n. Will you?"

His eye lit up, and he says:

"I'll _help_ you steal him!"

Well, I let go all holts then, like I was shot. It was the most
astonishing speech I ever heard--and I'm bound to say Tom Sawyer fell
considerable in my estimation. Only I couldn't believe it. Tom Sawyer
a _nigger-stealer!_

"Oh, shucks!" I says; "you're joking."

"I ain't joking, either."

"Well, then," I says, "joking or no joking, if you hear anything said
about a runaway nigger, don't forget to remember that _you_ don't know
nothing about him, and I don't know nothing about him."

Then he took the trunk and put it in my wagon, and he drove off his
way and I drove mine. But of course I forgot all about driving slow on
accounts of being glad and full of thinking; so I got home a heap too
quick for that length of a trip. The old gentleman was at the door,
and he says:

"Why, this is wonderful! Whoever would 'a' thought it was in that mare
to do it? I wish we'd 'a' timed her. And she hain't sweated a
hair--not a hair. It's wonderful. Why, I wouldn't take a hundred
dollars for that horse now--I wouldn't, honest; and yet I'd 'a' sold
her for fifteen before, and thought 'twas all she was worth."

That's all he said. He was the innocentest, best old soul I ever see.
But it warn't surprising; because he warn't only just a farmer, he was
a preacher, too, and had a little one-horse log church down back of
the plantation, which he built it himself at his own expense, for a
church and schoolhouse, and never charged nothing for his preaching,
and it was worth it, too. There was plenty other farmer-preachers like
that, and done the same way, down South.

In about half an hour Tom's wagon drove up to the front stile, and
Aunt Sally she see it through the window, because it was only about
fifty yards, and says:

"Why, there's somebody come! I wonder who 'tis? Why, I do believe it's
a stranger. Jimmy" (that's one of the children), "run and tell Lize to
put on another plate for dinner."

Everybody made a rush for the front door, because, of course, a
stranger don't come _every_ year, and so he lays over the
yaller-fever, for interest, when he does come. Tom was over the stile
and starting for the house; the wagon was spinning up the road for the
village, and we was all bunched in the front door. Tom had his store
clothes on, and an audience--and that was always nuts for Tom Sawyer.
In them circumstances it warn't no trouble to him to throw in an