“Him?” says Aunt Sally; “the runaway nigger? 'Deed he hasn't. They've got him back, safe and sound, and he's in that cabin again, on bread and water, and loaded down with chains, till he's claimed or sold!”

Tom rose square up in bed, with his eye hot, and his nostrils opening and shutting like gills, and sings out to me:

“They hain't no right to shut him up! shove! – and don't you lose a minute. Turn him loose! he ain't no slave; he's as free as any cretur that walks this earth!”

“What does the child mean?”

“I mean every word I say, Aunt Sally, and if somebody don't go, I'll go. I've knowed him all his life, and so has Tom, there. Old Miss Watson died two months ago, and she was ashamed she ever was going to sell him down the river, and said so; and she set him free in her will.”

“Then what on earth did you want to set him free for, seeing he was already free?”

“Well, that is a question, I must say; and just like women! Why, I wanted the adventure of it; and I'd a waded neck-deep in blood to – goodness alive, Aunt Polly!”

If she warn't standing right there, just inside the door, looking as sweet and contented as an angel half full of pie, I wish I may never!

Aunt Sally jumped for her, and most hugged the head off of her, and cried over her, and I found a good enough place for me under the bed, for it was getting pretty sultry for us, seemed to me. And I peeped out, and in a little while Tom's Aunt Polly shook herself loose and stood there looking across at Tom over her spectacles – kind of grinding him into the earth, you know. And then she says:

“Yes, you better turn y'r head away – I would if I was you, Tom.”

“Oh, deary me!” says Aunt Sally; “is he changed so? Why, that ain't Tom, it's Sid; Tom's – Tom's – why, where is Tom? He was here a minute ago.”

“You mean where's Huck Finn – that's what you mean! I reckon I hain't raised such a scamp as my Tom all these years not to know him when I see him. That would be a pretty howdy-do. Come out from under that bed, Huck Finn.”

So I done it. But not feeling brash.

Aunt Sally she was one of the mixed-upest-looking persons I ever see – except one, and that was Uncle Silas, when he come in and they told it all to him. It kind of made him drunk, as you may say, and he didn't know nothing at all the rest of the day, and preached a prayer-meeting sermon that night that gave him a rattling ruputation, because the oldest man in the world couldn't a understood it. So Tom's Aunt Polly, she told all about who I was, and what; and I had to up and tell how I was in such a tight place that when Mrs. Phelps took me for Tom Sawyer – she chipped in and says, “Oh, go on and call me Aunt Sally, I'm used to it now, and 'tain't no need to change” – that when Aunt Sally took me for Tom Sawyer I had to stand it – there warn't no other way, and I knowed he wouldn't mind, because it would be nuts for him, being a mystery, and he'd make an adventure out of it, and be perfectly satisfied. And so it turned out, and he let on to be Sid, and made things as soft as he could for me.

And his Aunt Polly she said Tom was right about old Miss Watson setting Jim free in her will; and so, sure enough, Tom Sawyer had gone and took all that trouble and bother to set a free nigger free! and I couldn't ever understand before, until that minute and that talk, how he could help a body set a nigger free with his bringing-up.