Huckleberry Finn by Dave Mckay, Mark Twain (recommended books to read TXT) 📕

After midnight the people went to bed, and then for two or three hours both sides of the river was black -- no more lights in the cabin windows. These lights was our clock -- the first one that showed again would tell us that morning was coming, so we hunted a place to hide and tie up right away.

One morning just after the sun come up I found a canoe and crossed a channel between the island and the side of the river -- it was only two hundred yards -- and went about a mile up a shallow little side river with a lot of trees on it, to see if I couldn’t get some berries. Just as I was passing a place where one could walk across the little river because of shallow water, here comes two men running toward me as fast as they could foot it.

I thought I was a goner, for whenever anyone was after anyone I judged it was me -- or maybe Jim. I was about to take off in a hurry, but they was pretty close to me then, and shouted out and begged me to save their lives -- said they hadn’t been doing nothing, and was in trouble for it -- said there was men and dogs a-coming. They wanted to jump right in, but I says: “Don’t you do it. I don’t hear the dogs and horses yet; you’ve got time to squeeze through the bushes and get up the river a little ways; then you take to the water and walk down to me and get in -- that’ll throw the dogs off the smell.”

They done it, and soon as they was in I headed for our island. In five or ten minutes we heard the dogs and the men away off, shouting. We heard them come along toward the side river, but couldn’t see them; they seemed to stop and act confused a while; then, as we got farther and farther away, we could only just hear them; by the time we had left a mile of trees behind us and come to the river, everything was quiet, and we went over to the island to hide in the trees where we was safe.

One of these men was about seventy or more, and had no hair and a very grey beard. He had an old knocked about soft hat on, and a dirty blue shirt, and very old blue pants pushed down into the top of his tall shoes, and a knitted rope over one shoulder to hold up the pants. He had an old blue coat with gold buttons over his arm, and both of them had big, fat, dirty bags made from rugs.

The other one was about thirty, and dressed about as poorly. After breakfast we all rested and talked, and the first thing that come out was that these men didn’t know one another.

“What got you into trouble?” says the old man to t’other.

“Well, I’d been selling a chemical to take hard dirt off the teeth -- and it does take it off, too, but most of the time it takes some of the tooth along with it -- and I stayed about one night longer than I should have, and was just in the act of leaving when I ran across you on this side of town, and you said they were coming, and begged me to help you to get off. So I told you I was running from trouble myself, and would run off with you. That’s the whole story -- what’s yours?

“Well, I’d been doing a little preaching there about a week, and the women, big and little, liked me because I was making it mighty warm for the drinkers, I tell you, and taking as much as five or six dollars a night -- ten cents a head, with children and slaves free -- and business was growing all the time, when one way or another a little story got around last night that I had been doing a little secret drinking myself. A slave warned me this morning, and told me the people was coming together on the quiet with their dogs and horses, and they’d be along pretty soon and give me about half an hour’s start, and then run me down if they could; and if they got me they would put tar and feathers on me. I didn’t wait for no breakfast -- I weren’t hungry.”

“Old man,” said the young one, “I think we could work together as a team; what do you think?”

“I ain’t against it. What’s your line -- mostly?”

“I learned to do printing as a boy; make a little of my own medicines; do some acting -- serious parts, you know; take a turn at telling people about themselves from the shape of their head when I can; teach, anything from singing to history, for a change; give talks sometimes -- oh, I do lots of things -- most anything that comes up, so long as it ain’t work. What’s your thing?”

“I’ve done a lot in the doctoring way in my time. Laying on of hands is my best trick -- for cancer and people that can’t move, and such things; and I can tell a person’s future pretty good when I’ve got someone along to find out things for me. Preaching’s my line, too, and missionary work.”

Nobody never said a thing for a while; then the young man breathed out loudly and says: “Oh me, oh my!”

“What are you oh mying about?” says the head with no hair.

“To think I should have lived to be leading such a life, and be pulled down into such company.” And he started to rub the corner of his eye with a cloth.

“Cook your skin, ain’t the company good enough for you?” says the head with no hair, pretty proud like.

“Yes, it is good enough for me; it’s as good as I’m worth; for who brought me so low when I was so high? I did it myself. I don’t blame you, my friends -- far from it; I don’t blame anyone. I had it all coming. Let the cold world do its worst; one thing I know -- there’s a hole in the ground waiting for me. The world may go on just as it’s always done, and take everything from me -- loved ones, my land, everything; but it can’t take that. Some day I’ll lie down in that hole and forget it all, and my poor broken heart will be at rest.” He went on a-rubbing his eyes.

“Forget your poor broken heart,” says the head. “What are you throwing your poor broken heart at us for? We ain’t done nothing.”

“No, I know you haven’t. I ain’t blaming you, friends. I brought myself down -- yes, I did it myself. It’s right I should go through this -- perfectly right -- I don’t make any groans about it.”

“Brought you down from where? Where was you brought down from?”

“Ah, you would not believe me; the world never believes -- let it go by -- it’s not important. The secret of my birth -- “

“The secret of your birth? Do you mean to say -- “

“Good men,” says the young man, very seriously, “I will tell it to you, for I feel I may have confidence in you. The truth is that I am a duke!”

Jim’s eyes pushed out when he heard that; and I think mine did, too. Then the head with no hair says: “No! you can’t mean it?”

“Yes. My father’s grandfather, oldest son of the Duke of Bridgewater, ran off to this country about the end of the last century, to breathe the clean air of freedom; married here, and died, leaving a son, his own father dying about the same time. The second son of the duke who died robbed his name and his wealth -- the baby that was the real duke was forgotten. That baby became my grandfather -- I am the true Duke of Bridgewater; and here am I, sad, robbed of my wealth, hunted of men, hated by the cold world, poor, sick, with a broken heart, and brought down to being friends with runaways on a raft!”

Jim felt sorry for him ever so much, and so did I. We tried to make him happy, but he said it weren’t much use, he couldn’t be made happy; said if we was to receive him as a duke, that would do him more good than most anything else; so we said we would, if he would tell us how. He said we should bend over when we spoke to him, and say “My Lord” -- and he would let us call him just “Bridgewater,” which, he said, was more than just a name; and one of us should serve him at dinner, and do any little thing for him he wanted done.

Well, that was all easy, so we done it. All through dinner Jim stood around and served him, and says, “Will my lord have some of dis or some of dat?” and so on, and a body could see he was mighty happy with it.

But the old man got pretty quiet by and by -- didn’t have much to say, and didn’t look very comfortable over all that serving that was going on around the Duke. He seemed to be thinking about something. So, along in the afternoon, he says:

“Look here, Bilgewater,” he says, “I’m a world full of sorry for you, but you ain’t the only person that’s had troubles like that.”

“No?”

“No you ain’t. You ain’t the only person that’s been pulled down wrongly out of a high place.”

“Oh my!”

“No, you ain’t the only person that’s had a secret of his birth.” And truth is, he started to cry.

“Hold! What do you mean?”

“Bilgewater, can I trust you?” says the old man, in a soft crying way.

“To the death!” He took the old man by the hand and squeezed it, and says, “That secret of your being: speak!”

“Bilgewater, I am the son of the king of France!”

You can be sure, Jim and me opened our eyes wide this time.

Then the duke says: “You are what?”

“Yes, my friend, it is too true -- your eyes is looking at this very second on the poor lost Dauphin, Louis the Seventeen, son of Louis the Sixteen and Mary Antoinette.”

“You! At your age! No! You mean you’re his son; you must be six or seven hundred years old, at the very least.”

“Trouble has done it, Bilgewater, trouble has done it; trouble has brought these grey hairs on my face and has taken the hairs from my head. Yes, good men, you see before you, in dirty blue pants and sadness, the lost, forced out, walked-on, and hurting true King of France.”

Well, he cried and took on so that me and Jim didn’t know what to do, we was so sorry -- and so glad and proud we’d got him with us, too. So we did like we done before with the duke, and tried to make him feel happy. But he said it weren’t no use, nothing but to be dead and done with it all could do him any good; but he added that it often made him feel easier and better for a while if people acted toward him as they should, and got down on one knee to speak to him, and always called him “Your Majesty,” and waited on him first at meals, and didn’t sit down when around him, until he asked them.

So Jim and me started majesty-ing him, and doing this and that and t’other for him, and standing up until he told us we might sit down. This done him a lot of good, and so he got happy and comfortable. But the duke kind of turned sour on him, and didn’t look at all happy with the way things was going; still, the king acted real friendly toward him, and said the duke’s father’s grandfather and all the other Dukes of Bilgewater was well thought of by his father, and was free to come to the palace a lot.

But the duke stayed angry a good while, until by and by the king says: “Like as not we got to be together a very long time on this here raft, Bilgewater, and so what’s the use of your being sour? It’ll only make things rough for all of us. I ain’t to be blamed for not being born a duke, and you ain’t to be blamed for not being born a king -- so what’s the use to worry? Make the best of things the way you find ‘em, says