fraid I had come; people might know my voice and find me out. But if
this woman had been in such a little town two days she could tell me
all I wanted to know; so I knocked at the door, and made up my mind I
wouldn't forget I was a girl.

CHAPTER XI

"Come in," says the woman, and I did. She says: "Take a cheer."

I done it. She looked me all over with her little shiny eyes, and
says:

"What might your name be?"

"Sarah Williams."

"Where'bouts do you live? In this neighborhood?"

"No'm. In Hookerville, seven mile below. I've walked all the way and
I'm all tired out."

"Hungry, too, I reckon. I'll find you something."

"No'm, I ain't hungry. I was so hungry I had to stop two miles below
here at a farm; so I ain't hungry no more. It's what makes me so late.
My mother's down sick, and out of money and everything, and I come to
tell my uncle Abner Moore. He lives at the upper end of the town, she
says. I hain't ever been here before. Do you know him?"

"No; but I don't know everybody yet. I haven't lived here quite two
weeks. It's a considerable ways to the upper end of the town. You
better stay here all night. Take off your bonnet."

"No," I says; "I'll rest awhile, I reckon, and go on. I ain't afeard
of the dark."

She said she wouldn't let me go by myself, but her husband would be in
by and by, maybe in a hour and a half, and she'd send him along with
me. Then she got to talking about her husband, and about her relations
up the river, and her relations down the river, and about how much
better off they used to was, and how they didn't know but they'd made
a mistake coming to our town, instead of letting well alone--and so on
and so on, till I was afeard I had made a mistake coming to her to
find out what was going on in the town; but by and by she dropped on
to pap and the murder, and then I was pretty willing to let her
clatter right along. She told about me and Tom Sawyer finding the
twelve thousand dollars (only she got it twenty) and all about pap and
what a hard lot he was, and what a hard lot I was, and at last she got
down to where I was murdered. I says:

"Who done it? We've heard considerable about these goings-on down in
Hookerville, but we don't know who 'twas that killed Huck Finn."

"Well, I reckon there's a right smart chance of people _here_ that 'd
like to know who killed him. Some think old Finn done it himself."

"No--is that so?"

"Most everybody thought it at first. He'll