I thought all this over for two or three days, and
then I reckoned I would see if there was anything
in it. I got an old tin lamp and an iron ring,
and went out in the woods and rubbed and rubbed till
I sweat like an Injun, calculating to build a palace
and sell it; but it warn’t no use, none of the
genies come. So then I judged that all that stuff
was only just one of Tom Sawyer’s lies.
I reckoned he believed in the A-rabs and the elephants,
but as for me I think different. It had all the
marks of a Sunday-school.
Well, three or four months run along, and it
was well into the winter now. I had been to school
most all the time and could spell and read and write
just a little, and could say the multiplication table
up to six times seven is thirty-five, and I don’t
reckon I could ever get any further than that if I
was to live forever. I don’t take no stock
in mathematics, anyway.
At first I hated the school, but by and by I got so
I could stand it. Whenever I got uncommon tired
I played hookey, and the hiding I got next day done
me good and cheered me up. So the longer I went
to school the easier it got to be. I was getting
sort of used to the widow’s ways, too, and they
warn’t so raspy on me. Living in a house
and sleeping in a bed pulled on me pretty tight mostly,
but before the cold weather I used to slide out and
sleep in the woods sometimes, and so that was a rest
to me. I liked the old ways best, but I was
getting so I liked the new ones, too, a little bit.
The widow said I was coming along slow but sure, and
doing very satisfactory. She said she warn’t
ashamed of me.
One morning I happened to turn over the salt-cellar
at breakfast. I reached for some of it as quick
as I could to throw over my left shoulder and keep
off the bad luck, but Miss Watson was in ahead of me,
and crossed me off. She says, “Take your
hands away, Huckleberry; what a mess you are always
making!” The widow put in a good word for me,
but that warn’t going to keep off the bad luck,
I knowed that well enough. I started out, after
breakfast, feeling worried and shaky, and wondering
where it was going to fall on me, and what it was going
to be. There is ways to keep off some kinds
of bad luck, but this wasn’t one of them kind;
so I never tried to do anything, but just poked along
low-spirited and on the watch-out.
I went down to the front garden and clumb over the
stile where you go through the high board fence.
There was an inch of new snow on the ground, and
I seen somebody’s tracks. They had come
up from the quarry and stood around the stile a while,
and then went on around the garden fence. It
was funny they hadn’t come in, after standing
around so. I couldn’t make it out.
It was very curious, somehow. I was going to
follow around, but I stooped down to look at the tracks
first. I didn’t notice anything at first,
but next I did. There was a cross in the left
boot-heel made with big nails, to keep off the devil.
