I s'pose he-«
«No, it come yesterday; I hain't read it yet, but IT'S all right, I've got that one.»
I wanted to offer to bet two dollars she hadn't, but I reckoned maybe it was just as safe to not to. So I never said nothing.
CHAPTER THE LAST
THE first time I catched Tom private I asked him what was his idea, time of the evasion?-what it was he'd planned to do if the evasion worked all right and he managed to set a nigger free that was already free before? And he said, what he had planned in his head from the start, if we got Jim out all safe, was for us to run him down the river on the raft, and have adventures plumb to the mouth of the river, and then tell him about his being free, and take him back up home on a steamboat, in style, and pay him for his lost time, and write word ahead and get out all the niggers around, and have them waltz him into town with a torchlight procession and a brass-band, and then he would be a hero, and so would we. But I reckoned it was about as well the way it was.
We had Jim out of the chains in no time, and when Aunt Polly and Uncle Silas and Aunt Sally found out how good he helped the doctor nurse Tom, they made a heap of fuss over him, and fixed him up prime, and give him all he wanted to eat, and a good time, and nothing to do. And we had him up to the sick-room, and had a high talk; and Tom give Jim forty dollars for being prisoner for us so patient, and doing it up so good, and Jim was pleased most to death, and busted out, and says:
«DAH, now, Huck, what I tell you?-what I tell you up dah on Jackson islan'? I TOLE you I got a hairy breas', en what's de sign un it; en I TOLE you I ben rich wunst, en gwineter to be rich AGIN; en it's come true; en heah she is! DAH, now! doan' talk to ME-signs is SIGNS, mine I tell you; en I knowed jis' 's well 'at I 'uz gwineter be rich agin as I's a-stannin' heah dis minute!»
And then Tom he talked along and talked along, and says, le's all three slide out of here one of these nights and get an outfit, and go for howling adventures amongst the Injuns, over in the Territory, for a couple of weeks or two; and I says, all right, that suits me, but I ain't got no money for to buy the outfit, and I reckon I couldn't get none from home, because it's likely pap's been back before now, and got it all away from Judge Thatcher and drunk it up.
«No, he hain't,» Tom says; «it's all there yet-six thousand dollars and more; and your pap hain't ever been back since. Hadn't when I come away, anyhow.»
