d we couldn't hold them any more. Two hours--three hours--just
gazing and gazing, and nothing but sand, sand, SAND, and you could see
the quivering heat-shimmer playing over it. Dear, dear, a body don't know
what real misery is till he is thirsty all the way through and is certain
he ain't ever going to come to any water any more. At last I couldn't
stand it to look around on them baking plains; I laid down on the locker,
and give it up.

But by and by Tom raised a whoop, and there she was! A lake, wide and
shiny, with pa'm-trees leaning over it asleep, and their shadders in the
water just as soft and delicate as ever you see. I never see anything
look so good. It was a long ways off, but that warn't anything to us; we
just slapped on a hundred-mile gait, and calculated to be there in seven
minutes; but she stayed the same old distance away, all the time; we
couldn't seem to gain on her; yes, sir, just as far, and shiny, and like
a dream; but we couldn't get no nearer; and at last, all of a sudden, she
was gone!

Tom's eyes took a spread, and he says:

"Boys, it was a MYridge!" Said it like he was glad. I didn't see nothing
to be glad about. I says:

"Maybe. I don't care nothing about its name, the thing I want to know is,
what's become of it?"

Jim was trembling all over, and so scared he couldn't speak, but he
wanted to ask that question himself if he could 'a' done it. Tom says:

"What's BECOME of it? Why, you see yourself it's gone."

"Yes, I know; but where's it gone TO?"

He looked me over and says:

"Well, now, Huck Finn, where WOULD it go to! Don't you know what a
myridge is?"

"No, I don't. What is it?"

"It ain't anything but imagination. There ain't anything TO it."

It warmed me up a little to hear him talk like that, and I says:

"What's the use you talking that kind of stuff, Tom Sawyer? Didn't I see
the lake?"

"Yes--you think you did."

"I don't think nothing about it, I DID see it."

"I tell you you DIDN'T see it either--because it warn't there to see."

It astonished Jim to hear him talk so, and he broke in and says, kind of
pleading and distressed:

"Mars Tom, PLEASE don't say sich things in sich an awful time as dis. You
ain't only reskin' yo' own self, but you's reskin' us--same way like Anna
Nias en Siffra. De lake WUZ dah--I seen it jis' as plain as I sees you en
Huck dis minute."

I says:

"Why, he seen it himself! He was the very one that seen it first. NOW,
then!"