een a strange nigger dressed so and so, and he says:

"Yes."

"Whereabouts?" says I.

"Down to Silas Phelps' place, two mile below here. He's a runaway
nigger, and they've got him. Was you looking for him?"

"You bet I ain't! I run across him in the woods about an hour or two
ago, and he said if I hollered he'd cut my livers out--and told me to lay
down and stay where I was; and I done it. Been there ever since; afeard
to come out."

"Well," he says, "you needn't be afeard no more, becuz they've got him.
He run off f'm down South, som'ers."

"It's a good job they got him."

"Well, I RECKON! There's two hunderd dollars reward on him. It's like
picking up money out'n the road."

"Yes, it is--and I could a had it if I'd been big enough; I see him
FIRST. Who nailed him?"

"It was an old fellow--a stranger--and he sold out his chance in him for
forty dollars, becuz he's got to go up the river and can't wait. Think
o' that, now! You bet I'D wait, if it was seven year."

"That's me, every time," says I. "But maybe his chance ain't worth no
more than that, if he'll sell it so cheap. Maybe there's something ain't
straight about it."

"But it IS, though--straight as a string. I see the handbill myself. It
tells all about him, to a dot--paints him like a picture, and tells the
plantation he's frum, below NewrLEANS. No-sirree-BOB, they ain't no
trouble 'bout THAT speculation, you bet you. Say, gimme a chaw tobacker,
won't ye?"

I didn't have none, so he left. I went to the raft, and set down in the
wigwam to think. But I couldn't come to nothing. I thought till I wore
my head sore, but I couldn't see no way out of the trouble. After all
this long journey, and after all we'd done for them scoundrels, here it
was all come to nothing, everything all busted up and ruined, because
they could have the heart to serve Jim such a trick as that, and make him
a slave again all his life, and amongst strangers, too, for forty dirty
dollars.

Once I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for Jim to be a
slave at home where his family was, as long as he'd GOT to be a slave,
and so I'd better write a letter to Tom Sawyer and tell him to tell Miss
Watson where he was. But I soon give up that notion for two things:
she'd be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness for
leaving her, and so she'd sell him straight down the river again; and if
she didn't, everybody naturally despises an ungrat