heard considerable about these goings-on down in Hookerville, but we don’t know who ’twas that killed Huck Finn.”

“Well, I reckon there’s a right smart chance of people here that ’d like to know who killed him. Some think old Finn done it himself.”

“No — is that so?”

“Most everybody thought it at first. He’ll never know how nigh he come to getting lynched. But before night they changed around and judged it was done by a runaway nigger named Jim.”

“Why he — “

I stopped.

I reckoned I better keep still. She run on, and never noticed I had put in at all: