fact, everything seemed to bedrifting just in the right direction, now; the treasure must be stillin No. 2, the men would be captured and jailed that day, and he and Tomcould seize the gold that night without any trouble or any fear ofinterruption.
Just as breakfast was completed there was a knock at the door. Huckjumped for a hiding-place, for he had no mind to be connected evenremotely with the late event. The Welshman admitted several ladies andgentlemen, among them the Widow Douglas, and noticed that groups ofcitizens were climbing up the hill--to stare at the stile. So the newshad spread. The Welshman had to tell the story of the night to thevisitors. The widow's gratitude for her preservation was outspoken.
"Don't say a word about it, madam. There's another that you're morebeholden to than you are to me and my boys, maybe, but he don't allowme to tell his name. We wouldn't have been there but for him."
Of course this excited a curiosity so vast that it almost belittledthe main matter--but the Welshman allowed it to eat into the vitals ofhis visitors, and through them be transmitted to the whole town, for herefused to part with his secret. When all else had been learned, thewidow said:
"I went to sleep reading in bed and slept straight through all thatnoise. Why didn't you come and wake me?"
"We judged it warn't worth while. Those fellows warn't likely to comeagain--they hadn't any tools left to work with, and what was the use ofwaking you up and scaring you to death? My three negro men stood guardat your house all the rest of the night. They've just come back."
More visitors came, and the story had to be told and retold for acouple of hours more.
There was no Sabbath-school during day-school vacation, but everybodywas early at church. The stirring event was well canvassed. News camethat not a sign of the two villains had been yet discovered. When thesermon was finished, Judge Thatcher's wife dropped alongside of Mrs.Harper as she moved down the aisle with the crowd and said:
"Is my Becky going to sleep all day? I just expected she would betired to death."
"Your Becky?"
"Yes," with a startled look--"didn't she stay with you last night?"
"Why, no."
Mrs. Thatcher turned pale, and sank into a pew, just as Aunt Polly,talking briskly with a friend, passed by. Aunt Polly said:
"Good-morning, Mrs. Thatcher. Good-morning, Mrs. Harper. I've got aboy that's turned up missing. I reckon my Tom stayed at your house lastnight--one of you. And now he's afraid to come to church. I've got tosettle with him."
Mrs. Thatcher shook her head feebly and turned paler than ever.
"He didn't stay with us," said Mrs. Harper, beginning to look uneasy.A marked anxiety came into Aunt Polly's face.
"Joe Harper, have you seen my Tom this morning?"
"No'm."
"When did you see him last?"
Joe tried to remember, but was not sure he could say. The people hadstopped moving out of church. Whispers passed along, and a bodinguneasiness took possession of every countenance. Children wereanxiously questioned, and young teachers. They all said they had notnoticed whether Tom and Becky were on board the ferryboat on thehomeward trip; it was dark; no one thought of inquiring if any one wasmissing. One young man finally blurted out his fear that they werestill in the cave! Mrs. Thatcher swooned away. Aunt Polly fell tocrying and wringing her hands.
The alarm swept from lip to lip, from group to group, from street tostreet, and within five minutes the bells were wildly clanging and thewhole town was up! The Cardiff Hill episode sank into instantinsignificance, the burglars were forgotten, horses were saddled,skiffs were manned, the ferryboat ordered out, and before the horrorwas half an hour old, two hundred men were pouring down highroad andriver toward the cave.
All the long afternoon the village seemed empty and dead. Many womenvisited Aunt Polly and Mrs. Thatcher and tried to comfort them. Theycried with them, too, and that was still better than words. All thetedious night the town waited for news; but when the morning dawned atlast, all the word that came was, "Send more candles--and send food."Mrs. Thatcher was almost crazed; and Aunt Polly, also. Judge Thatchersent messages of hope and encouragement from the cave, but theyconveyed no real cheer.
The old Welshman came home toward daylight, spattered withcandle-grease, smeared with clay, and almost worn out. He found Huckstill in the bed that had been provided for him, and delirious withfever. The physicians were all at the cave, so the Widow Douglas cameand took charge of the patient. She said she would do her best by him,because, whether he was good, bad, or indifferent, he was the Lord's,and nothing that was the Lord's was a thing to be neglected. TheWelshman said Huck had good spots in him, and the widow said:
"You can depend on it. That's the Lord's mark. He don't leave it off.He never does. Puts it somewhere on every creature that comes from hishands."
Early in the forenoon parties of jaded men began to straggle into thevillage, but the strongest of the citizens continued searching. All thenews that could be gained was that remotenesses of the cavern werebeing ransacked that had never been visited before; that every cornerand crevice was going to be thoroughly searched; that wherever onewandered through the maze of passages, lights were to be seen flittinghither and thither in the distance, and shoutings and pistol-shots senttheir hollow reverberations to the ear down the sombre aisles. In oneplace, far from the section usually traversed by tourists, the names"BECKY & TOM" had been found traced upon the rocky wall withcandle-smoke, and near at hand a grease-soiled bit of ribbon. Mrs.Thatcher recognized the ribbon and cried over it. She said it was thelast relic she should ever have of her child; and that no other memorialof her could ever be so precious, because this one parted latest fromthe living body before the awful death came. Some said that now andthen, in the cave, a far-away speck of light would glimmer, and then aglorious shout would burst forth and a score of men go trooping down theechoing aisle--and then a sickening disappointment always followed; thechildren were not there; it was only a searcher's light.
Three dreadful days and nights dragged their tedious hours along, andthe village sank into a hopeless stupor. No one had heart for anything.The accidental discovery, just made, that the proprietor of theTemperance Tavern kept liquor on his premises, scarcely fluttered thepublic pulse, tremendous as the fact was. In a lucid interval, Huckfeebly led up to the subject of taverns, and finally asked--dimlydreading the worst--if anything had been discovered at the TemperanceTavern since he had been ill.
"Yes," said the widow.
Huck started up in bed, wild-eyed:
"What? What was it?"
"Liquor!--and the place has been shut up. Lie down, child--what a turnyou did give me!"
"Only tell me just one thing--only just one--please! Was it Tom Sawyerthat found it?"
The widow burst into tears. "Hush, hush, child, hush! I've told youbefore, you must NOT talk. You are very, very sick!"
Then nothing but liquor had been found; there would have been a greatpowwow if it had been the gold. So the treasure was gone forever--goneforever! But what could she be crying about? Curious that she shouldcry.
These thoughts worked their dim way through Huck's mind, and under theweariness they gave him he fell asleep. The widow said to herself:
"There--he's asleep, poor wreck. Tom Sawyer find it! Pity but somebodycould find Tom Sawyer! Ah, there ain't many left, now, that's got hopeenough, or strength enough, either, to go on searching."
CHAPTER XXXI
NOW to return to Tom and Becky's share in the picnic. They trippedalong the murky aisles with the rest of the company, visiting thefamiliar wonders of the cave--wonders dubbed with ratherover-descriptive names, such as "The Drawing-Room," "The Cathedral,""Aladdin's Palace," and so on. Presently the hide-and-seek frolickingbegan, and Tom and Becky engaged in it with zeal until the exertionbegan to grow a trifle wearisome; then they wandered down a sinuousavenue holding their candles aloft and reading the tangled web-work ofnames, dates, post-office addresses, and mottoes with which the rockywalls had been frescoed (in can
dle-smoke). Still drifting along andtalking, they scarcely noticed that they were now in a part of the cavewhose walls were not frescoed. They smoked their own names under anoverhanging shelf and moved on. Presently they came to a place where alittle stream of water, trickling over a ledge and carrying a limestonesediment with it, had, in the slow-dragging ages, formed a laced andruffled Niagara in gleaming and imperishable stone. Tom squeezed hissmall body behind it in order to illuminate it for Becky'sgratification. He found that it curtained a sort of steep naturalstairway which was enclosed between narrow walls, and at once theambition to be a discoverer seized him. Becky responded to his call,and they made a smoke-mark for future guidance, and started upon