LITMIR.BIZ

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created the British empire; when Columbus sailed; when the massacre at Lexington was "news." It is falling now; it will still be falling when all these things shall have sunk down the afternoon of history, and the twilight of tradition, and been swallowed up in the thick night of oblivion. Has everything a purpose and a mission? Did this drop fall patiently during five thousand years to be ready for this flitting human insect's need? and has it another important object to accomplish ten thousand years to come? No matter. It is many and many a year since the hapless half-breed scooped out the stone to catch the priceless drops, but to this day the tourist stares longest at that pathetic stone and that slow-dropping water when he comes to see the wonders of McDougal's cave. Injun Joe's cup stands first in the list of the cavern's marvels; even "Aladdin's Palace" cannot rival it.

      Injun Joe was buried near the mouth of the cave; and people flocked there in boats and wagons from the towns and from all the farms and hamlets for seven miles around; they brought their children, and all sorts of provisions, and confessed that they had had almost as satisfactory a time at the funeral as they could have had at the hanging.

      This funeral stopped the further growth of one thing — the petition to the governor for Injun Joe's pardon. The petition had been largely signed; many tearful and eloquent meetings had been held, and a committee of sappy women been appointed to go in deep mourning and wail around the governor, and implore him to be a merciful ass and trample his duty under foot. Injun Joe was believed to have killed five citizens of the village, but what of that? If he had been Satan himself there would have been plenty of weaklings ready to scribble their names to a pardon-petition, and drip a tear on it from their permanently impaired and leaky water-works.

      The morning after the funeral Tom took Huck to a private place to have an important talk. Huck had learned all about Tom's adventure from the Welshman and the Widow Douglas, by this time, but Tom said he reckoned there was one thing they had not told him; that thing was what he wanted to talk about now. Huck's face saddened. He said:

      "I know what it is. You got into No. 2 and never found anything but whiskey. Nobody told me it was you; but I just knowed it must 'a' ben you, soon as I heard 'bout that whiskey business; and I knowed you hadn't got the money becuz you'd 'a' got at me some way or other and told me even if you was mum to everybody else. Tom, something's always told me we'd never get holt of that swag."

      "Why, Huck, I never told on that tavern-keeper. You know his tavern was all right the Saturday I went to the picnic. Don't you remember you was to watch there that night?"

      "Oh yes! Why, it seems 'bout a year ago. It was that very night that I follered Injun Joe to the widder's."

      "You followed him?"

      "Yes — but you keep mum. I reckon Injun Joe's left friends behind him, and I don't want 'em souring on me and doing me mean tricks. If it hadn't ben for me he'd be down in Texas now, all right."

      Then Huck told his entire adventure in confidence to Tom, who had only heard of the Welshman's part of it before.

      "Well," said Huck, presently, coming back to the main question, "whoever nipped the whiskey in No. 2, nipped the money, too, I reckon — anyways it's a goner for us, Tom."

      "Huck, that money wasn't ever in No. 2!"

      "What!" Huck searched his comrade's face keenly. "Tom, have you got on the track of that money again?"

      "Huck, it's in the cave!"

      Huck's eyes blazed.

      "Say it again, Tom."

      "The money's in the cave!"

      "Tom — honest injun, now — is it fun, or earnest?"

      "Earnest, Huck — just as earnest as ever I was in my life. Will you go in there with me and help get it out?"

      "I bet I will! I will if it's where we can blaze our way to it and not get lost."

      "Huck, we can do that without the least little bit of trouble in the world."

      "Good as wheat! What makes you think the money's —"

      "Huck, you just wait till we get in there. If we don't find it I'll agree to give you my drum and every thing I've got in the world. I will, by jings."

      "All right — it's a whiz. When do you say?"

      "Right now, if you say it. Are you strong enough?"

      "Is it far in the cave? I ben on my pins a little, three or four days, now, but I can't walk more'n a mile, Tom — least I don't think I could."

      "It's about five mile into there the way anybody but me would go, Huck, but there's a mighty short cut that they don't anybody but me know about. Huck, I'll take you right to it in a skiff. I'll float the skiff down there, and I'll pull it back again all by myself. You needn't ever turn your hand over."

      "Less start right off, Tom."

      "All right. We want some bread and meat, and our pipes, and a little bag or two, and two or three kite-strings, and some of these new-fangled things they call lucifer matches. I tell you, many's the time I wished I had some when I was in there before."

      A trifle after noon the boys borrowed a small skiff from a citizen who was absent, and got under way at once. When they were several miles below "Cave Hollow," Tom said:

      "Now you see this bluff here looks all alike all the way down from the cave hollow — no houses, no wood-yards, bushes all alike. But do you see that white place up yonder where there's been a landslide? Well, that's one of my marks. We'll get ashore, now."

      They landed.

      "Now, Huck, where we're a-standing you could touch that hole I got out of with a fishing-pole. See if you can find it."

      Huck searched all the place about, and found nothing. Tom proudly marched into a thick clump of sumach bushes and said:

      "Here you are! Look at it, Huck; it's the snuggest hole in this country. You just keep mum about it. All along I've been wanting to be a robber, but I knew I'd got to have a thing like this, and where to run across it was the bother. We've got it now, and we'll keep it quiet, only we'll let Joe Harper and Ben Rogers in — because of course there's got to be a Gang, or else there wouldn't be any style about it. Tom Sawyer's Gang — it sounds splendid, don't it, Huck?"

      "Well, it just does, Tom. And who'll we rob?"

      "Oh, most anybody. Waylay people — that's mostly the way."

      "And kill them?"

      "No, not always. Hive them in the cave till they raise a ransom."

      "What's a ransom?"

      "Money. You make them raise all they can, off'n their friends; and after you've kept them a year, if it ain't raised then you kill them. That's the general way. Only you don't kill the women. You shut up the women, but you don't kill them. They're always beautiful and rich, and awfully scared. You take their watches and things, but you always take your hat off and talk polite. They ain't anybody as polite as robbers — you'll see that in any book. Well, the women get to loving you, and after they've been in the cave a week or two weeks they stop crying and after that you couldn't get them to leave. If you drove them out they'd turn right around and come back. It's so in all the books."

      "Why, it's real bully, Tom. I believe it's better'n to be a pirate."

      "Yes, it's better in some ways, because it's close to home and circuses and all that."

      By this time everything was ready and the boys entered the hole, Tom in the lead. They toiled their way to the farther end of the tunnel, then made their spliced kite-strings fast and moved on. A few steps brought them to the spring, and Tom felt a shudder quiver all through him. He showed Huck the fragment of candle-wick perched on a lump of clay against the wall, and described how he and Becky had watched the flame struggle and expire.

      The boys began to quiet down to whispers, now, for the stillness and gloom of the place oppressed their spirits. They went on, and presently entered and followed Tom's other corridor until they reached the "jumping-off place." The candles revealed

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