s straw tick, and scratched
some marks on a tin plate and throwed it out of the window-hole.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

MAKING them pens was a distressid tough job, and so was the saw; and Jim
allowed the inscription was going to be the toughest of all. That's the
one which the prisoner has to scrabble on the wall. But he had to have
it; Tom said he'd GOT to; there warn't no case of a state prisoner not
scrabbling his inscription to leave behind, and his coat of arms.

"Look at Lady Jane Grey," he says; "look at Gilford Dudley; look at old
Northumberland! Why, Huck, s'pose it IS considerble trouble?--what you
going to do?--how you going to get around it? Jim's GOT to do his
inscription and coat of arms. They all do."

Jim says:

"Why, Mars Tom, I hain't got no coat o' arm; I hain't got nuffn but dish
yer ole shirt, en you knows I got to keep de journal on dat."

"Oh, you don't understand, Jim; a coat of arms is very different."

"Well," I says, "Jim's right, anyway, when he says he ain't got no coat
of arms, because he hain't."

"I reckon I knowed that," Tom says, "but you bet he'll have one before he
goes out of this--because he's going out RIGHT, and there ain't going to
be no flaws in his record."

So whilst me and Jim filed away at the pens on a brickbat apiece, Jim
a-making his'n out of the brass and I making mine out of the spoon, Tom
set to work to think out the coat of arms. By and by he said he'd struck
so many good ones he didn't hardly know which to take, but there was one
which he reckoned he'd decide on. He says:

"On the scutcheon we'll have a bend OR in the dexter base, a saltire
MURREY in the fess, with a dog, couchant, for common charge, and under
his foot a chain embattled, for slavery, with a chevron VERT in a chief
engrailed, and three invected lines on a field AZURE, with the nombril
points rampant on a dancette indented; crest, a runaway nigger, SABLE,
with his bundle over his shoulder on a bar sinister; and a couple of
gules for supporters, which is you and me; motto, MAGGIORE FRETTA, MINORE
OTTO. Got it out of a book--means the more haste the less speed."

"Geewhillikins," I says, "but what does the rest of it mean?"

"We ain't got no time to bother over that," he says; "we got to dig in
like all git-out."

"Well, anyway," I says, "what's SOME of it? What's a fess?"

"A fess--a fess is--YOU don't need to know what a fess is. I'll show him
how to make it when he gets to it.