and puts on that disguise.”
Tom waited a little here, for some more “effect” —
then he says, very deliberate:
“The man that put on that dead man’s disguise was
— JUBITER DUNLAP!”
“Great Scott!” everybody shouted, all over the
house, and old Uncle Silas he looked perfectly
astonished.
“Yes, it was Jubiter Dunlap. Not dead, you see.
Then they pulled off the dead man’s boots and put
Jubiter Dunlap’s old ragged shoes on the corpse and put
the corpse’s boots on Jubiter Dunlap. Then Jubiter
Dunlap stayed where he was, and the other man lugged
the dead body off in the twilight; and after midnight
he went to Uncle Silas’s house, and took his old green
work-robe off of the peg where it always hangs in the
passage betwixt the house and the kitchen and put it on,
and stole the long-handled shovel and went off down
into the tobacker field and buried the murdered man.”
He stopped, and stood half a minute. Then —
“And who do you reckon the murdered man WAS?
It was — JAKE Dunlap, the long-lost burglar!”
“Great Scott!”
“And the man that buried him was — BRACE Dunlap,
his brother!”
“Great Scott!”
“And who do you reckon is this mowing idiot here
that’s letting on all these weeks to be a deef and dumb
stranger? It’s — JUBITER Dunlap!”
My land, they all busted out in a howl, and you
never see the like of that excitement since the day you
was born. And Tom he made a jump for Jubiter and
snaked off his goggles and his false whiskers, and there
was the murdered man, sure enough, just as alive as
anybody! And Aunt Sally and Benny they went to
hugging and crying and kissing and smothering old
Uncle Silas to that degree he was more muddled and
confused and mushed up in his mind than he ever was
before, and that is saying considerable. And next,
people begun to yell:
“Tom Sawyer! Tom Sawyer! Shut up every-
body, and let him go on! Go on, Tom Sawyer!”
Which made him feel uncommon bully, for it was
nuts for Tom Sawyer to be a public character that-
away, and a hero, as he calls it. So when it was all
quiet, he says:
“There ain’t much left, only this. When that man
there, Bruce Dunlap, had most worried the life and
sense out of Uncle Silas till at last he plumb lost his
mind and hit this other blatherskite, his brother, with a
club, I reckon he seen his chance. Jubiter broke for
the woods to hide, and I reckon the game was for him
to slide out, in the night, and leave the country.
Then Brace would make everybody believe Uncle Silas
killed him and hid his body somers; and that would
ruin Uncle Silas and drive HIM out of the country —
hang him, maybe; I dunno. But when they found
their dead brother in the sycamores without knowing
him, because he was so battered up, they see they had
a better thing; disguise BOTH and bury Jake and dig
him up presently all dressed up in Jubiter’s clothes,
and hire Jim Lane and Bill Withers and the others to
swear to some handy lies — which they done. And
there they set, now, and I told them they would be
looking sick before I got done, and that is the way
they’re looking now.
“Well, me and Huck Finn here, we come down on
the boat with the thieves, and the dead one told us all
about the di’monds, and said the others would murder
him if they got the chance; and we was going to help
him all we could. We was bound for the sycamores
when we heard them killing him in there; but we was
in there in the early morning after the storm and
allowed nobody hadn’t been killed, after all. And
when we see Jubiter Dunlap here spreading around in
the very same disguise Jake told us HE was going to
wear, we thought it was Jake his own self — and he was
goo-gooing deef and dumb, and THAT was according to
agreement.
“Well, me and Huck went on hunting for the corpse