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from table -- same key, I bet. Watermelon shows man, lock shows prisoner; and it

ain't likely there's two prisoners on such a little plantation, and where the

people's all so kind and good. Jim's the prisoner. All right -- I'm glad we found

it out detective fashion; I wouldn't give shucks for any other way. Now you

work your mind and study out a plan to steal Jim, and I will study out one, too;

and we'll take the one we like the best." ssssssssss

 

What a head for just a boy to have! If I had Tom Sawyer's head, I wouldn't

trade it off to be a duke, nor mate of a steamboat, nor clown in a circus, nor noth-

ing I can think of. I went to thinking out a plan, but only just to be doing

something; I knowed very well where the right plan was going to come from.

Pretty soon, Tom says: ssssssssss

 

"Ready?'.' ssssssssss

 

"Yes," I says. ssssssssss

 

"All right -- bring it out."

 

"My plan is this," I says. "We can easy find out if it's Jim in there. Then

get up my canoe to-morrow night, and fetch my raft over from the island. Then

the first dark night that comes, steal the key out of the old man's britches, after

he goes to bed, and shove off down the river on the raft, with Jim, hiding day-

times and running nights, the way me and Jim used to do before. Wouldn't that

plan work?" ssssssssss

 

"Work? Why cert'nly, it would work, like rats a fighting. But it's too blame'

simple; there ain't nothing to it. What's the good of a plan that ain't no more

trouble than that? It's as mild as goose-milk. Why, Huck, it wouldn't make

no more talk than breaking into a soap factory."

 

I never said nothing, because I warn't expecting nothing different; but I

knowed mighty well that whenever he got his plan ready it wouldn't have none of

them objections to it. ssssssssss

 

And it didn't. He told me what it was, and I see in a minute it was worth

fifteen of mine, for style, and would make Jim just as free a man as mine would,

and maybe get us all killed besides. So I was satisfied, and said we would waltz

in on it. I needn't tell what it was, here, because I knowed it wouldn't stay the

way it was. I knowed he would be changing it around, every which way, as we

 

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