rive the horse myself,
and I druther he wouldn't take no trouble about me.

CHAPTER XXXIII

So I started for town in the wagon, and when I was half-way I see a
wagon coming, and sure enough it was Tom Sawyer, and I stopped and
waited till he come along. I says "Hold on!" and it stopped alongside,
and his mouth opened up like a trunk, and stayed so; and he swallowed
two or three times like a person that's got a dry throat, and then
says:

"I hain't ever done you no harm. You know that. So, then, what you
want to come back and ha'nt _me_ for?"

I says:

"I hain't come back--I hain't been _gone_."

When he heard my voice it righted him up some, but he warn't quite
satisfied yet. He says:

"Don't you play nothing on me, because I wouldn't on you. Honest
injun, you ain't a ghost?"

"Honest injun, I ain't," I says.

"Well--I--I--well, that ought to settle it, of course; but I can't
somehow seem to understand it no way. Looky here, warn't you ever
murdered _at all?_"

"No. I warn't ever murdered at all--I played it on them. You come in
here and feel of me if you don't believe me."

So he done it; and it satisfied him; and he was that glad to see me
again he didn't know what to do. And he wanted to know all about it
right off, because it was a grand adventure, and mysterious, and so it
hit him where he lived. But I said, leave it alone till by and by; and
told his driver to wait, and we drove off a little piece, and I told
him the kind of a fix I was in, and what did he reckon we better do?
He said, let him alone a minute, and don't disturb him. So he thought
and thought, and pretty soon he says:

"It's all right; I've got it. Take my trunk in your wagon, and let on
it's your'n; and you turn back and fool along slow, so as to get to
the house about the time you ought to; and I'll go towards town a
piece, and take a fresh start, and get there a quarter or a half an
hour after you; and you needn't let on to know me at first."

I says:

"All right; but wait a minute. There's one more thing--a thing that
_nobody_ don't know but me. And that is, there's a nigger here that
I'm a-trying to steal out of slavery, and his name is _Jim_--old Miss
Watson's Jim."

He says:

"What! Why, Jim is--"

He stopped and went to studying. I says:

"_I_ know what you'll say. You'll say it's dirty, low-down business;
but what if it is? _I_'m low down; and I'm a-going to steal him, and I
want you keep mum and not let o