before
he goes out of this--because he's going out _right_, and there ain't
going to be no flaws in his record."

So whilst me and Jim filed away at the pens on a brickbat apiece, Jim
a-making his'n out of the brass and I making mine out of the spoon,
Tom set to work to think out the coat of arms. By and by he said he'd
struck so many good ones he didn't hardly know which to take, but
there was one which he reckoned he'd decide on. He says:

"On the scutcheon we'll have a bend _or_ in the dexter base, a saltire
_murrey_ in the fess, with a dog, couchant, for common charge, and
under his foot a chain embattled, for slavery, with a chevron _vert_
in a chief engrailed, and three invected lines on a field _azure_,
with the nombril points rampant on a dancette indented; crest, a
runaway nigger, _sable_, with his bundle over his shoulder on a bar
sinister; and a couple of gules for supporters, which is you and me;
motto, _Maggiore fretta, minore atto_. Got it out of a book--means the
more haste the less speed."

"Geewhillikins," I says, "but what does the rest of it mean?"

"We ain't got no time to bother over that," he says; "we got to dig in
like all git-out."

"Well, anyway," I says, "what's _some_ of it? What's a fess?"

"A fess--a fess is--_you_ don't need to know what a fess is. I'll show
him how to make it when he gets to it."

"Shucks, Tom," I says, "I think you might tell a person. What's a bar
sinister?"

"Oh, I don't know. But he's got to have it. All the nobility does."

That was just his way. If it didn't suit him to explain a thing to
you, he wouldn't do it. You might pump at him a week, it wouldn't make
no difference. He'd got all that coat-of-arms business fixed, so now
he started in to finish up the rest of that part of the work, which
was to plan out a mournful inscription--said Jim got to have one, like
they all done. He made up a lot, and wrote them out on a paper, and
read them off, so:

_1. Here a captive heart busted.

2. Here a poor prisoner, forsook by the world and
friends, fretted his sorrowful life.

3. Here a lonely heart broke, and a worn spirit went
to its rest, after thirty-seven years of solitary captivity.

4. Here, homeless and friendless, after thirty-seven
years of bitter captivity, perished a noble stranger,
natural son of Louis XIV._

Tom's voice trembled whilst he was reading them, and he most broke
down. When he got done he couldn't no way make