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Now, who can he mean?” The howling stopped. Tom pricked up his ears.
“Sh! What’s that?” he whispered.

“Sounds like-like hogs grunting. No-it’s somebody snoring, Tom.” “That is it?
Where ‘bouts is it, Huck?”

“I bleeve it’s down at t’other end. Sounds so, anyway. Pap used to sleep there,
sometimes, ‘long with the hogs, but laws bless you, he just lifts things when he
snores. Besides, I reckon he ain’t ever coming back to this town any more.” The
spirit of adventure rose in the boys’ souls once more.

“Hucky do you das’t to go if I lead?” “I don’t like to, much. Tom, s’pose it’s
Injun Joe!” Tom quailed. But presently the temptation rose up strong again and
the boys agreed to try, with the understanding that they would take to their
heels if the snoring stopped. So they went tip-toeing stealthily down, the one
behind the other.

When they had got to within five steps of the snorer, Tom stepped on a stick,
and it broke with a sharp snap. The man moaned, writhed a little, and his face
came into the moonlight. It was Muff Potter. The boys’ hearts had stood still, and
their hopes too, when the man moved, but their fears passed away now. They
tip-toed out, through the broken weather-boarding, and stopped at a little
distance to exchange a parting word. That long, lugubrious howl rose on the
night air again! They turned and saw the strange dog standing within a few feet
of where Potter was lying, and facing Potter, with his nose pointing
heavenward.

“O, geeminy it’s him!” exclaimed both boys, in a breath.
“Say, Tom-they say a stray dog come howling around Johnny Miller’s house,
‘bout midnight, as much as two weeks ago; and a whippoorwill come in and lit
on the bannisters and sung, the very same evening; and there ain’t anybody
dead there yet.” “Well I know that.

And suppose there ain’t. Didn’t Gracie Miller fall in the kitchen fire and burn
herself terrible the very next Saturday?” “Yes, but she ain’t dead. And what’s
more, she’s getting better, too.” “All right, you wait and see. She’s a goner, just
as dead sure as Muff Potter’s a goner. That’s what the niggers say, and they
know all about these kind of things, Huck.” Then they separated, cogitating.
When Tom crept in at his bedroom window, the night was almost spent. He
undressed with excessive caution, and fell asleep congratulating himself that
nobody knew of his escapade. He was not aware that the gently-snoring Sid was
awake, and had been so for an hour.

When Tom awoke, Sid was dressed and gone. There was a late look in the light,
a late sense in the atmosphere. He was startled. Why had he not been
calledpersecuted till he was up, as usual? The thought filled him with bodings.
Within five minutes he was dressed and down stairs, feeling sore and drowsy.
The family were still at table, but they had finished breakfast. There was no
voice of rebuke; but there were averted eyes; there was a silence and an air of
solemnity that struck a chill to the culprit’s heart. He sat down and tried to seem