The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain [book club suggestions TXT] 📗

it’s kind of natural to hide under the bed when you are up to anything private. They sets down then, and the king says:

“Well, what is it? And cut it middlin’ short, because it’s better for us to be down there a-whoopin’ up the mournin’ than up here givin’ ’em a chance to talk us over.”

“Well, this is it, Capet. I ain’t easy; I ain’t comfortable. That doctor lays on my mind. I wanted to know your plans. I’ve got a notion, and I think it’s a sound one.”

“What is it, duke?”

“That we better glide out of this before three in the morning, and clip it down the river with what we’ve got. Specially, seeing we got it so easy⁠—given back to us, flung at our heads, as you may say, when of course we allowed to have to steal it back. I’m for knocking off and lighting out.”

That made me feel pretty bad. About an hour or two ago it would a been a little different, but now it made me feel bad and disappointed. The king rips out and says:

“What! And not sell out the rest o’ the property? March off like a passel of fools and leave eight or nine thous’n’ dollars’ worth o’ property layin’ around jest sufferin’ to be scooped in?⁠—and all good, salable stuff, too.”

The duke he grumbled; said the bag of gold was enough, and he didn’t want to go no deeper⁠—didn’t want to rob a lot of orphans of everything they had.

“Why, how you talk!” says the king. “We shan’t rob ’em of nothing at all but jest this money. The people that buys the property is the suff’rers; because as soon ’s it’s found out ’at we didn’t own it⁠—which won’t be long after we’ve slid⁠—the sale won’t be valid, and it’ll all go back to the estate. These yer orphans’ll git their house back agin, and that’s enough for them; they’re young and spry, and k’n easy earn a livin’. They ain’t a-goin to suffer. Why, jest think⁠—there’s thous’n’s and thous’n’s that ain’t nigh so well off. Bless you, they ain’t got noth’n’ to complain of.”

Well, the king he talked him blind; so at last he give in, and said all right, but said he believed it was blamed foolishness to stay, and that doctor hanging over them. But the king says:

“Cuss the doctor! What do we k’yer for him? Hain’t we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain’t that a big enough majority in any town?”

So they got ready to go downstairs again. The duke says:

“I don’t think we put that money in a good place.”

That cheered me up. I’d begun to think I warn’t going to get a hint of no kind to help me. The king says:

“Why?”

“Because Mary Jane’ll be in mourning from this out; and first you know the nigger that does up the rooms will get an order to box these duds up and put ’em away; and do you reckon a nigger can run across money and not borrow some of it?”

“Your head’s level agin, duke,” 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 I’d 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 featherbed, 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 featherbed, and don’t turn over the straw tick only about twice a year, and so it warn’t in no danger of getting stole now.

But I knowed better. I had it out of there before they was halfway downstairs. 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 couldn’t a gone to sleep if I’d 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 hadn’t begun yet; and then I slipped down the ladder.

XXVII

I crept to their doors and listened; they was snoring. So I tiptoed along, and got downstairs all right. There warn’t 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 warn’t nobody in there but the remainders of Peter; so I shoved on by; but the front door was locked, and the key wasn’t 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 man’s face down in there, with a wet cloth over it, and his