Well, I let go all holts then, like I was shot. It was the most astonishing speech I ever heard — and I’m bound to say Tom Sawyer fell considerable in my estimation. Only I couldn’t believe it. Tom Sawyer a nigger-stealer!

“Oh, shucks!” I says; “you’re joking.”

“I ain’t joking, either.”

“Well, then,” I says, “joking or no joking, if you hear anything said about a runaway nigger, don’t forget to remember that you don’t know nothing about him, and I don’t know nothing about him.”

Then he took the trunk and put it in my wagon, and he drove off his way and I drove mine.