Chapter 33

CHAPTER XXXIII.

SO I started for town in the wagon, and when I was
half-way I see a wagon coming, and sure enough it
was Tom Sawyer, and I stopped and waited till he come
along. I says "Hold on!" and it stopped alongside,
and his mouth opened up like a trunk, and stayed so;
and he swallowed two or three times like a person that's
got a dry throat, and then says:

"I hain't ever done you no harm. You know that.
So, then, what you want to come back and ha'nt ME
for?"

I says:

"I hain't come back -- I hain't been GONE."

When he heard my voice it righted him up some, but
he warn't quite satisfied yet. He says:

"Don't you play nothing on me, because I wouldn't
on you. Honest injun, you ain't a ghost?"

"Honest injun, I ain't," I says.

"Well -- I -- I -- well, that ought to settle it, of
course; but I can't somehow seem to understand it no
way. Looky here, warn't you ever murdered AT ALL?"

"No. I warn't ever murdered at all -- I played it
on them. You come in here and feel of me if you
don't believe me."

So he done it; and it satisfied him; and he was that
glad to see me again he didn't know what to do. And
he wanted to know all about it right off, because it was
a grand adventure, and mysterious, and so it hit him
where he lived. But I said, leave it alone till by and
by; and told his driver to wait, and we drove off a little
piece, and I told him the kind of a fix I was in, and what
did he reckon we better do? He said, let him alone a
minute, and don't disturb him. So he thought and
thought, and pretty soon he says:

"It's all right; I've got it. Take my trunk in your
wagon, and let on it's your'n; and you turn back and
fool along slow, so as to get to the house about the
time you ought to; and I'll go towards town a piece,
and take a fresh start, and get there a quarter or a half
an hour after you; and you needn't let on to know
me at first."

I says:

"All right; but wait a minute. There's one more
thing -- a thing that NOBODY don't know but me. And
that is, there's a nigger here that I'm a-trying to steal
out of slavery, and his name is JIM -- old Miss Wat-
son's Jim."

He says:

" What ! Why, Jim is --"

He stopped and went to studying. I says:

"I know what you'll say. You'll say it's dirty, low-
down business; but what if it is? I'm low down; and
I'm a-going to steal him, and I want you keep mum
and not let on. Will you?"

His eye lit up, and he says:

"I'll HELP you steal him!"

Well, I let go all holts then, like I was shot. It
was the most astonishing speech I ever heard -- and
I'm bound to say Tom Sawyer fell