Chapter IV.
Well,
three or four months run along, and
it was well into the winter,
now. I
had been to school most all the time,
and could spell, and
read, and write
just a little, and could say the multiplication
table up to six times
seven
is thirty-five, and I don't reckon I
could ever get any
further than that
if I was to live forever. I don't take
no stock
in mathematics, anyway.
[ILLUSTRATION]
!!!!!
At first I hated the school, but by
and-by I got so I could stand
it.
Whenever I got uncommon tired I
played hookey, and the hiding
I got
next day done me good and cheered
me up. So the longer I
went to
school the easier it got to be. I was
getting sort of used
to the widow's
ways, too, and they warn't so raspy
on me. Living
in a house, and sleeping
in a bed, pulled
on me pretty tight, mostly, but before the cold weather I
used to slide
out and sleep in the woods, sometimes, and so that was a rest to me.
I
liked the old ways best, but I was getting so I liked the new ones, too, a
little bit.
The widow said I was coming along slow but sure, and doing
very satisfactory. She
said she warn't ashamed of me.
One morning I happened to turn over the salt-cellar at breakfast. I
reached
for some of it as quick as I could, to throw over my left
shoulder and keep off
the bad luck, but Miss Watson was in ahead of me,
and crossed me off. She says,
"Take your hands away,
Huckleberry—what a mess you are always making." The
widow
put in a good word for me, but that warn't going to keep off the bad
luck,
I knowed that well enough. I started out, after breakfast,
feeling worried and
shaky, and wondering where it was going to fall on
me, and what it was going
to be. There is ways to keep off some kinds
of bad luck, but this wasn't one of
them kind; so I never tried to do
anything, but just poked along low-spirited and
on the watch-out.
I went down the front garden and clumb over the stile, where you go
through
the high board fence. There was an inch of new snow on the
ground, and I seen
somebody's tracks. They had come up from the quarry
and stood around the
stile a while, and then went on around the garden
fence. It was funny they hadn't
come in, after standing around so. I
couldn't make it out. It was very curious,
somehow. I was going to
follow around, but I stooped down to look at the tracks
first. I didn't
notice anything at first, but next I did. There was a cross in the
left
boot-heel made with big nails, to keep off the devil.
I was up in a second and shinning down the hill. I looked over my
shoulder
every now and then, but I didn't see nobody. I was at Judge
Thatcher's as quick
as I could get there. He said:
"Why, my boy, you are all out of breath. Did you come for your interest?"
"No sir," I says; "is there some for me?"
"Oh, yes, a half-yearly is in, last night. Over a hundred and fifty
dollars.
Quite a fortune for you. You better let me invest it along
with your six thousand,
because if you
take it you'll spend it."
"No sir," I says, "I don't want to spend it. I don't want it at
all—nor the
six thousand, nuther. I want you to take it; I
want to give it to you—the six
thousand and all."
He looked surprised. He couldn't seem to make it out. He says:
"Why, what can you mean, my boy?"
I says, "Don't you ask me no questions about it, please. You'll take
it—won't you?"
He says:
"Well I'm puzzled. Is something the matter ?"
"Please take it," says I, "and don't ask me nothing—then I won't
have
to tell no lies."
He studied a while, and
then he says:
"Oho-o. I think I see.
You want to sell all
your
property to me—not give it.
That's the correct
idea."
Then he wrote something
on a paper and read it over,
and says:
"There—you see it says
'for a consideration.' That
means
I have bought it of
you and paid you for it.
Here's a dollar for
you.
Now, you sign it."
So I signed it, and
left.
[ILLUSTRATION]
judge thatcher surprised.
Miss Watson's nigger,
Jim, had a hair-ball as big as your fist, which
had been took out of the
fourth stomach of an ox, and he used to do
magic with it. He said there
was a spirit inside of it, and it knowed
everything. So I went to him that night
and told him pap was here
again, for I found his tracks in the snow. What
I wanted to know, was,
what he was going to do, and was he going to stay? Jim got
out his
hair-ball, and said something over it, and then he held it up and dropped
it
on the floor. It fell pretty solid, and only rolled about an inch.
Jim tried it
again, and then another time, and it acted just the same.
Jim got down on his
knees and put his ear against it and listened. But
it warn't no use; he said it
wouldn't talk. He said sometimes it
wouldn't talk without money. I told him I
had an old slick counterfeit quarter
that warn't no good because the brass showed
through the silver a
little, and it wouldn't pass nohow, even if the brass didn't
show,
because it was so slick it felt greasy, and so that would tell on it every
time.
(I reckoned I wouldn't say nothing about the dollar I
got from the judge.) I
I said it was pretty bad money, but
maybe the hair-ball would take it, because
maybe it wouldn't know the
difference. Jim smelt it, and bit it, and rubbed it,
and said he would
manage so the hair-ball would think it was good. He said he
would split
open a raw Irish potato and stick the quarter in between and keep it
there all night, and next morning you couldn't see no brass, and it wouldn't
feel
greasy no more, and so anybody in town would take it in a minute,
let alone a
hair-ball. Well, I knowed a potato would do that, before,
but I had forgot it.
Jim put the quarter under the hair-ball and got down and listened again.
This time he said the
hair-ball was all right.
He said it would
tell
my whole fortune if I
wanted it to. I says,
go on. So
the hair-ball
talked to Jim, and Jim
told it to me. He says:
[ILLUSTRATION]
jim listening.
"Yo' ole father doan'
know, yit, what he's
a-gwyne to do. Sometimes
he spec he'll go
'way, en
den agin he
spec he'll stay. De bes'
way is to res' easy en let de
ole man take his own way. Dey's two angels hoverin'
roun' 'bout him.
One uv 'em is white en shiny, en 'tother one is black. De
white one
gits him to go right, a little while, den de black one sail in en bust
it
all up. A body can't tell, yit, which one gwyne to fetch him at de
las'. But
you is all right. You gwyne to have considable trouble in yo'
life, en considable
joy. Sometimes you gwyne to git hurt, en sometimes
you gwyne to git sick;
but every time you's gwyne to git well agin.
Dey's two gals flyin' 'bout you
in yo' life. One uv 'em's light en
'tother one is dark. One is rich en
'tother is po'. You's gwyne to
marry de po' one fust en de rich one byen-by.
You wants to keep 'way fum de water as much as you kin,
en
don't run no resk, 'kase it's down in de bills dat you's gwyne to
git hung."
When I lit my candle and went up to my room that night, there set
pap,
his own self !
