So we poked along back home, and I warn’t feeling
so brash as I was before, but kind of ornery, and
humble, and to blame, somehow—though I
hadn’t done nothing. But that’s always
the way; it don’t make no difference whether
you do right or wrong, a person’s conscience
ain’t got no sense, and just goes for him anyway.
If I had a yaller dog that didn’t know no more
than a person’s conscience does I would pison
him. It takes up more room than all the rest
of a person’s insides, and yet ain’t no
good, nohow. Tom Sawyer he says the same.
We stopped talking, and got to thinking.
By and by Tom says:
“Looky here, Huck, what fools we are to not
think of it before! I bet I know where Jim is.”
“No! Where?”
“In that hut down by the ash-hopper. Why,
looky here. When we was at dinner, didn’t
you see a nigger man go in there with some vittles?”
“Yes.”
“What did you think the vittles was for?”
“For a dog.”
“So ’d I. Well, it wasn’t for a
dog.”
“Why?”
“Because part of it was watermelon.”
“So it was—I noticed it. Well,
it does beat all that I never thought about a dog
not eating watermelon. It shows how a body can
see and don’t see at the same time.”
“Well, the nigger unlocked the padlock when
he went in, and he locked it again when he came out.
He fetched uncle a key about the time we got up from
table—same key, I bet. Watermelon
shows man, lock shows prisoner; and it ain’t
likely there’s two prisoners on such a little
plantation, and where the people’s all so kind
and good. Jim’s the prisoner. All
right—I’m glad we found it out detective
fashion; I wouldn’t give shucks for any other
way. Now you work your mind, and study out a
plan to steal Jim, and I will study out one, too;
and we’ll take the one we like the best.”
What a head for just a boy to have! If I had
Tom Sawyer’s head I wouldn’t trade it
off to be a duke, nor mate of a steamboat, nor clown
in a circus, nor nothing I can think of. I went
to thinking out a plan, but only just to be doing
something; I knowed very well where the right plan
was going to come from. Pretty soon Tom says:
“Ready?”
“Yes,” I says.
“All right—bring it out.”
“My plan is this,” I says. “We
can easy find out if it’s Jim in there.
Then get up my canoe to-morrow night, and fetch my
raft over from the island. Then the first dark
night that comes steal the key out of the old man’s
britches after he goes to bed, and shove off down the
river on the raft with Jim, hiding daytimes and running
nights, the way me and Jim used to do before.
Wouldn’t that plan work?”
“Work? Why, cert’nly it would
work, like rats a-fighting. But it’s too
blame’ simple; there ain’t nothing to
it. What’s the good of a plan that ain’t
no more trouble than that? It’s as mild
as goose-milk. Why, Huck, it wouldn’t
make no more talk than breaking into a soap factory.”
