Chapter 21
Eloquence- and the Master's Gilded Dome
-
VACATION WAS APPROACHING. The schoolmaster, always sever, grew
severer and more exacting than ever, for he wanted the school to
make a good showing on "Examination" day. His rod and his ferule
were seldom idle now- at least among the smaller pupils. Only the
biggest boys, and young ladies of eighteen and twenty escaped lashing.
Mr. Dobbins's lashings were very vigorous ones, too; for although he
carried, under his wig, a perfectly bald and shiny head, he had only
reached middle age and there was no sign of feebleness in his
muscle. As the great day approached, all the tyranny that was in him
came to the surface; he seemed to take a vindictive pleasure in
punishing the least shortcomings. The consequence was, that the
smaller boys spent their days in terror and suffering and their nights
in plotting revenge. They threw away no opportunity to do the master a
mischief. But he kept ahead all the time. The retribution that
followed every vengeful success was so sweeping and majestic that
the boys always retired from the field badly worsted. At last they
conspired together and hit upon a plan that promised a dazzling
victory. They swore-in the sign-painter's boy, told him the scheme,
and asked his help. He had his own reasons for being delighted, for
the master boarded in his father's family and had given the boy
ample cause to hate him. The master's wife would go on a visit to
the country in a few days, and there would be nothing to interfere
with the plan; the master always prepared himself for great
occasions by getting pretty well fuddled, and the sign-painter's boy
said that when the dominie had reached the proper condition on
Examination Evening he would "manage the thing" while he napped in his
chair; then he would have him awakened at the right time and hurried
away to school.
In the fullness of time the interesting occasion arrived. At eight
in the evening the school-house was brilliantly lighted, and adorned
with wreaths and festoons of foliage and flowers. The master sat
throned in his great chair upon a raised platform, with his blackboard
behind him. He was looking tolerably mellow. Three rows of benches
on each side and six rows in front of him were occupied by the
dignitaries of the town and by the parents of the pupils. To his left,
back of the rows of citizens, was a spacious temporary platform upon
which were seated the scholars who were to take part in the
exercises of the evening; rows of small boys, washed and dressed to an
intolerable state of discomfort; rows of gawky big boys; snow-banks of
girls and young ladies clad in lawn and muslin and conspicuously
conscious of their bare arms, their grandmothers' ancient trinkets,
their bits of pink and blue ribbon and the flowers in their hair.
All the rest of the house was filled with nonparticipating scholars.
The exercises began. A very little boy stood up and sheepishly
recited, "You'd scarce expect one of my age to speak in public on
the stage, etc"- accompanying himself with the painfully exact and
spasmodic gestures which a machine might have used- supposing the
machine to be a trifle out of order. But he got through safely, though
cruelly scared, and got a fine round of applause when he made his
manufactured bow and retired.
A little shame-faced girl lisped "Mary had a little lamb, etc.,"
performed a compassion-inspiring curtsy, got her meed of applause, and
sat down flushed and happy.
Tom Sawyer stepped forward with conceited confidence and soared into
the unquenchable and indestructible "Give me liberty or give me death"
speech, with fine fury and frantic gesticulation, and broke down in
the middle of it. A ghastly stage-fright seized him, his legs quaked
under him and he was like to choke. True, he had the manifest sympathy
of the house- but he had the house's silence, too, which was even
worse than its sympathy. The master frowned, and this completed the
disaster. Tom struggled a while and then retired, utterly defeated.
There was a weak attempt at applause, but it died early.
"The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck" followed; also "The Assyrian
Came Down," and other declaratory gems. Then there were reading
exercises, and a spelling fight. The meager Latin class recited with
honor. The prime feature of the evening was in order, now- original
"compositions" by the young ladies. Each in her turn stepped forward
to the edge of the platform, cleared her throat, held up her
manuscript (tied with dainty ribbon), and proceeded to read, with
labored attention to "expression" and punctuation. The themes were the
same that had been illuminated upon similar occasions by their mothers
before them, their grandmothers, and doubtless all their ancestors
in the female line clear back to the Crusades. "Friendship" was one;
"Memories of Other Days;" "Religion in History;" "Dream Land;" "The
Advantages of Culture;" "Forms of Political Government Compared and
Contrasted;" "Melancholy;" "Filial Love;" "Heart Longings," etc., etc.
A prevalent feature in these compositions was a nursed and petted
melancholy; another was a wasteful and opulent gush of "fine
language;" another was a tendency to lug in by the ears particularly
prized words and phrases until they were worn entirely out; and a
peculiarity that conspicuously marked and marred them was the
inveterate and intolerable sermon that wagged its crippled tail at the
end of each and every one of them. No matter what the subject might
be, a brainracking effort was made to squirm it into some aspect or
other that the moral and religious mind could contemplate with
edification. The glaring insincerity of these sermons was not
sufficient to compass the banishment of the fashion from the
schools, and it is not sufficient to-day; it never will be sufficient
while the world stands, perhaps. There is no school in all our land
where the young ladies do not feel obliged to close their compositions
with a sermon; and you will find that the sermon of the most frivolous
and least religious girl in the school is always the longest and the
most relentlessly pious. But enough of this. Homely truth is
unpalatable.
Let us return to the "Examination." The first composition that was
read was one entitled "Is this, then, Life?" Perhaps the reader can
endure an extract from it:
-
In the common walks of life, with what delightful emotions does
the youthful mind look forward to some anticipated scene of festivity!
Imagination is busy sketching rose-tinted pictures of joy. In fancy,
the voluptuous votary of fashion sees herself amid the festive throng,
"the observed of all observers." Her graceful form, arrayed in snowy
robes, is whirling through the mazes of the joyous dance; her eye is
brightest, her step is lightest in the gay assembly.
In such delicious fancies time quickly glides by, and the welcome
hour arrives for her entrance into the elysian world, of which she has
had such bright dreams. How fairy-like does every thing appear to
her enchanted vision! Each new scene is more charming than the last.
But after a while she finds that beneath this goodly exterior, all
is vanity: the flattery which once charmed her soul, now grates
harshly upon her ear; the ball-room has lost its charms; and with
wasted health and embittered heart, she turns away with the conviction
that earthly pleasures cannot satisfy the longings of the soul!
-
And so forth and so on. There was a buzz of gratification from
time to time during the reading, accompanied by whispered ejaculations
of "How sweet!" "How eloquent!" "So true!" etc., and after the thing
had closed with a peculiarly afflicting sermon the applause was
enthusiastic.
Then arose a slim, melancholy girl, whose face had the "interesting"
paleness that comes of pills and indigestion, and read a "poem." Two
stanzas of it will do:
-
A MISSOURI MAIDEN'S FAREWELL TO ALABAMA
-
ALABAMA, good-bye! I love thee well!
But yet for awhile do I leave thee now!
Sad, yes, sad thoughts of thee my heart doth swell,
And burning recollections throng my brow!
For I have wandered through thy flowery woods;
Have roamed and read near Tallapoosa's stream;
Have listened to Tallassee's warring floods,
And wooed on Coosa's side Aurora's beam.
-
Yet shame I not to bear an o'er-full heart,
Nor blush to turn behind my tearful eyes;
'Tis from no stranger land I now must part,
'Tis to no strangers left I yield these sighs.
Welcome and home were mine within this State,
Whose vales I leave- whose spires fade fast from me;
And cold must be mine eyes, and heart, and tete,
When, dear Alabama! they turn cold on thee!
-
There were very few there who knew what "tete" meant, but the poem
was very satisfactory, nevertheless.
Next appeared a dark-complexioned, black-eyed, black-haired young
lady, who paused an impressive moment, assumed a tragic expression,
and began to read in a measured, solemn tone.
-
A VISION
-
Dark and tempestuous was night. Around the throne on high not a
single star quivered; but the deep intonations of the heavy thunder
constantly vibrated upon the ear; whilst the terrific lightning
revelled in angry mood through the cloudy chambers of heaven,
seeming to scorn the power exerted over its terror by the
illustrious Franklin! Even the boisterous winds unanimously came forth
from their mystic homes, and blustered about as if to enhance by their
aid the wildness of the scene.
At such a time, so dark, so dreary, for human sympathy my very
spirit sighed; but instead thereof,
-
"My dearest friend, my counsellor, my comforter and guide-
My joy in grief, my second bliss in joy," came to my side.
-
She moved like one of those bright beings pictured in the sunny
walks of fancy's Eden by the romantic and young, a queen of beauty
unadorned save by her own transcendent loveliness. So soft was her
step, it failed to make even a sound, and but for the magical thrill
imparted by her genial touch, as other unobtrusive beauties, she would
have glided away unperceived- unsought. A strange sadness rested
upon her features, like icy tears upon the robe of December, as she
pointed to the contending elements without, and bade me contemplate
the two beings presented.
-
This nightmare occupied some ten pages of manuscript and wound up
with a sermon so destructive of all hope to non-Presbyterians that
it took the first prize. This composition was considered to be the
very finest effort of the evening. The mayor of the village, in
delivering the prize to the author of it, made a warm speech in
which he said that it was by far the most "eloquent" thing he had ever
listened to, and that Daniel Webster himself might well be proud of
it.
It may be remarked, in passing, that the number of compositions in
which the word "beauteous" was over-fondled, and human experience
referred to as "life's page," was up to the usual average.
Now the master, mellow almost to the verge of geniality, put his
chair aside, turned his back to the audience, and began to draw a
map of America on the blackboard, to exercise the geography class
upon. But he made a sad business of it with his unsteady hand, and a
smothered titter rippled over the house. He knew what the matter was
and set himself to right it. He sponged out lines and re-made them;
but he only distorted them more than ever, and the tittering was
more pronounced. He threw his entire attention upon his work, now,
as if determined not to be put down by the mirth. He felt that all
eyes were fastened upon him; he imagined he was succeeding, and yet
the tittering continued; it even manifestly increased. And well it
might. There was a garret above, pierced with a scuttle over his head;
and down through this scuttle came a cat, suspended around the
haunches by a string; she had a rag tied about her head and jaws to
keep her from mewing; as she slowly descended she curved upward and
clawed at the string, she swung downward and clawed at the
intangible air. The tittering rose higher and higher- the cat was
within six inches of the absorbed teacher's head- down, down, a little
lower, and she grabbed his wig with her desperate claws, clung to it
and was snatched up into the garret in an instant with her trophy
still in her possession! And how the light did blaze abroad from the
master's bald pate- for the sign-painter's boy had gilded it!
That broke up the meeting. The boys were avenged. Vacation had come.
CHAPTER_22
Chapter 22
Huck Finn Quotes Scripture
-
TOM JOINED THE NEW ORDER of Cadets of Temperance, being attracted by
the showy character of their "regalia." He promised to abstain from
smoking, chewing and profanity as long as he remained a member. Now he
found out a new thing- namely, that to promise not to do a thing is
the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very
thing. Tom soon found himself tormented with a desire to drink and
swear; the desire grew to be so intense that nothing but the hope of a
chance to display himself in his red sash kept him from withdrawing
from the order. Fourth of July was coming; but he soon gave that up-
gave it up before he had worn his shackles over forty-eight hours- and
fixed his hopes upon old Judge Frazer, justice of the peace, who was
apparently on his death-bed and would have a big public funeral, since
he was so high an official. During three days Tom was deeply concerned
about the judge's condition and hungry for news of it. Sometimes his
hopes ran high- so high that he would venture to get out his regalia
and practice before the looking-glass. But the judge had a most
discouraging way of fluctuating. At last he was pronounced upon the
mend- and then convalescent. Tom was disgusted; and felt a sense of
injury, too. He handed in his resignation at once- and that night
the judge suffered a relapse and died. Tom resolved that he would
never trust a man like that again.
The funeral was a fine thing. The Cadets paraded in a style
calculated to kill the late member with envy. Tom was a free boy
again, however- there was something in that. He could drink and swear,
now- but found to his surprise that he did not want to. The simple
fact that he could, took the desire away, and the charm of it.
Tom presently wondered to find that his coveted vacation was
beginning to hang a little heavily on his hands.
He attempted a diary- but nothing happened during three days, and so
he abandoned it.
The first of all the negro minstrel shows came to town, and made a
sensation. Tom and Joe Harper got up a band of performers and were
happy for two days.
Even the Glorious Fourth was in some sense a failure, for it
rained hard, there was no procession in consequence, and the
greatest man in the world (as Tom supposed) Mr. Benton, an actual
United States Senator, proved an overwhelming disappointment- for he
was not twenty-five feet high, nor even anywhere in the neighborhood
of it.
A circus came. The boys played circus for three days afterward in
tents made of rag carpeting- admission, three pins for boys, two for
girls- and then circusing was abandoned.
A phrenologist and a mesmerizer came- and went again and left the
village duller and drearier than ever.
There were some boys-and-girls' parties, but they were so few and so
delightful that they only made the aching voids between ache the
harder.
Becky Thatcher was gone to her Constantinople home to stay with
her parents during vacation- so there was no bright side to life
anywhere.
The dreadful secret of the murder was a chronic misery. It was a
very cancer for permanency and pain.
Then came the measles.
During two long weeks Tom lay a prisoner, dead to the world and
its happenings. He was very ill, he was interested in nothing. When he
got upon his feet at last and moved feebly down town, a melancholy
change had come over everything and every creature. There had been a
"revival," and everybody had "got religion"; not only the adults,
but even the boys and girls. Tom went about, hoping against hope for
the sight of one blessed sinful face, but disappointment crossed him
everywhere. He found Joe Harper studying a Testament, and turned sadly
away from the depressing spectacle. He sought Ben Rogers, and found
him visiting the poor with a basket of tracts. He hunted up Jim
Hollis, who called his attention to the precious blessing of his
late measles as a warning. Every boy he encountered added another
ton to his depression; and when, in desperation, he flew for refuge at
last to the bosom of Huckleberry Finn and was received with a
scriptural quotation, his heart broke and he crept home and to bed
realizing that he alone of all the town was lost, forever and forever.
And that night there came on a terrific storm, with driving rain,
awful claps of thunder and blinding sheets of lightning. He covered
his head with the bedclothes and waited in a horror of suspense for
his doom; for he had not the shadow of a doubt that all this hubbub
was about him. He believed he had taxed the forbearance of the
powers above to the extremity of endurance and that this was the
result. It might have seemed to him a waste of pomp and ammunition
to kill a bug with a battery of artillery, but there seemed nothing
incongruous about the getting up such an expensive thunderstorm as
this to knock the turf from under an insect like himself.
By and by the tempest spent itself and died without accomplishing
its object. The boy's first impulse was to be grateful, and reform.
His second was to wait- for there might not be any more storms.
The next day the doctors were back; Tom had relapsed. The three
weeks he spent on his back this time seemed an entire age. When he got
abroad at last he was hardly grateful that he had been spared,
remembering how lonely was his estate, how companionless and forlorn
he was. He drifted listlessly down the street and found Jim Hollis
acting as judge in a juvenile court that was trying a cat for
murder, in the presence of her victim, a bird. He found Joe Harper and
Huck Finn up an alley eating a stolen melon. Poor lads! they- like
Tom- had suffered a relapse.
CHAPTER_23
Chapter 23
The Salvation of Muff Potter
-
AT LAST the sleepy atmosphere was stirred- and vigorously: the
murder trial came on in the court. It became the absorbing topic of
village talk immediately. Tom could not get away from it. Every
reference to the murder sent a shudder to his heart, for his
troubled conscience and fears almost persuaded him that these
remarks were put forth in his hearing as "feelers"; he did not see how
he could be suspected of knowing anything about the murder, but
still he could not be comfortable in the midst of this gossip. It kept
him in a cold shiver all the time. He took Huck to a lonely place to
have a talk with him. It would be some relief to unseal his tongue for
a little while; to divide his burden of distress with another
sufferer. Moreover, he wanted to assure himself that Huck had remained
discreet.
"Huck, have you ever told anybody about- that?"
"'Bout what?"
"You know what."
"O- 'course I haven't."
"Never a word?"
"Never a solitary word, so help me. What makes you ask?"
"Well, I was afeard."
"Why Tom Sawyer, we wouldn't be alive two days if that got found
out. You know that."
Tom felt more comfortable. After a pause:
"Huck, they couldn't anybody get you to tell, could they?"
"Get me to tell? Why if I wanted that half-breed devil to drownd
me they could get me to tell. They ain't no different way."
"Well, that's all right, then. I reckon we're safe as long as we
keep mum. But let's swear again, anyway. It's more surer."
"I'm agreed."
So they swore again with dread solemnities.
"What is the talk around, Huck? I've heard a power of it."
"Talk? Well, it's just Muff Potter, Muff Potter, Muff Potter all the
time. It keeps me in a sweat, constant, so's I want to hide som'ers."
"That's just the same way they go on round me. I reckon he's a
goner. Don't you feel sorry for him, sometimes?"
"Most always- most always. He ain't no account; but then he hain't
ever done anything to hurt anybody. Just fishes a little, to get money
to get drunk on- and loafs around considerable; but lord we all do
that- leastways most of us,- preachers and such like. But he's kind of
good- he give me half a fish, once, when there warn't enough for two;
and lots of times he's kind of stood by me when I was out of luck."
"Well, he's mended kites for me, Huck, and knitted hooks on to my
line. I wish we could get him out of there."
"My! we couldn't get him out Tom. And besides, It wouldn't do any
good; they'd ketch him again."
"Yes- so they would. But I hate to hear 'em abuse him so like the
dickens when he never done- that."
"I do too, Tom. Lord, I hear 'em say he's the bloodiest-looking
villain in this country, and they wonder he wasn't ever hung before."
"Yes, they talk like that, all the time. I've heard 'em say that
if he was to get free they'd lynch him."
"And they'd do it, too."
The boys had a long talk, but it brought them little comfort. As the
twilight drew on, they found themselves hanging about the neighborhood
of the little isolated jail, perhaps with an undefined hope that
something would happen that might clear away their difficulties. But
nothing happened; there seemed to be no angels or fairies interested
in this luckless captive.
The boys did as they had often done before- went to the cell grating
and gave Potter some tobacco and matches. He was on the ground floor
and there were no guards.
His gratitude for their gifts had always smote their consciences
before- it cut deeper than ever, this time. They felt cowardly and
treacherous to the last degree when Potter said:
"You've ben mighty good to me, boys- better'n anybody else in this
town. And I don't forget it, I don't. Often I says to myself, says
I, 'I used to mend all the boys' kites and things, and show 'em
where the good fishin' places was, and befriend 'em what I could, and
now they've all forgot old Muff when he's in trouble; but Tom don't,
and Huck don't- they don't forget him,' says I, 'and I don't forget
them.' Well, boys, I done an awful thing- drunk and crazy at the
time- that's the only way I account for it- and now I got to swing for
it, and it's right. Right, and best, too I reckon- hope so, anyway.
Well, we won't talk about that. I don't want to make you feel bad;
you've befriended me. But what I want to say, is, don't you ever get
drunk- then you won't ever get here. Stand a little furder west- so-
that's it; it's a prime comfort to see faces that's friendly when a
body's in such a muck of trouble, and there don't none come here but
yourn. Good friendly faces- good friendly faces. Git up on one
another's backs and let me touch 'em. That's it. Shake hands- yourn'll
come through the bars, but mine's too big. Little hands, and weak- but
they've helped Muff Potter a power, and they'd help him more if they
could."
Tom went home miserable, and his dreams that night were full of
horrors. The next day and the day after, he hung about the court room,
drawn by an almost irresistible impulse to go in, but forcing
himself to stay out. Huck was having the same experience. They
studiously avoided each other. Each wandered away, from time to
time, but the same dismal fascination always brought them back
presently. Tom kept his ears open when idlers sauntered out of the
courtroom, but invariably heard distressing news- the toils were
closing more and more relentlessly around poor Potter. At the end of
the second day the village talk was to the effect that Injun Joe's
evidence stood firm and unshaken, and that there was not the slightest
question as to what the jury's verdict would be.
Tom was out late, that night, and came to bed through the window. He
was in a tremendous state of excitement. It was hours before he got to
sleep. All the village flocked to the courthouse the next morning, for
this was to be the great day. Both sexes were about equally
represented in the packed audience. After a long wait the jury filed
in and took their places; shortly afterward, Potter, pale and haggard,
timid and hopeless, was brought in, with chains upon him, and seated
where all the curious eyes could stare at him; no less conspicuous was
Injun Joe, stolid as ever. There was another pause, and then the judge
arrived and the sheriff proclaimed the opening of the court. The usual
whisperings among the lawyers and gathering together of papers
followed. These details and accompanying delays worked up an
atmosphere of preparation that was as impressive as it was
fascinating.
Now a witness was called who testified that he found Muff Potter
washing in the brook, at an early hour of the morning that the
murder was discovered, and that he immediately sneaked away. After
some further questioning, counsel for the prosecution said-
"Take the witness."
The prisoner raised his eyes for a moment, but dropped them again
when his own counsel said-
"I have no questions to ask him."
The next witness proved the finding of the knife near the corpse.
Counsel for the prosecution said:
"Take the witness."
"I have no questions to ask him." Potter's lawyer replied.
A third witness swore he had often seen the knife in Potter's
possession.
"Take the witness."
Counsel for Potter declined to question him. The faces of the
audience began to betray annoyance. Did this attorney mean to throw
away his client's life without an effort?
Several witnesses deposed concerning Potter's guilty behavior when
brought to the scene of the murder. They were allowed to leave the
stand without being cross-questioned.
Every detail of the damaging circumstances that occurred in the
graveyard upon that morning which all present remembered so well,
was brought out by credible witnesses, but none of them were
cross-examined by Potter's lawyer. The perplexity and
dissatisfaction of the house expressed itself in murmurs and
provoked a reproof from the bench. Counsel for the prosecution now
said:
"By the oaths of citizens whose simple word is above suspicion, we
have fastened this awful crime beyond all possibility of question,
upon the unhappy prisoner at the bar. We rest our case here."
A groan escaped from poor Potter, and he put his face in his hands
and rocked his body softly to and fro, while a painful silence reigned
in the courtroom. Many men were moved, and many women's compassion
testified itself in tears. Counsel for the defense rose and said:
"Your honor, in our remarks at the opening of this trial, we
foreshadowed our purpose to prove that our client did this fearful
deed while under the influence of a blind and irresponsible delirium
produced by drink. We have changed our mind. We shall not offer that
plea." [Then to the clerk]: "Call Thomas Sawyer!" A puzzled
amazement awoke in every face in the house, not even excepting
Potter's. Every eye fastened itself with wondering interest upon Tom
as he rose and took his place upon the stand. The boy looked wild
enough, for he was badly scared. The oath was administered.
"Thomas Sawyer, where were you on the seventeenth of June, about the
hour of midnight?"
Tom glanced at Injun Joe's iron face and his tongue failed him.
The audience listened breathless, but the words refused to come. After
a few moments, however, the boy got a little of his strength back, and
managed to put enough of it into his voice to make part of the house
hear:
"In the graveyard!"
"A little bit louder, please. Don't be afraid. You were-"
"In the graveyard."
A contemptuous smile flitted across Injun Joe's face.
"Were you anywhere near Horse Williams's grave?"
"Yes, sir."
"Speak up- just a trifle louder. How near were you?"
"Near as I am to you."
"Were you hidden, or not?"
"I was hid."
"Where?"
"Behind the elms that's on the edge of the grave."
Injun Joe gave a barely perceptible start.
"Any one with you?"
"Yes, sir. I went there with-"
"Wait- wait a moment. Never mind mentioning your companion's name.
We will produce him at the proper time. Did you carry anything there
with you?"
Tom hesitated and looked confused.
"Speak out my boy- don't be diffident. The truth is always
respectable. What did you take there?"
"Only a- a- dead cat."
There was a ripple of mirth, which the court checked.
"We will produce the skeleton of that cat. Now my boy, tell us
everything that occurred- tell it in your own way- don't skip
anything, and don't be afraid."
Tom began- hesitatingly at first, but as he warmed to his
subject his words flowed more and more easily; in a little while every
sound ceased but his own voice; every eye fixed itself upon him;
with parted lips and bated breath the audience hung upon his words,
taking no note of time, rapt in the ghastly fascinations of the
tale. The strain upon pent emotion reached its climax when the boy
said-
"-and as the doctor fetched the board around and Muff Potter fell,
Injun Joe jumped with the knife and-"
Crash! Quick as lightning the half-breed sprang for a window, tore
his way through all opposers, and was gone!
CHAPTER_24
Chapter 24
Splendid Days and Fearsome Nights
-
TOM WAS A GLITTERING HERO once more- the pet of the old, the envy of
the young. His name even went into immortal print, for the village
paper magnified him. There were some that believed he would be
President, yet, if he escaped hanging.
As usual, the fickle, unreasoning world took Muff Potter to its
bosom and fondled him as lavishly as it had abused him before. But
that sort of conduct is to the world's credit; therefore it is not
well to find fault with it.
Tom's days were days of splendor and exultation to him, but his
nights were seasons of horror. Injun Joe infested all his dreams,
and always with doom in his eye. Hardly any temptation could
persuade the boy to stir abroad after nightfall. Poor Huck was in
the same state of wretchedness and terror, for Tom had told the
whole story to the lawyer the night before the great day of the trial,
and Huck was sore afraid that his share in the business might leak
out, yet, notwithstanding Injun Joe's flight had saved him the
suffering of testifying in court. The poor fellow had got the attorney
to promise secrecy, but what of that? Since Tom's harassed
conscience had managed to drive him to the lawyer's house by night and
wring a dread tale from lips that had been sealed with the dismalest
and most formidable of oaths, Huck's confidence in the human race
was well-nigh obliterated. Daily Muff Potter's gratitude made Tom glad
he had spoken; but nightly he wished he had sealed up his tongue.
Half the time Tom was afraid Injun Joe would never be captured;
the other half he was afraid he would be. He felt sure he never
could draw a safe breath again until that man was dead and he had seen
the corpse.
Rewards had been offered, the country had been scoured, but no Injun
Joe was found. One of those omniscient and awe-inspiring marvels, a
detective, came up from St. Louis, moused around, shook his head,
looked wise, and made that sort of astounding success which members of
that craft usually achieve. That is to say he "found a clue." But
you can't hang a "clue" for murder and so after that detective had got
through and gone home, Tom felt just as insecure as he was before.
The slow days drifted on, and each left behind it a slightly
lightened weight of apprehension.
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