Chapter 38 - Page 2

wouldn't do it. You might
pump at him a week, it wouldn't make no difference.

He'd got all that coat of arms business fixed, so
now he started in to finish up the rest of that part of
the work, which was to plan out a mournful inscrip-
tion -- said Jim got to have one, like they all done.
He made up a lot, and wrote them out on a paper, and
read them off, so:

1. Here a captive heart busted.
2. Here a poor prisoner, forsook by the world
and friends, fretted his sorrowful life.
3. Here a lonely heart broke, and a worn spirit
went to its rest, after thirty-seven years
of solitary captivity.
4. Here, homeless and friendless, after
thirty-seven years of bitter captivity,
perished a noble stranger, natural son of
Louis XIV.

Tom's voice trembled whilst he was reading them,
and he most broke down. When he got done he
couldn't no way make up his mind which one for Jim
to scrabble on to the wall, they was all so good; but
at last he allowed he would let him scrabble them all
on. Jim said it would take him a year to scrabble
such a lot of truck on to the logs with a nail, and he
didn't know how to make letters, besides; but Tom
said he would block them out for him, and then he
wouldn't have nothing to do but just follow the lines.
Then pretty soon he says:

"Come to think, the logs ain't a-going to do; they
don't have log walls in a dungeon: we got to dig the
inscriptions into a rock. We'll fetch a rock."

Jim said the rock was worse than the logs; he said
it would take him such a pison long time to dig them
into a rock he wouldn't ever get out. But Tom said
he would let me help him do it. Then he took a look
to see how me and Jim was getting along with the
pens. It was most pesky tedious hard work and slow,
and didn't give my hands no show to get well of the
sores, and we didn't seem to make no headway, hardly;
so Tom says:

"I know how to fix it. We got to have a rock for
the coat of arms and mournful inscriptions, and we can
kill two birds with that same rock. There's a gaudy
big grindstone down at the mill, and we'll smouch it,
and carve the things on it, and file out the pens and
the saw on it, too."

It warn't no slouch of an idea; and it warn't no
slouch of a grindstone nuther; but we allowed we'd
tackle it. It warn't quite midnight yet, so we cleared
out for the mill, leaving Jim at work. We smouched
the grindstone, and set out to roll her home, but it
was a most nation tough job. Sometimes, do what we
could, we couldn't keep her from falling over, and she
come mighty near mashing us every time. Tom said
she was going to get one of us, sure, before we got
through. We got her half way; and then