ut I reckoned maybe
it was just as safe to not to. So I never said nothing.

CHAPTER THE LAST

The first time I catched Tom private I asked him what was his idea,
time of the evasion?--what it was he'd planned to do if the evasion
worked all right and he managed to set a nigger free that was already
free before? And he said, what he had planned in his head from the
start, if we got Jim out all safe, was for us to run him down the
river on the raft, and have adventures plumb to the mouth of the
river, and then tell him about his being free, and take him back up
home on a steamboat, in style, and pay him for his lost time, and
write word ahead and get out all the niggers around, and have them
waltz him into town with a torchlight procession and a brass-band, and
then he would be a hero, and so would we. But I reckoned it was about
as well the way it was.

We had Jim out of the chains in no time, and when Aunt Polly and Uncle
Silas and Aunt Sally found out how good he helped the doctor nurse
Tom, they made a heap of fuss over him, and fixed him up prime, and
give him all he wanted to eat, and a good time, and nothing to do. And
we had him up to the sick-room, and had a high talk; and Tom give Jim
forty dollars for being prisoner for us so patient, and doing it up so
good, and Jim was pleased most to death and busted out, and says:

"_Dah_, now, Huck, what I tell you?--what I tell you up dah on Jackson
Islan'? I tole you I got a hairy breas', en what's de sign un it; en I
_tole_ you I ben rich wunst, en gwineter to be rich _ag'in;_ en it's
come true; en heah she _is! Dah_, now! doan' talk to _me_--signs is
_signs_, mine I tell you; en I knowed jis' 's well 'at I 'uz gwineter
be rich ag'in as I's a-stannin' heah dis minute!"

And then Tom he talked along and talked along, and says, le's all
three slide out of here one of these nights and get an outfit, and go
for howling adventures amongst the Injuns, over in the territory, for
a couple of weeks or two; and I says, all right, that suits me, but I
ain't got no money for to buy the outfit, and I reckon I couldn't get
none from home, because it's likely pap's been back before now, and
got it all away from Judge Thatcher and drunk it up.

"No, he hain't," Tom says; "it's all there yet--six thousand dollars
and more; and your pap hain't ever been back since. Hadn't when I come
away, anyhow."

Jim says, kind of solemn:

"He ain't a-comin' back no mo', Huck."

I