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laid around the raft, as she floated along, thinking, and thinking, and never

saying nothing, by the half a day at a time, and dreadful blue and desperate.

And at last they took a change, and begun to lay their heads together in the

wigwam and talk low and confidential two or three hours at a time. Jim and

me got uneasy. We didn't like the look of it. "We judged they was studying

up some kind of worse deviltry than ever. We turned it over and over, and at

last we made up our minds they was going to break into somebody's house or

store, or was going into the counterfeit-money business, or something. So then

we was pretty scared, and made up an agreement that we wouldn't have nothing

in the world to do with such actions, and if we ever got the least show we would

give them the cold shake, and clear out and leave them behind. Well, early one

morning we hid the raft in a good safe place about two mile below a little bit of

a shabby village, named Pikesville, and the king he went ashore, and told us all

to stay hid whilst he went up to town and smelt around to see if anybody had got

any wind of the Royal Nonesuch there yet. (" House to rob, you mean," says I to

myself; "and when you get through robbing it you'll come back here and won-

der what's become of me and Jim and the raft -- and you'll have to take it out in

wondering.") And he said if he warn't back by midday, the duke and me would

know it was all right, and we was to come along.

So we staid where we was. The duke he fretted and sweated around, and

was in a mighty sour way. He scolded us for everything, and we couldn't seem

to do nothing right; he found fault with every little thing. Something was

a-brewing, sure. I was good and glad when midday come and no king; we could

have a change, anyway -- and maybe a chance for the change, on top of it. So

me and the duke went up to the village, and hunted around there for the king,

and by-and-by we found him in the back room of a little low doggery, very tight,

and a lot of loafers bullyragging him for sport, and he a cussing and threatening

with all his might, and so tight he couldn't walk, and couldn't do nothing to

them. The duke he begun to abuse him for an old fool, and the king begun to

sass back; and the minute they was fairly at it, I lit out, and shook the reefs out

of my hind legs, and spun down the river road like a deer -- for I see our chance;

and I made up my mind that it would be a long day before they ever see me and

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