grace."

Then he didn't look so joyful, and says:

"What was your idea for asking _me?_" he says.

"Well," I says, "when I see the king in that doggery yesterday I says
to myself, we can't get him home for hours, till he's soberer; so I
went a-loafing around town to put in the time and wait. A man up and
offered me ten cents to help him pull a skiff over the river and back
to fetch a sheep, and so I went along; but when we was dragging him to
the boat, and the man left me a-holt of the rope and went behind him
to shove him along, he was too strong for me and jerked loose and run,
and we after him. We didn't have no dog, and so we had to chase him
all over the country till we tired him out. We never got him till
dark; then we fetched him over, and I started down for the raft. When
I got there and see it was gone, I says to myself, 'They've got into
trouble and had to leave; and they've took my nigger, which is the
only nigger I've got in the world, and now I'm in a strange country,
and ain't got no property no more, nor nothing, and no way to make my
living'; so I set down and cried. I slept in the woods all night. But
what _did_ become of the raft, then?--and Jim--poor Jim!"

"Blamed if I know--that is, what's become of the raft. That old fool
had made a trade and got forty dollars, and when we found him in the
doggery the loafers had matched half-dollars with him and got every
cent but what he'd spent for whisky; and when I got him home late last
night and found the raft gone, we said, 'That little rascal has stole
our raft and shook us, and run off down the river.'"

"I wouldn't shake my _nigger_, would I?--the only nigger I had in the
world, and the only property."

"We never thought of that. Fact is, I reckon we'd come to consider him
_our_ nigger; yes, we did consider him so--goodness knows we had
trouble enough for him. So when we see the raft was gone and we flat
broke, there warn't anything for it but to try the 'Royal Nonesuch'
another shake. And I've pegged along ever since, dry as a powder-horn.
Where's that ten cents? Give it here."

I had considerable money, so I give him ten cents, but begged him to
spend it for something to eat, and give me some, because it was all
the money I had, and I hadn't had nothing to eat since yesterday. He
never said nothing. The next minute he whirls on me and says:

"Do you reckon that nigger would blow on us? We'd skin him if he done
that!"

"How can he blow? Hain