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about a quarter of a minute or as much as that, and I would a sold out
for half price if there was a bidder.  But after that we was all right
again--it was the sudden surprise of it that knocked us so kind of cold.
Uncle Silas he says:

“It’s most uncommon curious, I can’t understand it.  I know perfectly
well I took it _off_, because--”

“Because you hain’t got but one _on_.  Just _listen_ at the man!  I know
you took it off, and know it by a better way than your wool-gethering
memory, too, because it was on the clo’s-line yesterday--I see it there
myself. But it’s gone, that’s the long and the short of it, and you’ll
just have to change to a red flann’l one till I can get time to make a
new one. And it ‘ll be the third I’ve made in two years.  It just keeps
a body on the jump to keep you in shirts; and whatever you do manage to
_do_ with ‘m all is more’n I can make out.  A body ‘d think you _would_
learn to take some sort of care of ‘em at your time of life.”

“I know it, Sally, and I do try all I can.  But it oughtn’t to be
altogether my fault, because, you know, I don’t see them nor have
nothing to do with them except when they’re on me; and I don’t believe
I’ve ever lost one of them _off_ of me.”

“Well, it ain’t _your_ fault if you haven’t, Silas; you’d a done it
if you could, I reckon.  And the shirt ain’t all that’s gone, nuther.
 Ther’s a spoon gone; and _that_ ain’t all.  There was ten, and now
ther’s only nine. The calf got the shirt, I reckon, but the calf never
took the spoon, _that’s_ certain.”

“Why, what else is gone, Sally?”

“Ther’s six _candles_ gone--that’s what.  The rats could a got the
candles, and I reckon they did; I wonder they don’t walk off with the
whole place, the way you’re always going to stop their holes and don’t
do it; and if they warn’t fools they’d sleep in your hair, Silas--_you’d_
never find it out; but you can’t lay the _spoon_ on the rats, and that I
know.”

“Well, Sally, I’m in fault, and I acknowledge it; I’ve been remiss; but
I won’t let to-morrow go by without stopping up them holes.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t hurry; next year ‘ll do.  Matilda Angelina Araminta
_Phelps!_”

Whack comes the thimble, and the child snatches her claws out of the
sugar-bowl without fooling around any.  Just then the nigger woman steps
on to the passage, and says:

“Missus, dey’s a sheet gone.”

“A _sheet_ gone!  Well, for the land’s sake!”

“I’ll stop up them holes to-day,” says Uncle Silas, looking sorrowful.

“Oh, _do_ shet up!--s’pose the rats took the _sheet_?  _where’s_ it gone,
Lize?”

“Clah to goodness I hain’t no notion, Miss’ Sally.  She wuz on de
clo’sline yistiddy, but she done gone:  she ain’ dah no mo’ now.”

“I reckon the world _is_ coming to an end.  I _never_ see the beat of it
in all my born days.  A shirt, and a sheet, and a spoon, and six can--”

“Missus,” comes a young yaller wench, “dey’s a brass cannelstick
miss’n.”

“Cler out from here, you hussy, er I’ll take a skillet to ye!”

Well, she was just a-biling.  I begun to lay for a chance; I reckoned
I would sneak out and go for the woods till the weather moderated.  She
kept a-raging right along, running her insurrection all by herself, and
everybody else mighty meek and quiet; and at last Uncle Silas, looking
kind of foolish, fishes up that spoon out of his pocket.  She stopped,
with her mouth open and her hands up; and as for me, I wished I was in
Jeruslem or somewheres. But not long, because she says:

“It’s _just_ as I expected.  So you had it in your pocket all the time;
and like as not you’ve got the other things there, too.  How’d it get
there?”

“I reely don’t know, Sally,” he says, kind of apologizing, “or you know
I would tell.  I was a-studying over my text in Acts Seventeen before
breakfast, and I reckon I put it in there, not noticing, meaning to put
my Testament in, and it must be so, because my Testament ain’t in; but
I’ll go and see; and if the Testament is where I had it, I’ll know I
didn’t put it in, and that will show that I laid the Testament down and
took up the spoon, and--”

“Oh, for the land’s sake!  Give a body a rest!  Go ‘long now, the whole
kit and biling of ye; and don’t come nigh me again till I’ve got back my
peace of mind.”

I’D a heard her if she’d a said it to herself, let alone speaking it
out; and I’d a got up and obeyed her if I’d a been dead.  As we was
passing through the setting-room the old man he took up his hat, and the
shingle-nail fell out on the floor, and he just merely picked it up and
laid it on the mantel-shelf, and never said nothing, and went out.  Tom
see him do it, and remembered about the spoon, and says:

“Well, it ain’t no use to send things by _him_ no more, he ain’t
reliable.” Then he says:  “But he done us a good turn with the spoon,
anyway, without knowing it, and so we’ll go and do him one without _him_
knowing it--stop up his rat-holes.”

There was a noble good lot of them down cellar, and it took us a whole
hour, but we done the job tight and good and shipshape.  Then we heard
steps on the stairs, and blowed out our light and hid; and here comes
the old man, with a candle in one hand and a bundle of stuff in t’other,
looking as absent-minded as year before last.  He went a mooning around,
first to one rat-hole and then another, till he’d been to them all.
 Then he stood about five minutes, picking tallow-drip off of his candle
and thinking.  Then he turns off slow and dreamy towards the stairs,
saying:

“Well, for the life of me I can’t remember when I done it.  I could
show her now that I warn’t to blame on account of the rats.  But never
mind--let it go.  I reckon it wouldn’t do no good.”

And so he went on a-mumbling up stairs, and then we left.  He was a
mighty nice old man.  And always is.

Tom was a good deal bothered about what to do for a spoon, but he said
we’d got to have it; so he took a think.  When he had ciphered it out
he told me how we was to do; then we went and waited around the
spoon-basket till we see Aunt Sally coming, and then Tom went to
counting the spoons and laying them out to one side, and I slid one of
them up my sleeve, and Tom says:

“Why, Aunt Sally, there ain’t but nine spoons _yet_.”

She says:

“Go ‘long to your play, and don’t bother me.  I know better, I counted
‘m myself.”

“Well, I’ve counted them twice, Aunty, and I can’t make but nine.”

She looked out of all patience, but of course she come to count--anybody
would.

“I declare to gracious ther’ _ain’t_ but nine!” she says.  “Why, what in
the world--plague _take_ the things, I’ll count ‘m again.”

So I slipped back the one I had, and when she got done counting, she
says:

“Hang the troublesome rubbage, ther’s _ten_ now!” and she looked huffy
and bothered both.  But Tom says:

“Why, Aunty, I don’t think there’s ten.”

“You numskull, didn’t you see me _count ‘m?_”

“I know, but--”

“Well, I’ll count ‘m _again_.”

So I smouched one, and they come out nine, same as the other time.
 Well, she _was_ in a tearing way--just a-trembling all over, she was so
mad.  But she counted and counted till she got that addled she’d start
to count in the basket for a spoon sometimes; and so, three times they
come out right, and three times they come out wrong.  Then she grabbed
up the basket and slammed it across the house and knocked the cat
galley-west; and she said cle’r out and let her have some peace, and if
we come bothering around her again betwixt that and dinner she’d skin
us.  So we had the odd spoon, and dropped it in her apron-pocket whilst
she was a-giving us our sailing orders, and Jim got it all right, along
with her shingle nail, before noon.  We was very well satisfied with
this business, and Tom allowed it was worth twice the trouble it took,
because he said _now_ she couldn’t ever count them spoons twice alike
again to save her life; and wouldn’t believe she’d counted them right if
she _did_; and said that after she’d about counted her head off for the
next three days he judged she’d give it up and offer to kill anybody
that wanted her to ever count them any more.

So we put the sheet back on the line that night, and stole one out of
her closet; and kept on putting it back and stealing it again for a
couple of days till she didn’t know how many sheets she had any more,
and she didn’t _care_, and warn’t a-going to bullyrag the rest of her
soul out about it, and wouldn’t count them again not to save her life;
she druther die first.

So we was all right now, as to the shirt and the sheet and the spoon
and the candles, by the help of the calf and the rats and the mixed-up
counting; and as to the candlestick, it warn’t no consequence, it would
blow over by and by.

But that pie was a job; we had no end of trouble with that pie.  We
fixed it up away down in the woods, and cooked it there; and we got it
done at last, and very satisfactory, too; but not all in one day; and we
had to use up three wash-pans full of flour before we got through, and
we got burnt pretty much all over, in places, and eyes put out with
the smoke; because, you see, we didn’t want nothing but a crust, and we
couldn’t prop it up right, and she would always cave in.  But of course
we thought of the right way at last--which was to cook the ladder, too,
in the pie.  So then we laid in with Jim the second night, and tore
up the sheet all in little strings and twisted them together, and long
before daylight we had a lovely rope that you could a hung a person
with.  We let on it took nine months to make it.

And in the forenoon we took it down to the woods, but it wouldn’t go
into the pie.  Being made of a whole sheet, that way, there was rope
enough for forty pies if we’d a wanted them, and plenty left over
for soup, or sausage, or anything you choose.  We could a had a whole
dinner.

But we didn’t need it.  All we needed was just enough for the pie, and
so we throwed the rest away.  We didn’t cook none of the pies in the
wash-pan--afraid the solder would melt; but Uncle Silas he had a noble
brass warming-pan which he thought considerable of, because it belonged
to one of his ancesters with a long wooden handle that come over from
England with William the Conqueror in the Mayflower or one of them early
ships and was hid away up garret with a lot of other old pots and things
that was valuable, not on account of being any account, because they
warn’t, but on account of them being relicts, you know, and we snaked
her out, private, and took her down there, but she failed on the first
pies, because we didn’t know how, but she come up smiling on the last
one.  We took and lined her with dough, and set her in the coals, and
loaded her up with rag rope, and put on a dough roof, and shut down the
lid, and put hot embers on top, and stood off five foot, with the long
handle, cool and comfortable, and in fifteen minutes she turned out a
pie that was a satisfaction to look at. But the person that et it would
want to fetch a couple of kags of toothpicks along, for if that rope
ladder wouldn’t cramp him down to business I don’t know nothing what I’m
talking about, and lay him in enough stomach-ache to last him till next
time, too.

Nat didn’t look when we put the witch pie in Jim’s pan; and we put the
three tin plates in the bottom of the pan under the vittles; and so Jim
got everything all right, and as soon as he was by himself he busted
into the pie and hid the rope ladder inside of his straw tick,
and scratched some marks on a tin plate and throwed it out of the
window-hole.




CHAPTER XXXVIII.

MAKING them pens was a distressid tough job, and so was the saw; and Jim
allowed the inscription was going to be the toughest of all.  That’s the
one which the prisoner has to scrabble on the wall.  But he had to have
it; Tom said he’d _got_ to; there warn’t no case of a state prisoner not
scrabbling his inscription to leave behind, and his coat of arms.

“Look at Lady Jane Grey,” he says; “look at Gilford Dudley; look at old
Northumberland!  Why, Huck, s’pose it _is_ considerble trouble?--what
you going to do?--how you going to get around it?  Jim’s _got_ to do his
inscription and coat of arms.  They all do.”

Jim says:

“Why, Mars Tom, I hain’t got no coat o’ arm; I hain’t got nuffn but dish
yer ole shirt, en you knows I got to keep de journal on dat.”

“Oh, you don’t understand, Jim; a coat of arms is very different.”

“Well,” I says, “Jim’s right, anyway, when he says he ain’t got no coat
of arms, because he hain’t.”

“I reckon I knowed that,” Tom says, “but you bet he’ll have one before
he goes out of this--because he’s going out _right_, and there ain’t
going to be no flaws in his record.”

So whilst me and Jim filed away at the pens on a brickbat apiece, Jim
a-making his’n out of the brass and I making mine out of the spoon,
Tom set to work to think out the coat of arms.  By and by he said he’d
struck so many good ones he didn’t hardly know which to take, but there
was one which he reckoned he’d decide on.  He says:

“On the scutcheon we’ll have a bend _or_ in the dexter base, a saltire
_murrey_ in the fess, with a dog, couchant, for common charge, and under
his foot a chain embattled, for slavery, with a chevron _vert_ in a
chief engrailed, and three invected lines on a field _azure_, with the
nombril points rampant on a dancette indented; crest, a runaway nigger,
_sable_, with his bundle over his shoulder on a bar sinister; and a
couple of gules for supporters, which is you and me; motto, _Maggiore
Fretta, Minore Otto._  Got it out of a book--means the more haste the
less speed.”

“Geewhillikins,” I says, “but what does the rest of it mean?”

“We ain’t got no time to bother over that,” he says; “we got to dig in
like all git-out.”

“Well, anyway,” I says, “what’s _some_ of it?  What’s a fess?”

“A fess--a fess is--_you_ don’t need to know what a fess is.  I’ll show
him how to make it when he gets to it.”

“Shucks, Tom,” I says, “I think you might tell a person.  What’s a bar
sinister?”

“Oh, I don’t know.  But he’s got to have it.  All the nobility does.”

That was just his way.  If it didn’t suit him to explain a thing to you,
he wouldn’t do it.  You might pump at him a week, it wouldn’t make no
difference.

He’d got all that coat of arms business fixed, so now he started in to
finish up the rest of that part of the work, which was to plan out a
mournful inscription--said Jim got to have one, like they all done.  He
made up a lot, and wrote them out on a paper, and read them off, so:

1.  Here a captive heart busted. 2.  Here a poor prisoner, forsook by
the world and friends, fretted his sorrowful life. 3.  Here a lonely
heart broke, and a worn spirit went to its rest, after thirty-seven
years of solitary captivity. 4.  Here, homeless and friendless, after
thirty-seven years of bitter captivity, perished a noble stranger,
natural son of Louis XIV.

Tom’s voice trembled whilst he was reading them, and he most broke down.
When he got done he couldn’t no way make up his mind which one for Jim
to scrabble on to the wall, they was all so good; but at last he allowed
he would let him scrabble them all on.  Jim said it would take him a
year to scrabble such a lot of truck on to the logs with a nail, and he
didn’t know how to make letters, besides; but Tom said he would block
them out for him, and then he wouldn’t have nothing to do but just
follow the lines.  Then pretty soon he says:

“Come to think, the logs ain’t a-going to do; they don’t have log walls
in a dungeon:  we got to dig the inscriptions into a rock.  We’ll fetch
a rock.”

Jim said the rock was worse than the logs; he said it would take him
such a pison long time to dig them into a rock he wouldn’t ever get out.
 But Tom said he would let me help him do it.  Then he took a look to
see how me and Jim was getting along with the pens.  It was most pesky
tedious hard work and slow, and didn’t give my hands no show to get
well of the sores, and we didn’t seem to make no headway, hardly; so Tom
says:

“I know how to fix it.  We got to have a rock for the coat of arms and
mournful inscriptions, and we can kill two birds with that same rock.
There’s a gaudy big grindstone down at the mill, and we’ll smouch it,
and carve the things on it, and file out the pens and the saw on it,
too.”

It warn’t no slouch of an idea; and it warn’t no slouch of a grindstone
nuther; but we allowed we’d tackle it.  It warn’t quite midnight yet,
so we cleared out for the mill, leaving Jim at work.  We smouched the
grindstone, and set out to roll her home, but it was a most nation tough
job. Sometimes, do what we could, we couldn’t keep her from falling
over, and she come mighty near mashing us every time.  Tom said she was
going to get one of us, sure, before we got through.  We got her half
way; and then we was plumb played out, and most drownded with sweat.  We
see it warn’t no use; we got to go and fetch Jim. So he raised up his
bed and slid the chain off of the bed-leg, and wrapt it round and round
his neck, and we crawled out through our hole and down there, and Jim
and me laid into that grindstone and walked her along like nothing; and
Tom superintended.  He could out-superintend any boy I ever see.  He
knowed how to do everything.

Our hole was pretty big, but it warn’t big enough to get the grindstone
through; but Jim he took the pick and soon made it big enough.  Then Tom
marked out them things on it with the nail, and set Jim to work on them,
with the nail for a chisel and an iron bolt from the rubbage in the
lean-to for a hammer, and told him to work till the rest of his candle
quit on him, and then he could go to bed, and hide the grindstone under
his straw tick and sleep on it.  Then we helped him fix his chain back
on the bed-leg, and was ready for bed ourselves.  But Tom thought of
something, and says:

“You got any spiders in here, Jim?”

“No, sah, thanks to goodness I hain’t, Mars Tom.”

“All right, we’ll get you some.”

“But bless you, honey, I doan’ _want_ none.  I’s afeard un um.  I jis’
‘s soon have rattlesnakes aroun’.”

Tom thought a minute or two, and says:

“It’s a good idea.  And I reckon it’s been done.  It _must_ a been done;
it stands to reason.  Yes, it’s a prime good idea.  Where could you keep
it?”

“Keep what, Mars Tom?”

“Why, a rattlesnake.”

“De goodness gracious alive, Mars Tom!  Why, if dey was a rattlesnake to
come in heah I’d take en bust right out thoo dat log wall, I would, wid
my head.”

“Why, Jim, you wouldn’t be afraid of it after a little.  You could tame
it.”

“_Tame_ it!”

“Yes--easy enough.  Every animal is grateful for kindness and petting,
and they wouldn’t _think_ of hurting a person that pets them.  Any book
will tell you that.  You try--that’s all I ask; just try for two or three
days. Why, you can get him so, in a little while, that he’ll love you;
and sleep with you; and won’t stay away from you a minute; and will let
you wrap him round your neck and put his head in your mouth.”

“_Please_, Mars Tom--_doan_’ talk so!  I can’t _stan_’ it!  He’d _let_
me shove his head in my mouf--fer a favor, hain’t it?  I lay he’d wait a
pow’ful long time ‘fo’ I _ast_ him.  En mo’ en dat, I doan’ _want_ him
to sleep wid me.”

“Jim, don’t act so foolish.  A prisoner’s _got_ to have some kind of a
dumb pet, and if a rattlesnake hain’t ever been tried, why, there’s more
glory to be gained in your being the first to ever try it than any other
way you could ever think of to save your life.”

“Why, Mars Tom, I doan’ _want_ no sich glory.  Snake take ‘n bite
Jim’s chin off, den _whah_ is de glory?  No, sah, I doan’ want no sich
doin’s.”

“Blame it, can’t you _try_?  I only _want_ you to try--you needn’t keep
it up if it don’t work.”

“But de trouble all _done_ ef de snake bite me while I’s a tryin’ him.
Mars Tom, I’s willin’ to tackle mos’ anything ‘at ain’t onreasonable,
but ef you en Huck fetches a rattlesnake in heah for me to tame, I’s
gwyne to _leave_, dat’s _shore_.”

“Well, then, let it go, let it go, if you’re so bull-headed about it.
 We can get you some garter-snakes, and you can tie some buttons on
their tails, and let on they’re rattlesnakes, and I reckon that ‘ll have
to do.”

“I k’n stan’ _dem_, Mars Tom, but blame’ ‘f I couldn’ get along widout
um, I tell you dat.  I never knowed b’fo’ ‘t was so much bother and
trouble to be a prisoner.”

“Well, it _always_ is when it’s done right.  You got any rats around
here?”

“No, sah, I hain’t seed none.”

“Well, we’ll get you some rats.”

“Why, Mars Tom, I doan’ _want_ no rats.  Dey’s de dadblamedest creturs
to ‘sturb a body, en rustle roun’ over ‘im, en bite his feet, when he’s
tryin’ to sleep, I ever see.  No, sah, gimme g’yarter-snakes, ‘f I’s
got to have ‘m, but doan’ gimme no rats; I hain’ got no use f’r um,
skasely.”

“But, Jim, you _got_ to have ‘em--they all do.  So don’t make no more
fuss about it.  Prisoners ain’t ever without rats.  There ain’t no
instance of it.  And they train them, and pet them, and learn them
tricks, and they get to be as sociable as flies.  But you got to play
music to them.  You got anything to play music on?”

“I ain’ got nuffn but a coase comb en a piece o’ paper, en a juice-harp;
but I reck’n dey wouldn’ take no stock in a juice-harp.”

“Yes they would _they_ don’t care what kind of music ‘tis.  A
jews-harp’s plenty good enough for a rat.  All animals like music--in a
prison they dote on it.  Specially, painful music; and you can’t get no
other kind out of a jews-harp.  It always interests them; they come out
to see what’s the matter with you.  Yes, you’re all right; you’re fixed
very well.  You want to set on your bed nights before you go to sleep,
and early in the mornings, and play your jews-harp; play ‘The Last Link
is Broken’--that’s the thing that ‘ll scoop a rat quicker ‘n anything
else; and when you’ve played about two minutes you’ll see all the rats,
and the snakes, and spiders, and things begin to feel worried about you,
and come.  And they’ll just fairly swarm over you, and have a noble good
time.”

“Yes, _dey_ will, I reck’n, Mars Tom, but what kine er time is _Jim_
havin’? Blest if I kin see de pint.  But I’ll do it ef I got to.  I
reck’n I better keep de animals satisfied, en not have no trouble in de
house.”

Tom waited to think it over, and see if there wasn’t nothing else; and
pretty soon he says:

“Oh, there’s one thing I forgot.  Could you raise a flower here, do you
reckon?”

“I doan know but maybe I could, Mars Tom; but it’s tolable dark in heah,
en I ain’ got no use f’r no flower, nohow, en she’d be a pow’ful sight
o’ trouble.”

“Well, you try it, anyway.  Some other prisoners has done it.”

“One er dem big cat-tail-lookin’ mullen-stalks would grow in heah, Mars
Tom, I reck’n, but she wouldn’t be wuth half de trouble she’d coss.”

“Don’t you believe it.  We’ll fetch you a little one and you plant it in
the corner over there, and raise it.  And don’t call it mullen, call it
Pitchiola--that’s its right name when it’s in a prison.  And you want to
water it with your tears.”

“Why, I got plenty spring water, Mars Tom.”

“You don’t _want_ spring water; you want to water it with your tears.
 It’s the way they always do.”