The next day, the Widow Douglas washed the mud off my clothes.
She didn't scold me, but she looked so sad that I decided to try to be good for a while.
I called my father "Pap." No one had seen him for over a year.
That was fine with me. I didn't want to see Pap again because he beat me.
Then some people in St. Petersburg told me that they'd found his body in the river.
They said the drowned man was just his size, with ragged clothes and long hair like Pap's.
But they really couldn't recognize the face because the body had been in the water for so long.
They buried the drowned man on the riverbank.
A few days later, though, I thought of something.
The townspeople told me they found the body floating on his back.
But I had once been told that drowned men floated on their faces and only drowned women floated on their backs.
So I decided the body must have been a woman, dressed up in men's clothes.
After that, I was worried that my father would come back someday.
I still played robbers sometimes with Tom and the other boys, but I was getting bored with it. It was all pretending.
On Saturday Tom told us that we were going to ambush some rich merchants who had two hundred elephants,
six hundred camels, and a thousand mules loaded with diamonds.
But that was just a story he made up.
Really we were just ambushing a Sunday school picnic.
We chased the children away, but only got their doughnuts and jam.
"I don't see any diamonds," I said to Tom.
"Why, they're all right in front of you," Tom answered.
"And the elephants and camels too. Some magicians must have turned them into a Sunday school picnic before we got here."
Then Tom told me how magicians use genies to help them.
"Let's get some genies to come and help us," I said.
Tom explained that you have to rub a magic lamp to make a genie appear.
Then the genie will do whatever you want.
A few days later I thought I would try it.
I went out into the woods with an old lamp and I rubbed it and rubbed it, but nothing happened.
I think Tom really believed these things, but I didn't.
Several months passed, and winter came. I went to school.
At first I hated it, but soon I could spell and read and write a little.
I could say the multiplication tables up to six times seven. Then, school became easier for me.
I was also getting used to the Widow Douglas' house.
The widow told me that I was doing well. She said she wasn't ashamed of me.
One morning at breakfast, I accidentally knocked over the salt shaker.
It is very bad luck to spill salt.
So I reached for some of the salt to throw over my left shoulder because that's supposed to keep the bad luck away.
But Miss Watson stopped me. "Take your hands away, Huckleberry," she scolded. "What a mess you are always making!"
As I left the house after breakfast, I wondered when my bad luck would arrive.
Then I saw footprints in the new snow.
When I bent down to take a closer look, I noticed a cross made with big nails on the heel of the left boot. I knew that boot!
I ran as fast as I could to Judge Thatcher's house.
"Why, my boy, you're all out of breath," he said. "Did you come to get some of your money?"
"No sir," I said. "I don't want it! I want to give all the money to you."
Judge Thatcher was very surprised. He asked me whether anything was wrong.
"Please take it," I begged him, "and don't ask me anything—then I won't have to tell you any lies."
Finally the judge agreed to buy my money from me for one dollar.
He put the dollar in my hand and I left his house.
Miss Watson's black slave Jim, had a magic hairball as big as your fist.
It had come from the fourth stomach of an ox.
Jim said there was a spirit inside it that could see the future.
I went to see Jim that evening. I told him that I knew Pap was back and I wanted to know what he would do.
Jim got out his hairball and said some strange words to it that I couldn't understand.
Then he held it out and dropped it on the floor.
He got down on his knees, put his ear against the hairball, and listened closely. He shook his head.
"The hairball won't talk without money," Jim said.
I gave Jim an old brass quarter that I had in my pocket.
It wasn't a real coin, but maybe the hairball would take it.
Jim put the quarter under the hairball and listened again.
This time, Jim said the hairball would tell me my whole fortune.
The hairball talked to Jim, and Jim repeated it to me:
"Your father doesn't know yet what he's going to do, but you're going to be all right.
You'll have a lot of trouble in your life, but also joy.
And keep away from water as much as you can."
But when I lit my candle and went up to my room that night, there was Pap!