The boys and girls was all glad to see us again, and
we had a real good time all through recess.
Coming to school the Henderson boys had come across
the new deef and dummy and told the rest; so all the
scholars was chuck full of him and couldn’t
talk about anything else, and was in a sweat to get
a sight of him because they hadn’t ever seen
a deef and dummy in their lives, and it made a powerful
excitement.
Tom said it was tough to have to keep mum now; said
we would be heroes if we could come out and tell all
we knowed; but after all, it was still more heroic
to keep mum, there warn’t two boys in a million
could do it. That was Tom Sawyer’s idea
about it, and reckoned there warn’t anybody
could better it.
In the next two or three days Dummy he got to
be powerful popular. He went associating around
with the neighbors, and they made much of him, and
was proud to have such a rattling curiosity among them.
They had him to breakfast, they had him to dinner,
they had him to supper; they kept him loaded up with
hog and hominy, and warn’t ever tired staring
at him and wondering over him, and wishing they knowed
more about him, he was so uncommon and romantic.
His signs warn’t no good; people couldn’t
understand them and he prob’ly couldn’t
himself, but he done a sight of goo-gooing, and so
everybody was satisfied, and admired to hear him go
it. He toted a piece of slate around, and a pencil;
and people wrote questions on it and he wrote answers;
but there warn’t anybody could read his writing
but Brace Dunlap. Brace said he couldn’t
read it very good, but he could manage to dig out
the meaning most of the time. He said Dummy said
he belonged away off somers and used to be well off,
but got busted by swindlers which he had trusted,
and was poor now, and hadn’t any way to make
a living.
Everybody praised Brace Dunlap for being so good to
that stranger. He let him have a little log-cabin
all to himself, and had his niggers take care of it,
and fetch him all the vittles he wanted.
Dummy was at our house some, because old Uncle Silas
was so afflicted himself, these days, that anybody
else that was afflicted was a comfort to him.
Me and Tom didn’t let on that we had knowed
him before, and he didn’t let on that he had
knowed us before. The family talked their troubles
out before him the same as if he wasn’t there,
but we reckoned it wasn’t any harm for him to
hear what they said. Generly he didn’t seem
to notice, but sometimes he did.
Well, two or three days went along, and everybody
got to getting uneasy about Jubiter Dunlap.
Everybody was asking everybody if they had any idea
what had become of him. No, they hadn’t,
they said: and they shook their heads and said
there was something powerful strange about it.
Another and another day went by; then there was a report
got around that praps he was murdered. You bet
