Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Zombie Jim Read Online Free PDF Page B

supper he talked to him about temperance and such things till the old man cried, and said he'd been a fool, and fooled away his life; but now he was a-going to turn over a new leaf and be a man nobody wouldn't be ashamed of, and he hoped the judge would help him and not look down on him. The judge said he could hug him for them words; so he cried, and his wife she cried again; pap said he'd been a man that had always been misunderstood before, and the judge said he believed it. The old man said that what a man wanted that was down was sympathy, and the judge said it was so; so they cried again. And when it was bedtime the old man rose up and held out his hand, and says:
    "Look at it, gentlemen and ladies all; take a-hold of it; shake it. There's a hand that was the hand of a hog; but it ain't so no more; it's the hand of a man that's started in on a new life, and'll die before he'll go back. You mark them words-don't forget I said them. It's a clean hand now; shake it-don't be afeard."
    So they shook it, one after the other, all around, and cried. The judge's wife she kissed it. Then the old man he signed a pledge-made his mark. The judge said it was the holiest time on record, or something like that. Then they tucked the old man into a beautiful room, which was the spare room, and in the night some time he got powerful thirsty and clumb out on to the porch-roof and slid down a stanchion and traded his new coat for a jug of forty-rod, and clumb back again and had a good old time; and towards daylight he crawled out again, drunk as a fiddler, and rolled off the porch and broke his left arm in two places, and was most froze to death when somebody found him after sun-up. And when they come to look at that spare room they had to take soundings before they could navigate it.
    The judge he felt kind of sore. He said he reckoned a body could reform the old man with a shotgun, maybe, but he didn't know no other way. He said it'd be easier to reform a blood-hungry, wild-eyed bagger than it would be to reform pap. Those'd be the truest words I ever heard.

CHAPTER VI
    Well, pretty soon the old man was up and around again, and then he went for Judge Thatcher in the courts to make him give up that money, and he went for me, too, for not stopping school. He catched me a couple of times and thrashed me, but I went to school just the same, and dodged him or outrun him most of the time. I didn't want to go to school much before, but I reckoned I'd go now to spite pap. That law trial was a slow business-appeared like they warn't ever going to get started on it; so every now and then I'd borrow two or three dollars off of the judge for him, to keep from getting a cowhiding. Every time he got money he got drunk; and every time he got drunk he raised Cain around town; and every time he raised Cain he got jailed. He was just suited-this kind of thing was right in his line.
    He got to hanging around the widow's too much and so she told him at last that if he didn't quit using around there she would make trouble for him. Well, wasn't he mad? He said he would show who was Huck Finn's boss. So he watched out for me one day in the spring, and catched me, and took me up the river about three mile in a skiff, and crossed over to the Illinois shore where it was woody and there warn't no houses but an old log hut in a place where the timber was so thick you couldn't find it if you didn't know where it was.
    This was fringe territory, y'see, all trees and shadows and full up of baggers that din’ belong to nobody. You could see ‘em wandering about, not a direction or clue ‘bout what they was s'posed to be doin', but not actually causing ruckus, either. Like discarded dogs, I figger. Just roamin’ the forest and not knowin’ why.
    Pap called ‘em bunderlugs.
    He'd say, “Fetch us water an’ mind the bunderlugs, boy."
    He kept me with him all the time, and I never got a chance to run off. We lived in that old cabin, and he always locked the door