CHAPTER XXXV



THE reader may rest satisfied that Tom's and Huck's windfall

made a mighty stir in the poor little village of St. Petersburg.

So vast a sum, all in actual cash, seemed next to incredible.

It was talked about, gloated over, glorified, until the reason

of many of the citizens tottered under the strain of the

unhealthy excitement. Every "haunted" house in St.

Petersburg and the neighboring villages was dissected,

plank by plank, and its foundations dug up and ran-

sacked for hidden treasure -- and not by boys, but men

-- pretty grave, unromantic men, too, some of them.

Wherever Tom and Huck appeared they were courted,

admired, stared at. The boys were not able to remem-

ber that their remarks had possessed weight before;

but now their sayings were treasured and repeated;

everything they did seemed somehow to be regarded as

remarkable; they had evidently lost the power of doing

and saying commonplace things; moreover, their past

history was raked up and discovered to bear marks of

conspicuous originality. The village paper published

biographical sketches of the boys.



The Widow Douglas put Huck's money out at six

per cent., and Judge Thatcher did the same with

Tom's at Aunt Polly's request. Each lad had an in-

come, now, that was simply prodigious -- a dollar for

every week-day in the year and half of the Sundays.

It was just what the minister got -- no, it was what he

was promised -- he generally couldn't collect it. A

dollar and a quarter a week would board, lodge, and

school a boy in those old simple days -- and clothe him

and wash him, too, for that matter.



Judge Thatcher had conceived a great opinion of

Tom. He said that no commonplace boy would ever

have got his daughter out of the cave. When Becky

told her father, in strict confidence, how Tom had

taken her whipping at school, the Judge was visibly

moved; and when she pleaded grace for the mighty

lie which Tom had told in order to shift that whipping

from her shoulders to his own, the Judge said with a

fine outburst that it was a noble, a generous, a mag-

nanimous lie -- a lie that was worthy to hold up its head

and march down through history breast to breast with

George Washington's lauded Truth about the hatchet!

Becky thought her father had never looked so tall and

so superb as when he walked the floor and stamped

his foot and said that. She went straight off and told

Tom about it.



Judge Thatcher hoped to see Tom a great lawyer or

a great soldier some day. He said he meant to look

to it that Tom should be admitted to the National

Military Academy and afterward trained in the best

law school in the country, in order that he might be

ready for either career or both.



Huck Finn's wealth and the fact that he was now

under the Widow Douglas' protection introduced him

into society -- no, dragged him into it, hurled him into

it -- and his sufferings were almost more than he could

bear. The widow's servants kept him clean and neat,

combed and brushed, and they bedded him nightly in

unsympathetic sheets that had not one little spot or

stain which he could press to his heart and know for

a friend. He had to eat with a knife and fork; he had

to use napkin, cup, and plate; he had to learn his book,

he had to go to church; he had to talk so properly that

speech was become insipid in his mouth; whitherso-

ever he turned, the bars and shackles of civilization

shut him in and bound him hand and foot.



He bravely bore his miseries three weeks, and then

one day turned up missing. For forty-eight hours the

widow hunted for him everywhere in great distress.

The public were profoundly concerned; they searched

high and low, they dragged the river for his body.

Early the third morning Tom Sawyer wisely went

poking among some old empty hogsheads down behind

the abandoned slaughter-house, and in one of them

he found the refugee. Huck had slept there; he had

just breakfasted upon some stolen odds and ends of

food, and was lying off, now, in comfort, with his pipe.

He was unkempt, uncombed, and clad in the same old

ruin of rags that had made him picturesque in the days

when he was free and happy. Tom routed him out,

told him the trouble he had been causing, and urged

him to go home. Huck's face lost its tranquil content,

and took a melancholy cast. He said:



"Don't talk about it, Tom. I've tried it, and it

don't work; it don't work, Tom. It ain't for me;

I ain't used to it. The widder's good to me, and

friendly; but I can't stand them ways. She makes

me get up just at the same time every morning; she

makes me wash, they comb me all to thunder; she

won't let me sleep in the woodshed; I got to wear

them blamed clothes that just smothers me, Tom;

they don't seem to any air git through 'em, somehow;

and they're so rotten nice that I can't set down, nor

lay down, nor roll around anywher's; I hain't slid on

a cellar-door for -- well, it 'pears to be years; I got

to go to church and sweat and sweat -- I hate them

ornery sermons! I can't ketch a fly in there, I can't

chaw. I got to wear shoes all Sunday. The widder

eats by a bell; she goes to bed by a bell; she gits up

by a bell -- everything's so awful reg'lar a body can't stand it."



"Well, everybody does that way, Huck."



"Tom, it don't make no difference. I ain't every-

body, and I can't STAND it. It's awful to be tied up so.

And grub comes too easy -- I don't take no interest in

vittles, that way. I got to ask to go a-fishing; I got

to ask to go in a-swimming -- dern'd if I hain't got to

ask to do everything. Well, I'd got to talk so nice it

wasn't no comfort -- I'd got to go up in the attic and

rip out awhile, every day, to git a taste in my mouth,

or I'd a died, Tom. The widder wouldn't let me

smoke; she wouldn't let me yell, she wouldn't let me

gape, nor stretch, nor scratch, before folks --" [Then

with a spasm of special irritation and injury] -- "And

dad fetch it, she prayed all the time! I never see such

a woman! I HAD to shove, Tom -- I just had to. And

besides, that school's going to open, and I'd a had to

go to it -- well, I wouldn't stand THAT, Tom. Looky-

here, Tom, being rich ain't what it's cracked up to be.

It's just worry and worry, and sweat and sweat, and

a-wishing you was dead all the time. Now these

clothes suits me, and this bar'l suits me, and I ain't

ever going to shake 'em any more. Tom, I wouldn't

ever got into all this trouble if it hadn't 'a' ben for

that money; now you just take my sheer of it along

with your'n, and gimme a ten-center sometimes -- not

many times, becuz I don't give a dern for a thing

'thout it's tollable hard to git -- and you go and beg off

for me with the widder."



"Oh, Huck, you know I can't do that. 'Tain't

fair; and besides if you'll try this thing just a while

longer you'll come to like it."



"Like it! Yes -- the way I'd like a hot stove if I

was to set on it long enough. No, Tom, I won't be

rich, and I won't live in them cussed smothery houses.

I like the woods, and the river, and hogsheads, and

I'll stick to 'em, too. Blame it all! just as we'd got

guns, and a cave, and all just fixed to rob, here this

dern foolishness has got to come up and spile it all!"



Tom saw his opportunity --



"Lookyhere, Huck, being rich ain't going to keep

me back from turning robber."



"No! Oh, good-licks; are you in real dead-wood

earnest, Tom?"



"Just as dead earnest as I'm sitting here. But

Huck, we can't let you into the gang if you ain't re-

spectable, you know."



Huck's joy was quenched.



"Can't let me in, Tom? Didn't you let me go for a pirate?"



"Yes, but that's different. A robber is more high-

toned than what a pirate is -- as a general thing. In

most countries they're awful high up in the nobility --

dukes and such."



"Now, Tom, hain't you always ben friendly to me?

You wouldn't shet me out, would you, Tom? You

wouldn't do that, now, WOULD you, Tom?"



"Huck, I wouldn't want to, and I DON'T want to --

but what would people say? Why, they'd say, 'Mph!

Tom Sawyer's Gang! pretty low characters in it!'

They'd mean you, Huck. You wouldn't like that, and

I wouldn't."



Huck was silent for some time, engaged in a mental

struggle. Finally he said:



"Well, I'll go back to the widder for a month and

tackle it and see if I can come to stand it, if you'll

let me b'long to the gang, Tom."



"All right, Huck, it's a whiz! Come along, old chap,

and I'll ask the widow to let up on you a little, Huck."



"Will you, Tom -- now will you? That's good. If

she'll let up on some of the roughest things, I'll smoke

private and cuss private, and crowd through or bust.

When you going to start the gang and turn robbers?"



"Oh, right off. We'll get the boys together and

have the initiation to-night, maybe."



"Have the which?"



"Have the initiation."



"What's that?"



"It's to swear to stand by one another, and never

tell the gang's secrets, even if you're chopped all to

flinders, and kill anybody and all his family that hurts

one of the gang."



"That's gay -- that's mighty gay, Tom, I tell you."



"Well, I bet it is. And all that swearing's got to

be done at midnight, in the lonesomest, awfulest place

you can find -- a ha'nted house is the best, but they're

all ripped up now."



"Well, midnight's good, anyway, Tom."



"Yes, so it is. And you've got to swear on a coffin,

and sign it with blood."



"Now, that's something LIKE! Why, it's a million

times bullier than pirating. I'll stick to the widder

till I rot, Tom; and if I git to be a reg'lar ripper of a

robber, and everybody talking 'bout it, I reckon she'll

be proud she snaked me in out of the wet."

****

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