a good
ransacking: I knowed that very well. Then I turned in, with my clothes
all on; but I couldn't a gone to sleep if I'd a wanted to, I was in such
a sweat to get through with the business. By and by I heard the king and
the duke come up; so I rolled off my pallet and laid with my chin at the
top of my ladder, and waited to see if anything was going to happen. But
nothing did.

So I held on till all the late sounds had quit and the early ones hadn't
begun yet; and then I slipped down the ladder.

CHAPTER XXVII.

I CREPT to their doors and listened; they was snoring. So I tiptoed
along, and got down stairs all right. There warn't a sound anywheres. I
peeped through a crack of the dining-room door, and see the men that was
watching the corpse all sound asleep on their chairs. The door was open
into the parlor, where the corpse was laying, and there was a candle in
both rooms. I passed along, and the parlor door was open; but I see there
warn't nobody in there but the remainders of Peter; so I shoved on by;
but the front door was locked, and the key wasn't there. Just then I
heard somebody coming down the stairs, back behind me. I run in the
parlor and took a swift look around, and the only place I see to hide the
bag was in the coffin. The lid was shoved along about a foot, showing
the dead man's face down in there, with a wet cloth over it, and his
shroud on. I tucked the money-bag in under the lid, just down beyond
where his hands was crossed, which made me creep, they was so cold, and
then I run back across the room and in behind the door.

The person coming was Mary Jane. She went to the coffin, very soft, and
kneeled down and looked in; then she put up her handkerchief, and I see
she begun to cry, though I couldn't hear her, and her back was to me. I
slid out, and as I passed the dining-room I thought I'd make sure them
watchers hadn't seen me; so I looked through the crack, and everything
was all right. They hadn't stirred.

I slipped up to bed, feeling ruther blue, on accounts of the thing
playing out that way after I had took so much trouble and run so much
resk about it. Says I, if it could stay where it is, all right; because
when we get down the river a hundred mile or two I could write back to
Mary Jane, and she could dig him up again and get it; but that ain't the
thing that's going to happen; the thing that's going to happen is, the
money 'll be found when they come to screw on