"All right; but wait a minute.  There's one more thing—a thing that _nobody_ don't know but me.  And that is, there's a n***** here that I'm a-trying to steal out of slavery, and his name is _Jim_—old Miss Watson's Jim."

He says:

"What!  Why, Jim is—"

He stopped and went to studying.  I says:

"I know what you'll say.  You'll say it's dirty, low-down business; but what if it is?  I'm low down; and I'm a-going to steal him, and I want you keep mum and not let on.  Will you?"

His eye lit up, and he says:

"I'll _help_ you steal him!"

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 _n*****-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 n*****, don't forget to remember that _you_ don't know nothing about him, and I don't know nothing about him."

Then we took the trunk and put it in my wagon, and he drove off his way and I drove mine.  But of course I forgot all about driving slow on accounts of being glad and full of thinking; so I got home a heap too quick for that length of a trip.  The old gentleman was at the door, and he says:

"Why, this is wonderful!  Whoever would a thought it was in that mare to do it?  I wish we'd a timed her.  And she hain't sweated a hair—not a hair. It's wonderful.  Why, I wouldn't take a hundred dollars for that horse now—I wouldn't, honest; and yet I'd a sold her for fifteen before, and thought 'twas all she was worth."

That's all he said.  He was the innocentest, best old soul I ever see. But it warn't surprising; because he warn't only just a farmer, he was a preacher, too, and had a little one-horse log church down back of the plantation, which he built it himself at his own expense, for a church and schoolhouse, and never charged nothing for his preaching, and it was worth it, too.  There was plenty other farmer-preachers like that, and done the same way, down South.

In about half an hour Tom's wagon drove up to the front stile, and Aunt Sally she see it through the window, because it was only about fifty yards, and says: