Why does huck enjoying the bread that ironically

He will experience difficulties impossible to overcome without friends. Suddenly, Huck hears the sound of horses and human voices. He shoves out in his canoe and ties up back to his old place. Though he has no luck, later he does see a fire. A man is sleeping nearby: it is Jim. Huck greets him, but Jim jumps up, then falls to his knees, begging Huck not to hurt him, for he thinks Huck is a ghost.

Huck succeeds in convincing Jim that he is not, in fact, a ghost. Huck also finds that he is no longer lonesome having found Jim. Just as things become desperate for him, Huck discovers a friend in Jim, with whom he can negotiate the difficulties of nature and of society alike. With characteristic superstition, however, Jim, thinking that Huck was murdered, is afraid that Huck is a ghost.

Religion and Superstition. Huck sets up camp and brings out his provisions of meal, bacon, and coffee, all of which Jim thinks is done by witchcraft.

Huck also catches a catfish, which he and Jim enjoy for breakfast. Together, Huck and Jim can live in relative peace. Slavery and Racism. Huck then explains his escape to Jim, who praises the plan as being worthy of Tom Sawyer himself.

Consequently, Jim fled, doing so by water to avoid being tracked by men and dogs. Abolitionists fight for the freedom of the oppressed, which, the novel holds, is better than fighting to oppress. This section of the novel also reveals some of the cruelties of slavery as an institution: Miss Watson, who claims to be a Christian, values money more than she does a human who, in Christian belief, has an immortal and infinitely valuable soul.

He is no longer lonesome because he finds Jim. Jim is on the island. Birds flying in a pattern or formation and chickens indicate rain.

Catching a bird will cause a death. Hairy arms and breast indicates that you will someday be rich. Chapter 9 — Question 1 Where do Jim and Huck take shelter? Huck and Jim take shelter in a cavern.

How deep was the flooding? The river levels rose for ten or twelve days until it spilled over the banks. The water was three or four foot deep on the island in the low places and on the Illinois bottom. Question 3 What does Jim discover in the floating house? Inside the floating house, Jim finds a dead man who is naked and shot in the back.

Jim says it is bad luck to talk about a dead man. Jim goes to bed. Jim is deliriously ill for four days and nights. Huck does not let him know that it is his fault, but he is remorseful.

Hank Bunker looked at the new moon over his left shoulder. He does it and then brags about it. In less than two years, he got drunk and fell off the shot-tower and spread himself out so he was a kind of layer.

They slid him edgeways between two barn doors for a coffin and buried him. Huck went to shore for information dressed as a girl. That was good! Then I slipped down to the ground and crawled in among the trees, and, sure enough, there was Tom Sawyer waiting for me. When we was passing by the kitchen I fell over a root and made a noise. We scrouched down and laid still. He got up and stretched his neck out about a minute, listening.

Then he says:. He listened some more; then he come tiptoeing down and stood right between us; we could a touched him, nearly. Pretty soon Jim says:.

Whar is you? So he set down on the ground betwixt me and Tom. He leaned his back up against a tree, and stretched his legs out till one of them most touched one of mine. My nose begun to itch. It itched till the tears come into my eyes. Then it begun to itch on the inside. Next I got to itching underneath. This miserableness went on as much as six or seven minutes; but it seemed a sight longer than that.

I was itching in eleven different places now. Just then Jim begun to breathe heavy; next he begun to snore—and then I was pretty soon comfortable again. Tom he made a sign to me—kind of a little noise with his mouth—and we went creeping away on our hands and knees. When we was ten foot off Tom whispered to me, and wanted to tie Jim to the tree for fun. I said Jim might wake up and come. But Tom wanted to resk it; so we slid in there and got three candles, and Tom laid five cents on the table for pay.

Then we got out, and I was in a sweat to get away; but nothing would do Tom but he must crawl to where Jim was, on his hands and knees, and play something on him. I waited, and it seemed a good while, everything was so still and lonesome. As soon as Tom was back we cut along the path, around the garden fence, and by and by fetched up on the steep top of the hill the other side of the house.

Afterwards Jim said the witches be witched him and put him in a trance, and rode him all over the State, and then set him under the trees again, and hung his hat on a limb to show who done it. And next time Jim told it he said they rode him down to New Orleans; and, after that, every time he told it he spread it more and more, till by and by he said they rode him all over the world, and tired him most to death, and his back was all over saddle-boils. Niggers would come miles to hear Jim tell about it, and he was more looked up to than any nigger in that country.

Strange niggers would stand with their mouths open and look him all over, same as if he was a wonder. Jim always kept that five-center piece round his neck with a string, and said it was a charm the devil give to him with his own hands, and told him he could cure anybody with it and fetch witches whenever he wanted to just by saying something to it; but he never told what it was he said to it. Jim was most ruined for a servant, because he got stuck up on account of having seen the devil and been rode by witches.

Well, when Tom and me got to the edge of the hilltop we looked away down into the village and could see three or four lights twinkling, where there was sick folks, maybe; and the stars over us was sparkling ever so fine; and down by the village was the river, a whole mile broad, and awful still and grand.

We went down the hill and found Jo Harper and Ben Rogers, and two or three more of the boys, hid in the old tanyard. So we unhitched a skiff and pulled down the river two mile and a half, to the big scar on the hillside, and went ashore. We went to a clump of bushes, and Tom made everybody swear to keep the secret, and then showed them a hole in the hill, right in the thickest part of the bushes. Then we lit the candles, and crawled in on our hands and knees. We went about two hundred yards, and then the cave opened up.

We went along a narrow place and got into a kind of room, all damp and sweaty and cold, and there we stopped. Tom says:. Everybody that wants to join has got to take an oath, and write his name in blood. Everybody was willing. So Tom got out a sheet of paper that he had wrote the oath on, and read it. And if anybody that belonged to the band told the secrets, he must have his throat cut, and then have his carcass burnt up and the ashes scattered all around, and his name blotted off of the list with blood and never mentioned again by the gang, but have a curse put on it and be forgot forever.

Everybody said it was a real beautiful oath, and asked Tom if he got it out of his own head. He said, some of it, but the rest was out of pirate-books and robber-books, and every gang that was high-toned had it. Some thought it would be good to kill the families of boys that told the secrets.

Tom said it was a good idea, so he took a pencil and wrote it in. Then Ben Rogers says:. Well, nobody could think of anything to do—everybody was stumped, and set still. I was most ready to cry; but all at once I thought of a way, and so I offered them Miss Watson—they could kill her. Everybody said:. Then they all stuck a pin in their fingers to get blood to sign with, and I made my mark on the paper.

We are highwaymen. We stop stages and carriages on the road, with masks on, and kill the people and take their watches and money. Now, what do you reckon it is? Well, that is good. Not by a good deal. Say, do we kill the women, too? Kill the women? No; nobody ever saw anything in the books like that. So they all made fun of him, and called him cry-baby, and that made him mad, and he said he would go straight and tell all the secrets.

But Tom give him five cents to keep quiet, and said we would all go home and meet next week, and rob somebody and kill some people. They agreed to get together and fix a day as soon as they could, and then we elected Tom Sawyer first captain and Jo Harper second captain of the Gang, and so started home. I clumb up the shed and crept into my window just before day was breaking.

My new clothes was all greased up and clayey, and I was dog-tired. Then Miss Watson she took me in the closet and prayed, but nothing come of it. She told me to pray every day, and whatever I asked for I would get it. I tried it. Once I got a fish-line, but no hooks. By and by, one day, I asked Miss Watson to try for me, but she said I was a fool.

I set down one time back in the woods, and had a long think about it. This was including Miss Watson, as I took it. He used to always whale me when he was sober and could get his hands on me; though I used to take to the woods most of the time when he was around. Well, about this time he was found in the river drownded, about twelve mile above town, so people said.

They said he was floating on his back in the water. They took him and buried him on the bank. So I was uncomfortable again. We played robber now and then about a month, and then I resigned. All the boys did.

We used to hop out of the woods and go charging down on hog-drivers and women in carts taking garden stuff to market, but we never hived any of them. He said we must slick up our swords and guns, and get ready. We busted it up, and chased the children up the hollow; but we never got anything but some doughnuts and jam, though Ben Rogers got a rag doll, and Jo Harper got a hymn-book and a tract; and then the teacher charged in, and made us drop everything and cut.

He said there was loads of them there, anyway; and he said there was A-rabs there, too, and elephants and things. He said it was all done by enchantment. He said there was hundreds of soldiers there, and elephants and treasure, and so on, but we had enemies which he called magicians; and they had turned the whole thing into an infant Sunday-school, just out of spite. I said, all right; then the thing for us to do was to go for the magicians. Tom Sawyer said I was a numskull.

They are as tall as a tree and as big around as a church. I thought all this over for two or three days, and then I reckoned I would see if there was anything in it. I reckoned he believed in the A-rabs and the elephants, but as for me I think different. It had all the marks of a Sunday-school. Well, three or four months run along, and it was well into the winter now. At first I hated the school, but by and by I got so I could stand it. Whenever I got uncommon tired I played hookey, and the hiding I got next day done me good and cheered me up.

So the longer I went to school the easier it got to be. Living in a house and sleeping in a bed pulled on me pretty tight mostly, but before the cold weather I used to slide out and sleep in the woods sometimes, and so that was a rest to me. I liked the old ways best, but I was getting so I liked the new ones, too, a little bit. The widow said I was coming along slow but sure, and doing very satisfactory.

One morning I happened to turn over the salt-cellar at breakfast. I reached for some of it as quick as I could to throw over my left shoulder and keep off the bad luck, but Miss Watson was in ahead of me, and crossed me off.

I started out, after breakfast, feeling worried and shaky, and wondering where it was going to fall on me, and what it was going to be. I went down to the front garden and clumb over the stile where you go through the high board fence. They had come up from the quarry and stood around the stile a while, and then went on around the garden fence. It was very curious, somehow. I was going to follow around, but I stooped down to look at the tracks first. There was a cross in the left boot-heel made with big nails, to keep off the devil.

I was up in a second and shinning down the hill. He said:. Did you come for your interest? Quite a fortune for you. I want you to take it; I want to give it to you—the six thousand and all. I think I see. You want to sell all your property to me—not give it. Now you sign it. He said there was a spirit inside of it, and it knowed everything.

So I went to him that night and told him pap was here again, for I found his tracks in the snow. What I wanted to know was, what he was going to do, and was he going to stay? Jim got out his hair-ball and said something over it, and then he held it up and dropped it on the floor. It fell pretty solid, and only rolled about an inch. Jim tried it again, and then another time, and it acted just the same. Jim got down on his knees, and put his ear against it and listened.

Jim smelt it and bit it and rubbed it, and said he would manage so the hair-ball would think it was good. Well, I knowed a potato would do that before, but I had forgot it. Jim put the quarter under the hair-ball, and got down and listened again. This time he said the hair-ball was all right. He said it would tell my whole fortune if I wanted it to.

I says, go on. So the hair-ball talked to Jim, and Jim told it to me. He says:. De white one gits him to go right a little while, den de black one sail in en bust it all up. But you is all right. When I lit my candle and went up to my room that night there sat pap his own self! I had shut the door to. Then I turned around and there he was. I used to be scared of him all the time, he tanned me so much. He was most fifty, and he looked it. His hair was long and tangled and greasy, and hung down, and you could see his eyes shining through like he was behind vines.

It was all black, no gray; so was his long, mixed-up whiskers. As for his clothes—just rags, that was all. His hat was laying on the floor—an old black slouch with the top caved in, like a lid.

I stood a-looking at him; he set there a-looking at me, with his chair tilted back a little. I set the candle down. I noticed the window was up; so he had clumb in by the shed. He kept a-looking me all over. By and by he says:. And looky here—you drop that school, you hear? You lemme catch you fooling around that school again, you hear? Say, lemme hear you read. I took up a book and begun something about General Washington and the wars. You can do it. I had my doubts when you told me.

Now looky here; you stop that putting on frills. I never see such a son. I heard about it away down the river, too. You git me that money to-morrow—I want it.

You git it. I want it. Say, how much you got in your pocket? So Judge Thatcher and the widow had to quit on the business. I borrowed three dollars from Judge Thatcher, and pap took it and got drunk, and went a-blowing around and cussing and whooping and carrying on; and he kept it up all over town, with a tin pan, till most midnight; then they jailed him, and next day they had him before court, and jailed him again for a week.

When he got out the new judge said he was a-going to make a man of him. So he took him to his own house, and dressed him up clean and nice, and had him to breakfast and dinner and supper with the family, and was just old pie to him, so to speak.

The old man said that what a man wanted that was down was sympathy, and the judge said it was so; so they cried again. And when it was bedtime the old man rose up and held out his hand, and says:.

So they shook it, one after the other, all around, and cried. Then the old man he signed a pledge—made his mark. The judge said it was the holiest time on record, or something like that. Then they tucked the old man into a beautiful room, which was the spare room, and in the night some time he got powerful thirsty and clumb out on to the porch-roof and slid down a stanchion and traded his new coat for a jug of forty-rod, and clumb back again and had a good old time; and towards daylight he crawled out again, drunk as a fiddler, and rolled off the porch and broke his left arm in two places, and was most froze to death when somebody found him after sun-up.

And when they come to look at that spare room they had to take soundings before they could navigate it. The judge he felt kind of sore. Well, pretty soon the old man was up and around again, and then he went for Judge Thatcher in the courts to make him give up that money, and he went for me, too, for not stopping school.

He catched me a couple of times and thrashed me, but I went to school just the same, and dodged him or outrun him most of the time. Every time he got money he got drunk; and every time he got drunk he raised Cain around town; and every time he raised Cain he got jailed. He was just suited—this kind of thing was right in his line. He kept me with him all the time, and I never got a chance to run off. We lived in that old cabin, and he always locked the door and put the key under his head nights.

He had a gun which he had stole, I reckon, and we fished and hunted, and that was what we lived on. Every little while he locked me in and went down to the store, three miles, to the ferry, and traded fish and game for whisky, and fetched it home and got drunk and had a good time, and licked me. It was kind of lazy and jolly, laying off comfortable all day, smoking and fishing, and no books nor study. It was pretty good times up in the woods there, take it all around.

I was all over welts. He got to going away so much, too, and locking me in. Once he locked me in and was gone three days. It was dreadful lonesome. I was scared. I made up my mind I would fix up some way to leave there. The door was thick, solid oak slabs. Pap was pretty careful not to leave a knife or anything in the cabin when he was away; I reckon I had hunted the place over as much as a hundred times; well, I was most all the time at it, because it was about the only way to put in the time.

But this time I found something at last; I found an old rusty wood-saw without any handle; it was laid in between a rafter and the clapboards of the roof. I greased it up and went to work. There was an old horse-blanket nailed against the logs at the far end of the cabin behind the table, to keep the wind from blowing through the chinks and putting the candle out. I got under the table and raised the blanket, and went to work to saw a section of the big bottom log out—big enough to let me through.

I got rid of the signs of my work, and dropped the blanket and hid my saw, and pretty soon pap come in. He said he was down town, and everything was going wrong. His lawyer said he reckoned he would win his lawsuit and get the money if they ever got started on the trial; but then there was ways to put it off a long time, and Judge Thatcher knowed how to do it. He said he would like to see the widow get me.

The old man made me go to the skiff and fetch the things he had got. There was a fifty-pound sack of corn meal, and a side of bacon, ammunition, and a four-gallon jug of whisky, and an old book and two newspapers for wadding, besides some tow. I toted up a load, and went back and set down on the bow of the skiff to rest.

I thought it all over, and I reckoned I would walk off with the gun and some lines, and take to the woods when I run away. I judged I would saw out and leave that night if pap got drunk enough, and I reckoned he would.

I got the things all up to the cabin, and then it was about dark. While I was cooking supper the old man took a swig or two and got sort of warmed up, and went to ripping again. He had been drunk over in town, and laid in the gutter all night, and he was a sight to look at. A body would a thought he was Adam—he was just all mud.

Whenever his liquor begun to work he most always went for the govment, this time he says:. And they call that govment! They call that govment! Look at it, says I—such a hat for me to wear—one of the wealthiest men in this town if I could git my rights.

Why, looky here. There was a free nigger there from Ohio—a mulatter, most as white as a white man. And what do you think?

They said he could vote when he was at home. Well, that let me out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to?

And what do you reckon they said? Pap was agoing on so he never noticed where his old limber legs was taking him to, so he went head over heels over the tub of salt pork and barked both shins, and the rest of his speech was all the hottest kind of language—mostly hove at the nigger and the govment, though he give the tub some, too, all along, here and there. He hopped around the cabin considerable, first on one leg and then on the other, holding first one shin and then the other one, and at last he let out with his left foot all of a sudden and fetched the tub a rattling kick.

He said so his own self afterwards. He had heard old Sowberry Hagan in his best days, and he said it laid over him, too; but I reckon that was sort of piling it on, maybe. After supper pap took the jug, and said he had enough whisky there for two drunks and one delirium tremens.

That was always his word. He groaned and moaned and thrashed around this way and that for a long time. There was pap looking wild, and skipping around every which way and yelling about snakes. Pretty soon he was all fagged out, and fell down panting; then he rolled over and over wonderful fast, kicking things every which way, and striking and grabbing at the air with his hands, and screaming and saying there was devils a-hold of him.

He wore out by and by, and laid still a while, moaning. I could hear the owls and the wolves away off in the woods, and it seemed terrible still.

He was laying over by the corner. By and by he raised up part way and listened, with his head to one side. He says, very low:. Oh, let a poor devil alone! Then he went down on all fours and crawled off, begging them to let him alone, and he rolled himself up in his blanket and wallowed in under the old pine table, still a-begging; and then he went to crying. I could hear him through the blanket. By and by he rolled out and jumped up on his feet looking wild, and he see me and went for me.

I begged, and told him I was only Huck; but he laughed such a screechy laugh, and roared and cussed, and kept on chasing me up. Once when I turned short and dodged under his arm he made a grab and got me by the jacket between my shoulders, and I thought I was gone; but I slid out of the jacket quick as lightning, and saved myself.

Pretty soon he was all tired out, and dropped down with his back against the door, and said he would rest a minute and then kill me. He put his knife under him, and said he would sleep and get strong, and then he would see who was who. So he dozed off pretty soon. By and by I got the old split-bottom chair and clumb up as easy as I could, not to make any noise, and got down the gun.

I slipped the ramrod down it to make sure it was loaded, then I laid it across the turnip barrel, pointing towards pap, and set down behind it to wait for him to stir. And how slow and still the time did drag along.

I opened my eyes and looked around, trying to make out where I was. It was after sun-up, and I had been sound asleep. Pap was standing over me looking sour and sick, too. He unlocked the door, and I cleared out up the river-bank. I noticed some pieces of limbs and such things floating down, and a sprinkling of bark; so I knowed the river had begun to rise.

I reckoned I would have great times now if I was over at the town. The June rise used to be always luck for me; because as soon as that rise begins here comes cordwood floating down, and pieces of log rafts—sometimes a dozen logs together; so all you have to do is to catch them and sell them to the wood-yards and the sawmill.

Well, all at once here comes a canoe; just a beauty, too, about thirteen or fourteen foot long, riding high like a duck. Huckleberry came and went, at his own free will.

He slept on doorsteps in fine weather and in empty hogsheads in wet; he did not have to go to school or to church, or call any being master or obey anybody; he could go fishing or swimming when and where he chose, and stay as long as it suited him; nobody forbade him to fight; he could sit up as late as he pleased; he was always the first boy that went barefoot in the spring and the last to resume leather in the fall; he never had to wash, nor put on clean clothes; he could swear wonderfully.

In a word, everything that goes to make life precious that boy had. So thought every harassed, hampered, respectable boy in St. There now! Leastways all but the nigger.

Now you tell me how Bob Tanner done it, Huck. Talk about trying to cure warts with spunk-water such a blame fool way as that! Why, Tom, I know she is. She witched pap. Pap says so his own self. Specially if they mumble. How could their charms work till midnight? This is a pretty early tick, I reckon. Tom got out a bit of paper and carefully unrolled it. Huckleberry viewed it wistfully. The temptation was very strong. At last he said:. When Tom reached the little isolated frame school-house, he strode in briskly, with the manner of one who had come with all honest speed.

He hung his hat on a peg and flung himself into his seat with business-like alacrity. The master, throned on high in his great splint-bottom arm-chair, was dozing, lulled by the drowsy hum of study.

The interruption roused him. He instantly said:. The buzz of study ceased. The pupils wondered if this foolhardy boy had lost his mind. The master said:. No mere ferule will answer for this offence. Take off your jacket. Then the order followed:. And let this be a warning to you. The titter that rippled around the room appeared to abash the boy, but in reality that result was caused rather more by his worshipful awe of his unknown idol and the dread pleasure that lay in his high good fortune.

He sat down upon the end of the pine bench and the girl hitched herself away from him with a toss of her head. Nudges and winks and whispers traversed the room, but Tom sat still, with his arms upon the long, low desk before him, and seemed to study his book. By and by attention ceased from him, and the accustomed school murmur rose upon the dull air once more.

Presently the boy began to steal furtive glances at the girl. When she cautiously faced around again, a peach lay before her. She thrust it away. Tom gently put it back. She thrust it away again, but with less animosity. Tom patiently returned it to its place. Then she let it remain. Now the boy began to draw something on the slate, hiding his work with his left hand. For a time the girl refused to notice; but her human curiosity presently began to manifest itself by hardly perceptible signs.

The boy worked on, apparently unconscious. The girl made a sort of non-committal attempt to see, but the boy did not betray that he was aware of it. At last she gave in and hesitatingly whispered:. Tom partly uncovered a dismal caricature of a house with two gable ends to it and a corkscrew of smoke issuing from the chimney.

When it was finished, she gazed a moment, then whispered:. The artist erected a man in the front yard, that resembled a derrick.

He could have stepped over the house; but the girl was not hypercritical; she was satisfied with the monster, and whispered:. Tom drew an hour-glass with a full moon and straw limbs to it and armed the spreading fingers with a portentous fan.

The girl said:. Oh, I know. You call me Tom, will you? Now Tom began to scrawl something on the slate, hiding the words from the girl. But she was not backward this time. She begged to see. Just at this juncture the boy felt a slow, fateful grip closing on his ear, and a steady lifting impulse.

In that wise he was borne across the house and deposited in his own seat, under a peppering fire of giggles from the whole school. Then the master stood over him during a few awful moments, and finally moved away to his throne without saying a word.

As the school quieted down Tom made an honest effort to study, but the turmoil within him was too great. THE harder Tom tried to fasten his mind on his book, the more his ideas wandered. So at last, with a sigh and a yawn, he gave it up. It seemed to him that the noon recess would never come. The air was utterly dead.

There was not a breath stirring. It was the sleepiest of sleepy days. The drowsing murmur of the five and twenty studying scholars soothed the soul like the spell that is in the murmur of bees. Away off in the flaming sunshine, Cardiff Hill lifted its soft green sides through a shimmering veil of heat, tinted with the purple of distance; a few birds floated on lazy wing high in the air; no other living thing was visible but some cows, and they were asleep.

His hand wandered into his pocket and his face lit up with a glow of gratitude that was prayer, though he did not know it. Then furtively the percussion-cap box came out. He released the tick and put him on the long flat desk. The creature probably glowed with a gratitude that amounted to prayer, too, at this moment, but it was premature: for when he started thankfully to travel off, Tom turned him aside with a pin and made him take a new direction.

This bosom friend was Joe Harper. The two boys were sworn friends all the week, and embattled enemies on Saturdays. Joe took a pin out of his lapel and began to assist in exercising the prisoner.

The sport grew in interest momently. Soon Tom said that they were interfering with each other, and neither getting the fullest benefit of the tick. The tick escaped from Tom, presently, and crossed the equator.

Joe harassed him awhile, and then he got away and crossed back again. This change of base occurred often. While one boy was worrying the tick with absorbing interest, the other would look on with interest as strong, the two heads bowed together over the slate, and the two souls dead to all things else.

At last luck seemed to settle and abide with Joe. At last Tom could stand it no longer. The temptation was too strong. So he reached out and lent a hand with his pin. Joe was angry in a moment. Said he:. The boys had been too absorbed to notice the hush that had stolen upon the school awhile before when the master came tiptoeing down the room and stood over them.

He had contemplated a good part of the performance before he contributed his bit of variety to it. When school broke up at noon, Tom flew to Becky Thatcher, and whispered in her ear:. So the one went off with one group of scholars, and the other with another. In a little while the two met at the bottom of the lane, and when they reached the school they had it all to themselves. Then they sat together, with a slate before them, and Tom gave Becky the pencil and held her hand in his, guiding it, and so created another surprising house.

When the interest in art began to wane, the two fell to talking. Tom was swimming in bliss. But I mean dead ones, to swing round your head with a string. What I like is chewing-gum. That was agreeable, so they chewed it turn about, and dangled their legs against the bench in excess of contentment. That will be nice. And they get slathers of money—most a dollar a day, Ben Rogers says.

Say, Becky, was you ever engaged? Anybody can do it. Do you remember what I wrote on the slate? Becky hesitating, Tom took silence for consent, and passed his arm about her waist and whispered the tale ever so softly, with his mouth close to her ear. And then he added:. He turned his face away. Then she sprang away and ran around and around the desks and benches, with Tom after her, and took refuge in a corner at last, with her little white apron to her face.

Tom clasped her about her neck and pleaded:. Please, Becky. By and by she gave up, and let her hands drop; her face, all glowing with the struggle, came up and submitted. Tom kissed the red lips and said:. Will you? Of course. Tom tried to put his arm about her neck, but she pushed him away and turned her face to the wall, and went on crying. Tom tried again, with soothing words in his mouth, and was repulsed again. Then his pride was up, and he strode away and went outside.

He stood about, restless and uneasy, for a while, glancing at the door, every now and then, hoping she would repent and come to find him. But she did not. Then he began to feel badly and fear that he was in the wrong. It was a hard struggle with him to make new advances, now, but he nerved himself to it and entered. She was still standing back there in the corner, sobbing, with her face to the wall.

He went to her and stood a moment, not knowing exactly how to proceed. Then he said hesitatingly:. Tom got out his chiefest jewel, a brass knob from the top of an andiron, and passed it around her so that she could see it, and said:. She struck it to the floor. Then Tom marched out of the house and over the hills and far away, to return to school no more that day.

Presently Becky began to suspect. She ran to the door; he was not in sight; she flew around to the play-yard; he was not there. Then she called:. She listened intently, but there was no answer. She had no companions but silence and loneliness.

So she sat down to cry again and upbraid herself; and by this time the scholars began to gather again, and she had to hide her griefs and still her broken heart and take up the cross of a long, dreary, aching afternoon, with none among the strangers about her to exchange sorrows with. 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. Half an hour later he was disappearing behind the Douglas mansion on the summit of Cardiff Hill, and the school-house was hardly distinguishable away off in the valley behind him.

He entered a dense wood, picked his pathless way to the centre of it, and sat down on a mossy spot under a spreading oak. There was not even a zephyr stirring; the dead noonday heat had even stilled the songs of the birds; nature lay in a trance that was broken by no sound but the occasional far-off hammering of a wood-pecker, and this seemed to render the pervading silence and sense of loneliness the more profound.

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? He had meant the best in the world, and been treated like a dog—like a very dog. She would be sorry some day—maybe when it was too late. Ah, if he could only die temporarily! But the elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrained shape long at a time.

Tom presently began to drift insensibly back into the concerns of this life again. What if he turned his back, now, and disappeared mysteriously? What if he went away—ever so far away, into unknown countries beyond the seas—and never came back any more! How would she feel then! The idea of being a clown recurred to him now, only to fill him with disgust. For frivolity and jokes and spotted tights were an offense, when they intruded themselves upon a spirit that was exalted into the vague august realm of the romantic.

No, he would be a soldier, and return after long years, all war-worn and illustrious. No—better still, he would join the Indians, and hunt buffaloes and go on the warpath in the mountain ranges and the trackless great plains of the Far West, and away in the future come back a great chief, bristling with feathers, hideous with paint, and prance into Sunday-school, some drowsy summer morning, with a blood-curdling war-whoop, and sear the eyeballs of all his companions with unappeasable envy.

But no, there was something gaudier even than this. He would be a pirate! That was it! 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! 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:. 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.

He scratched his head with a perplexed air, and said:. 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. 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! The sand began to work, and presently a small black bug appeared for a second and then darted under again in a fright. 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:.

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:. Right gladly will I dispute with thee the passes of the merry wood. Have at thee! By and by Tom shouted:. There was no getting around the authorities, so Joe turned, received the whack and fell. 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. 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. 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. And now the tiresome chirping of a cricket that no human ingenuity could locate, began. 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.

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. 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.

He must force some talk. So he said in a whisper:. There was a considerable pause, while the boys canvassed this matter inwardly. Then Tom whispered:. But I never meant any harm. Everybody calls him Hoss. The boys bent their heads together and scarcely breathed. A muffled sound of voices floated up from the far end of the graveyard.

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:. Can you pray? Drunk, the same as usual, likely—blamed old rip! Here they come again. Cold again.