he logs at the
far end of the cabin behind the table, to keep the wind from blowing
through the chinks and putting the candle out. I got under the table
and raised the blanket, and went to work to saw a section of the big
bottom log out--big enough to let me through. Well, it was a good long
job, but I was getting toward the end of it when I heard pap's gun in
the woods. I got rid of the signs of my work, and dropped the blanket
and hid my saw, and pretty soon pap come in.

Pap warn't in a good humor--so he was his natural self. He said he was
down-town, and everything was going wrong. His lawyer said he reckoned
he would win his lawsuit and get the money if they ever got started on
the trial; but then there was ways to put it off a long time, and
Judge Thatcher knowed how to do it. And he said people allowed there'd
be another trial to get me away from him and give me to the widow for
my guardian, and they guessed it would win this time. This shook me up
considerable, because I didn't want to go back to the widow's any more
and be so cramped up and sivilized, as they called it. Then the old
man got to cussing, and cussed everything and everybody he could think
of, and then cussed them all over again to make sure he hadn't skipped
any, and after that he polished off with a kind of a general cuss all
round, including a considerable parcel of people which he didn't know
the names of, and so called them what's-his-name when he got to them,
and went right along with his cussing.

He said he would like to see the widow get me. He said he would watch
out, and if they tried to come any such game on him he knowed of a
place six or seven mile off to stow me in, where they might hunt till
they dropped and they couldn't find me. That made me pretty uneasy
again, but only for a minute; I reckoned I wouldn't stay on hand till
he got that chance.

The old man made me go to the skiff and fetch the things he had got.
There was a fifty-pound sack of corn meal, and a side of bacon,
ammunition, and a four-gallon jug of whisky, and an old book and two
newspapers for wadding, besides some tow. I toted up a load, and went
back and set down on the bow of the skiff to rest. I thought it all
over, and I reckoned I would walk off with the gun and some lines, and
take to the woods when I run away. I guessed I wouldn't stay in one
place, but just tramp right across the country, mostly night-times,
and hunt and fish to keep alive, and so get so