TOM dodged hither and thither through lanes until he was well out of the
track of returning scholars, and then fell into a moody jog. He crossed
a small "branch" two or three times, because of a prevailing juvenile
superstition that to cross water baffled pursuit. Half an hour later
he was disappearing behind the Douglas mansion on the summit of Cardiff
Hill, and the school-house was hardly distinguishable away off in the
valley behind him. He entered a dense wood, picked his pathless way to
the centre of it, and sat down on a mossy spot under a spreading oak.
There was not even a zephyr stirring; the dead noonday heat had even
stilled the songs of the birds; nature lay in a trance that was broken
by no sound but the occasional far-off hammering of a wood-pecker, and
this seemed to render the pervading silence and sense of loneliness the
more profound. The boy's soul was steeped in melancholy; his feelings
were in happy accord with his surroundings. He sat long with his elbows
on his knees and his chin in his hands, meditating. It seemed to him
that life was but a trouble, at best, and he more than half envied Jimmy
Hodges, so lately released; it must be very peaceful, he thought, to lie
and slumber and dream forever and ever, with the wind whispering through
the trees and caressing the grass and the flowers over the grave, and
nothing to bother and grieve about, ever any more. If he only had a
clean Sunday-school record he could be willing to go, and be done with
it all. Now as to this girl. What had he done? Nothing. He had meant
the best in the world, and been treated like a dog--like a very dog. She
would be sorry some day--maybe when it was too late. Ah, if he could only
die temporarily!
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But the elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrained
shape long at a time. Tom presently began to drift insensibly back into
the concerns of this life again. What if he turned his back, now, and
disappeared mysteriously? What if he went away--ever so far away, into
unknown countries beyond the seas--and never came back any more! How
would she feel then! The idea of being a clown recurred to him now, only
to fill him with disgust. For frivolity and jokes and spotted tights
were an offense, when they intruded themselves upon a spirit that was
exalted into the vague august realm of the romantic. No, he would be
a soldier, and return after long years, all war-worn and illustrious.
No--better still, he would join the Indians, and hunt buffaloes and go on
the warpath in the mountain ranges and the trackless great plains of the
Far West, and away in the future come back a great chief, bristling with
feathers, hideous with paint, and prance into Sunday-school, some drowsy
summer morning, with a blood-curdling war-whoop, and sear the eyeballs
of all his companions with unappeasable envy. But no, there was
something gaudier even than this. He would be a pirate! That was it!
now his future lay plain before him, and glowing with unimaginable
splendor. How his name would fill the world, and make people shudder!
How gloriously he would go plowing the dancing seas, in his long, low,
black-hulled racer, the Spirit of the Storm, with his grisly flag flying
at the fore! And at the zenith of his fame, how he would suddenly appear
at the old village and stalk into church, brown and weather-beaten, in
his black velvet doublet and trunks, his great jack-boots, his crimson
sash, his belt bristling with horse-pistols, his crime-rusted cutlass
at his side, his slouch hat with waving plumes, his black flag unfurled,
with the skull and crossbones on it, and hear with swelling ecstasy
the whisperings, "It's Tom Sawyer the Pirate!--the Black Avenger of the
Spanish Main!"
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