s a big place to him. I suppose if I should come back
again ten years from now it would be the size of a bird-house." He did
not see "Huck"--Torn Blankenship had not lived in Hannibal for many
years. But he was driven to all the familiar haunts--to Lover's Leap,
the cave, and the rest; and Sunday afternoon, with John Briggs, he walked
over Holliday's Hill--the "Cardiff Hill" of "Tom Sawyer." It was just
such a day, as the one when they had damaged a cooper shop and so nearly
finished the old negro driver. A good deal more than fifty years had
passed since then, and now here they were once more--Tom Sawyer and Joe
Harper--two old men, the hills still fresh and green, the river rippling
in the sun. Looking across to the Illinois shore and 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 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 peaches from old
man Price, and one of his bow-legged niggers came after us with dogs, and
how we made up our minds we'd catch that nigger and drown him?"

And so they talked on of this thing and that, and by and by drove along
the river, and Sam Clemens pointed out the place where he swam it and was
taken with a cramp on the return.

"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 knee struck the sand and I crawled out. That was the closest call I
ever had."

They drove by a place where a haunted house had stood. They drank from a
well they had always known--from the bucket, as they had always drunk
--talking, always talking, touching with lingering fondness that most
beautiful and safest of all our possessions--the past.

"Sam," said John, when they parted, "this is probably the last time we
shall meet on earth. God bless you. Perhaps somewhere we shall renew
our friendship."

"John," was the answer, "this day has been worth a thousand dollars to
me. We were like brothers once, and I feel that we are the same now.
Good-by, John. I'll try to meet you somewhere."

Clemens left n