oned I better keep still. She run on, and never
noticed I had put in at all:

"The nigger run off the very night Huck Finn was killed. So there's a
reward out for him--three hundred dollars. And there's a reward out for
old Finn, too--two hundred dollars. You see, he come to town the morning
after the murder, and told about it, and was out with 'em on the
ferryboat hunt, and right away after he up and left. Before night they
wanted to lynch him, but he was gone, you see. Well, next day they found
out the nigger was gone; they found out he hadn't ben seen sence ten
o'clock the night the murder was done. So then they put it on him, you
see; and while they was full of it, next day, back comes old Finn, and
went boo-hooing to Judge Thatcher to get money to hunt for the nigger all
over Illinois with. The judge gave him some, and that evening he got
drunk, and was around till after midnight with a couple of mighty
hard-looking strangers, and then went off with them. Well, he hain't
come back sence, and they ain't looking for him back till this thing
blows over a little, for people thinks now that he killed his boy and
fixed things so folks would think robbers done it, and then he'd get
Huck's money without having to bother a long time with a lawsuit. People
do say he warn't any too good to do it. Oh, he's sly, I reckon. If he
don't come back for a year he'll be all right. You can't prove anything
on him, you know; everything will be quieted down then, and he'll walk in
Huck's money as easy as nothing."

"Yes, I reckon so, 'm. I don't see nothing in the way of it. Has
everybody quit thinking the nigger done it?"

"Oh, no, not everybody. A good many thinks he done it. But they'll get
the nigger pretty soon now, and maybe they can scare it out of him."

"Why, are they after him yet?"

"Well, you're innocent, ain't you! Does three hundred dollars lay around
every day for people to pick up? Some folks think the nigger ain't far
from here. I'm one of them--but I hain't talked it around. A few days
ago I was talking with an old couple that lives next door in the log
shanty, and they happened to say hardly anybody ever goes to that island
over yonder that they call Jackson's Island. Don't anybody live there?
says I. No, nobody, says they. I didn't say any more, but I done some
thinking. I was pretty near certain I'd seen smoke over there, about the
head of the island, a day or two before that, so I says to