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with a ten-foot chain on his leg. Why, drat it, Huck, it's the stupidest arrange-

ment I ever see. You got to invent all the difficulties. Well, we can't help it,

we got to do the best we can with the materials we've got. Anyhow, there's one

thing -- there's more honor in getting him out through a lot of difficulties and

dangers, where there warn't one of them furnished to you by the people who it

was their duty to furnish them, and you had to contrive them all out of your own

head. Now look at just that one thing of the lantern. When you come down

to the cold facts, we simply got to let on that a lantern's resky. Why, we could

work with a torchlight procession if we wanted to, I believe. Now, whilst I

think of it, we got to hunt up something to make a saw out of, the first chance

we get." ssssssssss

"What do we want of a saw?"

' -- What do we want of it? Hain't we got to saw the leg of Jim's bed off, so

as to get the chain loose?" ssssssssss

"Why, you just said a body could lift up the bedstead and slip the

chain off." ssssssssss

"Well, if that ain't just like you, Huck Finn. You can get up the infant-

schooliest ways of going at a thing. Why, hain't you ever read any books at

all? -- Baron Trenck, nor Casanova, nor Benvenuto Chelleeny, nor Henri IV.,

nor none of them heroes? Whoever heard of getting a prisoner loose in such an

old-maidy way as that? No; the way all the best authorities does, is to saw the

bed-leg in two, and leave it just so, and swallow the sawdust, so it can't be found,

and put some dirt and grease around the sawed place so the very keenest seneskal

can't see no sign of it's being sawed, and thinks the bed-leg is perfectly sound.

Then, the night you're ready, fetch the leg a kick, down she goes; slip off your

chain, and there you are. Nothing to do but hitch your rope-ladder to the battle-

ments, shin down it, break your leg in the moat -- because a rope-ladder is

nineteen foot too short, you know -- and there's your horses and your trusty vassles,

and they scoop you up and fling you across a saddle and away you go, to your

native Langudoc, or Navarre, or wherever it is. It's gaudy, Huck. I wish there

was a moat to this cabin. If we get time, the night of the escape, we'll dig

one."

ssssssssss

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