SO I started for town in the wagon, and when I was half-way I see a wagon coming, and sure enough it was Tom Sawyer, and I stopped and waited till he come along.  I says "Hold on!" and it stopped alongside, and his mouth opened up like a trunk, and stayed so; and he swallowed two or three times like a person that's got a dry throat, and then says:

"I hain't ever done you no harm.  You know that.  So, then, what you want to come back and ha'nt _me_ for?"

I says:

"I hain't come back—I hain't been _gone_."

When he heard my voice it righted him up some, but he warn't quite satisfied yet.  He says:

"Don't you play nothing on me, because I wouldn't on you.  Honest injun now, you ain't a ghost?"

"Honest injun, I ain't," I says.

"Well—I—I—well, that ought to settle it, of course; but I can't somehow seem to understand it no way.  Looky here, warn't you ever murdered _at all?_"

"No.  I warn't ever murdered at all—I played it on them.  You come in here and feel of me if you don't believe me."

So he done it; and it satisfied him; and he was that glad to see me again he didn't know what to do.  And he wanted to know all about it right off, because it was a grand adventure, and mysterious, and so it hit him where he lived.  But I said, leave it alone till by and by; and told his driver to wait, and we drove off a little piece, and I told him the kind of a fix I was in, and what did he reckon we better do?  He said, let him alone a minute, and don't disturb him.  So he thought and thought, and pretty soon he says:

"It's all right; I've got it.  Take my trunk in your wagon, and let on it's your'n; and you turn back and fool along slow, so as to get to the house about the time you ought to; and I'll go towards town a piece, and take a fresh start, and get there a quarter or a half an hour after you; and you needn't let on to know me at first."

I says: