't you just tell me he was all right? Hasn't he got away?"

"_Him?_" says Aunt Sally; "the runaway nigger? 'Deed he hasn't.
They've got him back, safe and sound, and he's in that cabin again, on
bread and water, and loaded down with chains, till he's claimed or
sold!"

Tom rose square up in bed, with his eye hot, and his nostrils opening
and shutting like gills, and sings out to me:

"They hain't no _right_ to shut him up! _Shove!_--and don't you lose a
minute. Turn him loose! he ain't no slave; he's as free as any cretur
that walks this earth!"

"What _does_ the child mean?"

"I mean every word I _say_, Aunt Sally, and if somebody don't go,
_I'll_ go. I've knowed him all his life, and so has Tom, there. Old
Miss Watson died two months ago, and she was ashamed she ever was
going to sell him down the river, and _said_ so; and she set him free
in her will."

"Then what on earth did _you_ want to set him free for, seeing he was
already free?"

"Well, that _is_ a question, I must say; and _just_ like women! Why, I
wanted the _adventure_ of it; and I'd 'a' waded neck-deep in blood
to--goodness alive, _Aunt Polly!"_

If she warn't standing right there, just inside the door, looking as
sweet and contented as an angel half full of pie, I wish I may never!

Aunt Sally jumped for her, and most hugged the head off of her, and
cried over her, and I found a good enough place for me under the bed,
for it was getting pretty sultry for _us_, seemed to me. And I peeped
out, and in a little while Tom's Aunt Polly shook herself loose and
stood there looking across at Tom over her spectacles--kind of
grinding him into the earth, you know. And then she says:

"Yes, you _better_ turn y'r head away--I would if I was you, Tom."

"Oh, deary me!" says Aunt Sally; "_is_ he changed so? Why, that ain't
_Tom_, it's Sid; Tom's--Tom's--why, where is Tom? He was here a minute
ago."

"You mean where's Huck _Finn_--that's what you mean! I reckon I hain't
raised such a scamp as my Tom all these years not to know him when I
_see_ him. That _would_ be a pretty howdy-do. Come out from under that
bed, Huck Finn."

So I done it. But not feeling brash.

Aunt Sally she was one of the mixed-upest-looking persons I ever
see--except one, and that was Uncle Silas, when he come in and they
told it all to him. It kind of made him drunk, as you may say, and he
didn't know nothing at all the rest of the day, and preached a
prayer-meeting sermon that n