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??We went to a clump of bushes, and Tom made everybody swear to keep the

secret, and then showed them a hole in the hill, right in the thickest part of

the bushes. Then we lit the candles and crawled in on our hands and knees.

We went about two hundred yards, and then the cave opened up. Tom poked

about amongst the passages and pretty soon ducked under a wall where you

wouldn't a noticed that there was a hole. We went along a narrow place and

got into a kind of room, all damp and sweaty and cold, and there we stopped.

Tom says: ssssssssss

"Now we'll start this band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer's Gang.

Everybody that wants to join has got to take an oath, and write his name in

blood."

Everybody was willing. So Tom got out a sheet of paper that he had wrote

the oath on, and read it. It swore every boy to stick to the band, and never

tell any of the secrets; and if anybody done anything to any boy in the band,

whichever boy was ordered to kill that person and his family must do it, and he

mustn't eat and he mustn't sleep till he had killed them and hacked a cross in

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