Tom Sawyer Detective | Page 6

a sweat to get in there and find out the mystery
about Phillips; and moreover he done a lot of guessing about it all night, which warn't no
use, for if you are going to find out the facts of a thing, what's the sense in guessing out
what ain't the facts and wasting ammunition? I didn't lose no sleep. I wouldn't give a dern
to know what's the matter of Phillips, I says to myself.
Well, in the morning we put on the aperns and got a couple of trays of truck, and Tom he
knocked on the door. The man opened it a crack, and then he let us in and shut it quick.
By Jackson, when we got a sight of him, we 'most dropped the trays! and Tom says:
"Why, Jubiter Dunlap, where'd YOU come from?"
Well, the man was astonished, of course; and first off he looked like he didn't know
whether to be scared, or glad, or both, or which, but finally he settled down to being glad;
and then his color come back, though at first his face had turned pretty white. So we got
to talking together while he et his breakfast. And he says:
"But I aint Jubiter Dunlap. I'd just as soon tell you who I am, though, if you'll swear to
keep mum, for I ain't no Phillips, either."
Tom says:
"We'll keep mum, but there ain't any need to tell who you are if you ain't Jubiter Dunlap."
"Why?"
"Because if you ain't him you're t'other twin, Jake. You're the spit'n image of Jubiter."
"Well, I'm Jake. But looky here, how do you come to know us Dunlaps?"

Tom told about the adventures we'd had down there at his uncle Silas's last summer, and
when he see that there warn't anything about his folks--or him either, for that matter--that
we didn't know, he opened out and talked perfectly free and candid. He never made any
bones about his own case; said he'd been a hard lot, was a hard lot yet, and reckoned he'd
be a hard lot plumb to the end. He said of course it was a dangerous life, and--He give a
kind of gasp, and set his head like a person that's listening. We didn't say anything, and so
it was very still for a second or so, and there warn't no sounds but the screaking of the
woodwork and the chug-chugging of the machinery down below.
Then we got him comfortable again, telling him about his people, and how Brace's wife
had been dead three years, and Brace wanted to marry Benny and she shook him, and
Jubiter was working for Uncle Silas, and him and Uncle Silas quarreling all the time--and
then he let go and laughed.
"Land!" he says, "it's like old times to hear all this tittle-tattle, and does me good. It's
been seven years and more since I heard any. How do they talk about me these days?"
"Who?"
"The farmers--and the family."
"Why, they don't talk about you at all--at least only just a mention, once in a long time."
"The nation!" he says, surprised; "why is that?"
"Because they think you are dead long ago."
"No! Are you speaking true?--honor bright, now." He jumped up, excited.
"Honor bright. There ain't anybody thinks you are alive."
"Then I'm saved, I'm saved, sure! I'll go home. They'll hide me and save my life. You
keep mum. Swear you'll keep mum--swear you'll never, never tell on me. Oh, boys, be
good to a poor devil that's being hunted day and night, and dasn't show his face! I've
never done you any harm; I'll never do you any, as God is in the heavens; swear you'll be
good to me and help me save my life."
We'd a swore it if he'd been a dog; and so we done it. Well, he couldn't love us enough
for it or be grateful enough, poor cuss; it was all he could do to keep from hugging us.
We talked along, and he got out a little hand-bag and begun to open it, and told us to turn
our backs. We done it, and when he told us to turn again he was perfectly different to
what he was before. He had on blue goggles and the naturalest-looking long brown
whiskers and mustashes you ever see. His own mother wouldn't 'a' knowed him. He asked
us if he looked like his brother Jubiter, now.
"No," Tom said; "there ain't anything left that's like him except the long hair."

"All right, I'll get that cropped close to my head before I get there; then him and Brace
will keep my secret, and I'll live with them as being a stranger, and the neighbors won't
ever guess me out.