d stared and stared, and let him clip
along, and I see it warn't no use for _me_ to put in. "Why, Aunty, it
cost us a power of work--weeks of it--hours and hours, every night,
whilst you was all asleep. And we had to steal candles, and the sheet,
and the shirt, and your dress, and spoons, and tin plates, and
case-knives, and the warming-pan, and the grindstone, and flour, and
just no end of things, and you can't think what work it was to make
the saws, and pens, and inscriptions, and one thing or another, and
you can't think half the fun it was. And we had to make up the
pictures of coffins and things, and nonnamous letters from the
robbers, and get up and down the lightning-rod, and dig the hole into
the cabin, and make the rope ladder and send it in cooked up in a pie,
and send in spoons and things to work with in your apron pocket--"

"Mercy sakes!"

"--and load up the cabin with rats and snake's and so on, for company
for Jim; and then you kept Tom here so long with the butter in his hat
that you come near spiling the whole business, because the men come
before we was out of the cabin, and we had to rush, and they heard us
and let drive at us, and I got my share, and we dodged out of the path
and let them go by, and when the dogs come they warn't interested in
us, but went for the most noise, and we got our canoe, and made for
the raft, and was all safe, and Jim was a free man, and we done it all
by ourselves, and _wasn't_ it bully. Aunty!"

"Well, I never heard the likes of it in all my born days! So it was
_you_, you little rapscallions, that's been making all this trouble,
and turned everybody's wits clean inside out and scared us all most to
death. I've as good a notion as ever I had in my life to take it out
o' you this very minute. To think, here I've been, night after night,
a--_you_ just get well once, you young scamp, and I lay I'll tan the
Old Harry out o' both o' ye!"

But Tom, he _was_ so proud and joyful, he just _couldn't_ hold in, and
his tongue just _went_ it--she a-chipping in, and spitting fire all
along, and both of them going it at once, like a cat convention; and
she says:

"_Well_, you get all the enjoyment you can out of it _now_, for mind I
tell you if I catch you meddling with him again--"

"Meddling with _who_ Tom says, dropping his smile and looking
surprised.

"With _who?_ Why, the runaway nigger, of course. Who'd you reckon?"

Tom looks at me very grave, and says:

"Tom, didn