end of fun of the whole business and of the people
that had been hunting the body; and he said:
“If they’d had any sense they’d ‘a’ knowed the lazy
cuss slid out because he wanted a loafing spell after all
this work. He’ll come pottering back in a couple of
weeks, and then how’ll you fellers feel? But, laws
bless you, take the dog, and go and hunt his re-
mainders. Do, Tom.”
Then he busted out, and had another of them forty-
rod laughs of hisn. Tom couldn’t back down after all
this, so he said, “All right, unchain him;” and the
blacksmith done it, and we started home and left that
old man laughing yet.
It was a lovely dog. There ain’t any dog that’s got
a lovelier disposition than a bloodhound, and this one
knowed us and liked us. He capered and raced
around ever so friendly, and powerful glad to be free
and have a holiday; but Tom was so cut up he couldn’t
take any intrust in him, and said he wished he’d stopped
and thought a minute before he ever started on such a
fool errand. He said old Jeff Hooker would tell every-
body, and we’d never hear the last of it.
So we loafed along home down the back lanes, feel-
ing pretty glum and not talking. When we was pass-
ing the far corner of our tobacker field we heard the
dog set up a long howl in there, and we went to the
place and he was scratching the ground with all his
might, and every now and then canting up his head
sideways and fetching another howl.
It was a long square, the shape of a grave; the rain
had made it sink down and show the shape. The
minute we come and stood there we looked at one
another and never said a word. When the dog had
dug down only a few inches he grabbed something and
pulled it up, and it was an arm and a sleeve. Tom
kind of gasped out, and says:
“Come away, Huck — it’s found.”
I just felt awful. We struck for the road and
fetched the first men that come along. They got a
spade at the crib and dug out the body, and you never
see such an excitement. You couldn’t make anything
out of the face, but you didn’t need to. Everybody
said:
“Poor Jubiter; it’s his clothes, to the last rag!”
Some rushed off to spread the news and tell the
justice of the peace and have an inquest, and me and
Tom lit out for the house. Tom was all afire and ‘most
out of breath when we come tearing in where Uncle
Silas and Aunt Sally and Benny was. Tom sung
out:
“Me and Huck’s found Jubiter Dunlap’s corpse all
by ourselves with a bloodhound, after everybody else
had quit hunting and given it up; and if it hadn’t a
been for us it never WOULD ‘a’ been found; and he WAS
murdered too — they done it with a club or something
like that; and I’m going to start in and find the mur-
derer, next, and I bet I’ll do it!”
Aunt Sally and Benny sprung up pale and astonished,
but Uncle Silas fell right forward out of his chair on to
the floor and groans out:
“Oh, my God, you’ve found him NOW!”
CHAPTER X.
THE ARREST OF UNCLE SILAS
THEM awful words froze us solid. We couldn’t
move hand or foot for as much as half a minute.
Then we kind of come to, and lifted the old man up
and got him into his chair, and Benny petted him and
kissed him and tried to comfort him, and poor old
Aunt Sally she done the same; but, poor things, they
was so broke up and scared and knocked out of their
right minds that they didn’t hardly know what they was
about. With Tom it was awful; it ‘most petrified him
to think maybe he had got his uncle into a thousand
times more trouble than ever, and maybe it wouldn’t
ever happened if he hadn’t been so ambitious to get