MINERVA

down on that boat? And s’pose he steps in here any minute, and sings out my name before I can throw him a wink to keep quiet? Well, I couldn’t _have_ it that way; it wouldn’t do at all. I must go up the road and waylay him. So I told the folks I reckoned I would go up to the town and fetch down my baggage. The old gentleman was for going along with me, but I said no, I could drive the horse myself, and I druther he wouldn’t take no trouble about me. 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, now, 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 Watson’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 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 forget 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