we dug and dug with the case-knives till most midnight; and
then we was dog-tired, and our hands was blistered, and yet you
couldn't see we'd done anything hardly. At last I says:

"This ain't no thirty-seven-year job; this is a thirty-eight-year job,
Tom Sawyer."

He never said nothing. But he sighed, and pretty soon he stopped
digging, and then for a good little while I knowed that he was
thinking. Then he says:

"It ain't no use, Huck, it ain't a-going to work. If we was prisoners
it would, because then we'd have as many years as we wanted, and no
hurry; and we wouldn't get but a few minutes to dig, every day, while
they was changing watches, and so our hands wouldn't get blistered,
and we could keep it up right along, year in and year out, and do it
right, and the way it ought to be done. But _we_ can't fool along; we
got to rush; we ain't got no time to spare. If we was to put in
another night this way we'd have to knock off for a week to let our
hands get well--couldn't touch a case-knife with them sooner."

"Well, then, what we going to do, Tom?"

"I'll tell you. It ain't right, and it ain't moral, and I wouldn't
like it to get out; but there ain't only just the one way: we got to
dig him out with the picks, and _let on_ it's case-knives."

"_Now_ you're _talking!_" I says; "your head gets leveler and leveler
all the time, Tom Sawyer," I says. "Picks is the thing, moral or no
moral; and as for me, I don't care shucks for the morality of it,
nohow. When I start in to steal a nigger, or a watermelon, or a
Sunday-school book, I ain't no ways particular how it's done so it's
done. What I want is my nigger; or what I want is my watermelon; or
what I want is my Sunday-school book; and if a pick's the handiest
thing, that's the thing I'm a-going to dig that nigger or that
watermelon or that Sunday-school book out with; and I don't give a
dead rat what the authorities thinks about it nuther."

"Well," he says, "there's excuse for picks and letting on in a case
like this; if it warn't so, I wouldn't approve of it, nor I wouldn't
stand by and see the rules broke--because right is right, and wrong is
wrong, and a body ain't got no business doing wrong when he ain't
ignorant and knows better. It might answer for _you_ to dig Jim out
with a pick, _without_ any letting on, because you don't know no
better; but it wouldn't for me, because I do know better. Gimme a
case-knife."

He had his own by him, but I handed him