First Tom and then Becky realize that they are lost. Becky falls to the ground and cries while Tom tries to comfort her by telling her it is all his fault. They begin to wander again, hoping to find a familiar landmark. Tom takes Becky's candle and blows it out to conserve that source of light.
After a while, Becky has to sit down, and she falls asleep. When she awakens, she and Tom stumble on until they find a spring: Tom explains to Becky that they must stay close to water because their candles are almost gone. They are both very hungry, and Tom shares a piece of cake that he had saved from the picnic. Suddenly, Becky realizes that her mother will think she is spending the night at the Harper's house and that they won't be missed until sometime Sunday.
They sleep again and then share the last bite of the cake. Suddenly, they hear voices in the background. The two begin shouting, but to no avail, and the sounds fade away.
Tom decides to explore side passages, leaving Becky sitting by the spring. At the end of one corridor, he sees a human holding a candle; he shouts loudly and to his horror it is Injun Joe. The shouting has also frightened Injun Joe, who runs away.
After some time, Tom is so hungry and Becky is so weak that he leaves her and explores other passages. Becky feels that she will now die, and she makes Tom promise to return to her soon and hold her during her final moments. Acting as bravely as he can, he leaves her to try to find an exit. Quotes Find the quotes you need to support your essay, or refresh your memory of the book by reading these key quotes. Important Quotes Explained.
Quick Quizzes Test your knowledge of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer with quizzes about every section, major characters, themes, symbols, and more. Further Study Go further in your study of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer with background information, movie adaptations, and links to the best resources around the web. Purchase Go to BN. But Sid had snatched his clothes and gone. Tom was suffering in reality, now, so handsomely was his imagination working, and so his groans had gathered quite a genuine tone.
But she fled upstairs, nevertheless, with Sid and Mary at her heels. And her face grew white, too, and her lip trembled. When she reached the bedside she gasped out:.
The old lady sank down into a chair and laughed a little, then cried a little, then did both together. This restored her and she said:. Now you shut up that nonsense and climb out of this. The groans ceased and the pain vanished from the toe. The boy felt a little foolish, and he said:. Open your mouth. Mary, get me a silk thread, and a chunk of fire out of the kitchen.
I wish I may never stir if it does. Tom, Tom, I love you so, and you seem to try every way you can to break my old heart with your outrageousness. The tooth hung dangling by the bedpost, now. But all trials bring their compensations. As Tom wended to school after breakfast, he was the envy of every boy he met because the gap in his upper row of teeth enabled him to expectorate in a new and admirable way.
He gathered quite a following of lads interested in the exhibition; and one that had cut his finger and had been a centre of fascination and homage up to this time, now found himself suddenly without an adherent, and shorn of his glory.
Shortly Tom came upon the juvenile pariah of the village, Huckleberry Finn, son of the town drunkard. Huckleberry was cordially hated and dreaded by all the mothers of the town, because he was idle and lawless and vulgar and bad—and because all their children admired him so, and delighted in his forbidden society, and wished they dared to be like him. Tom was like the rest of the respectable boys, in that he envied Huckleberry his gaudy outcast condition, and was under strict orders not to play with him.
So he played with him every time he got a chance. Huckleberry was always dressed in the cast-off clothes of full-grown men, and they were in perennial bloom and fluttering with rags. His hat was a vast ruin with a wide crescent lopped out of its brim; his coat, when he wore one, hung nearly to his heels and had the rearward buttons far down the back; but one suspender supported his trousers; the seat of the trousers bagged low and contained nothing, the fringed legs dragged in the dirt when not rolled up.
Huckleberry came and went, at his own free will. He slept on doorsteps in fine weather and in empty hogsheads in wet; he did not have to go to school or to church, or call any being master or obey anybody; he could go fishing or swimming when and where he chose, and stay as long as it suited him; nobody forbade him to fight; he could sit up as late as he pleased; he was always the first boy that went barefoot in the spring and the last to resume leather in the fall; he never had to wash, nor put on clean clothes; he could swear wonderfully.
In a word, everything that goes to make life precious that boy had. So thought every harassed, hampered, respectable boy in St. There now! Leastways all but the nigger. Now you tell me how Bob Tanner done it, Huck. Talk about trying to cure warts with spunk-water such a blame fool way as that! Why, Tom, I know she is. She witched pap. Pap says so his own self.
Specially if they mumble. How could their charms work till midnight? This is a pretty early tick, I reckon. Tom got out a bit of paper and carefully unrolled it. Huckleberry viewed it wistfully. The temptation was very strong. At last he said:. When Tom reached the little isolated frame school-house, he strode in briskly, with the manner of one who had come with all honest speed.
He hung his hat on a peg and flung himself into his seat with business-like alacrity. The master, throned on high in his great splint-bottom arm-chair, was dozing, lulled by the drowsy hum of study. The interruption roused him. He instantly said:. The buzz of study ceased. The pupils wondered if this foolhardy boy had lost his mind.
The master said:. No mere ferule will answer for this offence. Take off your jacket. Then the order followed:. And let this be a warning to you. The titter that rippled around the room appeared to abash the boy, but in reality that result was caused rather more by his worshipful awe of his unknown idol and the dread pleasure that lay in his high good fortune.
He sat down upon the end of the pine bench and the girl hitched herself away from him with a toss of her head. Nudges and winks and whispers traversed the room, but Tom sat still, with his arms upon the long, low desk before him, and seemed to study his book. By and by attention ceased from him, and the accustomed school murmur rose upon the dull air once more. Presently the boy began to steal furtive glances at the girl. When she cautiously faced around again, a peach lay before her.
She thrust it away. Tom gently put it back. She thrust it away again, but with less animosity. Tom patiently returned it to its place. Then she let it remain. Now the boy began to draw something on the slate, hiding his work with his left hand.
For a time the girl refused to notice; but her human curiosity presently began to manifest itself by hardly perceptible signs. The boy worked on, apparently unconscious. The girl made a sort of non-committal attempt to see, but the boy did not betray that he was aware of it. At last she gave in and hesitatingly whispered:.
Tom partly uncovered a dismal caricature of a house with two gable ends to it and a corkscrew of smoke issuing from the chimney. When it was finished, she gazed a moment, then whispered:. The artist erected a man in the front yard, that resembled a derrick. He could have stepped over the house; but the girl was not hypercritical; she was satisfied with the monster, and whispered:. Tom drew an hour-glass with a full moon and straw limbs to it and armed the spreading fingers with a portentous fan.
The girl said:. Oh, I know. You call me Tom, will you? Now Tom began to scrawl something on the slate, hiding the words from the girl. But she was not backward this time. She begged to see.
Just at this juncture the boy felt a slow, fateful grip closing on his ear, and a steady lifting impulse. In that wise he was borne across the house and deposited in his own seat, under a peppering fire of giggles from the whole school. Then the master stood over him during a few awful moments, and finally moved away to his throne without saying a word.
As the school quieted down Tom made an honest effort to study, but the turmoil within him was too great. THE harder Tom tried to fasten his mind on his book, the more his ideas wandered.
So at last, with a sigh and a yawn, he gave it up. It seemed to him that the noon recess would never come. The air was utterly dead. There was not a breath stirring. It was the sleepiest of sleepy days. The drowsing murmur of the five and twenty studying scholars soothed the soul like the spell that is in the murmur of bees. Away off in the flaming sunshine, Cardiff Hill lifted its soft green sides through a shimmering veil of heat, tinted with the purple of distance; a few birds floated on lazy wing high in the air; no other living thing was visible but some cows, and they were asleep.
His hand wandered into his pocket and his face lit up with a glow of gratitude that was prayer, though he did not know it. Then furtively the percussion-cap box came out. He released the tick and put him on the long flat desk. The creature probably glowed with a gratitude that amounted to prayer, too, at this moment, but it was premature: for when he started thankfully to travel off, Tom turned him aside with a pin and made him take a new direction.
This bosom friend was Joe Harper. The two boys were sworn friends all the week, and embattled enemies on Saturdays. Joe took a pin out of his lapel and began to assist in exercising the prisoner. The sport grew in interest momently. Soon Tom said that they were interfering with each other, and neither getting the fullest benefit of the tick. The tick escaped from Tom, presently, and crossed the equator.
Joe harassed him awhile, and then he got away and crossed back again. This change of base occurred often. While one boy was worrying the tick with absorbing interest, the other would look on with interest as strong, the two heads bowed together over the slate, and the two souls dead to all things else.
At last luck seemed to settle and abide with Joe. At last Tom could stand it no longer. The temptation was too strong. So he reached out and lent a hand with his pin. Joe was angry in a moment. Said he:. The boys had been too absorbed to notice the hush that had stolen upon the school awhile before when the master came tiptoeing down the room and stood over them. He had contemplated a good part of the performance before he contributed his bit of variety to it.
When school broke up at noon, Tom flew to Becky Thatcher, and whispered in her ear:. So the one went off with one group of scholars, and the other with another. In a little while the two met at the bottom of the lane, and when they reached the school they had it all to themselves. Then they sat together, with a slate before them, and Tom gave Becky the pencil and held her hand in his, guiding it, and so created another surprising house.
When the interest in art began to wane, the two fell to talking. Tom was swimming in bliss. But I mean dead ones, to swing round your head with a string.
What I like is chewing-gum. That was agreeable, so they chewed it turn about, and dangled their legs against the bench in excess of contentment. That will be nice. And they get slathers of money—most a dollar a day, Ben Rogers says. Say, Becky, was you ever engaged? Anybody can do it. Do you remember what I wrote on the slate? Becky hesitating, Tom took silence for consent, and passed his arm about her waist and whispered the tale ever so softly, with his mouth close to her ear.
And then he added:. He turned his face away. Then she sprang away and ran around and around the desks and benches, with Tom after her, and took refuge in a corner at last, with her little white apron to her face. Tom clasped her about her neck and pleaded:. Please, Becky. By and by she gave up, and let her hands drop; her face, all glowing with the struggle, came up and submitted. Tom kissed the red lips and said:. Will you? Of course. Tom tried to put his arm about her neck, but she pushed him away and turned her face to the wall, and went on crying.
Tom tried again, with soothing words in his mouth, and was repulsed again. Then his pride was up, and he strode away and went outside.
He stood about, restless and uneasy, for a while, glancing at the door, every now and then, hoping she would repent and come to find him. But she did not. Then he began to feel badly and fear that he was in the wrong. It was a hard struggle with him to make new advances, now, but he nerved himself to it and entered. She was still standing back there in the corner, sobbing, with her face to the wall.
He went to her and stood a moment, not knowing exactly how to proceed. Then he said hesitatingly:. Tom got out his chiefest jewel, a brass knob from the top of an andiron, and passed it around her so that she could see it, and said:.
She struck it to the floor. Then Tom marched out of the house and over the hills and far away, to return to school no more that day. Presently Becky began to suspect. She ran to the door; he was not in sight; she flew around to the play-yard; he was not there. Then she called:. She listened intently, but there was no answer. She had no companions but silence and loneliness. So she sat down to cry again and upbraid herself; and by this time the scholars began to gather again, and she had to hide her griefs and still her broken heart and take up the cross of a long, dreary, aching afternoon, with none among the strangers about her to exchange sorrows with.
TOM dodged hither and thither through lanes until he was well out of the track of returning scholars, and then fell into a moody jog. Half an hour later he was disappearing behind the Douglas mansion on the summit of Cardiff Hill, and the school-house was hardly distinguishable away off in the valley behind him.
He entered a dense wood, picked his pathless way to the centre of it, and sat down on a mossy spot under a spreading oak. There was not even a zephyr stirring; the dead noonday heat had even stilled the songs of the birds; nature lay in a trance that was broken by no sound but the occasional far-off hammering of a wood-pecker, and this seemed to render the pervading silence and sense of loneliness the more profound.
He sat long with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands, meditating. It seemed to him that life was but a trouble, at best, and he more than half envied Jimmy Hodges, so lately released; it must be very peaceful, he thought, to lie and slumber and dream forever and ever, with the wind whispering through the trees and caressing the grass and the flowers over the grave, and nothing to bother and grieve about, ever any more.
If he only had a clean Sunday-school record he could be willing to go, and be done with it all. Now as to this girl. What had he done? He had meant the best in the world, and been treated like a dog—like a very dog. She would be sorry some day—maybe when it was too late.
Ah, if he could only die temporarily! But the elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrained shape long at a time.
Tom presently began to drift insensibly back into the concerns of this life again. What if he turned his back, now, and disappeared mysteriously? What if he went away—ever so far away, into unknown countries beyond the seas—and never came back any more! How would she feel then! The idea of being a clown recurred to him now, only to fill him with disgust. For frivolity and jokes and spotted tights were an offense, when they intruded themselves upon a spirit that was exalted into the vague august realm of the romantic.
No, he would be a soldier, and return after long years, all war-worn and illustrious. No—better still, he would join the Indians, and hunt buffaloes and go on the warpath in the mountain ranges and the trackless great plains of the Far West, and away in the future come back a great chief, bristling with feathers, hideous with paint, and prance into Sunday-school, some drowsy summer morning, with a blood-curdling war-whoop, and sear the eyeballs of all his companions with unappeasable envy.
But no, there was something gaudier even than this. He would be a pirate! That was it! How his name would fill the world, and make people shudder!
How gloriously he would go plowing the dancing seas, in his long, low, black-hulled racer, the Spirit of the Storm, with his grisly flag flying at the fore! Yes, it was settled; his career was determined. He would run away from home and enter upon it. He would start the very next morning. Therefore he must now begin to get ready.
He would collect his resources together. He went to a rotten log near at hand and began to dig under one end of it with his Barlow knife. He soon struck wood that sounded hollow.
He put his hand there and uttered this incantation impressively:. Then he scraped away the dirt, and exposed a pine shingle. He took it up and disclosed a shapely little treasure-house whose bottom and sides were of shingles. In it lay a marble. He scratched his head with a perplexed air, and said:.
Then he tossed the marble away pettishly, and stood cogitating. The truth was, that a superstition of his had failed, here, which he and all his comrades had always looked upon as infallible.
If you buried a marble with certain necessary incantations, and left it alone a fortnight, and then opened the place with the incantation he had just used, you would find that all the marbles you had ever lost had gathered themselves together there, meantime, no matter how widely they had been separated.
But now, this thing had actually and unquestionably failed. He had many a time heard of this thing succeeding but never of its failing before. It did not occur to him that he had tried it several times before, himself, but could never find the hiding-places afterward. He puzzled over the matter some time, and finally decided that some witch had interfered and broken the charm.
He thought he would satisfy himself on that point; so he searched around till he found a small sandy spot with a little funnel-shaped depression in it. He laid himself down and put his mouth close to this depression and called—. Doodle-bug, doodle-bug, tell me what I want to know! The sand began to work, and presently a small black bug appeared for a second and then darted under again in a fright. So it was a witch that done it. I just knowed it. He well knew the futility of trying to contend against witches, so he gave up discouraged.
But it occurred to him that he might as well have the marble he had just thrown away, and therefore he went and made a patient search for it. But he could not find it.
Now he went back to his treasure-house and carefully placed himself just as he had been standing when he tossed the marble away; then he took another marble from his pocket and tossed it in the same way, saying:. He watched where it stopped, and went there and looked. But it must have fallen short or gone too far; so he tried twice more.
The last repetition was successful. The two marbles lay within a foot of each other. Just here the blast of a toy tin trumpet came faintly down the green aisles of the forest.
Tom flung off his jacket and trousers, turned a suspender into a belt, raked away some brush behind the rotten log, disclosing a rude bow and arrow, a lath sword and a tin trumpet, and in a moment had seized these things and bounded away, barelegged, with fluttering shirt.
He presently halted under a great elm, blew an answering blast, and then began to tiptoe and look warily out, this way and that. He said cautiously—to an imaginary company:. Right gladly will I dispute with thee the passes of the merry wood. Have at thee! By and by Tom shouted:.
There was no getting around the authorities, so Joe turned, received the whack and fell. This was satisfactory, and so these adventures were carried out. Then Tom became Robin Hood again, and was allowed by the treacherous nun to bleed his strength away through his neglected wound. The boys dressed themselves, hid their accoutrements, and went off grieving that there were no outlaws any more, and wondering what modern civilization could claim to have done to compensate for their loss.
They said they would rather be outlaws a year in Sherwood Forest than President of the United States forever. AT half-past nine, that night, Tom and Sid were sent to bed, as usual. They said their prayers, and Sid was soon asleep. Tom lay awake and waited, in restless impatience. When it seemed to him that it must be nearly daylight, he heard the clock strike ten! This was despair. He would have tossed and fidgeted, as his nerves demanded, but he was afraid he might wake Sid.
So he lay still, and stared up into the dark. Everything was dismally still. By and by, out of the stillness, little, scarcely perceptible noises began to emphasize themselves. The ticking of the clock began to bring itself into notice.
Old beams began to crack mysteriously. The stairs creaked faintly. Evidently spirits were abroad. And now the tiresome chirping of a cricket that no human ingenuity could locate, began. Then the howl of a far-off dog rose on the night air, and was answered by a fainter howl from a remoter distance.
Tom was in an agony. At last he was satisfied that time had ceased and eternity begun; he began to doze, in spite of himself; the clock chimed eleven, but he did not hear it. And then there came, mingling with his half-formed dreams, a most melancholy caterwauling. The raising of a neighboring window disturbed him. Huckleberry Finn was there, with his dead cat. The boys moved off and disappeared in the gloom. At the end of half an hour they were wading through the tall grass of the graveyard.
It was a graveyard of the old-fashioned Western kind. It was on a hill, about a mile and a half from the village. It had a crazy board fence around it, which leaned inward in places, and outward the rest of the time, but stood upright nowhere. Grass and weeds grew rank over the whole cemetery. All the old graves were sunken in, there was not a tombstone on the place; round-topped, worm-eaten boards staggered over the graves, leaning for support and finding none.
A faint wind moaned through the trees, and Tom feared it might be the spirits of the dead, complaining at being disturbed. The boys talked little, and only under their breath, for the time and the place and the pervading solemnity and silence oppressed their spirits. They found the sharp new heap they were seeking, and ensconced themselves within the protection of three great elms that grew in a bunch within a few feet of the grave. Then they waited in silence for what seemed a long time.
The hooting of a distant owl was all the sound that troubled the dead stillness. He must force some talk. So he said in a whisper:.
There was a considerable pause, while the boys canvassed this matter inwardly. Then Tom whispered:. But I never meant any harm. Everybody calls him Hoss. The boys bent their heads together and scarcely breathed.
A muffled sound of voices floated up from the far end of the graveyard. Some vague figures approached through the gloom, swinging an old-fashioned tin lantern that freckled the ground with innumerable little spangles of light. Presently Huckleberry whispered with a shudder:. Can you pray? Drunk, the same as usual, likely—blamed old rip! Here they come again. Cold again. Hot again. Red hot! What kin they be up to? Potter and Injun Joe were carrying a handbarrow with a rope and a couple of shovels on it.
They cast down their load and began to open the grave. The doctor put the lantern at the head of the grave and came and sat down with his back against one of the elm trees. He was so close the boys could have touched him. They growled a response and went on digging. For some time there was no noise but the grating sound of the spades discharging their freight of mould and gravel.
It was very monotonous. Finally a spade struck upon the coffin with a dull woody accent, and within another minute or two the men had hoisted it out on the ground. They pried off the lid with their shovels, got out the body and dumped it rudely on the ground. The moon drifted from behind the clouds and exposed the pallid face. The barrow was got ready and the corpse placed on it, covered with a blanket, and bound to its place with the rope. Potter took out a large spring-knife and cut off the dangling end of the rope and then said:.
He was threatening the doctor, with his fist in his face, by this time. The doctor struck out suddenly and stretched the ruffian on the ground.
Potter dropped his knife, and exclaimed:. He reeled and fell partly upon Potter, flooding him with his blood, and in the same moment the clouds blotted out the dreadful spectacle and the two frightened boys went speeding away in the dark. Presently, when the moon emerged again, Injun Joe was standing over the two forms, contemplating them. The doctor murmured inarticulately, gave a long gasp or two and was still. The half-breed muttered:.
Then he robbed the body. Three—four—five minutes passed, and then Potter began to stir and moan. His hand closed upon the knife; he raised it, glanced at it, and let it fall, with a shudder.
Then he sat up, pushing the body from him, and gazed at it, and then around him, confusedly. Tell me, Joe— honest , now, old feller—did I do it? Tell me how it was, Joe. I wish I may die this minute if I did.
It was all on account of the whiskey and the excitement, I reckon. I never used a weepon in my life before, Joe.
I always liked you, Joe, and stood up for you, too. Potter started on a trot that quickly increased to a run. The half-breed stood looking after him.
He muttered:. The stillness was complete again, too. THE two boys flew on and on, toward the village, speechless with horror. They glanced backward over their shoulders from time to time, apprehensively, as if they feared they might be followed. Every stump that started up in their path seemed a man and an enemy, and made them catch their breath; and as they sped by some outlying cottages that lay near the village, the barking of the aroused watch-dogs seemed to give wings to their feet.
They gained steadily on it, and at last, breast to breast, they burst through the open door and fell grateful and exhausted in the sheltering shadows beyond. By and by their pulses slowed down, and Tom whispered:. He had liquor in him; I could see that; and besides, he always has.
He says so, his own self. But if a man was dead sober, I reckon maybe that whack might fetch him; I dono. You know that. And blood. It was deep, and dark, and awful; the hour, the circumstances, the surroundings, were in keeping with it. He at once took a pin from his lapel and was going to prick his flesh, but Tom said:.
It might have verdigrease on it. So Tom unwound the thread from one of his needles, and each boy pricked the ball of his thumb and squeezed out a drop of blood.
In time, after many squeezes, Tom managed to sign his initials, using the ball of his little finger for a pen. Then he showed Huckleberry how to make an H and an F, and the oath was complete.
They buried the shingle close to the wall, with some dismal ceremonies and incantations, and the fetters that bound their tongues were considered to be locked and the key thrown away. A figure crept stealthily through a break in the other end of the ruined building, now, but they did not notice it.
They continued to whisper for some little time. Presently a dog set up a long, lugubrious howl just outside—within ten feet of them. The boys clasped each other suddenly, in an agony of fright. Tom, quaking with fear, yielded, and put his eye to the crack.
His whisper was hardly audible when he said:.
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