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 called persecuted 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 gay, but it
was up-hill work; it roused no smile, no response, and he lapsed into
silence and let his heart sink down to the depths.
After breakfast his aunt took him aside, and Tom almost brightened in
the hope that he was going to be flogged; but it was not so. His aunt
wept over him and asked him how he could go and break her old heart so;
and finally told him to go on, and ruin himself and bring her gray hairs
with sorrow to the grave, for it was no use for her to try any more.
This was worse than a thousand whippings, and Tom s heart was sorer now
than his body. He cried, he pleaded for forgiveness, promised to reform
over and over again, and then received his dismissal, feeling that
he had won but an imperfect forgiveness and established but a feeble
confidence.
He left the presence too miserable to even feel revengeful toward
Sid; and so the latter s prompt retreat through the back gate was
unnecessary. He moped to school gloomy and sad, and took his flogging,
along with Joe Harper, for playing hookey the day before, with the
air of one whose heart was busy with heavier woes and wholly dead to
trifles. Then he betook himself to his seat, rested his elbows on his
desk and his jaws in his hands, and stared at the wall with the stony
stare of suffering that has reached the limit and can no further go.
83