he was floating on his back in the water. They took him
and buried him on the bank. But I warn't comfortable long, because I
happened to think of something. I knowed mighty well that a drownded
man don't float on his back, but on his face. So I knowed, then, that
this warn't pap, but a woman dressed up in a man's clothes. So I was
uncomfortable again. I judged the old man would turn up again by and
by, though I wished he wouldn't.

We played robber now and then about a month, and then I resigned. All
the boys did. We hadn't robbed nobody, hadn't killed any people, but
only just pretended. We used to hop out of the woods and go charging
down on hog-drivers and women in carts taking garden stuff to market,
but we never hived any of them. Tom Sawyer called the hogs "ingots,"
and he called the turnips and stuff "julery," and we would go to the
cave and powwow over what we had done, and how many people we had
killed and marked. But I couldn't see no profit in it. One time Tom
sent a boy to run about town with a blazing stick, which he called a
slogan (which was the sign for the Gang to get together), and then he
said he had got secret news by his spies that next day a whole parcel
of Spanish merchants and rich A-rabs was going to camp in Cave Hollow
with two hundred elephants, and six hundred camels, and over a
thousand "sumter" mules, all loaded down with di'monds, and they
didn't have only a guard of four hundred soldiers, and so we would lay
in ambuscade, as he called it, and kill the lot and scoop the things.
He said we must slick up our swords and guns, and get ready. He never
could go after even a turnip-cart but he must have the swords and guns
all scoured up for it, though they was only lath and broomsticks, and
you might scour at them till you rotted, and then they warn't worth a
mouthful of ashes more than what they was before. I didn't believe we
could lick such a crowd of Spaniards and A-rabs, but I wanted to see
the camels and elephants, so I was on hand next day, Saturday, in the
ambuscade; and when we got the word we rushed out of the woods and
down the hill. But there warn't no Spaniards and A-rabs, and there
warn't no camels nor no elephants. It warn't anything but a
Sunday-school picnic, and only a primer class at that. We busted it
up, and chased the children up the hollow; but we never got anything
but some doughnuts and jam, though Ben Rogers got a rag doll, and Joe
Harper got a hymn-book and a tract; an