The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: Chapter 24-25

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, Chapter twenty four.
Splendid Days and Fearsome Nights. Tom was a glittering hero,
once more, the pet of the old, the envy of
the young. His name even went into immortal print, for
the village paper magnified him. There were some that believed

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he would be president. Yet if he escaped hanging, as usual,
the fickle, unreasoning world took muff Potter to its bosom
and fondled him as lavishly as it had abused him before.
But that sort of conduct is to the world's credit.
Therefore it is not well to find fault with it.
Tom's days were days of splendor and exaltation to him,

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but his nights were seasons of horror. Injun Joe infested
all his dreams, and always with doom in his eye,
Hardly any temptation could persuade the boy to stir abroad
after nightfall. Poor Huck was in the same state of
wretchedness and terror, for Tom had told the whole story
to the lawyer the night before the great day of
the trial, and Huck was sore afraid that his share

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in the business might leak out. Yet, notwithstanding Injun Joe's
flight had saved him the suffering of testifying in court.
The poor fellow had got the attorney to promise secrecy,
but what of that, Since Tom's harassed conscience had managed
to drive him to the lawyer's house by night and
wring a dread tale from lips that had been sealed

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with the dismallest and most formidable of oaths, Huck's confidence
in the human race was well nigh obliterated. Daily muff
Potter's gratitude made Tom glad he had spoken, but nightly
he wished he had sealed up his tongue. Half the
time Tom was afraid Injun Joe would never be captured.
The other half he was afraid he would be. He

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felt sure he never could draw a safe breath again
until that man was dead and he had seen the corpse.
Rewards had been offered, the country had been goward, but
no Indian Joe was found. One of those omniscient and
awe inspiring marvels, a detective came up from Saint Louis,
moused around, shook his head, looked wise, and made that

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sort of astounding success which members of the craft usually achieve.
That is, to say he found a clue, But you
can't hang a clue for murder. And so after that
detective had got through and gone home, Tom felt just
as insecure as he was before. The slow days drifted on,
and each left behind it a slightly lightened weight of apprehension.

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End of Chapter twenty four. Chapter twenty five, Seeking the
Buried Treasure. There comes a time in every rightly constructed
boy's life when he has a raging desire to go
somewhere and dig for hidden treasure. This desire suddenly came
upon Tom. One day he sallied out to find Joe Harper,

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but failed of success. Next he sought Ben roday he
had gone fishing. Presently he stumbled upon Huck Finn. The
red handed Huck would answer. Tom took him to a
private place and opened the matter to him confidentially. Huck
was willing. Huck was always willing to take a hand
in any enterprise that offered entertainment and required no capital,

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for he had a troublesome superabundance of that sort of time,
which is not money. Where'll we dig, said Huck? Oh,
most anywhere? Why is it hid all round? No? Indeed,
it ain't It's hid in mighty particular places huck sometimes
on islands, sometimes in rotten chests, under the end of

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a limb of an old dead tree, just where the
shadow falls at midnight, but mostly under the floor in
haunted houses. Who hides it? Why? Robbers? Of course? Who'd
you reckon Sunday school superintendents. I don't know. If twas mine,
I wouldn't hide it. I'd spend it and have a
good time, so would I. But robbers don't do that way.

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They always hide it and leave it there. Don't they
come after it any more? No, they think they will,
but they generally forget the marks, or else they die. Anyway,
it lays there a long time and gets rusty, and
by and by somebody finds an old yellow paper that
tells how to find the marks, A paper that's got
to be ciphered over about a week because it's mostly

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signs and high rogue glyphics high row which hi rogue glyphics,
pictures and things you know that don't seem to mean anything.
You got one of them papers, Tom, No, Well, then
how are you going to find the marks? I don't
want to find any marks. They always bury it under
a haunted house, or on an island, or under a

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dead tree that's got one limb sticking out. Well, we've
tried Jackson's Island a little, and we can try it
again some time. And there's the old haunted house up
the still House branch, and there's lots of dead limbed trees,
dead loads of em? Is it? Under all of them?
How you talk? No? And how you going to know

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which one to go? For? Go for all of them? Why? Tom,
it'll take all summer? Well what of that? Suppose you
find a brass pot with one hundred dollars in it,
all rusty and gay, or a rotten chest full of diamonds?
How's that Huck's eyes glowed? That's bully plenty, bully enough
for me. Just you give me the hundred dollars. And

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I don't want no diamonds, all right, But I bet
you I ain't gonna throw off on diamonds. Some of
them's worth twenty dollars a piece. There ain't any hardly,
but it's worth six bits or a dollar? No? Is
that so? Certainly? Anybody tell you so? Ain't you ever
seen one? Huck? Not? As I remember? Oh, kings have

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slathers of them. Well, I don't know, no, kings, Tom,
and I reckon you don't. But if you was to
go to Europe, you'd see a raft of them hopping around.
Do they hop hop you're granny? No? Oh, well what'd
you say they did for? Shucks? I only meant you'd
see him not hopping, of course, what do they want
to hop for? But I mean you just see him

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scattered around, you know, in a kind of a general way,
like that old humpbacked Richard. Richard what's his other name?
He didn't have any other name. Kings don't have any
but a given name. No, but they don't. Well if
they like it, Tom, all right, but I don't want
to be a king and have only just a given name,
like a nigger. But say, where are you going to dig? First? Well,

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I don't know. Suppose we tackle that old dead limb
tree on the hill on the other side of stillhouse branch.
I'm agreed. So they got a crippled pick and a
shovel and set out on their three mile tramp. They
arrived hot and panting, and threw themselves down in the
shade of a neighboring elm to rest and have a smoke.
I like this, said Tom, So do, I say, Huck?

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If we find a treasure here, what are you going
to do with you? Share? Well, I'll have pie and
a glass of soda every day, and I'll go to
every circus that comes along. I bet I'll have a
gay time. Well, ain't you going to save any of it?
Save it? What for? Why? So as to have something
to live on by? And by? Oh, that ain't any use.

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Pap would come back to this year town someday and
get his claws on it if I didn't hurry up,
and I tell you, he'd clean it out pretty quick.
What are you going to do with your and Tom?
I'm going to buy a new drum and a sure
enough sword and a red necktie and a bull pop
and get married married. That's it, Tom, You or you

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ain't in your right mind? Wait, you'll see. Well that's
the foolishest thing you could do. Look at Pap and
my mother fight. Why they used to fight all the time.
I remember, mighty Well, that ain't anything. The girl I'm
going to marry won't fight, Tom. I reckon, they're all alike.
They'll all comb a body. Now, you'd better think about

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this a while, I tell you you better. What's the
name of the gal? It ain't a gal at all,
it's a girl. It's all the same, I reckon. Some
says gal, some says girl. Both's right, Like enough anyway,
what's her name? Tom? I'll tell you sometime, not now,
All right, that'll do. Only if you get married, I'll
be more lonesomer than ever. No, you won't. You'll come

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and live with me. Now, stir out of this and
we'll go to digging. They worked and sweated for half
an hour. No result. They toiled another half hour, still
no result. Huck said, do they always buried as deep
as this? Sometimes? Not always, not generally. I reckon, we
haven't got the right place. So they chose a new

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spot and began again. Labor dragged a little, but still
they made progress. They pegged away in silence for some time. Finally,
Huck leaned on his shovel, swabbed the beaded drops from
his brow with his sleeve, and said, where are you
going to dig next? After we get this one? I reckon,
maybe we'll tackle the old tree that's over yonder on

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Cardiff Hill, back of the widows. I reckon, that'll be
a good one. But won't the widow take it away
from us? Tom, it's on her land, she take it away.
Maybe she'd like to try it once. Whoever finds one
of these hid treasures, it blocks to him. It don't
make any difference whose land it's on. That was satisfactory.
The work went on by and by, Hucks said, blame it.

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We must be in the wrong place again. What do
you think it is? Mighty curious, Huck, I don't understand it.
Sometimes witches interfere, I reckon. Maybe that's what's the trouble, now, Shucks.
Witches ain't got no power in the daytime. Well that's
so I didn't think of that. Oh, I know what
the matter is. What a blamed lot of fools we are.

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You gotta find out where the shadow the limb falls
at midnight, and that's where you dig. Then con sound it.
We fooled away all this work for nothing. Now hang
it all. We got to come back in the night.
It's an awful long way. Can you get out? I
bet I will. We've got to do it tonight too,
because if somebody sees these holes, they'll know in a

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minute what's here, and they'll go for it. Well, I'll
come around and now to night. All right, let's hide
the tools in the bushes. The boys were there that
night about the appointed time. They sat in the shadow waiting.
It was a lonely place, and an hour made solemn
by old traditions. Spirits whispered in the rustling leaves, Ghosts

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lurked in the murky nooks. The deep baying of a
hound floated up out of the distance. An owl answered
with his sepulchral note. The boys were subdued by these
solemnities and talked little by and bye. They judged that
twelve had come. They marked where the shadow fell, and
began to dig. Their hopes commenced to rise, Their interests
grew stronger, and their industry kept pace with it. The

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hole deepened and still deepened, But every time their hearts
jumped to hear the pick strung upon something, they only
suffered a new disappointment. It was only a stone or
a chunk. At last, Tom said, it ain't no use, Huck,
We're wrong again. Well, but we can't be wrong. We
spotted the shatter to a dot, I know it. But

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then there's another thing. What's that? Why we only guessed
at the time, like enough, it was too late or
too early. Huck dropped his shovel. That's it, he said.
That's the very trouble. We got to give this one up.
We can't ever tell the right time. And besides, this
kind of thing's too awful here this time of night,

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with witches and ghosts of fluttering around. So I feel
as if something's behind me all the time, and I'm
afeared to turn around because maybe there's others in front
of waiting for a chance. I've been creeping all over
ever since I got here. Well, I've been pretty much
so too, Huck. They most always put in a dead
man when they bury a treasure under a tree to

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look out for it. Lordie, Yes they do. I've always
heard that, Tom. I don't like to fool around much.
Where there's dead people, a body's bound to get into
trouble with. I'm sure I don't like to stir them
up either. Suppose this one here was to stick his
skull out and say something, don't Tom, it's awful. Well,
it just is talk. I don't feel comfortable a bit.

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Say Tom, let's give this place up and try somewhere else,
all right, I reckon we better. What'll it be? Tom
considered a while and then said, the hanted house. That's it.
Blame it. I don't like hanted houses, Tom, Why they're
a durned sight worse than dead people. Dead people might talk, maybe,
but they don't come sliding around in a shroud when

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you ain't noticing, and peep over your shoulder all of
a sudden and grit their teeth the way a ghost does.
I couldn't stand such a thing as that, Tom, nobody could. Yes,
but hack ghosts don't travel around only at night. They
won't handle us from digging there in the daytime. Well
that's so, But you know, mighty well, people don't go

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about that handed house in the day nor the night.
Well that's mostly because they don't like to go where
a man's been murdered. Anyway, But nothing's ever been seen
around that house except in the night. Just some blue
lights slipping by the windows. No regular ghosts. Well, where
you see one of them blue lights flickering around, Tom,
you can bet there's a ghost mighty close behind it.

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It stands to reason, because you know that they don't
anybody but ghosts use em. Yes, that's so. Anyway, they
don't come round in the daytime, So what's the use
of our being afeared? Well, all right, we'll tackle the
handed house if you say so, but I reckon it's
taken chances. They'd started down the hill by this time.
There in the middle of the moonlit valley below them

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stood the hanted House, utterly isolated, its fences gone long ago,
rank weeds smothering the very doorsteps, the chimney crumpled to ruin,
the window sashes vavacant, a corner of the roof caved in.
The boys gazed awhile, half expecting to see a blue
light flit past a window, then, talking in a low
tone as befitted the time and the circumstances, they struck

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far off to the right to give the haunted House
a wide berth, and took their way homeward through the
woods that adorned the rearward side of Cardiff Hill. End
of Chapter twenty five