"IT WAS TOM SAWYER."
I started for town, in the wagon, and when I was half-way I see a wagon coming, and sure enough it was Tom Sawyer, and I stopped and waited till he come along. I says "Hold on!" and it stopped alongside, and his mouth opened up like a trunk, and staid so; and he swallowed two or three times like a person that's got a dry throat, and then says:
"I hain't ever done you no harm. You know that. So then, what you want to come back and ha'nt me for?"
I says:
"I hain't come back—I hain't been gone."
When he heard my voice, it righted him up some, but he warn't quite satisfied yet. He says:
"Don't you play nothing on me, because I wouldn't on you. Honest injun, now, you ain't a ghost?"
"Honest injun, I ain't," I says.
"Well—I—I—well, that ought to settle it, of course; but I can't somehow seem to understand it, no way. Looky here, warn't you ever murdered at all?"
"No. I warn't ever murdered at all—I played it on them. You come in here and feel of me if you don't believe me."
