The next day the doctors were back; Tom had relapsed.  The three weeks he spent on his back this time seemed an entire age.  When he got abroad at last he was hardly grateful that he had been spared, remembering how lonely was his estate, how companionless and forlorn he was.  He drifted listlessly down the street and found Jim Hollis acting as judge in a juvenile court that was trying a cat for murder, in the presence of her victim, a bird.  He found Joe Harper and Huck Finn up an alley eating a stolen melon.  Poor lads! they—­like Tom—­had suffered a relapse.

CHAPTER XXIII

At last the sleepy atmosphere was stirred—­and vigorously:  the murder trial came on in the court.  It became the absorbing topic of village talk immediately.  Tom could not get away from it.  Every reference to the murder sent a shudder to his heart, for his troubled conscience and fears almost persuaded him that these remarks were put forth in his hearing as “feelers”; he did not see how he could be suspected of knowing anything about the murder, but still he could not be comfortable in the midst of this gossip.  It kept him in a cold shiver all the time.  He took Huck to a lonely place to have a talk with him.  It would be some relief to unseal his tongue for a little while; to divide his burden of distress with another sufferer.  Moreover, he wanted to assure himself that Huck had remained discreet.

“Huck, have you ever told anybody about—­that?”

“’Bout what?”

“You know what.”

“Oh—­’course I haven’t.”

“Never a word?”

“Never a solitary word, so help me.  What makes you ask?”

“Well, I was afeard.”

“Why, Tom Sawyer, we wouldn’t be alive two days if that got found out.  You know that.”

Tom felt more comfortable.  After a pause: 

“Huck, they couldn’t anybody get you to tell, could they?”

“Get me to tell?  Why, if I wanted that half-breed devil to drownd me they could get me to tell.  They ain’t no different way.”

“Well, that’s all right, then.  I reckon we’re safe as long as we keep mum.  But let’s swear again, anyway.  It’s more surer.”

“I’m agreed.”

So they swore again with dread solemnities.

“What is the talk around, Huck?  I’ve heard a power of it.”

“Talk?  Well, it’s just Muff Potter, Muff Potter, Muff Potter all the time.  It keeps me in a sweat, constant, so’s I want to hide som’ers.”

“That’s just the same way they go on round me.  I reckon he’s a goner.  Don’t you feel sorry for him, sometimes?”

“Most always—­most always.  He ain’t no account; but then he hain’t ever done anything to hurt anybody.  Just fishes a little, to get money to get drunk on—­and loafs around considerable; but lord, we all do that—­leastways most of us—­preachers and such like.  But he’s kind of good—­he give me half a fish, once, when there warn’t enough for two; and lots of times he’s kind of stood by me when I was out of luck.”