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I didn't look at him at all. Jim throwed some old rags over him, but he

needn't done it; I didn't want to see him. There was heaps of old greasy

cards scattered around over the floor, and old whisky bottles, and a couple of

masks made out of black cloth; and all over the walls was the ignorantest kind

of words and pictures, made with charcoal. There was two old dirty calico

dresses, and a sun-bonnet, and some women's under-clothes, hanging against

the wall, and some men's clothing, too. We put the lot into the canoe; it might

come good. There was a boy's old speckled straw hat on the floor; I took that

too. And there was a bottle that had had milk in it; and it had a rag stopper

for a baby to suck. We would a took the bottle, but it was broke. There was

a seedy old chest, and an old hair trunk with the hinges broke. They stood open,

but there warn't nothing left in them that was any account. The way things was

scattered about, we reckoned the people left in a hurry and warn't fixed so as to

carry off most of their stuff. ssssssssss

We got an old tin lantern, and a butcher knife without any handle, and a bran-

new Barlow knife worth two bits in any store, and a lot of tallow candles, and a

tin candlestick, and a gourd, and a tin cup, and a ratty old bed-quilt off the bed,

and a reticule with needles and pins and beeswax and buttons and thread and all

such truck in it, and a hatchet and some nails, and a fish-line as thick as my

little finger, with some monstrous hooks on it, and a roll of buckskin, and a leather

dog-collar, and a horse-shoe, and some vials of medicine that didn't have no label

on them; and just as we was leaving I found a tolerable good curry-comb, and Jim

he found a ratty old fiddle-bow, and a wooden leg. The straps was broke off of it,

but barring that, it was a good enough leg, though it was too long for me and not

long enough for Jim, and we couldn't find the other one, though we hunted all

around.

And so, take it all around, we made a good haul. When we was ready to shove

off, we was a quarter of a mile below the island, and it was pretty broad day; so I

made Jim lay down in the canoe and cover up with the quilt, because if he set up,

people could tell he was a nigger a good ways off. I paddled over to the Illinois

shore, and drifted down most a half a mile doing it. I crept up the dead water

under the bank, and hadn't no accidents and didn't see nobody. We got home

all safe. ssssssssss

ssssssssss

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