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“Well, it ain’t no use to send things by him no more, he ain’t reliable.” Then he says: “But he done us a good turn with the spoon, anyway, without knowing it, and so we’ll go and do him one without him knowing it—stop up his rat-holes.”
There was a noble good lot of them down cellar, and it took us a whole hour, but we done the job tight and good and shipshape. Then we heard steps on the stairs, and blowed out our light and hid; and here comes the old man, with a candle in one hand and a bundle of stuff in t’other, looking as absent-minded as year bef...
“Well, for the life of me I can’t remember when I done it. I could show her now that I warn’t to blame on account of the rats. But never mind—let it go. I reckon it wouldn’t do no good.”
And so he went on a-mumbling up stairs, and then we left. He was a mighty nice old man. And always is.
Tom was a good deal bothered about what to do for a spoon, but he said we’d got to have it; so he took a think. When he had ciphered it out he told me how we was to do; then we went and waited around the spoon-basket till we see Aunt Sally coming, and then Tom went to counting the spoons and laying them out to one side...
“Why, Aunt Sally, there ain’t but nine spoons yet.”
She says:
“Go ’long to your play, and don’t bother me. I know better, I counted ’m myself.”
“Well, I’ve counted them twice, Aunty, and I can’t make but nine.”
She looked out of all patience, but of course she come to count—anybody would.
“I declare to gracious ther’ ain’t but nine!” she says. “Why, what in the world—plague take the things, I’ll count ’m again.”
So I slipped back the one I had, and when she got done counting, she says:
“Hang the troublesome rubbage, ther’s ten now!” and she looked huffy and bothered both. But Tom says:
“Why, Aunty, I don’t think there’s ten.”
“You numskull, didn’t you see me count ’m?”
“I know, but—”
“Well, I’ll count ’m again.”
So I smouched one, and they come out nine, same as the other time. Well, she was in a tearing way—just a-trembling all over, she was so mad. But she counted and counted till she got that addled she’d start to count in the basket for a spoon sometimes; and so, three times they come out right, and three times they come o...
So we put the sheet back on the line that night, and stole one out of her closet; and kept on putting it back and stealing it again for a couple of days till she didn’t know how many sheets she had any more, and she didn’t care, and warn’t a-going to bullyrag the rest of her soul out about it, and wouldn’t count them a...
So we was all right now, as to the shirt and the sheet and the spoon and the candles, by the help of the calf and the rats and the mixed-up counting; and as to the candlestick, it warn’t no consequence, it would blow over by-and-by.
But that pie was a job; we had no end of trouble with that pie. We fixed it up away down in the woods, and cooked it there; and we got it done at last, and very satisfactory, too; but not all in one day; and we had to use up three wash-pans full of flour before we got through, and we got burnt pretty much all over, in ...
And in the forenoon we took it down to the woods, but it wouldn’t go into the pie. Being made of a whole sheet, that way, there was rope enough for forty pies if we’d a wanted them, and plenty left over for soup, or sausage, or anything you choose. We could a had a whole dinner.
But we didn’t need it. All we needed was just enough for the pie, and so we throwed the rest away. We didn’t cook none of the pies in the wash-pan—afraid the solder would melt; but Uncle Silas he had a noble brass warming-pan which he thought considerable of, because it belonged to one of his ancesters with a long wood...
Nat didn’t look when we put the witch pie in Jim’s pan; and we put the three tin plates in the bottom of the pan under the vittles; and so Jim got everything all right, and as soon as he was by himself he busted into the pie and hid the rope ladder inside of his straw tick, and scratched some marks on a tin plate and t...
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Making them pens was a distressid tough job, and so was the saw; and Jim allowed the inscription was going to be the toughest of all. That’s the one which the prisoner has to scrabble on the wall. But he had to have it; Tom said he’d got to; there warn’t no case of a state prisoner not scrabbling his inscription to lea...
“Look at Lady Jane Grey,” he says; “look at Gilford Dudley; look at old Northumberland! Why, Huck, s’pose it is considerble trouble?—what you going to do?—how you going to get around it? Jim’s got to do his inscription and coat of arms. They all do.”
Jim says:
“Why, Mars Tom, I hain’t got no coat o’ arm; I hain’t got nuffn but dish yer ole shirt, en you knows I got to keep de journal on dat.”
“Oh, you don’t understand, Jim; a coat of arms is very different.”
“Well,” I says, “Jim’s right, anyway, when he says he ain’t got no coat of arms, because he hain’t.”
“I reckon I knowed that,” Tom says, “but you bet he’ll have one before he goes out of this—because he’s going out right, and there ain’t going to be no flaws in his record.”
So whilst me and Jim filed away at the pens on a brickbat apiece, Jim a-making his’n out of the brass and I making mine out of the spoon, Tom set to work to think out the coat of arms. By-and-by he said he’d struck so many good ones he didn’t hardly know which to take, but there was one which he reckoned he’d decide on...
“On the scutcheon we’ll have a bend or in the dexter base, a saltire murrey in the fess, with a dog, couchant, for common charge, and under his foot a chain embattled, for slavery, with a chevron vert in a chief engrailed, and three invected lines on a field azure, with the nombril points rampant on a dancette indented...
“Geewhillikins,” I says, “but what does the rest of it mean?”
“We ain’t got no time to bother over that,” he says; “we got to dig in like all git-out.”
“Well, anyway,” I says, “what’s some of it? What’s a fess?”
“A fess—a fess is—you don’t need to know what a fess is. I’ll show him how to make it when he gets to it.”
“Shucks, Tom,” I says, “I think you might tell a person. What’s a bar sinister?”
“Oh, I don’t know. But he’s got to have it. All the nobility does.”
That was just his way. If it didn’t suit him to explain a thing to you, he wouldn’t do it. You might pump at him a week, it wouldn’t make no difference.
He’d got all that coat of arms business fixed, so now he started in to finish up the rest of that part of the work, which was to plan out a mournful inscription—said Jim got to have one, like they all done. He made up a lot, and wrote them out on a paper, and read them off, so:
1. Here a captive heart busted.
2. Here a poor prisoner, forsook by the world and friends, fretted out his sorrowful life.
3. Here a lonely heart broke, and a worn spirit went to its rest, after thirty-seven years of solitary captivity.
4. Here, homeless and friendless, after thirty-seven years of bitter captivity, perished a noble stranger, natural son of Louis XIV.
Tom’s voice trembled whilst he was reading them, and he most broke down. When he got done he couldn’t no way make up his mind which one for Jim to scrabble on to the wall, they was all so good; but at last he allowed he would let him scrabble them all on. Jim said it would take him a year to scrabble such a lot of truc...
“Come to think, the logs ain’t a-going to do; they don’t have log walls in a dungeon: we got to dig the inscriptions into a rock. We’ll fetch a rock.”
Jim said the rock was worse than the logs; he said it would take him such a pison long time to dig them into a rock he wouldn’t ever get out. But Tom said he would let me help him do it. Then he took a look to see how me and Jim was getting along with the pens. It was most pesky tedious hard work and slow, and didn’t g...