e hill and found Joe
Harper and Ben Rogers, and two or three more of the boys, hid in the
old tanyard. So we unhitched a skiff and pulled down the river two
mile and a half, to the big scar on the hillside, and went ashore.

We went to a clump of bushes, and Tom made everybody swear to keep the
secret, and then showed them a hole in the hill, right in the thickest
part of the bushes. Then we lit the candles, and crawled in on our
hands and knees. We went about two hundred yards, and then the cave
opened up. Tom poked about amongst the passages, and pretty soon
ducked under a wall where you wouldn't 'a' noticed that there was a
hole. We went along a narrow place and got into a kind of room, all
damp and sweaty and cold, and there we stopped. Tom says:

"Now, we'll start this band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer's Gang.
Everybody that wants to join has got to take an oath, and write his
name in blood." Everybody was willing. So Tom got out a sheet of paper
that he had wrote the oath on, and read it. It swore every boy to
stick to the band, and never tell any of the secrets; and if anybody
done anything to any boy in the band, whichever boy was ordered to
kill that person and his family must do it, and he mustn't eat and he
mustn't sleep till he had killed them and hacked a cross in their
breasts, which was the sign of the band. And nobody that didn't belong
to the band could use that mark, and if he did he must be sued; and if
he done it again he must be killed. And if anybody that belonged to
the band told the secrets, he must have his throat cut, and then have
his carcass burnt up and the ashes scattered all around, and his name
blotted off the list with blood and never mentioned again by the gang,
but have a curse put on it and be forgot forever.

Everybody said it was a real beautiful oath, and asked Tom if he got
it out of his own head. He said some of it, but the rest was out of
pirate-books and robber-books, and every gang that was high-toned had
it.

Some thought it would be good to kill the _families_ of boys that told
the secrets. Tom said it was a good idea, so he took a pencil and
wrote it in. Then Ben Rogers says:

"Here's Huck Finn, he hain't got no family; what you going to do 'bout
him?"

"Well, hain't he got a father?" says Tom Sawyer.

"Yes, he's got a father, but you can't never find him these days. He
used to lay drunk with the hogs in the tanyard, but he hain't been
seen in these parts for