Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, page 219 by Mark Twain
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back and fool along slow, so as to get to the house about the time you ought to; and I'll go towards town a piece, and take a fresh start, and get there a quarter or a half an hour after you; and you needn't let on to know me at first."
I says:
"All right; but wait a minute. There's one more thing--a thing that NOBODY don't know but me. And that is, there's a nigger here that I'm a- trying to steal out of slavery, and his name is JIM--old Miss Watson's Jim."
He says:
"What! Why, Jim is--"
He stopped and went to studying. I says:
"I know what you'll say. You'll say it's dirty, low-down business; but what if it is? I'm low down; and I'm a-going to steal him, and I want you keep mum and not let on. Will you?"
His eye lit up, and he says:
"I'll HELP you steal him!"
Well, I let go all holts then, like I was shot. It was the most astonishing speech I ever heard--and I'm bound to say Tom Sawyer fell considerable in my estimation. Only I couldn't believe it. Tom Sawyer a NIGGER-STEALER!
"Oh, shucks!" I says; "you're joking."
"I ain't joking, either."
"Well, then," I says, "joking or no joking, if you hear anything said about a runaway nigger, don't forget to remember that YOU don't know nothing about him, and I don't know nothing about him."
Then we took the trunk and put it in my wagon, and he drove off his way and I drove mine. But of course I forgot all about driving slow on accounts of being glad and full of thinking; so I got home a heap too quick for that length of a trip. The old gentleman was at the door, and he says:
"Why, this is wonderful! Whoever would a thought it was in that mare to do it? I wish we'd a timed her. And she hain't sweated a hair--not a hair. It's wonderful. Why, I wouldn't take a hundred dollars for that horse now--I wouldn't, honest; and yet I'd a sold her for fifteen before, and thought 'twas all she was worth."
That's all he said. He was the innocentest, best old soul I ever see. But i