Chapter 40

CHAPTER XL.

WE was feeling pretty good after breakfast, and
took my canoe and went over the river a-fishing,
with a lunch, and had a good time, and took a look at
the raft and found her all right, and got home late to
supper, and found them in such a sweat and worry
they didn't know which end they was standing on, and
made us go right off to bed the minute we was done
supper, and wouldn't tell us what the trouble was, and
never let on a word about the new letter, but didn't
need to, because we knowed as much about it as
anybody did, and as soon as we was half up stairs and
her back was turned we slid for the cellar cubboard
and loaded up a good lunch and took it up to our
room and went to bed, and got up about half-past
eleven, and Tom put on Aunt Sally's dress that he
stole and was going to start with the lunch, but says:

"Where's the butter?"

"I laid out a hunk of it," I says, "on a piece of a
corn-pone."

"Well, you LEFT it laid out, then -- it ain't here."

"We can get along without it," I says.

"We can get along WITH it, too," he says; "just
you slide down cellar and fetch it. And then mosey
right down the lightning-rod and come along. I'll go
and stuff the straw into Jim's clothes to represent his
mother in disguise, and be ready to BA like a sheep
and shove soon as you get there."

So out he went, and down cellar went I. The hunk
of butter, big as a person's fist, was where I had left
it, so I took up the slab of corn-pone with it on, and
blowed out my light, and started up stairs very
stealthy, and got up to the main floor all right, but
here comes Aunt Sally with a candle, and I clapped
the truck in my hat, and clapped my hat on my head,
and the next second she see me; and she says:

"You been down cellar?"

"Yes'm."

"What you been doing down there?"

"Noth'n."

"NOTH'N!"

"No'm."

"Well, then, what possessed you to go down there
this time of night?"

"I don't know 'm."

"You don't KNOW? Don't answer me that way.
Tom, I want to know what you been DOING down
there."

"I hain't been doing a single thing, Aunt Sally, I
hope to gracious if I have."

I reckoned she'd let me go now, and as a generl
thing she would; but I s'pose there was so many
strange things going on she was just in a sweat about
every little thing that warn't yard-stick straight; so she
says, very decided:

"You just march into that setting-room and stay
there till I come. You been up to something you no
business to, and I lay I'll find out what it is before I'M
done with you."

So she went away as I opened the door and walked
into the