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The Welshman’s sons departed at once. As they were leaving the room Huck sprang up and exclaimed:

“Oh, please don’t tell anybody it was me that blowed on them! Oh, please!”

“All right if you say it, Huck, but you ought to have the credit of what you did.”

“Oh no, no! Please don’t tell!”

When the young men were gone, the old Welshman said:

“They won’t tell—and I won’t. But why don’t you want it known?”

Huck would not explain, further than to say that he already knew too much about one of those men and would not have the man know that he knew anything against him for the whole world—he would be killed for knowing it, sure.

The old man promised secrecy once more, and said:

“How did you come to follow these fellows, lad? Were they looking suspicious?”

Huck was silent while he framed a duly cautious reply. Then he said:

“Well, you see, I’m a kind of a hard lot,—least everybody says so, and I don’t see nothing agin it—and sometimes I can’t sleep much, on account of thinking about it and sort of trying to strike out a new way of doing. That was the way of it last night. I couldn’t sleep, and so I come along upstreet ’bout midnight, a-turning it all over, and when I got to that old shackly brick store by the Temperance Tavern, I backed up agin the wall to have another think. Well, just then along comes these two chaps slipping along close by me, with something under their arm, and I reckoned they’d stole it. One was a-smoking, and t’other one wanted a light; so they stopped right before me and the cigars lit up their faces and I see that the big one was the deaf and dumb Spaniard, by his white whiskers and the patch on his eye, and t’other one was a rusty, ragged-looking devil.”

“Could you see the rags by the light of the cigars?”

This staggered Huck for a moment. Then he said:

“Well, I don’t know—but somehow it seems as if I did.”

“Then they went on, and you—”

“Follered ’em—yes. That was it. I wanted to see what was up—they sneaked along so. I dogged ’em to the widder’s stile, and stood in the dark and heard the ragged one beg for the widder, and the Spaniard swear he’d spile her looks just as I told you and your two—”

“What! The deaf and dumb man said all that!”

Huck had made another terrible mistake! He was trying his best to keep the old man from getting the faintest hint of who the Spaniard might be, and yet his tongue seemed determined to get him into trouble in spite of all he could do. He made several efforts to creep out of his scrape, but the old man’s eye was upon him and he made blunder after blunder. Presently the Welshman said:

“My boy, don’t be afraid of me. I wouldn’t hurt a hair of your head for all the world. No—I’d protect you—I’d protect you. This Spaniard is not deaf and dumb; you’ve let that slip without intending it; you can’t cover that up now. You know something about that Spaniard that you want to keep dark. Now trust me—tell me what it is, and trust me—I won’t betray you.”

Huck looked into the old man’s honest eyes a moment, then bent over and whispered in his ear:

“’Tain’t a Spaniard—it’s Injun Joe!”

The Welshman almost jumped out of his chair. In a moment he said:

“It’s all plain enough, now. When you talked about notching ears and slitting noses I judged that that was your own embellishment, because white men don’t take that sort of revenge. But an Injun! That’s a different matter altogether.”

During breakfast the talk went on, and in the course of it the old man said that the last thing which he and his sons had done, before going to bed, was to get a lantern and examine the stile and its vicinity for marks of blood. They found none, but captured a bulky bundle of—

“Of what?”

If the words had been lightning they could not have leaped with a more stunning suddenness from Huck’s blanched lips. His eyes were staring wide, now, and his breath suspended—waiting for the answer. The Welshman started—stared in return—three seconds—five seconds—ten—then replied:

“Of burglar’s tools. Why, what’s the matter with you?”

Huck sank back, panting gently, but deeply, unutterably grateful. The Welshman eyed him gravely, curiously—and presently said:

“Yes, burglar’s tools. That appears to relieve you a good deal. But what did give you that turn? What were you expecting we’d found?”

Huck was in a close place—the inquiring eye was upon him—he would have given anything for material for a plausible answer—nothing suggested itself—the inquiring eye was boring deeper and deeper—a senseless reply offered—there was no time to weigh it, so at a venture he uttered it—feebly:

“Sunday-school books, maybe.”

Poor Huck was too distressed to smile, but the old man laughed loud and joyously, shook up the details of his anatomy from head to foot, and ended by saying that such a laugh was money in a-man’s pocket, because it cut down the doctor’s bill like everything. Then he added:

“Poor old chap, you’re white and jaded—you ain’t well a bit—no wonder you’re a little flighty and off your balance. But you’ll come out of it. Rest and sleep will fetch you out all right, I hope.”

Huck was irritated to think he had been such a goose and betrayed such a suspicious excitement, for he had dropped the idea that the parcel brought from the tavern was the treasure, as soon as he had heard the talk at the widow’s stile. He had only thought it was not the treasure, however—he had not known that it wasn’t—and so the suggestion of a captured bundle was too much for his self-possession. But on the whole he felt glad the little episode had happened, for now he knew beyond all question that that bundle was not the bundle, and so his mind was at rest and exceedingly comfortable. In fact, everything seemed to be drifting just in the right direction, now; the treasure must be still in No. 2, the men would be captured and jailed that day, and he and Tom could seize the gold that night without any trouble or any fear of interruption.