and hide it from Him. Nor from _me_, neither. I
knowed very well why they wouldn't come. It was because my heart
warn't right; it was because I warn't square; it was because I was
playing double. I was letting _on_ to give up sin, but away inside of
me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my
mouth _say_ I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and
write to that nigger's owner and tell where he was; but deep down in
me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie--I
found that out.

So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn't know what to
do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I'll go and write the
letter--and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I
felt as light as a feather right straight off, and my troubles all
gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited,
and set down and wrote:

Miss Watson, your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below
Pikesville, and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the
reward if you send. HUCK FINN.

I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever
felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it
straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking--thinking
how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being
lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over
our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the
day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and
we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I
couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only
the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, 'stead
of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was
when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the
swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would
always call me honey, and pet me, and do everything he could think of
for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I
saved him by telling the men we had smallpox aboard, and he was so
grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the
world, and the _only_ one he's got now; and then I happened to look
around and see that paper.

It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was
a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, foreve