d her east, and said he would hold her there till we
rousted out the breakfast. The professor had laid in everything a body
could want; he couldn't 'a' been better fixed. There wasn't no milk for
the coffee, but there was water, and everything else you could want,
and a charcoal stove and the fixings for it, and pipes and cigars and
matches; and wine and liquor, which warn't in our line; and books, and
maps, and charts, and an accordion; and furs, and blankets, and no end
of rubbish, like brass beads and brass jewelry, which Tom said was
a sure sign that he had an idea of visiting among savages. There was
money, too. Yes, the professor was well enough fixed.

After breakfast Tom learned me and Jim how to steer, and divided us all
up into four-hour watches, turn and turn about; and when his watch was
out I took his place, and he got out the professor's papers and pens and
wrote a letter home to his aunt Polly, telling her everything that had
happened to us, and dated it "IN THE WELKIN, APPROACHING ENGLAND," and
folded it together and stuck it fast with a red wafer, and directed it,
and wrote above the direction, in big writing, "FROM TOM SAWYER, THE
ERRONORT," and said it would stump old Nat Parsons, the postmaster, when
it come along in the mail. I says:

"Tom Sawyer, this ain't no welkin, it's a balloon."

"Well, now, who SAID it was a welkin, smarty?"

"You've wrote it on the letter, anyway."

"What of it? That don't mean that the balloon's the welkin."

"Oh, I thought it did. Well, then, what is a welkin?"

I see in a minute he was stuck. He raked and scraped around in his mind,
but he couldn't find nothing, so he had to say:

"I don't know, and nobody don't know. It's just a word, and it's a
mighty good word, too. There ain't many that lays over it. I don't
believe there's ANY that does."

"Shucks!" I says. "But what does it MEAN?--that's the p'int."

"I don't know what it means, I tell you. It's a word that people uses
for--for--well, it's ornamental. They don't put ruffles on a shirt to
keep a person warm, do they?"

"Course they don't."

"But they put them ON, don't they?"

"Yes."

"All right, then; that letter I wrote is a shirt, and the welkin's the
ruffle on it."

I judged that that would gravel Jim, and it did.

"Now, Mars Tom, it ain't no use to talk like dat; en, moreover, it's
sinful. You knows a letter ain't no shirt, en dey ain't no ruffles on
it, nuther. Dey ain't no place to put 'em