"I don't reckon he did. I don't know."

"Aha! Talk about trying to cure warts with spunk-water such a blame
fool way as that! Why, that ain't a-going to do any good. You got to go
all by yourself, to the middle of the woods, where you know there's a
spunk-water stump, and just as it's midnight you back up against the
stump and jam your hand in and say:

'Barley-corn, barley-corn, injun-meal shorts,
Spunk-water, spunk-water, swaller these warts,'

and then walk away quick, eleven steps, with your eyes shut, and then
turn around three times and walk home without speaking to anybody.
Because if you speak the charm's busted."

"Well, that sounds like a good way; but that ain't the way Bob Tanner
done."

"No, sir, you can bet he didn't, becuz he's the wartiest boy in this
town; and he wouldn't have a wart on him if he'd knowed how to work
spunk-water. I've took off thousands of warts off of my hands that way,
Huck. I play with frogs so much that I've always got considerable many
warts. Sometimes I take 'em off with a bean."

"Yes, bean's good. I've done that."

"Have you? What's your way?"

"You take and split the bean, and cut the wart so as to get some
blood, and then you put the blood on one piece of the bean and take and
dig a hole and bury it 'bout midnight at the crossroads in the dark of
the moon, and then you burn up the rest of the bean. You see that piece
that's got the blood on it will keep drawing and drawing, trying to
fetch the other piece to it, and so that helps the blood to draw the
wart, and pretty soon off she comes."

"Yes, that's it, Huck--that's it; though when you're burying it if you
say 'Down bean; off wart; come no more to bother me!' it's better.
That's the way Joe Harper does, and he's been nearly to Coonville and
most everywheres. But say--how do you cure 'em with dead cats?"

"Why, you take your cat and go and get in the graveyard 'long about
midnight when somebody that was wicked has been buried; and when it's
midnight a devil will come, or maybe two or three, but you can't see
'em, you can only hear something like the wind, or maybe hear 'em talk;
and when they're taking that feller away, you heave your cat after 'em
and say, 'Devil follow corpse, cat follow devil, warts follow cat, I'm
done with ye!' That'll fetch ANY wart."

"Sounds right. D'you ever try it, Huck?"

"No, but old Mother Hopkins told me."

"Well, I reckon it's so, then. Becuz they say she's a witch."

"S