er time they tried to go at yellocution;
but they didn't yellocute long till the audience got up and give them a
solid good cussing, and made them skip out. They tackled missionarying,
and mesmerizing, and doctoring, and telling fortunes, and a little of
everything; but they couldn't seem to have no luck. So at last they got
just about dead broke, and laid around the raft as she floated along,
thinking and thinking, and never saying nothing, by the half a day at a
time, and dreadful blue and desperate.

And at last they took a change and begun to lay their heads together in
the wigwam and talk low and confidential two or three hours at a time.
Jim and me got uneasy. We didn't like the look of it. We judged they
was studying up some kind of worse deviltry than ever. We turned it over
and over, and at last we made up our minds they was going to break into
somebody's house or store, or was going into the counterfeit-money
business, or something. So then we was pretty scared, and made up an
agreement that we wouldn't have nothing in the world to do with such
actions, and if we ever got the least show we would give them the cold
shake and clear out and leave them behind. Well, early one morning we hid
the raft in a good, safe place about two mile below a little bit of a
shabby village named Pikesville, and the king he went ashore and told us
all to stay hid whilst he went up to town and smelt around to see if
anybody had got any wind of the Royal Nonesuch there yet. ("House to rob,
you MEAN," says I to myself; "and when you get through robbing it you'll
come back here and wonder what has become of me and Jim and the raft--and
you'll have to take it out in wondering.") And he said if he warn't back
by midday the duke and me would know it was all right, and we was to come
along.

So we stayed where we was. The duke he fretted and sweated around, and
was in a mighty sour way. He scolded us for everything, and we couldn't
seem to do nothing right; he found fault with every little thing.
Something was a-brewing, sure. I was good and glad when midday come and
no king; we could have a change, anyway--and maybe a chance for THE
change on top of it. So me and the duke went up to the village, and
hunted around there for the king, and by and by we found him in the back
room of a little low doggery, very tight, and a lot of loafers
bullyragging him for sport, and he a-cussing and a-threatening with all
his might, and so tight