WELL, three or four months run along, and it was well
into the winter now. I had been to school most all the
time and could spell and read and write just a little,
and could say the multiplication table up to six times
seven is thirty-five, and I don't reckon I could ever get
any further than that if I was to live forever. I don't
take no stock in mathematics, anyway.
At first I hated the school, but by and by I got so I
could stand it. Whenever I got uncommon tired I played
hookey, and the hiding I got next day done me good and
cheered me up. So the longer I went to school the easier
it got to be. I was getting sort of used to the widow's
ways, too, and they warn't so raspy on me. Living in a
house and sleeping in a bed pulled on me pretty tight
mostly, but before the cold weather I used to slide out
and sleep in the woods sometimes, and so that was a rest
to me. I liked the old ways best, but I was getting so I
liked the new ones, too, a little bit. The widow said I
was coming along slow but sure, and doing very
satisfactory. She said she warn't ashamed of me.
One morning I happened to turn over the salt-cellar at
breakfast. I reached for some of it as quick as I could
to throw over my left shoulder and keep off the bad luck,
but Miss Watson was in ahead of me, and crossed me off.
She says, "Take your hands away, Huckleberry; what a
mess you are always making!" The widow put in a good
word for me, but that warn't going to keep off the bad
luck, I knowed that well enough. I started out, after
breakfast, feeling worried and shaky, and wondering where
it was going to fall on me, and what it was going to be.
There is ways to keep off some kinds of bad luck, but
this wasn't one of them kind; so I never tried to do
anything, but just poked along low-spirited and on the
watch-out.
I went down to the front garden and clumb over the
stile where you go through the high board fence. There
was an inch of new snow on the ground, and I seen
somebody's tracks. They had come up from the quarry and
stood around the stile a while, and then went on around
the garden fence. It was funny they hadn't come in, after
standing around so. I couldn't make it out. It was very
curious, somehow. I was going to follow around, but I
stooped down to look at the tracks first. I didn't notice
anything at first, but next I did. There was a cross in
the left boot-heel made with big nails, to keep off the
devil.
I was up in a second and shinning down the hill. I
looked over my shoulder every now and then, but I didn't
see nobody. I was at Judge Thatcher's as quick as I could
get there. He said:
"Why, my boy, you are all out of breath. Did you
come for your interest?"
"No, sir," I says; "is there some for
me?"
"Oh, yes, a half-yearly is in last night — over
a hundred and fifty dollars. Quite a fortune for you. You
had better let me invest it along with your six thousand,
because if you take it you'll spend it."
"No, sir," I says, "I don't want to
spend it. I don't want it at all — nor the six thousand,
nuther. I want you to take it; I want to give it to you
— the six thousand and all."
He looked surprised. He couldn't seem to make it out.
He says:
"Why, what can you mean, my boy?"
I says, "Don't you ask me no questions about it,
please. You'll take it — won't you?"
He says:
"Well, I'm puzzled. Is something the matter?"
"Please take it," says I, "and don't
ask me nothing — then I won't have to tell no lies."
He studied a while, and then he says:
"Oho-o! I think I see. You want to SELL all your
property to me — not give it. That's the correct idea."
Then he wrote something on a paper and read it over,
and says:
"There; you see it says 'for a consideration.'
That means I have bought it of you and paid you for it.
Here's a dollar for you. Now you sign it."
So I signed it, and left.
Miss Watson's nigger, Jim, had a hair-ball as big as
your fist, which had been took out of the fourth stomach
of an ox, and he used to do magic with it. He said there
was a spirit inside of it, and it knowed everything. So I
went to him that night and told him pap was here again,
for I found his tracks in the snow. What I wanted to know
was, what he was going to do, and was he going to stay?
Jim got out his hair-ball and said something over it, and
then he held it up and dropped it on the floor. It fell
pretty solid, and only rolled about an inch. Jim tried it
again, and then another time, and it acted just the same.
Jim got down on his knees, and put his ear against it and
listened. But it warn't no use; he said it wouldn't talk.
He said sometimes it wouldn't talk without money. I told
him I had an old slick counterfeit quarter that warn't no
good because the brass showed through the silver a
little, and it wouldn't pass nohow, even if the brass
didn't show, because it was so slick it felt greasy, and
so that would tell on it every time. (I reckoned I
wouldn't say nothing about the dollar I got from the
judge.) I said it was pretty bad money, but maybe the
hair-ball would take it, because maybe it wouldn't know
the difference. Jim smelt it and bit it and rubbed it,
and said he would manage so the hair-ball would think it
was good. He said he would split open a raw Irish potato
and stick the quarter in between and keep it there all
night, and next morning you couldn't see no brass, and it
wouldn't feel greasy no more, and so anybody in town
would take it in a minute, let alone a hair-ball. Well, I
knowed a potato would do that before, but I had forgot it.
Jim put the quarter under the hair-ball, and got down
and listened again. This time he said the hairball was
all right. He said it would tell my whole fortune if I
wanted it to. I says, go on. So the hairball talked to
Jim, and Jim told it to me. He says:
"Yo' ole father doan' know yit what he's a-gwyne
to do. Sometimes he spec he'll go 'way, en den agin he
spec he'll stay. De bes' way is to res' easy en let de
ole man take his own way. Dey's two angels hoverin' roun'
'bout him. One uv 'em is white en shiny, en t'other one
is black. De white one gits him to go right a little
while, den de black one sail in en bust it all up. A body
can't tell yit which one gwyne to fetch him at de las'.
But you is all right. You gwyne to have considable
trouble in yo' life, en considable joy. Sometimes you
gwyne to git hurt, en sometimes you gwyne to git sick;
but every time you's gwyne to git well agin. Dey's two
gals flyin' 'bout you in yo' life. One uv 'em's light en
t'other one is dark. One is rich en t'other is po'. You's
gwyne to marry de po' one fust en de rich one by en by.
You wants to keep 'way fum de water as much as you kin,
en don't run no resk, 'kase it's down in de bills dat
you's gwyne to git hung."
When I lit my candle and went up to my room that night
there sat pap — his own self!