n you goin' to leave?"
"This afternoon," says my pa. Then Mitch says: "Let's go. I don't feel
well. I want to go home."

Then Mr. Miller tried to comfort Mitch and tell him that life was full
of disappointments; that everything that happens when you're a boy,
happens over when you're a man, just like it, but hurts worse. And that
people must dis-cip-line themselves to stand it, and make the most of
life, and do for others, and love God and keep His commandments. Mitch
didn't say nothin'. He just set quiet, every now and then brushin' a
tear out of his eye.

When our pas had walked away, Mitch says: "Now you see the whole thing,
Skeet. You've lost Tom as much as I have; but I've lost more'n you. I've
lost Zueline. Both in the same summer. I don't know what I'm goin' to
do. I want to go home."

And then Mitch said: "I'm mad at my pa. He ought not to brought me here.
He ought not to have showed us that butcher. It's too much. He ought to
have left us still believin' in the book."

CHAPTER XXV

We crossed the river and took the train. But the fun was over. Even our
pas was quiet. Mitch fell asleep in his father's arms. I couldn't talk,
somehow. The summer was fading, we could see that. We could hear the
crickets in the grass whenever the train stopped. Sleep was falling on
the earth. The fields were still and bare. No birds sang. And the train
moved on. And we were going home; and to what? No more digging for
treasure; no more belief in Tom Sawyer. School would commence soon. The
end of the world seemed near. I myself wanted to die; for if Mitch and
me had to keep goin' through this same thing until we was old like our
pas, what was the use? We got back to Petersburg; and Mitch and his pa
stepped off the train and started on before we got off. They stopped
after a little bit and waited for us. Then they went on; and when we got
to the square, they said good-by and started for home. And my pa went to
his office and took me.

When we got there we found a man in the hall, walkin' up and down. He'd
been there for three days waitin' for my pa. And so pa unlocked the
office and went in. The man follered and sat down. He was an old,
farmer-like feller, but it seemed he lived in a town down in Pike
County. He'd come up to get Nancy Allen's money, the treasure Mitch and
me had found. He said he was a third cousin of Nancy Allen's, and her
only livin' relative. Well, the advertisement that pa had put in the
paper for