the work done now,
at last; and we was all pretty much fagged out, too, but mainly Jim. The
old man had wrote a couple of times to the plantation below Orleans to
come and get their runaway nigger, but hadn't got no answer, because
there warn't no such plantation; so he allowed he would advertise Jim in
the St. Louis and New Orleans papers; and when he mentioned the St. Louis
ones it give me the cold shivers, and I see we hadn't no time to lose.
So Tom said, now for the nonnamous letters.

"What's them?" I says.

"Warnings to the people that something is up. Sometimes it's done one
way, sometimes another. But there's always somebody spying around that
gives notice to the governor of the castle. When Louis XVI. was going to
light out of the Tooleries, a servant-girl done it. It's a very good way,
and so is the nonnamous letters. We'll use them both. And it's usual
for the prisoner's mother to change clothes with him, and she stays in,
and he slides out in her clothes. We'll do that, too."

"But looky here, Tom, what do we want to WARN anybody for that
something's up? Let them find it out for themselves--it's their
lookout."

"Yes, I know; but you can't depend on them. It's the way they've acted
from the very start--left us to do EVERYTHING. They're so confiding and
mullet-headed they don't take notice of nothing at all. So if we don't
GIVE them notice there won't be nobody nor nothing to interfere with us,
and so after all our hard work and trouble this escape 'll go off
perfectly flat; won't amount to nothing--won't be nothing TO it."

"Well, as for me, Tom, that's the way I'd like."

"Shucks!" he says, and looked disgusted. So I says:

"But I ain't going to make no complaint. Any way that suits you suits
me. What you going to do about the servant-girl?"

"You'll be her. You slide in, in the middle of the night, and hook that
yaller girl's frock."

"Why, Tom, that 'll make trouble next morning; because, of course, she
prob'bly hain't got any but that one."

"I know; but you don't want it but fifteen minutes, to carry the
nonnamous letter and shove it under the front door."

"All right, then, I'll do it; but I could carry it just as handy in my
own togs."

"You wouldn't look like a servant-girl THEN, would you?"

"No, but there won't be nobody to see what I look like, ANYWAY."

"That ain't got nothing to do with it. The thing for us to do is just to
do our DUTY, and not worry about wheth