CHAPTER I. AN INVITATION FOR TOM AND HUCK
     [Note: Strange as the incidents of this story are, they
     are not inventions, but facts â even to the public confession
     of the accused. I take them from an old-time Swedish
     criminal trial, change the actors, and transfer the scenes
     to America. I have added some details, but only a couple of
     them are important ones. â M. T.]
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WELL, it was the next spring after me and Tom Sawyer set our old nigger Jim free, the time he was chained up for a runaway slave down there on Tomâs uncle Silasâs farm in Arkansaw. The frost was working out of the ground, and out of the air, too, and it was getting closer and closer onto barefoot time every day; and next it would be marble time, and next mumbletypeg, and next tops and hoops, and next kites, and then right away it would be summer and going in a-swimming. It just makes a boy homesick to look ahead like that and see how far off summer is. Yes, and it sets him to sighing and saddening around, and thereâs something the matter with him, he donât know what. But anyway, he gets out by himself and mopes and thinks; and mostly he hunts for a lonesome place high up on the hill in the edge of the woods, and sets there and looks away off on the big Mississippi down there a-reaching miles and miles around the points where the timber looks smoky and dim itâs so far off and still, and everythingâs so solemn it seems like everybody youâve loved is dead and gone, and you âmost wish you was dead and gone too, and done with it all.
Donât you know what that is? Itâs spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when youâve got it, you want â oh, you donât quite know what it is you DO want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so! It seems to you that mainly what you want is to get away; get away from the same old tedious things youâre so used to seeing and so tired of, and set something new. That is the idea; you want to go and be a wanderer; you want to go wandering far away to strange countries where everything is mysterious and wonderful and romantic. And if you canât do that, youâll put up with considerable less; youâll go anywhere you CAN go, just so as to get away, and be thankful of the chance, too.
Well, me and Tom Sawyer had the spring fever, and had it bad, too; but it warnât any use to think about Tom trying to get away, because, as he said, his Aunt Polly wouldnât let him quit school and go traipsing off somers wasting time; so we was pretty blue. We was setting on the front steps one day about sundown talking this way, when out comes his aunt Polly with a letter in her hand and says:
âTom, I reckon youâve got to pack up and go down to Arkansaw â your aunt Sally wants you.â
I âmost jumped out of my skin for joy. I reckoned Tom would fly at his aunt and hug her head off; but if you believe me he set there like a rock, and never said a word. It made me fit to cry to see him act so foolish, with such a noble chance as this opening up. Why, we might lose it if he didnât speak up and show he was thankful and grateful. But he set there and studied and studied till I was that distressed I didnât know what to do; then he says, very caâm, and I could a shot him for it:
âWell,â he says, âIâm right down sorry, Aunt Polly, but I reckon I got to be excused â for the present.â
His aunt Polly was knocked so stupid and so mad at the cold impudence of it that she couldnât say a word for as much as a half a minute, and this gave me a chance to nudge Tom and whisper:
âAinât you got any sense? Spâiling such a noble chance as this and throwing it away?â
But he warnât disturbed. He mumbled back:
âHuck Finn, do you want me to let her SEE how bad I want to go? Why, sheâd begin to doubt, right away, and imagine a lot of sicknesses and dangers and objections, and first you know sheâd take it all back. You lemme alone; I reckon I know how to work her.â
Now I never would âaâ thought of that. But he was right. Tom Sawyer was always right â the levelest head I ever see, and always AT himself and ready for anything you might spring on him. By this time his aunt Polly was all straight again, and she let fly. She says:
âYouâll be excused! YOU will! Well, I never heard the like of it in all my days! The idea of you talking like that to ME! Now take yourself off and pack your traps; and if I hear another word out of you about what youâll be excused from and what you wonât, I lay IâLL excuse you â with a hickory!â
She hit his head a thump with her thimble as we dodged by, and he let on to be whimpering as we struck for the stairs. Up in his room he hugged me, he was so out of his head for gladness because he was going traveling. And he says:
âBefore we get away sheâll wish she hadnât let me go, but she wonât know any way to get around it now. After what sheâs said, her pride wonât let her take it back.â
Tom was packed in ten minutes, all except what his aunt and Mary would finish up for him; then we waited ten more for her to get cooled down and sweet and gentle again; for Tom said it took her ten minutes to unruffle in times when half of her feathers was up, but twenty when they was all up, and this was one of the times when they was all up. Then we went down, being in a sweat to know what the letter said.
She was setting there in a brown study, with it laying in her lap. We set down, and she says:
âTheyâre in considerable trouble down there, and they think you and Huckâll be a kind of diversion for themâ âcomfort,â they say. Much of that theyâll get out of you and Huck Finn, I reckon. Thereâs a neighbor named Brace Dunlap thatâs been wanting to marry their Benny for three months, and at last they told him point blank and once for all, he COULDNâT; so he has soured on them, and theyâre worried about it. I reckon heâs somebody they think they better be on the good side of, for theyâve tried to please him by hiring his no-account brother to help on the farm when they canât hardly afford it, and donât want him around anyhow. Who are the Dunlaps?â
âThey live about a mile from Uncle Silasâs place, Aunt Polly â all the farmers live about a mile apart down there â and Brace Dunlap is a long sight richer than any of the others, and owns a whole grist of niggers. Heâs a widower, thirty-six years old, without any children, and is proud of his money and overbearing, and everybody is a little afraid of him. I judge he thought he could have any girl he wanted, just for the asking, and it must have set him back a good deal when he found he couldnât get Benny. Why, Bennyâs only half as old as he is, and just as sweet and lovely as â well, youâve seen her. Poor old Uncle Silas â why, itâs pitiful, him trying to curry favor that way â so hard pushed and poor, and yet hiring that useless Jubiter Dunlap to please his ornery brother.â
âWhat a name â Jubiter! Whereâd he get it?â
âItâs only just a nickname. I reckon theyâve forgot his real name long before this. Heâs twenty-seven, now, and has had it ever since the first time he ever went in swimming. The school teacher seen a round brown mole the size of a dime on his left leg above his knee, and four little bits of moles around it, when he was naked, and he said it minded him of Jubiter and his moons; and the children thought it was funny, and so they got to calling him Jubiter, and heâs Jubiter yet. Heâs tall, and lazy, and sly, and sneaky, and ruther cowardly, too, but kind of good-natured, and wears long brown hair and no beard, and hasnât got a cent, and Brace boards him for nothing, and gives him his old clothes to wear, and despises him. Jubiter is a twin.â
âWhatâs tâother twin like?â
âJust exactly like Jubiter â so they say; used to was, anyway, but he hainât been seen for seven years. He got to robbing when he was nineteen or twenty, and they jailed him; but he broke jail and got away â up North here, somers. They used to hear about him robbing and burglaring now and then, but that was years ago. Heâs dead, now. At least thatâs what they say. They donât hear about him any more.â
âWhat was his name?â
âJake.â
There wasnât anything more said for a considerable while; the old lady was thinking. At last she says:
âThe thing that is mostly worrying your aunt Sally is the tempers that that man Jubiter gets your uncle into.â
Tom was astonished, and so was I. Tom says:
âTempers? Uncle Silas? Land, you must be joking! I didnât know he HAD any temper.â
âWorks him up into perfect rages, your aunt Sally says; says he acts as if he would really hit the man, sometimes.â
âAunt Polly, it beats anything I ever heard of. Why, heâs just as gentle as mush.â
âWell, sheâs worried, anyway. Says your uncle Silas is like a changed man, on account of all this quarreling. And the neighbors talk about it, and lay all the blame on your uncle, of course, because heâs a preacher and hainât got any business to quarrel. Your aunt Sally says he hates to go into the pulpit heâs so ashamed; and the people have begun to cool toward him, and he ainât as popular now as he used to was.â
âWell, ainât it strange? Why, Aunt Polly, he was always so good and kind and moony and absent-minded and chuckle-headed and lovable â why, he was just an angel! What CAN be the matter of him, do you reckon?â
CHAPTER II. JAKE DUNLAP
WE had powerful good luck; because we got a chance in a stern-wheeler from away North which was bound for one of them bayous or one-horse rivers away down Louisiana way, and so we could go all the way down the Upper Mississippi and all the way down the Lower Mississippi to that farm in Arkansaw without having to change steamboats at St. Louis; not so very much short of a thousand miles at one pull.
A pretty lonesome boat; there warnât but few passengers, and all old folks, that set around, wide apart, dozing, and was very quiet. We was four days getting out of the âupper river,â because we got aground so much. But it warnât dull â couldnât be for boys that was traveling, of course.
From the very start me and Tom allowed that there was somebody sick in the stateroom next to ourn, because the meals was always toted in there by the waiters. By and by we asked about it â Tom did and the waiter said it was a man, but he didnât look sick.
âWell, but AINâT he sick?â
âI donât know; maybe he is, but âpears to me heâs just letting on.â
âWhat makes you think that?â
âBecause if he was sick he would pull his clothes off SOME time or other â donât you reckon he would? Well, this one donât. At least he donât ever pull off his boots, anyway.â
âThe mischief he donât! Not even when he goes to bed?â
âNo.â
It was always nuts for Tom Sawyer â a mystery was. If youâd lay out a mystery and a pie before me and him, you wouldnât have to say take your choice; it was a thing that would regulate itself. Because in my nature I have always run to pie, whilst in his nature he has always run to mystery. People are made different. And it is the best way. Tom says to the waiter:
âWhatâs the manâs name?â
âPhillips.â
âWhereâd he come aboard?â
âI think he got aboard at Elexandria, up on the Iowa line.â
âWhat do you reckon heâs a-playing?â
âI hainât any notion â I never thought of it.â
I says to myself, hereâs another one that runs to pie.
âAnything peculiar about him? â the way he acts or talks?â
âNo â nothing, except he seems so scary, and keeps his doors locked night and day both, and when you knock he wonât let you in till he opens the door a crack and sees who it is.â
âBy jimminy, itâs intâresting! Iâd like to get a look at him. Say â the next time youâre going in there, donât you reckon you could spread the door andââ
âNo, indeedy! Heâs always behind it. He would block that game.â
Tom studied over it, and then he says:
âLooky here. You lend me your apern and let me take him his breakfast in the morning. Iâll give you a quarter.â
The boy was plenty willing enough, if the head steward wouldnât mind. Tom says thatâs al...