THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER - online book

Original Illustrated Version By Mark Twain

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192
TOM SAWYER.
"No indeed it ain't. It's hid in mighty particular places, Huck—sometimes on islands, sometimes in rotten chests under the end of a limb of an old dead tree, just
where the shadow falls at midnight; but
mostly under the floor in ha'nted houses." "Who hides it? "
"Why robbers, of course — who'd you
reckon ? Sunday-school sup'rintendents ?"
"I don't know. If 'twas mine I wouldn't
hide it; I'd spend it and have a good
time."
" So would I. But robbers don't do that way. They always hide it and leave it there."
" Don't they come after it any more ? " " No, they think they will, but they gen­erally forget the marks, or else they die. Anyway it lays there a long time and gets, rusty; and by and by somebody finds an
old yellow paper that tells how to find the
THE PRIVATE CONFERENCE.
marks—a paper that's got to be ciphered over about a week because it's mostly signs and hy'roglyphics." " Hyro—which ? "
"Hy'rogliphics—pictures and things, you know, that don't seem to mean anything."
" Have you got one of them papers, Tom ? " "No."
" Well then, how you going to find the marks? "
" I don't want any marks. They always bury it under a ha'nted house or on an island, or under a dead tree that's got one limb sticking out. Well, we've tried Jackson's Island a little, and we can try it again some time; and there's the old ha'nted house up the Still-House branch, and there's lots of dead-limb trees— dead loads of 'em."