



Produced by David Widger





HUCKLEBERRY FINN

By Mark Twain

Part 8.



CHAPTER XXXVI.

AS soon as we reckoned everybody was asleep that night we went down the
lightning-rod, and shut ourselves up in the lean-to, and got out our pile
of fox-fire, and went to work.  We cleared everything out of the way,
about four or five foot along the middle of the bottom log.  Tom said we
was right behind Jim's bed now, and we'd dig in under it, and when we got
through there couldn't nobody in the cabin ever know there was any hole
there, because Jim's counter-pin hung down most to the ground, and you'd
have to raise it up and look under to see the hole.  So we dug and dug
with the case-knives till most midnight; and then we was dog-tired, and
our hands was blistered, and yet you couldn't see we'd done anything
hardly.  At last I says:

"This ain't no thirty-seven year job; this is a thirty-eight year job,
Tom Sawyer."

He never said nothing.  But he sighed, and pretty soon he stopped
digging, and then for a good little while I knowed that he was thinking.
Then he says:

"It ain't no use, Huck, it ain't a-going to work.  If we was prisoners it
would, because then we'd have as many years as we wanted, and no hurry;
and we wouldn't get but a few minutes to dig, every day, while they was
changing watches, and so our hands wouldn't get blistered, and we could
keep it up right along, year in and year out, and do it right, and the
way it ought to be done.  But WE can't fool along; we got to rush; we
ain't got no time to spare.  If we was to put in another night this way
we'd have to knock off for a week to let our hands get well--couldn't
touch a case-knife with them sooner."

"Well