orate and soft, and lay it on the bunk again,
and let on WE didn't know about any trick, and hadn't any idea he was
a-laughing at us behind them bogus snores of his'n; and we would stick
by him, and the first night we was ashore we would get him drunk and
search him, and get the di'monds; and DO for him, too, if it warn't too
risky. If we got the swag, we'd GOT to do for him, or he would hunt us
down and do for us, sure. But I didn't have no real hope. I knowed we
could get him drunk--he was always ready for that--but what's the good
of it? You might search him a year and never find--Well, right there I
catched my breath and broke off my thought! For an idea went ripping
through my head that tore my brains to rags--and land, but I felt gay and
good! You see, I had had my boots off, to unswell my feet, and just
then I took up one of them to put it on, and I catched a glimpse of the
heel-bottom, and it just took my breath away. You remember about that
puzzlesome little screwdriver?"

"You bet I do," says Tom, all excited.

"Well, when I catched that glimpse of that boot heel, the idea that went
smashing through my head was, I know where he's hid the di'monds! You
look at this boot heel, now. See, it's bottomed with a steel plate, and
the plate is fastened on with little screws. Now there wasn't a screw
about that feller anywhere but in his boot heels; so, if he needed a
screwdriver, I reckoned I knowed why."

"Huck, ain't it bully!" says Tom.

"Well, I got my boots on, and we went down and slipped in and laid the
paper of sugar on the berth, and sat down soft and sheepish and went to
listening to Bud Dixon snore. Hal Clayton dropped off pretty soon, but
I didn't; I wasn't ever so wide awake in my life. I was spying out from
under the shade of my hat brim, searching the floor for leather. It took
me a long time, and I begun to think maybe my guess was wrong, but at
last I struck it. It laid over by the bulkhead, and was nearly the color
of the carpet. It was a little round plug about as thick as the end of
your little finger, and I says to myself there's a di'mond in the nest
you've come from. Before long I spied out the plug's mate.

"Think of the smartness and coolness of that blatherskite! He put up
that scheme on us and reasoned out what we would do, and we went ahead
and done it perfectly exact, like a couple of pudd'nheads. He set there
and took his own time to unscrew his heelplates and cut out his plugs
and st