went in swimming. The school teacher seen a round
brown mole the size of a dime on his left leg above his
knee, and four little bits of moles around it, when he
was naked, and he said it minded him of Jubiter and
his moons; and the children thought it was funny, and
so they got to calling him Jubiter, and he’s Jubiter yet.
He’s tall, and lazy, and sly, and sneaky, and ruther
cowardly, too, but kind of good-natured, and wears
long brown hair and no beard, and hasn’t got a cent,
and Brace boards him for nothing, and gives him his old
clothes to wear, and despises him. Jubiter is a twin.”
“What’s t’other twin like?”
“Just exactly like Jubiter — so they say; used to
was, anyway, but he hain’t been seen for seven years.
He got to robbing when he was nineteen or twenty,
and they jailed him; but he broke jail and got away —
up North here, somers. They used to hear about him
robbing and burglaring now and then, but that was
years ago. He’s dead, now. At least that’s what
they say. They don’t hear about him any more.”
“What was his name?”
“Jake.”
There wasn’t anything more said for a considerable
while; the old lady was thinking. At last she says:
“The thing that is mostly worrying your aunt Sally
is the tempers that that man Jubiter gets your uncle
into.”
Tom was astonished, and so was I. Tom says:
“Tempers? Uncle Silas? Land, you must be jok-
ing! I didn’t know he HAD any temper.”
“Works him up into perfect rages, your aunt Sally
says; says he acts as if he would really hit the man,
sometimes.”
“Aunt Polly, it beats anything I ever heard of.
Why, he’s just as gentle as mush.”
“Well, she’s worried, anyway. Says your uncle
Silas is like a changed man, on account of all this
quarreling. And the neighbors talk about it, and lay
all the blame on your uncle, of course, because he’s a
preacher and hain’t got any business to quarrel. Your
aunt Sally says he hates to go into the pulpit he’s so
ashamed; and the people have begun to cool toward
him, and he ain’t as popular now as he used to was.”
“Well, ain’t it strange? Why, Aunt Polly, he was
always so good and kind and moony and absent-minded
and chuckle-headed and lovable — why, he was just an
angel! What CAN be the matter of him, do you
reckon?”
CHAPTER II.
JAKE DUNLAP
WE had powerful good luck; because we got a
chance in a stern-wheeler from away North which
was bound for one of them bayous or one-horse rivers
away down Louisiana way, and so we could go all the
way down the Upper Mississippi and all the way down
the Lower Mississippi to that farm in Arkansaw with-
out having to change steamboats at St. Louis; not so
very much short of a thousand miles at one pull.
A pretty lonesome boat; there warn’t but few
passengers, and all old folks, that set around, wide
apart, dozing, and was very quiet. We was four days
getting out of the “upper river,” because we got
aground so much. But it warn’t dull — couldn’t be
for boys that was traveling, of course.
From the very start me and Tom allowed that there
was somebody sick in the stateroom next to ourn, be-
cause the meals was always toted in there by the wait-
ers. By and by we asked about it — Tom did and
the waiter said it was a man, but he didn’t look sick.
“Well, but AIN’T he sick?”
“I don’t know; maybe he is, but ‘pears to me he’s
just letting on.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because if he was sick he would pull his clothes off
SOME time or other — don’t you reckon he would?
Well, this one don’t. At least he don’t ever pull off
his boots, anyway.”
“The mischief he don’t! Not even when he goes
to bed?”
“No.”
It was always nuts for Tom Sawyer — a mystery was.
If you’d lay out a mystery and a pie before me and