Chapter 33 - Page 2

considerable in my
estimation. Only I couldn't believe it. Tom Sawyer a
NIGGER-STEALER!

"Oh, shucks!" I says; "you're joking."

"I ain't joking, either."

"Well, then," I says, "joking or no joking, if you
hear anything said about a runaway nigger, don't for-
get to remember that YOU don't know nothing about
him, and I don't know nothing about him."

Then we took the trunk and put it in my wagon, and
he drove off his way and I drove mine. But of course
I forgot all about driving slow on accounts of being glad
and full of thinking; so I got home a heap too quick
for that length of a trip. The old gentleman was at
the door, and he says:

"Why, this is wonderful! Whoever would a
thought it was in that mare to do it? I wish we'd
a timed her. And she hain't sweated a hair -- not a
hair. It's wonderful. Why, I wouldn't take a hundred
dollars for that horse now -- I wouldn't, honest; and
yet I'd a sold her for fifteen before, and thought 'twas
all she was worth."

That's all he said. He was the innocentest, best old
soul I ever see. But it warn't surprising; because he
warn't only just a farmer, he was a preacher, too, and
had a little one-horse log church down back of the
plantation, which he built it himself at his own expense,
for a church and schoolhouse, and never charged noth-
ing for his preaching, and it was worth it, too. There
was plenty other farmer-preachers like that, and done
the same way, down South.

In about half an hour Tom's wagon drove up to the
front stile, and Aunt Sally she see it through the win-
dow, because it was only about fifty yards, and says:

"Why, there's somebody come! I wonder who
'tis? Why, I do believe it's a stranger. Jimmy "
(that's one of the children)' "run and tell Lize to put
on another plate for dinner."

Everybody made a rush for the front door, because,
of course, a stranger don't come EVERY year, and so he
lays over the yaller-fever, for interest, when he does
come. Tom was over the stile and starting for the
house; the wagon was spinning up the road for the
village, and we was all bunched in the front door. Tom
had his store clothes on, and an audience -- and that
was always nuts for Tom Sawyer. In them circum-
stances it warn't no trouble to him to throw in an
amount of style that was suitable. He warn't a boy to
meeky along up that yard like a sheep; no, he come
ca'm and important, like the ram. When he got a-front
of us he lifts his hat ever so gracious and dainty, like it
was the lid of a box that had butterflies asleep in it and
he didn't want to disturb them, and says:

"Mr. Archibald Nichols, I presume?"

"No, my boy," says the old