it wouldn't do at all. I must go up
the road and waylay him. So I told the folks I reckoned I would go up to
the town and fetch down my baggage. The old gentleman was for going
along with me, but I said no, I could drive the horse myself, and I
druther he wouldn't take no trouble about me.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

SO I started for town in the wagon, and when I was half-way I see a wagon
coming, and sure enough it was Tom Sawyer, and I stopped and waited till
he come along. I says "Hold on!" and it stopped alongside, and his mouth
opened up like a trunk, and stayed so; and he swallowed two or three
times like a person that's got a dry throat, and then says:

"I hain't ever done you no harm. You know that. So, then, what you want
to come back and ha'nt ME for?"

I says:

"I hain't come back--I hain't been GONE."

When he heard my voice it righted him up some, but he warn't quite
satisfied yet. He says:

"Don't you play nothing on me, because I wouldn't on you. Honest injun
now, you ain't a ghost?"

"Honest injun, I ain't," I says.

"Well--I--I--well, that ought to settle it, of course; but I can't
somehow seem to understand it no way. Looky here, warn't you ever
murdered AT ALL?"

"No. I warn't ever murdered at all--I played it on them. You come in
here and feel of me if you don't believe me."

So he done it; and it satisfied him; and he was that glad to see me again
he didn't know what to do. And he wanted to know all about it right off,
because it was a grand adventure, and mysterious, and so it hit him where
he lived. But I said, leave it alone till by and by; and told his driver
to wait, and we drove off a little piece, and I told him the kind of a
fix I was in, and what did he reckon we better do? He said, let him
alone a minute, and don't disturb him. So he thought and thought, and
pretty soon he says:

"It's all right; I've got it. Take my trunk in your wagon, and let on
it's your'n; and you turn back and fool along slow, so as to get to the
house about the time you ought to; and I'll go towards town a piece, and
take a fresh start, and get there a quarter or a half an hour after you;
and you needn't let on to know me at first."

I says:

"All right; but wait a minute. There's one more thing--a thing that
NOBODY don't know but me. And that is, there's a nigger here that I'm
a-trying to steal out of slavery, and his name is JIM--old Miss Watson's
Jim."

He says:

"What! Why,