Chương Chương 4 · 第4章

Well, three or four months run along, and it was well into the winter

now. I had been to school most all the time and could spell and read

and write just a little, and could say the multiplication table up to

six times seven is thirty-five, and I don’t reckon I could ever get any

further than that if I was to live forever. I don’t take no stock in

mathematics, anyway.

At first I hated the school, but by-and-by I got so I could stand it.

Whenever I got uncommon tired I played hookey, and the hiding I got

next day done me good and cheered me up. So the longer I went to school

the easier it got to be. I was getting sort of used to the widow’s

ways, too, and they warn’t so raspy on me. Living in a house and

sleeping in a bed pulled on me pretty tight mostly, but before the cold

weather I used to slide out and sleep in the woods sometimes, and so

that was a rest to me. I liked the old ways best, but I was getting so

I liked the new ones, too, a little bit. The widow said I was coming

along slow but sure, and doing very satisfactory. She said she warn’t

ashamed of me.

One morning I happened to turn over the salt-cellar at breakfast. I

reached for some of it as quick as I could to throw over my left

shoulder and keep off the bad luck, but Miss Watson was in ahead of me,

and crossed me off. She says, “Take your hands away, Huckleberry; what

a mess you are always making!” The widow put in a good word for me, but

that warn’t going to keep off the bad luck, I knowed that well enough.

I started out, after breakfast, feeling worried and shaky, and

wondering where it was going to fall on me, and what it was going to

be. There is ways to keep off some kinds of bad luck, but this wasn’t

one of them kind; so I never tried to do anything, but just poked along

low-spirited and on the watch-out.

I went down to the front garden and clumb over the stile where you go

through the high board fence. There was an inch of new snow on the

ground, and I seen somebody’s tracks. They had come up from the quarry

and stood around the stile a while, and then went on around the garden

fence. It was funny they hadn’t come in, after standing around so. I

couldn’t make it out. It was very curious, somehow. I was going to

follow around, but I stooped down to look at the tracks first. I didn’t

notice anything at first, but next I did. There was a cross in the left

boot-heel made with big nails, to keep off the devil.

I was up in a second and shinning down the hill. I looked over my

shoulder every now and then, but I didn’t see nobody. I was at Judge

Thatcher’s as quick as I could get there. He said:

“Why, my boy, you are all out of breath. Did you come for your

interest?”

“No, sir,” I says; “is there some for me?”

“Oh, yes, a half-yearly is in, last night—over a hundred and fifty

dollars. Quite a fortune for you. You had better let me invest it along

with your six thousand, because if you take it you’ll spend it.”

“No, sir,” I says, “I don’t want to spend it. I don’t want it at

all—nor the six thousand, nuther. I want you to take it; I want to give

it to you—the six thousand and all.”

He looked surprised. He couldn’t seem to make it out. He says:

“Why, what can you mean, my boy?”

I says, “Don’t you ask me no questions about it, please. You’ll take

it—won’t you?”

He says:

“Well, I’m puzzled. Is something the matter?”

“Please take it,” says I, “and don’t ask me nothing—then I won’t have

to tell no lies.”

He studied a while, and then he says:

“Oho-o! I think I see. You want to _sell_ all your property to me—not

give it. That’s the correct idea.”

Then he wrote something on a paper and read it over, and says:

“There; you see it says ‘for a consideration.’ That means I have bought

it of you and paid you for it. Here’s a dollar for you. Now you sign

it.”

So I signed it, and left.

Miss Watson’s nigger, Jim, had a hair-ball as big as your fist, which

had been took out of the fourth stomach of an ox, and he used to do

magic with it. He said there was a spirit inside of it, and it knowed

everything. So I went to him that night and told him pap was here

again, for I found his tracks in the snow. What I wanted to know was,

what he was going to do, and was he going to stay? Jim got out his

hair-ball and said something over it, and then he held it up and

dropped it on the floor. It fell pretty solid, and only rolled about an

inch. Jim tried it again, and then another time, and it acted just the

same. Jim got down on his knees, and put his ear against it and

listened. But it warn’t no use; he said it wouldn’t talk. He said

sometimes it wouldn’t talk without money. I told him I had an old slick

counterfeit quarter that warn’t no good because the brass showed

through the silver a little, and it wouldn’t pass nohow, even if the

brass didn’t show, because it was so slick it felt greasy, and so that

would tell on it every time. (I reckoned I wouldn’t say nothing about

the dollar I got from the judge.) I said it was pretty bad money, but

maybe the hair-ball would take it, because maybe it wouldn’t know the

difference. Jim smelt it and bit it and rubbed it, and said he would

manage so the hair-ball would think it was good. He said he would split

open a raw Irish potato and stick the quarter in between and keep it

there all night, and next morning you couldn’t see no brass, and it

wouldn’t feel greasy no more, and so anybody in town would take it in a

minute, let alone a hair-ball. Well, I knowed a potato would do that

before, but I had forgot it.

Jim put the quarter under the hair-ball, and got down and listened

again. This time he said the hair-ball was all right. He said it would

tell my whole fortune if I wanted it to. I says, go on. So the

hair-ball talked to Jim, and Jim told it to me. He says:

“Yo’ ole father doan’ know yit what he’s a-gwyne to do. Sometimes he

spec he’ll go ’way, en den agin he spec he’ll stay. De bes’ way is to

res’ easy en let de ole man take his own way. Dey’s two angels hoverin’

roun’ ’bout him. One uv ’em is white en shiny, en t’other one is black.

De white one gits him to go right a little while, den de black one sail

in en bust it all up. A body can’t tell yit which one gwyne to fetch

him at de las’. But you is all right. You gwyne to have considable

trouble in yo’ life, en considable joy. Sometimes you gwyne to git

hurt, en sometimes you gwyne to git sick; but every time you’s gwyne to

git well agin. Dey’s two gals flyin’ ’bout you in yo’ life. One uv

’em’s light en t’other one is dark. One is rich en t’other is po’.

You’s gwyne to marry de po’ one fust en de rich one by en by. You wants

to keep ’way fum de water as much as you kin, en don’t run no resk,

’kase it’s down in de bills dat you’s gwyne to git hung.”

When I lit my candle and went up to my room that night there sat pap

his own self!