“That ain’t got anything to _do_ with it, Huck Finn.All _he’s_ got to do is to write on the plate and throw it out.You don’t _have_ to be able to read it. Why,half the time you can’t read anything a prisoner writes on a tin plate, or anywhere else.”
“Well, then, what’s the sense in wasting the plates?”
“Why, blame it all, it ain’t the _prisoner’s_ plates.”
“But it’s _somebody’s_ plates, ain’t it?”
“Well, spos’n it is?What does the _prisoner_ care whose—”
He broke off there, because we heard the breakfast-horn blowing. So we cleared out for the house.
Along during the morning I borrowed a sheet and a white shirt off of the clothes-line;and I found an old sack and put them in it, and we went down and got the fox-fire,and put that in too. I called it borrowing, because that was what pap always called it;but Tom said it warn’t borrowing, it was stealing. He said we was representing prisoners;and prisoners don’t care how they get a thing so they get it, and nobody don’t blame them for it,either. It ain’t no crime in a prisoner to steal the thing he needs to get away with, Tom said;it’s his right; and so, as long as we was representing a prisoner,we had a perfect right to steal anything on this place we had the least use for to get ourselves out of prison with.He said if we warn’t prisoners it would be a very different thing, and nobody but a mean,ornery person would steal when he warn’t a prisoner.So we allowed we would steal everything there was that come handy. And yet he made a mighty fuss,one day, after that, when I stole a watermelon out of the nigger-patch and eat it;and he made me go and give the niggers a dime without telling them what it was for.Tom said that what he meant was, we could steal anything we _needed_. Well, I says,I needed the watermelon. But he said I didn’t need it to get out of prison with;there’s where the difference was. He said if I’d a wanted it to hide a knife in,and smuggle it to Jim to kill the seneskal with, it would a been all right. So I let it go at that,though I couldn’t see no advantage in my representing a prisoner if I got to set down and chaw over a lot of gold-leaf distinctions like that every time I see a chance to hog a watermelon.
Well, as I was saying, we waited that morning till everybody was settled down to business,and nobody in sight around the yard; then Tom he carried the sack into the lean-to whilst I stood off a piece to keep watch.By-and-by he come out, and we went and set down on the woodpile to talk. He says:
“Everything’s all right now except tools; and that’s easy fixed.”
“Tools?” I says.
“Yes.”
“Tools for what?”
“Why, to dig with. We ain’t a-going to _gnaw_ him out, are we?”
“Ain’t them old crippled picks and things in there good enough to dig a nigger out with?” I says.
He turns on me, looking pitying enough to make a body cry, and says:
“Huck Finn, did you _ever_ hear of a prisoner having picks and shovels,and all the modern conveniences in his wardrobe to dig himself out with?Now I want to ask you—if you got any reasonableness in you at all—what kind of a show would _that_ give him to be a hero?Why, they might as well lend him the key and done with it. Picks and shovels—why, they wouldn’t furnish ’em to a king.”
“Well, then,” I says, “if we don’t want the picks and shovels, what do we want?”
“A couple of case-knives.”
“To dig the foundations out from under that cabin with?”
“Yes.”
“Confound it, it’s foolish, Tom.”
“It don’t make no difference how foolish it is, it’s the _right_ way—and it’s the regular way.And there ain’t no _other_ way, that ever _I_ heard of,and I’ve read all the books that gives any information about these things.They always dig out with a case-knife—and not through dirt, mind you;generly it’s through solid rock. And it takes them weeks and weeks and weeks,and for ever and ever. Why, look at one of them prisoners in the bottom dungeon of the Castle Deef,in the harbor of Marseilles, that dug himself out that way; how long was _he_ at it, you reckon?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, guess.”
“I don’t know. A month and a half.”
“_Thirty-seven year_—and he come out in China. _That’s_ the kind.I wish the bottom of _this_ fortress was solid rock.”
“_Jim_ don’t know nobody in China.”
“What’s _that_ got to do with it?Neither did that other fellow. But you’re always a-wandering off on a side issue. Why can’t you stick to the main point?”
“All right—_I_ don’t care where he comes out, so he _comes_ out; and Jim don’t, either, I reckon.But there’s one thing, anyway—Jim’s too old to be dug out with a case-knife. He won’t last.”
“Yes he will _last_, too. You don’t reckon it’s going to take thirty-seven years to dig out through a _dirt_ foundation, do you?”
“How long will it take, Tom?”
“Well, we can’t resk being as long as we ought to,because it mayn’t take very long for Uncle Silas to hear from down there by New Orleans.He’ll hear Jim ain’t from there. Then his next move will be to advertise Jim,or something like that. So we can’t resk being as long digging him out as we ought to.By rights I reckon we ought to be a couple of years; but we can’t. Things being so uncertain,what I recommend is this: that we really dig right in, as quick as we can; and after that,we can _let on_, to ourselves, that we was at it thirty-seven years.Then we can snatch him out and rush him away the first time there’s an alarm. Yes, I reckon that’ll be the best way.”
“Now, there’s _sense_ in that,” I says. “Letting on don’t cost nothing; letting on ain’t no trouble;and if it’s any object, I don’t mind letting on we was at it a hundred and fifty year.It wouldn’t strain me none, after I got my hand in. So I’ll mosey along now, and smouch a couple of case-knives.”
“Smouch three,” he says; “we want one to make a saw out of.”
“Tom, if it ain’t unregular and irreligious to sejest it,” I says,“there’s an old rusty saw-blade around yonder sticking under the weather-boarding behind the smoke-house. ”
He looked kind of weary and discouraged-like, and says:
“It ain’t no use to try to learn you nothing, Huck. Run along and smouch the knives—three of them. ” So I done it.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
As soon as we reckoned everybody was asleep that night we went down the lightning-rod,and shut ourselves up in the lean-to, and got out our pile of fox-fire, and went to work.We cleared everything out of the way, about four or five foot along the middle of the bottom log.Tom said he was right behind Jim’s bed now, and we’d dig in under it,and when we got through there couldn’t nobody in the cabin ever know there was any hole there,because Jim’s counter-pin hung down most to the ground,and you’d have to raise it up and look under to see the hole.So we dug and dug with the case-knives till most midnight; and then we was dog-tired,and our hands was blistered, and yet you couldn’t see we’d done anything hardly. At last I says:
“This ain’t no thirty-seven year job; this is a thirty-eight year job, Tom Sawyer.”
He never said nothing. But he sighed, and pretty soon he stopped digging,and then for a good little while I knowed that he was thinking. Then he says:
“It ain’t no use, Huck, it ain’t a-going to work. If we was prisoners it would,because then we’d have as many years as we wanted, and no hurry;and we wouldn’t get but a few minutes to dig, every day, while they was changing watches,and so our hands wouldn’t get blistered, and we could keep it up right along, year in and year out,and do it right, and the way it ought to be done. But _we_ can’t fool along; we got to rush;we ain’t got no time to spare. If we was to put in another night this way we’d have to knock off for a week to let our hands get well—couldn’t touch a case-knife with them sooner.”
“Well, then, what we going to do, Tom?”
“I’ll tell you. It ain’t right, and it ain’t moral, and I wouldn’t like it to get out;but there ain’t only just the one way: we got to dig him out with the picks, and _let on_ it’s case-knives.”
“_Now_ you’re _talking!_” I says; “your head gets leveler and leveler all the time, Tom Sawyer,” I says.“Picks is the thing, moral or no moral; and as for me, I don’t care shucks for the morality of it,nohow. When I start in to steal a nigger, or a watermelon, or a Sunday-school book,I ain’t no ways particular how it’s done so it’s done. What I want is my nigger;or what I want is my watermelon; or what I want is my Sunday-school book;and if a pick’s the handiest thing, that’s the thing I’m a-going to dig that nigger or that watermelon or that Sunday-school book out with;and I don’t give a dead rat what the authorities thinks about it nuther.”
“Well,” he says, “there’s excuse for picks and letting-on in a case like this; if it warn’t so,I wouldn’t approve of it, nor I wouldn’t stand by and see the rules broke—because right is right,and wrong is wrong, and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when he ain’t ignorant and knows better.It might answer for _you_ to dig Jim out with a pick, _without_ any letting on,because you don’t know no better; but it wouldn’t for me, because I do know better. Gimme a case-knife.”
He had his own by him, but I handed him mine. He flung it down, and says:
“Gimme a _case-knife_.”
I didn’t know just what to do—but then I thought. I scratched around amongst the old tools,and got a pickaxe and give it to him, and he took it and went to work, and never said a word.
He was always just that particular. Full of principle.
So then I got a shovel, and then we picked and shoveled, turn about, and made the fur fly.We stuck to it about a half an hour, which was as long as we could stand up;but we had a good deal of a hole to show for it.When I got up stairs I looked out at the window and see Tom doing his level best with the lightning-rod,but he couldn’t come it, his hands was so sore. At last he says:
“It ain’t no use, it can’t be done. What you reckon I better do?Can’t you think of no way?”
“Yes,” I says, “but I reckon it ain’t regular. Come up the stairs, and let on it’s a lightning-rod.”
So he done it.
Next day Tom stole a pewter spoon and a brass candlestick in the house,for to make some pens for Jim out of, and six tallow candles;and I hung around the nigger cabins and laid for a chance, and stole three tin plates.Tom says it wasn’t enough; but I said nobody wouldn’t ever see the plates that Jim throwed out,because they’d fall in the dog-fennel and jimpson weeds under the window-hole—then we could tote them back and he could use them over again. So Tom was satisfied. Then he says:
“Now, the thing to study out is, how to get the things to Jim.”
“Take them in through the hole,” I says, “when we get it done.”
He only just looked scornful, and said something about nobody ever heard of such an idiotic idea,and then he went to studying. By-and-by he said he had ciphered out two or three ways,but there warn’t no need to decide on any of them yet. Said we’d got to post Jim first.
That night we went down the lightning-rod a little after ten, and took one of the candles along,and listened under the window-hole, and heard Jim snoring; so we pitched it in,and it didn’t wake him. Then we whirled in with the pick and shovel,and in about two hours and a half the job was done. We crept in under Jim’s bed and into the cabin,and pawed around and found the candle and lit it, and stood over Jim awhile,and found him looking hearty and healthy, and then we woke him up gentle and gradual.He was so glad to see us he most cried; and called us honey,and all the pet names he could think of;and was for having us hunt up a cold-chisel to cut the chain off of his leg with right away,and clearing out without losing any time. But Tom he showed him how unregular it would be,and set down and told him all about our plans,and how we could alter them in a minute any time there was an alarm;and not to be the least afraid, because we would see he got away, _sure_.So Jim he said it was all right, and we set there and talked over old times awhile,and then Tom asked a lot of questions, and when Jim told him Uncle Silas come in every day or two to pray with him,and Aunt Sally come in to see if he was comfortable and had plenty to eat,and both of them was kind as they could be, Tom says:
“_Now_ I know how to fix it. We’ll send you some things by them.”
I said, “Don’t do nothing of the kind; it’s one of the most jackass ideas I ever struck;” but he never paid no attention to me; went right on. It was his way when he’d got his plans set.
So he told Jim how we’d have to smuggle in the rope-ladder pie and other large things by Nat,the nigger that fed him, and he must be on the lookout, and not be surprised,and not let Nat see him open them; and we would put small things in uncle’s coat-pockets and he must steal them out;and we would tie things to aunt’s apron-strings or put them in her apron-pocket,if we got a chance; and told him what they would be and what they was for.And told him how to keep a journal on the shirt with his blood, and all that.He told him everything. Jim he couldn’t see no sense in the most of it,but he allowed we was white folks and knowed better than him; so he was satisfied,and said he would do it all just as Tom said.
Jim had plenty corn-cob pipes and tobacco; so we had a right down good sociable time;then we crawled out through the hole, and so home to bed,with hands that looked like they’d been chawed. Tom was in high spirits.He said it was the best fun he ever had in his life, and the most intellectural;and said if he only could see his way to it we would keep it up all the rest of our lives and leave Jim to our children to get out;for he believed Jim would come to like it better and better the more he got used to it.He said that in that way it could be strung out to as much as eighty year,and would be the best time on record. And he said it would make us all celebrated that had a hand in it.
In the morning we went out to the woodpile and chopped up the brass candlestick into handy sizes,and Tom put them and the pewter spoon in his pocket. Then we went to the nigger cabins,and while I got Nat’s notice off, Tom shoved a piece of candlestick into the middle of a corn-pone that was in Jim’s pan,and we went along with Nat to see how it would work, and it just worked noble;when Jim bit into it it most mashed all his teeth out;and there warn’t ever anything could a worked better. Tom said so himself.Jim he never let on but what it was only just a piece of rock or something like that that’s always getting into bread,you know; but after that he never bit into nothing but what he jabbed his fork into it in three or four places first.
And whilst we was a-standing there in the dimmish light,here comes a couple of the hounds bulging in from under Jim’s bed;and they kept on piling in till there was eleven of them,and there warn’t hardly room in there to get your breath. By jings, we forgot to fasten that lean-to door!The nigger Nat he only just hollered “Witches” once,and keeled over on to the floor amongst the dogs, and begun to groan like he was dying.Tom jerked the door open and flung out a slab of Jim’s meat, and the dogs went for it,and in two seconds he was out himself and back again and shut the door,and I knowed he’d fixed the other door too. Then he went to work on the nigger,coaxing him and petting him, and asking him if he’d been imagining he saw something again.He raised up, and blinked his eyes around, and says:
“Mars Sid, you’ll say I’s a fool, but if I didn’t b’lieve I see most a million dogs, er devils,er some’n, I wisht I may die right heah in dese tracks. I did, mos’ sholy. Mars Sid,I _felt_ um—I _felt_ um, sah; dey was all over me. Dad fetch it,I jis’ wisht I could git my han’s on one er dem witches jis’ wunst—on’y jis’ wunst—it’s all _I_’d ast.But mos’ly I wisht dey’d lemme ’lone, I does.”
Tom says:
“Well, I tell you what _I_ think. What makes them come here just at this runaway nigger’s breakfast-time?It’s because they’re hungry; that’s the reason. You make them a witch pie; that’s the thing for _you_ to do.”
“But my lan’, Mars Sid, how’s _I_ gwyne to make ’m a witch pie?I doan’ know how to make it. I hain’t ever hearn er sich a thing b’fo’.”
“Well, then, I’ll have to make it myself.”
“Will you do it, honey?—will you?I’ll wusshup de groun’ und’ yo’ foot, I will!”
“All right, I’ll do it, seeing it’s you,and you’ve been good to us and showed us the runaway nigger. But you got to be mighty careful.When we come around, you turn your back; and then whatever we’ve put in the pan,don’t you let on you see it at all. And don’t you look when Jim unloads the pan—something might happen,I don’t know what. And above all, don’t you _handle_ the witch-things.”
“_Hannel_ ’m, Mars Sid?What _is_ you a-talkin’ ’bout?I wouldn’ lay de weight er my finger on um, not f’r ten hund’d thous’n billion dollars, I wouldn’t.”
CHAPTER XXXVII.
That was all fixed. So then we went away and went to the rubbage-pile in the back yard,where they keep the old boots, and rags, and pieces of bottles, and wore-out tin things,and all such truck, and scratched around and found an old tin washpan,and stopped up the holes as well as we could, to bake the pie in,and took it down cellar and stole it full of flour and started for breakfast,and found a couple of shingle-nails that Tom said would be handy for a prisoner to scrabble his name and sorrows on the dungeon walls with,and dropped one of them in Aunt Sally’s apron-pocket which was hanging on a chair,and t’other we stuck in the band of Uncle Silas’s hat, which was on the bureau,because we heard the children say their pa and ma was going to the runaway nigger’s house this morning,and then went to breakfast, and Tom dropped the pewter spoon in Uncle Silas’s coat-pocket,and Aunt Sally wasn’t come yet, so we had to wait a little while.
And when she come she was hot and red and cross, and couldn’t hardly wait for the blessing;and then she went to sluicing out coffee with one hand and cracking the handiest child’s head with her thimble with the other, and says:
“I’ve hunted high and I’ve hunted low, and it does beat all what _has_ become of your other shirt.”
My heart fell down amongst my lungs and livers and things,and a hard piece of corn-crust started down my throat after it and got met on the road with a cough,and was shot across the table, and took one of the children in the eye and curled him up like a fishing-worm,and let a cry out of him the size of a warwhoop, and Tom he turned kinder blue around the gills,and it all amounted to a considerable state of things for about a quarter of a minute or as much as that,and I would a sold out for half price if there was a bidder.But after that we was all right again—it was the sudden surprise of it that knocked us so kind of cold. Uncle Silas he says:
“It’s most uncommon curious, I can’t understand it. I know perfectly well I took it _off_, because—”
“Because you hain’t got but one _on_. Just _listen_ at the man!_I_ know you took it off, and know it by a better way than your wool-gethering memory, too,because it was on the clo’s-line yesterday—I see it there myself. But it’s gone,that’s the long and the short of it, and you’ll just have to change to a red flann’l one till I can get time to make a new one.And it’ll be the third I’ve made in two years.It just keeps a body on the jump to keep you in shirts;and whatever you do manage to _do_ with ’m all is more’n _I_ can make out.A body ’d think you _would_ learn to take some sort of care of ’em at your time of life.”
“I know it, Sally, and I do try all I can. But it oughtn’t to be altogether my fault, because,you know, I don’t see them nor have nothing to do with them except when they’re on me;and I don’t believe I’ve ever lost one of them _off_ of me.”
“Well, it ain’t _your_ fault if you haven’t, Silas; you’d a done it if you could, I reckon.And the shirt ain’t all that’s gone, nuther. Ther’s a spoon gone; and _that_ ain’t all.There was ten, and now ther’s only nine. The calf got the shirt, I reckon,but the calf never took the spoon, _that’s_ certain.”
“Why, what else is gone, Sally?”
“Ther’s six _candles_ gone—that’s what. The rats could a got the candles, and I reckon they did;I wonder they don’t walk off with the whole place,the way you’re always going to stop their holes and don’t do it;and if they warn’t fools they’d sleep in your hair, Silas—_you’d_ never find it out;but you can’t lay the _spoon_ on the rats, and that I _know_.”
“Well, Sally, I’m in fault, and I acknowledge it; I’ve been remiss;but I won’t let to-morrow go by without stopping up them holes.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t hurry; next year’ll do. Matilda Angelina Araminta _Phelps!_”
Whack comes the thimble, and the child snatches her claws out of the sugar-bowl without fooling around any.Just then the nigger woman steps on to the passage, and says:
“Missus, dey’s a sheet gone.”
“A _sheet_ gone!Well, for the land’s sake!”
“I’ll stop up them holes _to-day_,” says Uncle Silas, looking sorrowful.
“Oh, _do_ shet up!—s’pose the rats took the _sheet?Where’s_ it gone, Lize?”
“Clah to goodness I hain’t no notion, Miss’ Sally. She wuz on de clo’sline yistiddy,but she done gone: she ain’ dah no mo’ now.”
“I reckon the world _is_ coming to an end. I _never_ see the beat of it in all my born days.A shirt, and a sheet, and a spoon, and six can—”
“Missus,” comes a young yaller wench, “dey’s a brass cannelstick miss’n.”
“Cler out from here, you hussy, er I’ll take a skillet to ye!”
Well, she was just a-biling. I begun to lay for a chance;I reckoned I would sneak out and go for the woods till the weather moderated.She kept a-raging right along, running her insurrection all by herself,and everybody else mighty meek and quiet; and at last Uncle Silas, looking kind of foolish,fishes up that spoon out of his pocket. She stopped, with her mouth open and her hands up;and as for me, I wished I was in Jeruslem or somewheres. But not long, because she says:
“It’s _just_ as I expected. So you had it in your pocket all the time;and like as not you’ve got the other things there, too. How’d it get there?”
“I reely don’t know, Sally,” he says, kind of apologizing, “or you know I would tell.I was a-studying over my text in Acts Seventeen before breakfast, and I reckon I put it in there,not noticing, meaning to put my Testament in, and it must be so, because my Testament ain’t in;but I’ll go and see; and if the Testament is where I had it, I’ll know I didn’t put it in,and that will show that I laid the Testament down and took up the spoon, and—”
“Oh, for the land’s sake!Give a body a rest!Go ’long now, the whole kit and biling of ye;and don’t come nigh me again till I’ve got back my peace of mind.”
_I’d_ a heard her if she’d a said it to herself, let alone speaking it out;and I’d a got up and obeyed her if I’d a been dead.As we was passing through the setting-room the old man he took up his hat,and the shingle-nail fell out on the floor,and he just merely picked it up and laid it on the mantel-shelf, and never said nothing,and went out. Tom see him do it, and remembered about the spoon, and says:
“Well, it ain’t no use to send things by _him_ no more, he ain’t reliable.” Then he says:“But he done us a good turn with the spoon, anyway, without knowing it,and so we’ll go and do him one without _him_ knowing it—stop up his rat-holes.”
There was a noble good lot of them down cellar, and it took us a whole hour,but we done the job tight and good and shipshape. Then we heard steps on the stairs,and blowed out our light and hid; and here comes the old man,with a candle in one hand and a bundle of stuff in t’other,looking as absent-minded as year before last. He went a mooning around,first to one rat-hole and then another, till he’d been to them all.Then he stood about five minutes, picking tallow-drip off of his candle and thinking.Then he turns off slow and dreamy towards the stairs, saying:
“Well, for the life of me I can’t remember when I done it.I could show her now that I warn’t to blame on account of the rats. But never mind—let it go. I reckon it wouldn’t do no good.”
And so he went on a-mumbling up stairs, and then we left. He was a mighty nice old man. And always is.
Tom was a good deal bothered about what to do for a spoon, but he said we’d got to have it;so he took a think. When he had ciphered it out he told me how we was to do;then we went and waited around the spoon-basket till we see Aunt Sally coming,and then Tom went to counting the spoons and laying them out to one side,and I slid one of them up my sleeve, and Tom says:
“Why, Aunt Sally, there ain’t but nine spoons _yet_.”
She says:
“Go ’long to your play, and don’t bother me. I know better, I counted’m myself.”
“Well, I’ve counted them twice, Aunty, and _I_ can’t make but nine.”
She looked out of all patience, but of course she come to count—anybody would.
“I declare to gracious ther’ _ain’t_ but nine!” she says. “Why, what in the world—plague _take_ the things, I’ll count ’m again.”
So I slipped back the one I had, and when she got done counting, she says:
“Hang the troublesome rubbage, ther’s _ten_ now!” and she looked huffy and bothered both. But Tom says:
“Why, Aunty, _I_ don’t think there’s ten.”
“You numskull, didn’t you see me _count_ ’m?”
“I know, but—”
“Well, I’ll count ’m _again_.”
So I smouched one, and they come out nine, same as the other time. Well,she _was_ in a tearing way—just a-trembling all over, she was so mad.But she counted and counted till she got that addled she’d start to count in the _basket_ for a spoon sometimes;and so, three times they come out right, and three times they come out wrong.Then she grabbed up the basket and slammed it across the house and knocked the cat galley-west;and she said cle’r out and let her have some peace,and if we come bothering around her again betwixt that and dinner she’d skin us.So we had the odd spoon, and dropped it in her apron-pocket whilst she was a-giving us our sailing orders,and Jim got it all right, along with her shingle nail, before noon.We was very well satisfied with this business,and Tom allowed it was worth twice the trouble it took,because he said _now_ she couldn’t ever count them spoons twice alike again to save her life;and wouldn’t believe she’d counted them right if she _did;_ and said that after she’d about counted her head off for the next three days he judged she’d give it up and offer to kill anybody that wanted her to ever count them any more.
So we put the sheet back on the line that night, and stole one out of her closet;and kept on putting it back and stealing it again for a couple of days till she didn’t know how many sheets she had any more,and she didn’t _care_, and warn’t a-going to bullyrag the rest of her soul out about it,and wouldn’t count them again not to save her life; she druther die first.
So we was all right now, as to the shirt and the sheet and the spoon and the candles,by the help of the calf and the rats and the mixed-up counting; and as to the candlestick,it warn’t no consequence, it would blow over by-and-by.
But that pie was a job; we had no end of trouble with that pie.We fixed it up away down in the woods, and cooked it there; and we got it done at last,and very satisfactory, too; but not all in one day;and we had to use up three wash-pans full of flour before we got through,and we got burnt pretty much all over, in places, and eyes put out with the smoke; because,you see, we didn’t want nothing but a crust, and we couldn’t prop it up right,and she would always cave in. But of course we thought of the right way at last—which was to cook the ladder,too, in the pie. So then we laid in with Jim the second night,and tore up the sheet all in little strings and twisted them together,and long before daylight we had a lovely rope that you could a hung a person with.We let on it took nine months to make it.
And in the forenoon we took it down to the woods, but it wouldn’t go into the pie.Being made of a whole sheet, that way, there was rope enough for forty pies if we’d a wanted them,and plenty left over for soup, or sausage, or anything you choose. We could a had a whole dinner.
But we didn’t need it. All we needed was just enough for the pie, and so we throwed the rest away.We didn’t cook none of the pies in the wash-pan—afraid the solder would melt;but Uncle Silas he had a noble brass warming-pan which he thought considerable of,because it belonged to one of his ancesters with a long wooden handle that come over from England with William the Conqueror in the _Mayflower_ or one of them early ships and was hid away up garret with a lot of other old pots and things that was valuable, not on account of being any account, because they warn’t, but on account of them being relicts, you know, and we snaked her out, private, and took her down there, but she failed on the first pies, because we didn’t know how, but she come up smiling on the last one. We took and lined her with dough, and set her in the coals, and loaded her up with rag rope, and put on a dough roof, and shut down the lid, and put hot embers on top, and stood off five foot, with the long handle, cool and comfortable, and in fifteen minutes she turned out a pie that was a satisfaction to look at. But the person that et it would want to fetch a couple of kags of toothpicks along, for if that rope ladder wouldn’t cramp him down to business I don’t know nothing what I’m talking about, and lay him in enough stomach-ache to last him till next time, too.