t a start, and she never checked him up,
just set and stared and stared, and let him clip along, and I see it
warn't no use for ME to put in. "Why, Aunty, it cost us a power of work
--weeks of it--hours and hours, every night, whilst you was all asleep.
And we had to steal candles, and the sheet, and the shirt, and your
dress, and spoons, and tin plates, and case-knives, and the warming-pan,
and the grindstone, and flour, and just no end of things, and you can't
think what work it was to make the saws, and pens, and inscriptions, and
one thing or another, and you can't think HALF the fun it was. And we
had to make up the pictures of coffins and things, and nonnamous letters
from the robbers, and get up and down the lightning-rod, and dig the hole
into the cabin, and made the rope ladder and send it in cooked up in a
pie, and send in spoons and things to work with in your apron pocket--"

"Mercy sakes!"

"--and load up the cabin with rats and snakes and so on, for company for
Jim; and then you kept Tom here so long with the butter in his hat that
you come near spiling the whole business, because the men come before we
was out of the cabin, and we had to rush, and they heard us and let drive
at us, and I got my share, and we dodged out of the path and let them go
by, and when the dogs come they warn't interested in us, but went for the
most noise, and we got our canoe, and made for the raft, and was all
safe, and Jim was a free man, and we done it all by ourselves, and WASN'T
it bully, Aunty!"

"Well, I never heard the likes of it in all my born days! So it was YOU,
you little rapscallions, that's been making all this trouble, and turned
everybody's wits clean inside out and scared us all most to death. I've
as good a notion as ever I had in my life to take it out o' you this very
minute. To think, here I've been, night after night, a--YOU just get
well once, you young scamp, and I lay I'll tan the Old Harry out o' both
o' ye!"

But Tom, he WAS so proud and joyful, he just COULDN'T hold in, and his
tongue just WENT it--she a-chipping in, and spitting fire all along, and
both of them going it at once, like a cat convention; and she says:

"WELL, you get all the enjoyment you can out of it NOW, for mind I tell
you if I catch you meddling with him again--"

"Meddling with WHO?" Tom says, dropping his smile and looking surprised.

"With WHO? Why, the runaway nigger, of course. Who'd you reckon?"

Tom looks at