TOM SAWYER ABROAD TOM SAWYER, DETECTIVE
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Tom Sawyer, Detective                         209
Well, that beat me. I couldn't understand it. And Benny and her mother — oh, they looked sick, they was so troubled. They shoved their veils to one side and tried to get his eye, but it warn't any use, and I couldn't get his eye either. So the mud-turtle he tackled the witness, but it didn't amount to nothing; and he made a mess of it.
Then they called up Jim Lane, and he told the very same story over again, exact. Tom never listened to this one at all, but set there thinking and thinking, miles and miles away. So the mud-turtle went in alone again and come out just as flat as he done before. The lawyer for the prostitution looked very comfortable, but the judge looked disgusted. You see, Tom was just the same as a regular lawyer, nearly, because it was Arkansaw law for a prisoner to choose anybody he wanted to help his lawyer, and Tom had had Uncle Silas shove him into the case, and now he was botching it and you could see the judge didn't like it much.
All that the mud-turtle got out of Lem and Jim was this : he asked them :
" Why didn't you go and tell what you saw?"
" We was afraid we would get mixed up in it our­selves. And we was just starting down the river a-hunting for all the week besides; but as soon as we come back we found out they'd been searching for the body, so then we went and told Brace Dunlap all about it."
" When was that?"
" Saturday night, September 9th/* 14**