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212 Tom Sawyer, Detective
up. And so I reckoned he was gone off somers to have a little peace, and would come back to us when his troubles was kind, of healed. But late Saturday night, the 9th, Lem Beebe and Jim Lane come to my house and told me all — told me the whole awful 'sassination, and my heart was broke. And then I remembered something that hadn't took no hold of me at the time, because reports said this prisoner had took to walking in his sleep and doing all kind of things of no consequence, not knowing what he was about. I will tell you what that thing was that come back into my memory. Away late that awful Saturday night when I was wandering around about this prisoner's place, grieving and troubled, I was down by the corner of the tobacker-field and I heard a sound like digging in a gritty soil; and I crope nearer and peeped through the vines that hung on the rail fence and seen this prisoner shoveling—shoveling with a long-handled shovel — heaving earth into a big hole that was most filled up; his back was to me, but it was bright moonlight and I knowed him by his old green baize work-gown with a splattery white patch in the middle of the back like somebody had hit him with a snowball. He was burying the man he'd murdered!"
And he slumped down in his chair crying and sobbing, and 'most everybody in the house busted out wailing, and crying, and saying, " Oh, it's awful — awful — horrible ! and there was a most tremendous excitement, and you couldn't hear yourself think; and right in the midst of it up jumps old Uncle Silas, white as a sheet, and sings out:
"It's true, every word—I murdered him in cold blood!"
By Jackson, it petrified them ! People rose up wild all over the house, straining and staring for a better look at him, and the judge was hammering with his mallet and the sheriff yelling " Order — order in the court — order!"
And all the while the old man stood there a-quaking and his eyes a-burning, and not looking at his wife and |
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