THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER - online book

Original Illustrated Version By Mark Twain

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AN A TTEMPT ON NO. TWO.
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lantern, and a large towel to blindfold it with. He hid the lantern in Huck's sugar hogshead and the watch began. An hour before midnight the tavern closed up
and its lights (the only ones there­abouts) were put out. No Spaniard had been seen. Nobody had entered or left the alley. Everything was aus­picious. The blackness of darkness reigned, the perfect stillness was inter­rupted only by occasional mutterings of distant thunder.
Tom got his lantern, lit it in the hogs­head, wrapped it closely in the towel, and the two adventurers crept in the gloom toward the tavern, Huck stood sentry and Tom felt his way into the alley. Then there was a season of waiting anxiety that weighed upon Huck's spirits like a mountain. He
HUCK AT HOME.
began to wish he could see a flash
from the lantern — it would frighten liim, but it would at least tell him that Tom was alive yet. It seemed hours since Tom had disappeared. Surely he must have fainted; maybe he was dead; maybe his heart had burst under terror and excitement. In his uneasiness Huck found himself drawing closer and closer to the alley; fearing all sorts of dreadful things, and momentarily expecting some catastrophe to happen that would take away his breath. There was not much to take away, for he seemed only able to inhale it by thimblefuls, and his heart would soon wear itself out, the way it was beating. Suddenly there was a flash of light and Tom came tearing by him: " Run ! " said he ; " run, for your life ! "
He needn't have repeated it; once was enough; Huck was making thirty or forty miles an hour before the repetition was uttered. The boys never stopped till they reached the shed of a deserted slaughter-house at the lower end of the
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