and on Saturday night when he paid him he
docked him fifteen minutes for the time he was up in the air--but never
mind, he had his reward.

He told all this in his solemn, grave way, though the Sunday-school was
in a storm of enjoyment when he finished. There still remains a doubt in
Hannibal as to its perfect suitability, but there is no doubt as to its
acceptability.

That Sunday afternoon, with John Briggs, he walked over Holliday's
Hill--the Cardiff Hill of Tom Sawyer. It was jest such a Sunday as that
one when they had so nearly demolished the negro driver and had damaged
a cooper-shop. They calculated that nearly three thousand Sundays had
passed since then, and now here they were once more, two old men
with the hills still fresh and green, the river still sweeping by and
rippling in the sun. Standing there together and looking across to
the low-lying Illinois shore, and to the green islands where they had
played, and to Lover's Leap on the south, the man who had been Sam
Clemens said:

"John, that is one of the loveliest sights I ever saw. Down there by
the island is the place we used to swim, and yonder is where a man was
drowned, and there's where the steamboat sank. Down there on Lover's
Leap is where the Millerites put on their robes one night to go to
heaven. None of them went that night, but I suppose most of them have
gone now."

John Briggs said:

"Sam, do you remember the day we stole the peaches from old man Price
and one of his bow-legged niggers came after us with the dogs, and how
we made up our minds that we'd catch that nigger and drown him?"

They came to the place where they had pried out the great rock that had
so nearly brought them to grief. Sam Clemens said:

"John, if we had killed that man we'd have had a dead nigger on our
hands without a cent to pay for him."

And so they talked on of this thing and that, and by and by they drove
along the river, and Sam Clemens pointed out the place where he swam it
and was taken with a cramp on the return swim, and believed for a while
that his career was about to close.

"Once, near the shore, I thought I would let down," he said, "but was
afraid to, knowing that if the water was deep I was a goner, but finally
my knees struck the sand and I crawled out. That was the closest call I
ever had."

They drove by the place where the haunted house had stood. They drank
from a well they had always known, and from the bucket as they had
always dru