Chapter 27

CHAPTER XXVII.

I CREPT to their doors and listened; they was snor-
ing. So I tiptoed along, and got down stairs all
right. There warn't a sound anywheres. I peeped
through a crack of the dining-room door, and see the
men that was watching the corpse all sound asleep on
their chairs. The door was open into the parlor, where
the corpse was laying, and there was a candle in both
rooms. I passed along, and the parlor door was open;
but I see there warn't nobody in there but the re-
mainders of Peter; so I shoved on by; but the front
door was locked, and the key wasn't there. Just then
I heard somebody coming down the stairs, back behind
me. I run in the parlor and took a swift look around,
and the only place I see to hide the bag was in the
coffin. The lid was shoved along about a foot, show-
ing the dead man's face down in there, with a wet
cloth over it, and his shroud on. I tucked the money-
bag in under the lid, just down beyond where his
hands was crossed, which made me creep, they was so
cold, and then I run back across the room and in
behind the door.

The person coming was Mary Jane. She went to
the coffin, very soft, and kneeled down and looked in;
then she put up her handkerchief, and I see she begun
to cry, though I couldn't hear her, and her back was
to me. I slid out, and as I passed the dining-room I
thought I'd make sure them watchers hadn't seen me;
so I looked through the crack, and everything was all
right. They hadn't stirred.

I slipped up to bed, feeling ruther blue, on accounts
of the thing playing out that way after I had took so
much trouble and run so much resk about it. Says I,
if it could stay where it is, all right; because when we
get down the river a hundred mile or two I could write
back to Mary Jane, and she could dig him up again
and get it; but that ain't the thing that's going to
happen; the thing that's going to happen is, the
money 'll be found when they come to screw on the
lid. Then the king 'll get it again, and it 'll be a long
day before he gives anybody another chance to smouch
it from him. Of course I WANTED to slide down and
get it out of there, but I dasn't try it. Every minute
it was getting earlier now, and pretty soon some of
them watchers would begin to stir, and I might get
catched -- catched with six thousand dollars in my
hands that nobody hadn't hired me to take care of. I
don't wish to be mixed up in no such business as that,
I says to myself.

When I got down stairs in the morning the parlor
was shut up, and the watchers was gone. There warn't
nobody around but the family and the widow Bartley
and our tribe. I watched their faces to see if anything
had been