But if they was joyful, it warn’t nothing to what I was; for it was like being born again, I was so glad to find out who I was.  Well, they froze to me for two hours; and at last, when my chin was so tired it couldn’t hardly go any more, I had told them more about my family—­I mean the Sawyer family—­than ever happened to any six Sawyer families.  And I explained all about how we blowed out a cylinder-head at the mouth of White River, and it took us three days to fix it.  Which was all right, and worked first-rate; because they didn’t know but what it would take three days to fix it.  If I’d a called it a bolthead it would a done just as well.

Now I was feeling pretty comfortable all down one side, and pretty uncomfortable all up the other.  Being Tom Sawyer was easy and comfortable, and it stayed easy and comfortable till by and by I hear a steamboat coughing along down the river.  Then I says to myself, s’pose Tom Sawyer comes down on that boat?  And s’pose he steps in here any minute, and sings out my name before I can throw him a wink to keep quiet?

Well, I couldn’t have it that way; it wouldn’t do at all.  I must go up the road and waylay him.  So I told the folks I reckoned I would go up to the town and fetch down my baggage.  The old gentleman was for going along with me, but I said no, I could drive the horse myself, and I druther he wouldn’t take no trouble about me.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

So I started for town in the wagon, and when I was half-way I see a wagon coming, and sure enough it was Tom Sawyer, and I stopped and waited till he come along.  I says “Hold on!” and it stopped alongside, and his mouth opened up like a trunk, and stayed so; and he swallowed two or three times like a person that’s got a dry throat, and then says: 

“I hain’t ever done you no harm.  You know that.  So, then, what you want to come back and ha’nt me for?”

I says: 

“I hain’t come back—­I hain’t been gone.”

When he heard my voice it righted him up some, but he warn’t quite satisfied yet.  He says: 

“Don’t you play nothing on me, because I wouldn’t on you.  Honest injun, you ain’t a ghost?”

“Honest injun, I ain’t,” I says.

“Well—­I—­I—­well, that ought to settle it, of course; but I can’t somehow seem to understand it no way.  Looky here, warn’t you ever murdered at all?”

“No.  I warn’t ever murdered at all—­I played it on them.  You come in here and feel of me if you don’t believe me.”

So he done it; and it satisfied him; and he was that glad to see me again he didn’t know what to do.  And he wanted to know all about it right off, because it was a grand adventure, and mysterious, and so it hit him where he lived.  But I said, leave it alone till by and by; and told his driver to wait, and we drove off a little piece, and I told him the kind of a fix I was in, and what did he reckon we better do?  He said, let him alone a minute, and don’t disturb him.  So he thought and thought, and pretty soon he says: