Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain (free children's ebooks pdf .txt) š
- Author: Mark Twain
- Performer: 0142437174
Book online Ā«Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain (free children's ebooks pdf .txt) šĀ». Author Mark Twain
āYour headās level agin, duke,ā says the king; and he comes a-fumbling under the curtain two or three foot from where I was. I stuck tight to the wall and kept mighty still, though quivery; and I wondered what them fellows would say to me if they catched me; and I tried to think what Iād better do if they did catch me. But the king he got the bag before I could think more than about a half a thought, and he never suspicioned I was around. They took and shoved the bag through a rip in the straw tick that was under the feather-bed, and crammed it in a foot or two amongst the straw and said it was all right now, because a nigger only makes up the feather-bed, and donāt turn over the straw tick only about twice a year, and so it warnāt in no danger of getting stole now.
But I knowed better. I had it out of there before they was half-way down stairs. I groped along up to my cubby, and hid it there till I could get a chance to do better. I judged I better hide it outside of the house somewheres, because if they missed it they would give the house a good ransacking: I knowed that very well. Then I turned in, with my clothes all on; but I couldnāt a gone to sleep if Iād a wanted to, I was in such a sweat to get through with the business. By and by I heard the king and the duke come up; so I rolled off my pallet and laid with my chin at the top of my ladder, and waited to see if anything was going to happen. But nothing did.
So I held on till all the late sounds had quit and the early ones hadnāt begun yet; and then I slipped down the ladder.
CHAPTER XXVII.
I crept to their doors and listened; they was snoring. So I tiptoed along, and got down stairs all right. There warnāt a sound anywheres. I peeped through a crack of the dining-room door, and see the men that was watching the corpse all sound asleep on their chairs. The door was open into the parlor, where the corpse was laying, and there was a candle in both rooms. I passed along, and the parlor door was open; but I see there warnāt nobody in there but the remainders of Peter; so I shoved on by; but the front door was locked, and the key wasnāt there. Just then I heard somebody coming down the stairs, back behind me. I run in the parlor and took a swift look around, and the only place I see to hide the bag was in the coffin. The lid was shoved along about a foot, showing the dead manās face down in there, with a wet cloth over it, and his shroud on. I tucked the money-bag in under the lid, just down beyond where his hands was crossed, which made me creep, they was so cold, and then I run back across the room and in behind the door.
The person coming was Mary Jane. She went to the coffin, very soft, and kneeled down and looked in; then she put up her handkerchief, and I see she begun to cry, though I couldnāt hear her, and her back was to me. I slid out, and as I passed the dining-room I thought Iād make sure them watchers hadnāt seen me; so I looked through the crack, and everything was all right. They hadnāt stirred.
I slipped up to bed, feeling ruther blue, on accounts of the thing playing out that way after I had took so much trouble and run so much resk about it. Says I, if it could stay where it is, all right; because when we get down the river a hundred mile or two I could write back to Mary Jane, and she could dig him up again and get it; but that aināt the thing thatās going to happen; the thing thatās going to happen is, the money āll be found when they come to screw on the lid. Then the king āll get it again, and it āll be a long day before he gives anybody another chance to smouch it from him. Of course I wanted to slide down and get it out of there, but I dasnāt try it. Every minute it was getting earlier now, and pretty soon some of them watchers would begin to stir, and I might get catchedācatched with six thousand dollars in my hands that nobody hadnāt hired me to take care of. I donāt wish to be mixed up in no such business as that, I says to myself.
When I got down stairs in the morning the parlor was shut up, and the watchers was gone. There warnāt nobody around but the family and the widow Bartley and our tribe. I watched their faces to see if anything had been happening, but I couldnāt tell.
Towards the middle of the day the undertaker come with his man, and they set the coffin in the middle of the room on a couple of chairs, and then set all our chairs in rows, and borrowed more from the neighbors till the hall and the parlor and the dining-room was full. I see the coffin lid was the way it was before, but I dasnāt go to look in under it, with folks around.
Then the people begun to flock in, and the beats and the girls took seats in the front row at the head of the coffin, and for a half an hour the people filed around slow, in single rank, and looked down at the dead manās face a minute, and some dropped in a tear, and it was all very still and solemn, only the girls and the beats holding handkerchiefs to their eyes and keeping their heads bent, and sobbing a little. There warnāt no other sound but the scraping of the feet on the floor and blowing nosesābecause people always blows them more at a funeral than they do at other places except church.
When the place was packed full the undertaker he slid around in his black gloves with his softy soothering ways, putting on the last touches, and getting people and things all ship-shape and comfortable, and making no more sound than a cat. He never spoke; he moved people around, he squeezed in late ones, he opened up passageways, and done it with nods, and signs with his hands. Then he took his place over against the wall. He was the softest, glidingest, stealthiest man I ever see; and there warnāt no more smile to him than there is to a ham.
They had borrowed a melodeumāa sick one; and when everything was ready a young woman set down and worked it, and it was pretty skreeky and colicky, and everybody joined in and sung, and Peter was the only one that had a good thing, according to my notion. Then the Reverend Hobson opened up, slow and solemn, and begun to talk; and straight off the most outrageous row busted out in the cellar a body ever heard; it was only one dog, but he made a most powerful racket, and he kept it up right along; the parson he had to stand there, over the coffin, and waitāyou couldnāt hear yourself think. It was right down awkward, and nobody didnāt seem to know what to do. But pretty soon they see that long-legged undertaker make a sign to the preacher as much as to say, āDonāt you worryājust depend on me.ā Then he stooped down and begun to glide along the wall, just his shoulders showing over the peopleās heads. So he glided along, and the powwow and racket getting more and more outrageous all the time; and at last, when he had gone around two sides of the room, he disappears down cellar. Then in about two seconds we heard a whack, and the dog he finished up with a most amazing howl or two, and then everything was dead still, and the parson begun his solemn talk where he left off. In a minute or two here comes this undertakerās back and shoulders gliding along the wall again; and so he glided and glided around three sides of the room, and then rose up, and shaded his mouth with his hands, and stretched his neck out towards the preacher, over the peopleās heads, and says, in a kind of a coarse whisper, āHe had a rat!ā Then he drooped down and glided along the wall again to his place. You could see it was a great satisfaction to the people, because naturally they wanted to know. A little thing like that donāt cost nothing, and itās just the little things that makes a man to be looked up to and liked. There warnāt no more popular man in town than what that undertaker was.
Well, the funeral sermon was very good, but pison long and tiresome; and then the king he shoved in and got off some of his usual rubbage, and at last the job was through, and the undertaker begun to sneak up on the coffin with his screw-driver. I was in a sweat then, and watched him pretty keen. But he never meddled at all; just slid the lid along as soft as mush, and screwed it down tight and fast. So there I was! I didnāt know whether the money was in there or not. So, says I, sāpose somebody has hogged that bag on the sly?ānow how do I know whether to write to Mary Jane or not? Sāpose she dug him up and didnāt find nothing, what would she think of me? Blame it, I says, I might get hunted up and jailed; Iād better lay low and keep dark, and not write at all; the thingās awful mixed now; trying to better it, Iāve worsened it a hundred times, and I wish to goodness Iād just let it alone, dad fetch the whole business!
They buried him, and we come back home, and I went to watching faces againāI couldnāt help it, and I couldnāt rest easy. But nothing come of it; the faces didnāt tell me nothing.
The king he visited around in the evening, and sweetened everybody up, and made himself ever so friendly; and he give out the idea that his congregation over in England would be in a sweat about him, so he must hurry and settle up the estate right away and leave for home. He was very sorry he was so pushed, and so was everybody; they wished he could stay longer, but they said they could see it couldnāt be done. And he said of course him and William would take the girls home with them; and that pleased everybody too, because then the girls would be well fixed and amongst their own relations; and it pleased the girls, tooātickled them so they clean forgot they ever had a trouble in the world; and told him to sell out as quick as he wanted to, they would be ready. Them poor things was that glad and happy it made my heart ache to see them getting fooled and lied to so, but I didnāt see no safe way for me to chip in and change the general tune.
Well, blamed if the king didnāt bill the house and the niggers and all the property for auction straight offāsale two days after the funeral;
Comments (0)