{{huckfp306.jpg}}

down to business, and nobody in sight around the yard; then Tom he carried the

sack into the lean-to whilst I stood off a piece to keep watch. By-and-by he

come out, and we went and set down on the wood-pile, to talk. He says:

"Everything's all right, now, except tools? and that's easy fixed."

"Tools?" I says.

"Yes." ssssssssss

"Tools for what?"

"Why, to dig with. We ain't agoing to gnaw him out, are we?"

"Ain't them old crippled picks and things in there good enough to dig a

nigger out with?" I says. ssssssssss

He turns on me looking pitying enough to make a body cry, and says:

"Huck Finn, did you ever hear of a prisoner having picks and shovels, and all

the modern conveniences in his wardrobe to dig himself out with? Now I want

to ask you -- if you got any reasonableness in you at all -- what kind of a show

would that give him to be a hero? Why, they might as well lend him the key,

and done with it. Picks and shovels -- why they wouldn't furnish 'em to a

king."

"Well, then," I says, "if we don't want the picks and shovels, what do we

want?"

"A couple of case-knives."

"To dig the foundations out from under that cabin with?"

"Yes." ssssssssss

"Confound it, it's foolish, Tom."

"It don't make no difference how foolish it is, it's the right way -- and it's the

regular way. And there ain't no other way, that ever I heard of, and I've read

all the books that gives any information about these things. They always dig

out with a case-knife -- and not through dirt, mind you; generly it's through

solid rock. And it takes them weeks and weeks and weeks, and for ever and

ever. Why, look at one of them prisoners in the bottom dungeon of the Castle

Deef, in the harbor of Marseilles, that dug himself out that way; how long wai

he at it, you reckon?" ssssssssss

"l don't know."

ssssssssss

 [306]