{{huckfp362.jpg}}

one, and that was Uncle Silas, when he come in, and they told it all to him. It

kind of made him drunk, as you may say, and he didn't know nothing at all the

rest of the day, and preached a prayer-meeting sermon that night that give him

a rattling ruputation, because the oldest man in the world couldn't a understood

it. So Tom's Aunt Polly, she told all about who I was, and what; and I had to

up and tell how I was in such a tight place that when Mrs. Phelps took me for

Tom Sawyer -- she chipped in and says, "Oh, go on and call me Aunt Sally, I'm

used to it, now, and 'tain't no need to change" -- that when Aunt Sally took me

for Tom Sawyer, I had to stand it -- there warn't no other way, and I knowed he

wouldn't mind, because it would be nuts for him, being a mystery, and he'd

make an adventure out of it and be perfectly satisfied. And so it turned out,

and he let on to be Sid, and made things as soft as he could for me.

And his Aunt Polly she said Tom was right about old Miss "Watson setting

Jim free in her will; and so, sure enough, Tom Sawyer had gone and took all

that trouble and bother to set a free nigger free!

and I couldn't ever understand, before, until that

minute and that talk, how he could help a body

set a nigger free, with his bringing-up. ssssssssss

Well, Aunt Polly she said that when Aunt Sally

wrote to her that Tom and Sid had come, all right

and safe, she says to herself: ssssssssss

"Look at that, now! I might have expected

it, letting him go off that way without anybody

to watch him. So now I got to go and trapse all

the way down the river, eleven hundred mile, and

find out what that creetur'sup to, this time; as long

as I couldn't seem to get any answer orut of you

about it." ssssssssss

"Why, I never heard nothing from you," says

Aunt Sally. ssssssssss

"Well, I wonder! Why, I wrote to you twice, to ask you what you could

mean by Sid being here." ssssssssss

ssssssssss

 [362]