hings ain't robbery; it's burglary,"
says Tom Sawyer. "We ain't burglars. That ain't no sort of style. We
are highwaymen. We stop stages and carriages on the road, with masks on,
and kill the people and take their watches and money."

"Must we always kill the people?"

"Oh, certainly. It's best. Some authorities think different, but mostly
it's considered best to kill them--except some that you bring to the cave
here, and keep them till they're ransomed."

"Ransomed? What's that?"

"I don't know. But that's what they do. I've seen it in books; and so
of course that's what we've got to do."

"But how can we do it if we don't know what it is?"

"Why, blame it all, we've GOT to do it. Don't I tell you it's in the
books? Do you want to go to doing different from what's in the books,
and get things all muddled up?"

"Oh, that's all very fine to SAY, Tom Sawyer, but how in the nation are
these fellows going to be ransomed if we don't know how to do it to them?
--that's the thing I want to get at. Now, what do you reckon it is?"

"Well, I don't know. But per'aps if we keep them till they're ransomed,
it means that we keep them till they're dead."

"Now, that's something LIKE. That'll answer. Why couldn't you said that
before? We'll keep them till they're ransomed to death; and a bothersome
lot they'll be, too--eating up everything, and always trying to get
loose."

"How you talk, Ben Rogers. How can they get loose when there's a guard
over them, ready to shoot them down if they move a peg?"

"A guard! Well, that IS good. So somebody's got to set up all night and
never get any sleep, just so as to watch them. I think that's
foolishness. Why can't a body take a club and ransom them as soon as they
get here?"

"Because it ain't in the books so--that's why. Now, Ben Rogers, do you
want to do things regular, or don't you?--that's the idea. Don't you
reckon that the people that made the books knows what's the correct thing
to do? Do you reckon YOU can learn 'em anything? Not by a good deal.
No, sir, we'll just go on and ransom them in the regular way."

"All right. I don't mind; but I say it's a fool way, anyhow. Say, do we
kill the women, too?"

"Well, Ben Rogers, if I was as ignorant as you I wouldn't let on. Kill
the women? No; nobody ever saw anything in the books like that. You
fetch them to the cave, and you're always as polite as pie to them; and
by and by they fall in love with y