would
he do it? Is it in his line? He's rich and gettin' higher and higher up
in the world. What does this mean?"

[Illustration: Tom Sawyer]

We followed our pas into the shop. And Mr. Miller asked a boy, "Where's
Mr. Sawyer?" And the boy says, "He's in the back room." Just then a door
opened and a man came in, red-faced and plump and friendly. And Mitch's
pa says: "Are you Tom Sawyer?" And the man says, "That's me." And
Mitch's pa says: "I'm Mr. Miller from Petersburg and this is my boy
Mitchie, who wrote to you. And this is Mr. Kirby and his boy." And Tom
Sawyer laughed and says: "I hope I didn't make you any trouble. I kind a
heard I did. But this letter came to me from your boy, and I showed it
to the postmaster, and he laughed; and so I thought I'd have a little
fun, and I had it answered. You don't mind, do you, Mitchie?" And he
kind of put his hand on Mitchie's head. "Oh," says Mitch, "there might
be two persons with the same names." Tom Sawyer laughed and said, "Not
in this town--anyway I had that letter written you, Mitchie, and I'm
sorry now, since you took it in earnest. I meant no harm. There never
was any boy here of that name, and no Huckleberry Finn. It was all made
up, even though it does sound real and boys believe it. How'd you like
to have some bologna?" He gave both of us some. Then we talked a bit and
left.

After that Mitch wasn't interested in anything. He didn't want to see
the town; he just sat in front of the hotel, and our pas went around
lookin' up the places where Mark Twain had been, and talkin' to folks
who knew where Mark Twain got this character and the other for his book.
And finally Mitch said to me: "I had a dream last night, and now I know
what it means. I dreamed the engines on the trains wouldn't work any
more, or wouldn't work very well, and they had to hitch horses to the
engines to pull the trains. So everywhere you'd see an engine and a
train and at the head of the engine a team of horses, pullin' it and the
train. And it means that what was so beautiful and wonderful ain't true
and won't work and after all, you're just where you were, back with
horses, so to speak, and no engines; back in Petersburg, with all the
wonder of Tom Sawyer gone forever." And Mitch began to cry. I didn't
know what to say or to do. It was all true. There wasn't any Tom Sawyer;
and this town--why we couldn't find a thing like it was in the book.

Pretty soon our pas came back and Mitch says, "Whe