me very grave, and says:

"Tom, didn't you just tell me he was all right? Hasn't he got away?"

"HIM?" says Aunt Sally; "the runaway nigger? 'Deed he hasn't. They've
got him back, safe and sound, and he's in that cabin again, on bread and
water, and loaded down with chains, till he's claimed or sold!"

Tom rose square up in bed, with his eye hot, and his nostrils opening and
shutting like gills, and sings out to me:

"They hain't no RIGHT to shut him up! SHOVE!--and don't you lose a
minute. Turn him loose! he ain't no slave; he's as free as any cretur
that walks this earth!"

"What DOES the child mean?"

"I mean every word I SAY, Aunt Sally, and if somebody don't go, I'LL go.
I've knowed him all his life, and so has Tom, there. Old Miss Watson
died two months ago, and she was ashamed she ever was going to sell him
down the river, and SAID so; and she set him free in her will."

"Then what on earth did YOU want to set him free for, seeing he was
already free?"

"Well, that IS a question, I must say; and just like women! Why, I
wanted the ADVENTURE of it; and I'd a waded neck-deep in blood to
--goodness alive, AUNT POLLY!"

If she warn't standing right there, just inside the door, looking as
sweet and contented as an angel half full of pie, I wish I may never!

Aunt Sally jumped for her, and most hugged the head off of her, and cried
over her, and I found a good enough place for me under the bed, for it
was getting pretty sultry for us, seemed to me. And I peeped out, and in
a little while Tom's Aunt Polly shook herself loose and stood there
looking across at Tom over her spectacles--kind of grinding him into the
earth, you know. And then she says:

"Yes, you BETTER turn y'r head away--I would if I was you, Tom."

"Oh, deary me!" says Aunt Sally; "IS he changed so? Why, that ain't TOM,
it's Sid; Tom's--Tom's--why, where is Tom? He was here a minute ago."

"You mean where's Huck FINN--that's what you mean! I reckon I hain't
raised such a scamp as my Tom all these years not to know him when I SEE
him. That WOULD be a pretty howdy-do. Come out from under that bed,
Huck Finn."

So I done it. But not feeling brash.

Aunt Sally she was one of the mixed-upest-looking persons I ever see
--except one, and that was Uncle Silas, when he come in and they told it
all to him. It kind of made him drunk, as you may say, and he didn't
know nothing at all the rest of the day, and preached a prayer-meeting