{{huckfp085.jpg}}

"No," I says, "I'll rest a while, I reckon, and go on. I ain't afeard of the

dark."

She said she wouldn't let me go by myself, but her husband would be in by-

and-by, maybe in a hour and a half, and she'd send him along with me. Then she

got to talking about her husband, and about her relations up the river, and her

relations down the river, and about how much better off they used to was, and how

they didn't know but they'd made a mistake coming to our town, instead of let-

ting well alone -- and so on and so on, till I was afeard I had made a mistake com-

ing to her to find out what was going on in the town; but by-and-by she

dropped onto pap and the murder, and then I was pretty willing to let her clatter

right along. She told about me and Tom Sawyer finding the six thousand

dollars (only she got it ten) and all about pap and what a hard lot he was,

and what a hard lot I was, and at last she got down to where I was murdered.

I says:

"Who done it? We've heard considerable about these goings on, down in

Hookerville, but we don't know who 'twas that killed Huck Finn."

"Well, I reckon there's a right smart chance of people here that 'd like to

know who killed him. Some thinks old Finn done it himself."

"No -- is that so?"

"Most everybody thought it at first. He'll never know how nigh he come to

getting lynched. But before night they changed around and judged it was done

by a runaway nigger named Jim." ssssssssss

"Why he" ssssssssss

I stopped. I reckoned I better keep still. She run on, and never noticed I

had put in at all. ssssssssss

"The nigger ran off the very night Huck Finn was killed. So there's a re-

ward out for him -- three hundred dollars. And there's a reward out for old Finn

too -- two hundred dollars. You see, he come to town the morning after the

murder, and told about it, and was out with 'em on the ferry-boat hunt, and

right away after he up and left. Before night they wanted to lynch him, but he

was gone, you see. Well, next day they found out the nigger was gone; they

found out he hadn't ben seen sence ten o'clock the night the murder was done.

So then they put it on him, you see, and while they was full of it, next day back

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