"Well, I never heard the likes of it in all my born days!  So it was _you_, you little rapscallions, that's been making all this trouble, and turned everybody's wits clean inside out and scared us all most to death.  I've as good a notion as ever I had in my life to take it out o' you this very minute.  To think, here I've been, night after night, a—_you_ just get well once, you young scamp, and I lay I'll tan the Old Harry out o' both o' ye!"

But Tom, he _was_ so proud and joyful, he just _couldn't_ hold in, and his tongue just _went_ it—she a-chipping in, and spitting fire all along, and both of them going it at once, like a cat convention; and she says:

"_Well_, you get all the enjoyment you can out of it _now_, for mind I tell you if I catch you meddling with him again—"

"Meddling with _who_?"  Tom says, dropping his smile and looking surprised.

"With _who_?  Why, the runaway n*****, of course.  Who'd you reckon?"

Tom looks at me very grave, and says:

"Tom, didn't you just tell me he was all right?  Hasn't he got away?"

"_Him_?" says Aunt Sally; "the runaway n*****?  'Deed he hasn't.  They've got him back, safe and sound, and he's in that cabin again, on bread and water, and loaded down with chains, till he's 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!