claimed or sold!” Tom rose square up in bed, with his eye hot, and his nostrils opening and shutting like gills, and sings out to me: “They hain't no _right_ to shut him up!  SHOVE!--and don't you lose a minute.  Turn him loose! he ain't no slave; he's as free as any cretur that walks this earth!” “What _does_ the child mean?” “I mean every word I _say_, Aunt Sally, and if somebody don't go, _I'll_ go. I've knowed him all his life, and so has Tom, there.  Old Miss Watson died two months ago, and she was ashamed she ever was going to sell him down the river, and _said_ so; and she set him free in her will.” “Then what on earth did _you_ want to set him free for, seeing he was already free?” “Well, that _is_ a question, I must say; and just like women!  Why, I wanted the _adventure_ of it; and I'd a waded neck-deep in blood to--goodness alive, _Aunt Polly!_” If she warn't standing right there, just inside the door, looking as sweet and contented as an angel half full of pie, I wish I may never! Aunt Sally jumped for her, and most hugged the head off of her, and cried over her, and I found a good enough place for me under the bed, for it was getting pretty sultry for us, seemed to me.  And I peeped out, and in a little while Tom's Aunt Polly shook herself loose and stood there looking across at Tom over her spectacles--kind of grinding him into the earth, you know.  And then she says: “Yes, you _better_ turn y'r head away--I would if I was you, Tom.” “Oh, deary me!” says Aunt Sally; “_Is_ he changed so?  Why, that ain't _Tom_, it's Sid; Tom's--Tom's--why, where is Tom?  He was here a minute ago.” “You mean where's Huck _Finn_--that's what you mean!  I reckon I hain't raised such a scamp as my Tom all these years not to know him when I _see_ him.  That _would_ be a pretty howdy-do. Come out from under that bed, Huck Finn.” So I done it.  But not feeling brash. Aunt Sally she was one of the mixed-upest-looking persons I ever see--except one, and that was Un