CHAPTER XXVII

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• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer   CHAPTER XXXV

  THE reader may rest satisfied that Tom’s and Huck’s windfall made a mighty stir in the poor little village of St. Petersburg. So vast a sum, all in actual cash, seemed next to incredible. It was talked about, gloated over, glorified, until the reason of many of the citizens tottered under the strain of the unhealthy excitement. Every “haunted” house in St. Petersburg and the neighboring villages was dissected, plank by plank, and its foundations dug up and ransacked for hidden treasure—and not by boys, but men—pretty grave, unromantic men, too, some of them. Wherever Tom and Huck appeared they were courted, admired, stared at. The boys were not able to remember that their remarks had possessed weight before; but now their sayings were treasured and repeated; everything they did seemed somehow to be regarded as remarkable; they had evidently lost the power of doing and saying commonplace things; moreover, their past history was raked up and discovered to bear marks of conspicuous origin

• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer   CHAPTER XXXIV

  HUCK said: “Tom, we can slope, if we can find a rope. The window ain’t high from the ground.”“Shucks! what do you want to slope for?”“Well, I ain’t used to that kind of a crowd. I can’t stand it. I ain’t going down there, Tom.”“Oh, bother! It ain’t anything. I don’t mind it a bit. I’ll take care of you.”Sid appeared.“Tom,” said he, “auntie has been waiting for you all the afternoon. Mary got your Sunday clothes ready, and everybody’s been fretting about you. Say—ain’t this grease and clay, on your clothes?”“Now, Mr. Siddy, you jist ’tend to your own business. What’s all this blowout about, anyway?”“It’s one of the widow’s parties that she’s always having. This time it’s for the Welshman and his sons, on account of that scrape they helped her out of the other night. And say—I can tell you something, if you want to know.”“Well, what?”“Why, old Mr. Jones is going to try to spring something on the people here tonight, but I overheard him tell auntie today about it, as a s

• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer   CHAPTER XXXIII

  WITHIN a few minutes the news had spread, and a dozen skiff-loads of men were on their way to McDougal’s cave, and the ferryboat, well filled with passengers, soon followed. Tom Sawyer was in the skiff that bore Judge Thatcher.When the cave door was unlocked, a sorrowful sight presented itself in the dim twilight of the place. Injun Joe lay stretched upon the ground, dead, with his face close to the crack of the door, as if his longing eyes had been fixed, to the latest moment, upon the light and the cheer of the free world outside. Tom was touched, for he knew by his own experience how this wretch had suffered. His pity was moved, but nevertheless he felt an abounding sense of relief and security, now, which revealed to him in a degree which he had not fully appreciated before how vast a weight of dread had been lying upon him since the day he lifted his voice against this bloody-minded outcast. Injun Joe’s bowie-knife lay close by, its blade broken in two. The great foun

• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer   CHAPTER XXXII

  TUESDAY afternoon came, and waned to the twilight. The village of St. Petersburg still mourned. The lost children had not been found. Public prayers had been offered up for them, and many and many a private prayer that had the petitioner’s whole heart in it; but still no good news came from the cave. The majority of the searchers had given up the quest and gone back to their daily avocations, saying that it was plain the children could never be found. Mrs. Thatcher was very ill, and a great part of the time delirious. People said it was heartbreaking to hear her call her child, and raise her head and listen a whole minute at a time, then lay it wearily down again with a moan. Aunt Polly had drooped into a settled melancholy, and her gray hair had grown almost white. The village went to its rest on Tuesday night, sad and forlorn.Away in the middle of the night a wild peal burst from the village bells, and in a moment the streets were swarming with frantic half-clad people, who shouted

• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer   CHAPTER XXXI

  NOW to return to Tom and Becky’s share in the picnic. They tripped along the murky aisles with the rest of the company, visiting the familiar wonders of the cave—wonders dubbed with rather over-descriptive names, such as “The Drawing-Room,” “The Cathedral,” “Aladdin’s Palace,” and so on. Presently the hide-and-seek frolicking began, and Tom and Becky engaged in it with zeal until the exertion began to grow a trifle wearisome; then they wandered down a sinuous avenue holding their candles aloft and reading the tangled webwork of names, dates, postoffice addresses, and mottoes with which the rocky walls had been frescoed (in candle-smoke). Still drifting along and talking, they scarcely noticed that they were now in a part of the cave whose walls were not frescoed. They smoked their own names under an overhanging shelf and moved on. Presently they came to a place where a little stream of water, trickling over a ledge and carrying a limestone sediment with it, had, in the slow-dragging ag

• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer   CHAPTER XXX

  AS the earliest suspicion of dawn appeared on Sunday morning, Huck came groping up the hill and rapped gently at the old Welshman’s door. The inmates were asleep, but it was a sleep that was set on a hair-trigger, on account of the exciting episode of the night. A call came from a window:“Who’s there!”Huck’s scared voice answered in a low tone:“Please let me in! It’s only Huck Finn!”“It’s a name that can open this door night or day, lad!—and welcome!”These were strange words to the vagabond boy’s ears, and the pleasantest he had ever heard. He could not recollect that the closing word had ever been applied in his case before. The door was quickly unlocked, and he entered. Huck was given a seat and the old man and his brace of tall sons speedily dressed themselves.“Now, my boy, I hope you’re good and hungry, because breakfast will be ready as soon as the sun’s up, and we’ll have a piping hot one, too—make yourself easy about that! I and the boys hoped you’d turn up and stop